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Most dentists have no idea how much a single Google review is actually worth.
And I’m not talking about reputation. Financially.
Let’s walk through the math.
Step 1: Lifetime Patient Value
For a general dentistry practice, the lifetime value of a patient is roughly $3,000.
Some are less. Some are much more.
But $3K is a fair, leaning toward a conservative, average.
That number matters more than almost any marketing metric you look at. If you don’t know this number for your practice, find it out, ESPECIALLY if you are spending many thousands in ad budget per month.
Step 2: Reviews → Rankings → Calls
Now let’s say your practice earns 50 additional Google reviews over time.
And right now, we aren’t even pushing total reviews on our practices. Google is using review velocity, meaning they want a steady stream of fresh reviews over everything else.
Right now, those reviews moving you from outside the local 3-pack to inside it. It’s happening far faster than it has in years past. And that’s a big deal, for now.
Being inside the map pack dramatically increases visibility and call volume, even if nothing else about your marketing changes.
So, let’s keep this conservative.
Say that ranking improvement generates 10 extra calls per month.
If you convert 1 out of every 3 calls, that’s 3 new patients per month and 36 new patients per year.
Step 3: The Actual Dollar Impact
3 patients per month × $3,000 lifetime value = $9,000 per month
Over a year? That’s over $100,000 in additional revenue that otherwise would have gone to another practice that got the chance to land them before you did.
That’s with reviews being the main driver. Yes, you still need the SEO structure to support that jump and you need the pillars and conversion to turn them into patients easily. But right now, reviews can be your MAIN driver in a much more meaningful way than before.
The Bigger Picture
If you truly understood the ROI of reviews, you wouldn’t treat them as a side task.
You’d build systems around them, measure them monthly and coach your team on encouraging them.
Marketing doesn’t always require more complexity.
Sometimes it just requires respecting the math and asking for a favor.
-Kyle
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