What a $3,000/Month Marketing Spend Actually Produces

You're spending $3,000 a month on marketing. Your agency sends a report. It shows clicks, impressions, maybe some "leads." But when you look at your schedule, you're not seeing $3,000 worth of new patients.

Where does the money go?

Not into a black hole — into a funnel with very specific leak points. And once you see the math at each stage, you'll understand exactly why most practices get a fraction of the patients their marketing should produce, and what to do about it.

The Funnel Math: $3,000 In, How Many Patients Out?

Let's trace a typical $3,000/month dental marketing budget through every stage of the funnel. These numbers are based on industry benchmarks for cost per click, call rates, answer rates, and booking rates across dental practices.

That's the full funnel. $3,000 produces roughly 200 clicks, which produce about 60 calls, which — if your front desk answers and converts well — produce 15–20 patients in the chair.

Your cost per patient: $150–$250. Your revenue per patient: depends on the case, but the industry average for a new patient's first-year value sits around $700–$1,200. The math works — if the funnel doesn't leak.

But it leaks. Almost every practice loses patients at two specific stages, and those two stages alone can cut your patient count in half.

Leak #1: The Calls Nobody Answers

Of the 50–70 calls your marketing generates, how many actually reach someone? In most practices, the answer is: fewer than you think.

Calls come in during the lunch break when the front desk is away. They come at 7:45 AM before the office opens. They come at 5:15 PM, five minutes after close. They come at 8 PM on a Tuesday when someone is Googling "dental implant consultation" from their couch. They come during the morning rush when all lines are busy and the front desk is checking in three patients at once.

Every one of those calls cost you money to generate. A missed call on a $14 Google Ad click is $14 gone. If 20–30% of your marketing-generated calls go unanswered — which is common — that's $600–$900 of your $3,000 budget producing exactly zero patients. Not because the ad didn't work. Not because the patient wasn't interested. Because nobody picked up the phone.

For a deeper look at the cost of missed calls, see our missed calls cost analysis.

Your ads run 24/7. Your phones don't — unless DentiVoice answers them.Book a free DentalBase demo and see how many after-hours and overflow calls you're currently losing.

Leak #2: The Calls That Don't Convert

Of the calls that do get answered, how many actually become booked appointments? This is the second major leak — and it's harder to see because the calls happened, so they look like "activity" on the report.

A new patient calls and asks about availability. The front desk puts them on hold to check the schedule. The patient waits 90 seconds and hangs up. A patient calls about implant pricing. The front desk doesn't have the information ready and says "let me take your number and have someone call you back." The callback happens four hours later. The patient already booked elsewhere.

Industry data puts the typical phone-to-appointment conversion rate for dental practices at 30–50%. That means even among calls that are answered, half or more don't result in a booking. Some of that is expected — not every caller is a qualified patient. But a significant portion is lost to hold times, callback delays, and front desk bandwidth.

When you combine both leaks — missed calls and unconverted answered calls — the funnel looks very different:

Same $3,000. Same 60 calls. Double the patients — because every call was answered and handled by a system designed to convert calls to bookings.

Same ad spend. Twice the patients.Book a free DentalBase demo →

What DentiVoice Does at the Call Stage

DentiVoice is an AI receptionist that sits at the exact point in the funnel where the most money leaks out — the phone call. Here's what it changes:

Every call gets answered. After hours, during lunch, during the morning rush — DentiVoice picks up every call your front desk can't. The 20–30% of calls that used to hit voicemail now reach an AI receptionist that can answer questions, check availability, and book appointments in real time.

Calls convert to bookings faster. DentiVoice doesn't put patients on hold to check the schedule. It has real-time access to your PMS — Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, or Curve — and offers specific time slots immediately. The patient picks a time, the appointment writes to the PMS, and a confirmation text goes out in the same conversation. No hold time. No callback.

The source stays attached. Every call DentiVoice handles is tagged with the campaign that generated it. Your Google Ads implant campaign, your organic search traffic, your recall text blast — each one gets credit for the calls it produced, the appointments it booked, and the patients who showed up. This is the attribution chain that most practices can't close.

Your front desk isn't replaced. DentiVoice handles what your front desk can't get to — the overflow, the after-hours, the hold-time abandonments. During business hours, your team still answers the phone. DentiVoice catches what falls through.

What $3,000 Actually Produces With vs. Without DentiVoice

Here's the same $3,000 budget, traced through both scenarios across a full quarter:

The difference isn't the marketing. The marketing generated the same 180 calls in both scenarios. The difference is what happened when the phone rang.

"Practice owners look at that table and realize they've been blaming their marketing for a phone problem," says Jordan, DentalBase's Head of Sales. "The ads are working. The calls are coming in. The question is whether anyone's there to answer them."

How many patients is your $3,000 actually producing?Book a free DentalBase demo — we'll show you your current call answer rate, estimate how many patients you're losing at the phone stage, and model what DentiVoice would change.

Beyond the Phone: What the DentalBase Dashboard Shows You

Once DentiVoice is handling calls and tagging sources, the DentalBase dashboard transforms your monthly marketing report from guesswork into math:

Cost per booked appointment by channel. Not cost per click — cost per patient actually on your schedule. Google Ads might cost $180 per booked patient. Organic search might cost $90. Recall texts might cost $12. These numbers tell you exactly where to put your next dollar.

Revenue by source. Which campaigns attract the highest-value patients? Your emergency ad might fill chairs fast at $300/visit. Your implant campaign might book slower but produce $4,200 cases. Without source-to-revenue tracking, you'd treat both campaigns the same. With DentalBase, you invest based on revenue, not volume.

After-hours conversion rate. What percentage of DentiVoice's after-hours calls convert to booked appointments? If that number is 40–50%, it tells you something critical: your marketing generates demand around the clock, and every hour your phones were off was an hour of wasted ad spend.

For the complete picture of what honest marketing reporting looks like, see Why Your Marketing Reports Aren't Telling the Truth.

See what your $3,000 is really doing.Book a free DentalBase demo →Explore all DentalBase services →

Your $3,000 Isn't the Problem

Most practices that feel like their marketing "isn't working" are actually generating plenty of calls. The ads work. The clicks happen. The phones ring. The problem is downstream — at the call stage where voicemail, hold times, and bandwidth limits quietly kill half the leads your budget paid for.

DentiVoice doesn't change your marketing. It changes what happens when your marketing works. Every call answered. Every appointment booked in real time. Every source tagged. And a dashboard that shows you — in actual patients and actual dollars — what your $3,000 produced this month.