From Google Ad to Filled Chair: Connected Systems Guide

Every dental marketing article talks about "connecting clicks to patients." But what does that actually look like — not in theory, but step by step?

This article follows one patient from the moment they click a Google Ad to the moment they're sitting in the chair with treatment completed. At each step, we'll show two things: what happens in a typical disconnected practice (and where the lead falls through), and what happens when DentalBase connects the full journey.

Same patient. Same Google Ad. Two completely different outcomes.

Step 1: The Click

Tuesday, 9:47 PM. A patient searches "dental implant consultation [city]" on their phone. Your Google Ad appears at the top. They click.

What every practice gets right: The click registers in Google Ads. You're charged $14. The patient lands on your website.

What happens next is where the paths diverge.

In a disconnected practice, the patient browses your implant page for two minutes. They look for a phone number. The office is closed. They see a contact form. Maybe they fill it out. Maybe they don't — they might prefer to call and decide to try tomorrow. Either way, Google Ads records a click. Your website records a session. That's where the data ends.

With DentalBase: The patient lands on your site and sees your practice number. They call. Even though it's 9:47 PM, DentiVoice answers — not a voicemail, not an answering service, but an AI receptionist that knows your schedule, your providers, and your appointment types. The patient journey doesn't pause because your office is closed. It continues.

Your Google Ads run 24/7. Shouldn't your phones?Book a free DentalBase demo and see how DentiVoice answers every call your marketing generates — even at 9:47 PM.

Step 2: The Call

The patient says: "I saw your ad about implants. I've been thinking about this for a while. What does a consultation involve, and do you have anything available this week?"

Disconnected practice: If the patient left a voicemail, someone listens to it the next morning. They call back. The patient is at work and doesn't answer. Phone tag ensues. The patient calls back at lunch but gets put on hold. They hang up after 90 seconds and Google another practice. Your $14 click produced nothing.

If the patient filled out a form instead, the same dynamic plays out over email — slower, less personal, and with every hour of delay reducing conversion odds.

With DentalBase: DentiVoice handles the call in real time. It answers the patient's questions about the implant consultation — duration, what to expect, whether imaging is included. It checks your PMS for availability and offers specific time slots. The patient picks Thursday at 2 PM. DentiVoice books the appointment directly into your PMS, confirms it with the patient via text, and logs the entire interaction.

The critical difference: DentiVoice also tags this appointment with the campaign source. The system knows this patient came from your Google Ads implant campaign, clicked at 9:47 PM, called immediately, and booked a Thursday consultation. That campaign-to-appointment connection is written to the record — not estimated, not inferred from timing, not dependent on the front desk asking "how did you hear about us?"

Step 3: The Confirmation and Show-Up

Wednesday. The appointment is tomorrow.

Disconnected practice: Maybe your scheduling software sends a generic reminder. Maybe it doesn't — it depends on whether someone set up the automation, whether the patient's contact info was entered correctly, and whether the reminder goes to the right phone number. If the patient has second thoughts or simply forgets, you've lost a consultation that your ad spend already paid for.

With DentalBase: The patient receives an automated confirmation text the evening before and a reminder the morning of. The text comes from the same thread as their original booking confirmation — one continuous conversation, not a random number they don't recognize. If the patient needs to reschedule, they can reply to the text and DentiVoice handles it.

Show rates improve when the experience is seamless from first contact through appointment day. The patient has the text thread to prove the appointment is real.

Step 4: The Visit

Thursday, 2 PM. The patient arrives for their implant consultation.

This is the step your PMS handles regardless of how connected your systems are — the clinical visit, the exam, the treatment plan presentation. DentalBase doesn't replace your clinical workflow.

But here's what DentalBase adds: the patient record already contains the full journey. The provider or treatment coordinator can see this is a new patient from a Google Ads implant campaign who called after hours, was booked by DentiVoice, and arrived on time. They know the patient searched for implants specifically and called the same night — indicating urgency. That's a different starting point than "so, what brings you in today?"

Step 5: The Attribution

Thursday, 3:30 PM. The consultation is complete. The patient accepted a treatment plan for a single implant — $4,200 in production.

Disconnected practice: Your PMS shows a new patient and $4,200 in scheduled production. Your Google Ads dashboard shows a click from Tuesday night. Nobody connects the two. At month-end, your agency reports "142 clicks, 23 form fills, estimated 8-12 new patients." Your PMS shows 14 new patients. Were they the same patients? Which came from Google Ads vs. organic vs. referrals? Nobody knows. The $47,000 question remains unanswered.

With DentalBase: The full chain is already connected. The DentalBase dashboard shows: Google Ads implant campaign → click at 9:47 PM Tuesday → DentiVoice call at 9:48 PM → consultation booked for Thursday 2 PM → patient arrived → $4,200 treatment plan accepted. Cost of that click: $14. Revenue attributed: $4,200. ROI on that specific interaction: 300x.

And this isn't a one-off manual calculation. Every call DentiVoice handles is tagged with the source. Every appointment is logged with the campaign. The monthly report doesn't show "clicks and estimated patients" — it shows patients, appointments, and revenue by campaign. That's what we mean by tracking marketing to the chair.

See the full journey — from click to revenue — on one dashboard.Book a free DentalBase demo →

What This Changes About Your Marketing Decisions

When you can see the full journey for every patient, your marketing decisions change in three specific ways:

You stop optimizing for clicks and start optimizing for revenue. Your implant campaign might have a higher cost per click than your teeth whitening campaign — but if implant clicks produce $4,200 cases and whitening clicks produce $200 visits, the implant campaign has 20x the return. Without end-to-end tracking, you'd never know. You might even cut the implant budget because the "cost per click" looked expensive.

An agency report optimizing for clicks would scale the whitening campaign. A DentalBase report optimizing for revenue would scale the implant campaign. Same data, completely different decisions.

You discover your best-performing hours. If DentiVoice books 35% of its appointments from after-hours calls — people calling at 8 PM, 10 PM, Sunday afternoon — that tells you something specific: your marketing generates demand outside business hours, and without AI reception, that demand goes to voicemail and dies. For more on what this reveals about your call patterns, see our missed calls cost analysis.

You identify which campaigns attract committed patients. Show rate by source is one of the most underused metrics in dental marketing. If your Google Ads patients show up 90% of the time but your Facebook Ads patients show up 60%, that's a budget signal. DentalBase tracks show rates by source because the same system that booked the appointment also records whether the patient arrived.

Which of your campaigns actually fills chairs?Book a free DentalBase demo — we'll show you the attribution dashboard and what it reveals about your ad spend.

The System Behind the Story

The patient journey above isn't hypothetical — it's the default workflow for every practice running DentalBase. Here's what makes it work:

DentiVoice answers the call. Whether it's 9:47 PM or 12:15 PM during the lunch rush, the patient reaches an AI receptionist that knows your schedule, your providers, and your appointment types. No voicemail. No hold music.

The PMS integration writes the booking. DentiVoice doesn't book into a separate calendar that someone has to reconcile. It writes directly to Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, or Curve. The appointment exists in the same system your front desk and providers already use.

The source tag stays attached. From click to call to booking to show-up, the campaign source travels with the patient record. No manual tagging. The attribution is automatic because the system that handled the call is the same system that booked the appointment.

The dashboard shows the full picture. One report. Calls by source. Appointments by channel. Revenue by campaign. Show rates by source. Not estimated — actual, pulled from call recordings and PMS records.

"When a practice sees their first full-journey report — one patient, traced from the Google Ad click to the $4,200 treatment plan — the conversation about marketing ROI changes completely," says Jordan, DentalBase's Head of Sales. "It's not abstract anymore. It's a name, a timestamp, a campaign, and a dollar amount."

Follow your patients from click to chair.Book a free DentalBase demo →Explore all DentalBase services →

Every Click Has a Story. Most Practices Never Hear It.

That $14 click at 9:47 PM on a Tuesday had a patient behind it — someone ready to move forward on a $4,200 implant case. In a disconnected practice, that patient hits voicemail, calls a competitor in the morning, and becomes someone else's revenue.

In a connected practice, that same patient reaches DentiVoice, books a consultation, shows up Thursday, and accepts treatment — with the entire journey traceable from the ad campaign to the revenue it produced. No guessing. No spreadsheets. No "how did you hear about us?"

The difference isn't the ad. It isn't the patient. It's whether your systems carry that patient from click to chair without dropping them. That's what DentalBase was built to do.

For the full picture on why attribution breaks and how to fix it, read The $47,000 Question. To see what your current reports are missing, read Why Your Marketing Reports Aren't Telling the Truth.