Dental lead quality: a scorecard for marketing decisions

Judge dental marketing lead quality by following the same group of enquiries towards a meaningful outcome. Show how many are genuine, how many receive an answer and how many book and attend. Keep the cost and the definition beside every rate.

A low cost per form submission can hide duplicates, irrelevant messages or slow handovers. It does not prove the advertising is good or bad on its own.

Define the group before making the scorecard

Choose enquiries created in one period, then record the date their outcomes are reviewed. This is a cohort: the same group followed over time. Enquiries received yesterday have had less time to book than those received a month ago.

Agree factual exclusions such as spam, duplicates or requests for services you do not offer. Keep the original submission count and exclusion reasons. “Did not book” is an outcome, not a reason to remove an inconvenient enquiry from the denominator.

The enquiry tracker guide shows the working fields behind the report. This scorecard focuses on comparing sources and choosing an action.

Use a small set of traceable measures

Measure	Plain meaning	Do not confuse it with
Submitted enquiries	All submissions in the defined source and period	Unique people
Valid unique enquiries	Relevant enquiries after documented duplicate/spam exclusions	People guaranteed to buy
Meaningful contact	The defined evidence of a useful exchange	An unanswered call attempt
Confirmed consultation	Appointment confirmed in the agreed source	An appointment offered
Attendance	Consultation recorded as attended	Treatment accepted
Later outcome	Separately defined, verified event	An estimated pipeline value

Use totals as well as percentages. If one source has two valid enquiries and one booking, 50% describes the arithmetic but gives little evidence of stable performance.

Worked example: one campaign, several different costs

These figures are fictional. They are not advertising benchmarks or expected Dentorb results.

A campaign spends £1,000 on advertising. It receives 50 submissions; ten are documented duplicates or spam. Of the 40 valid enquiries, 20 book and 12 have attended by the review date.

Measure	Calculation	Result
Cost per submission	£1,000 ÷ 50	£20
Cost per valid enquiry	£1,000 ÷ 40	£25
Valid-enquiry booking rate	20 ÷ 40	50%
Cost per booked consultation	£1,000 ÷ 20	£50
Cost per attended consultation	£1,000 ÷ 12	£83.33

These costs include ad spend only. If a £300 management fee is included in a separate fully loaded comparison, the total becomes £1,300 and cost per booked consultation becomes £65. Label both versions clearly. Neither figure establishes profit: that needs the relevant revenue, refunds and delivery costs.

For a zero denominator, display “not available — no matching events” rather than 0% success or a broken calculation.

Diagnose the gap with both teams

What the records show	What to investigate first
Many irrelevant submissions	Targeting, location, offer and form wording
Valid enquiries waiting	Assignment, staffing and unanswered messages
Conversations but few bookings	Questions left unanswered, suitable slots and patient choices
Bookings but low attendance	Joining information, cancellations and appointment arrangements
Good attendance but weak later outcomes	Appropriately reviewed service, clinical and commercial factors

Do not turn this table into a blame score. Sample the records with the campaign owner and front desk. The enquiry-to-booking guide helps diagnose handovers without assuming more pressure on patients is the solution.

Keep sensitive detail out of campaign reporting

Use aggregate counts and the minimum authorised operational references needed to reconcile them. Do not send patient notes, diagnoses or treatment narratives to an advertising platform merely to fill a report. Any tracking or outcome sharing needs its own privacy and platform-policy assessment.

The ICO's direct-marketing planning guidance identifies additional issues when health or other special-category information is used. Internal measurement and uploading individual outcomes to a platform are separate decisions.

Turn the scorecard into one accountable action

Keep source definitions, attribution method, extract date and exclusions beside the report. A person may see several channels before enquiring; a reported source is useful evidence, not a complete explanation of their decision.

Agree one change, its owner and the next review date. Keep the definitions stable so next month's apparent improvement is not simply a changed filter. Avoid moving budget on a handful of immature records alone.

Dentorb's leads pipeline describes source reporting, while its Paid Ads Management service describes campaign work and visible results. Confirm which stages are supported and how they reconcile. In a demo, ask both views to reproduce a fictional duplicate, a booking and an attendance outcome before trusting a combined headline.