Case Study·Google Ads, Dental Group

From cash-negative to 2.39× profitable: rebuilding Google Ads for an 11-clinic dental group

URBN Dental was spending tens of thousands a month on search with almost nothing to show for it. In one month of account rebuild, cost per booked appointment nearly halved and the channel turned properly profitable.

Client
URBN Dental
Industry
Dental / Healthcare
Location
Houston, TX (11 clinics)
Engagement
Ongoing since June 2025
Spend Managed
$60,000+ / month
$0$0
Cost per booked appointment
Return on ad spend, first month back
0%0%
Lead-to-booking rate
0%0%
Patient show-up rate
The journey

Four turning points in six months.

A quick read of how the account moved from losing money to funding its own growth.

June 2025
We take over a cash-negative account.
0.55× ROAS
July 2025
Rebuild goes live: tracking, negatives, radius.
2.39× ROAS
Aug to Dec 2025
Overlap cut 80%, keyword list grows past 6,000.
55% show up
January 2026
Spend scaled up and still profitable.
$113,071 revenue
01·In the red

The account was losing money on every dollar spent.

URBN Dental runs 11 clinics across Houston's highest-income areas. Before we took over in June 2025, Google Ads had spent $42,000 to generate just $23,000 in new-patient revenue, a 0.55× return. Close to $19,000 was lost outright, making the channel cash-negative and unsustainable at that spend level.

A

Budget was funding the wrong searches

Spend concentrated on competitor brand terms, insurance-related searches the practice doesn't accept, and bargain-intent queries such as "cheap," "no cost" and "free," paired with dentist, dentistry and implants.

B

Conversion tracking was measuring the wrong thing

Success was counted as clicks on the call button, not real calls, and not calls lasting over 60 seconds. Lead quality and actual demand were effectively invisible.

C

Clinics were competing against each other

9 of the 11 locations sit within a 6km radius. Budget from one clinic routinely spent on another: one clinic landed zero new patients while another took 70 new patients from a $5,000 budget.

D

Volume was rising, outcomes weren't

Lead counts looked healthy on the surface. Booked appointments stayed low regardless, spend and real results had come apart.

Excluded from day one
Google Ads · Account Overview
June 2024
Cost$0
Conv. rate0%
Clicks0
CTR0%
Exhibit A. The account before the rebuild, spend outrunning results.

Per the same period's patient-value report: average revenue per booked patient was just $899 account-wide, $824 from Google Ads specifically.

02·The rebuild

Three changes, in this order.

No new campaigns and no bigger budget, just fixing what was broken in the structure, the measurement, and the geography.

01

Rebuilt the negative keyword list

Systematically excluded the terms that were never going to convert: insurance searches, competitor brand names, bargain-intent queries. Over 0 negative keywords added to date.

02

Fixed conversion tracking

Re-pointed success metrics to what actually matters: online bookings and booked phone calls, not clicks on a call button.

Google Ads conversion action, live Active
Liine New Patient Online BookingPrimary
Conversion sourceWebsite
All conversions0
Conversion value tracked to date: $0
03

Gave every clinic its own radius

Replaced broad, overlapping targeting with small, clinic-specific radii, so neighbouring locations stopped bidding against each other. Overlap cut by roughly 0% after testing.

Sample campaign, live targeting Optimisation score 0%
2.5 mi radius · 1440 S Voss Rd, Houstoncustom radius
1.6 mi radius · 510 Chimney Rock Rd, Houstoncustom radius
77056, TX0
77057, TX0
77063, TX0
Daily budget $0 · down from broad, overlapping city-wide targeting
03·Profitable

Profitable from the first month back.

We took over the account in July 2025. That first month, $33,000 in spend generated $79,398 in new-patient revenue, a 2.39× return counting first visits alone. Using conservative dental lifetime-value assumptions, the true revenue impact of that same spend sits between $237,000 and $395,000.

Google Ads · Account Overview
July 2024
Cost$0
Conv. rate0%
Clicks0
CTR0%
Exhibit C. The account one month after the rebuild.
Revenue generated (Jul)$0
Average value per patient$0
Show-up rate (Jul)0%

Average value per patient more than doubled month over month, from $899 in June to $2,036 in July.

Metric
Before
After
Monthly spend, first month back
$0
$0
New-patient revenue
$0
$0
Return on ad spend (first visit)
Net position
($0)
$0
Lead → booking rate
0%
0%
Show-up rate
0%
0%
0%
Lead to booking rate
0%
Patient show up rate
0%
Clinic overlap removed
$0$20K$40K$60K$80K$100K$120K
$0
May
$0
$0
June
$0
$0
July
$0
$0
Aug
$0
Sep
$0
Oct
$0
$0
Nov
$0
$0
Dec
$0
$0
Jan
Ad spend Revenue, profitable month Revenue, loss-making month Revenue not labelled in source report
Monthly ad spend vs. revenue from new-patient leads, May through January. Striped bars mark months where the source report didn't label an exact revenue figure; height is approximate.
04·Latest read

January 2026, by the numbers

$0

Total revenue tied to Google Ads in January: $95,173 already collected ($82,831 from Google Ads directly, the rest from call extensions), plus 19 future-dated appointments averaging $942 each. Every one of these bookings is non-branded search; nothing here is inflated by brand terms or repeat calls.

Google Ads · Account Overview
January 2026
Cost$0
Bookings0
Conv. rate0%
ROAS
Exhibit B. The same account, January 2026.
Spend (Jan 2026)$0
ROAS, first visit only
Est. true value (3–5× LTV)$0K to $0K
January funnel · lead to revenue

Blended across every channel, the funnel above converts at 72%. Isolate pure Google Ads clicks and it climbs to 90% (168 booked from 186 leads); call-extension traffic is what drags the blended rate down.

New patient leads
0
Booked appointments
0
Attended
0
Revenue generating
0
060120180240300360
0
0
Mar
0
0
Apr
0
0
May
0
0
Jun
0
0
Jul
0
0
Aug
0
0
Sep
0
0
Oct
0
0
Nov
0
0
Dec
0
0
Jan
New patient leads Booked appointments
New patient leads vs. booked appointments, March 2025 through January 2026. Conversion rate rose from 54% to 72% over the same window.
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