Cranbourne West Dental’s Google Ads went live on 19 October 2026 in an account with no history. In the first 19 days the ads brought in 62 patient enquiries for $1,891, about $30 each. After a quiet first week, the 12 days from 26 October averaged 35 enquiries a week at $23 each. Here’s what we did, what we counted, and what we’d tell any practice thinking about ads.
| The short version | |
|---|---|
| Live | 19 October 2026, account with no history |
| First 19 days | 62 enquiries for $1,891, about $30 each |
| From 26 October | 60 enquiries in 12 days, $23 each |
| What an enquiry is | 37 forms, 15 taps on the phone number, 7 online bookings, 3 calls from the ads |
The situation
Cranbourne West Dental is a dental clinic in Cranbourne West, in Melbourne’s south-east. In August 2026 the practice owner, Gary Sidhu, came to our two-day dental marketing workshop with three other practices. Part of the pre-work was an audit of each practice’s own accounts, and his Google Ads account had never spent a dollar.
He signed on at the end of September for Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, SEO and website work, as a package. This case study is the Google Ads part, and only its first 19 days.
The plan from the workshop leaned towards treatment searches: CEREC crowns and veneers first, then implants and orthodontics. We built that campaign. Alongside it we built a second one for the plainest search there is, a dentist near me, and let the numbers choose.
What was going wrong
Nothing yet, but dental accounts are easy to flatter, and we’ve audited enough of them to know where it happens.
A form gets counted twice. A tap on a phone number gets reported as a booked patient. Searches for the clinic’s own name get mixed in with everything else, so the account looks like it’s finding new patients when it’s mostly catching people who were already coming.
So before a dollar was spent, the tracking was built to count each enquiry once, by type: forms, online bookings, calls from the ads, and taps on the phone number on the website. If the report was going to be read by someone who runs a practice, it had to be a number they could trust.
An ad account that counts the same patient twice helps nobody, least of all the dentist paying for it.
What we did
1. Tracking before spend
Google Tag Manager, Analytics and Search Console in the practice’s name, with us added as a user. Forms, bookings, calls and phone taps each counted once as an enquiry.
2. Two campaigns, two kinds of search
One for people looking for a dentist near them. One for people looking for a specific treatment. Same clinic, different intent, kept apart so each could be judged on its own.
3. A small budget and a week of patience
About $100 a day. The first week cost $514 and produced two enquiries. That’s Google working out who to show the ads to, and it’s the week a lot of accounts get switched off. We left it alone.
4. Reported it by type, not as one number
Every enquiry in the report is one of four things, so the practice can see what the ads are producing and what to follow up.
The results
| Dentist near me searches | Treatment searches | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | $1,338 | $553 | $1,891 |
| Clicks | 261 | 152 | 413 |
| Enquiries | About 58 | About 4 | 62 |
| Cost per enquiry | About $23 | About $130 | About $30 |
Google splits the credit for some enquiries between campaigns, so the split is approximate. The total isn’t.
| Type of enquiry | Count |
|---|---|
| Form enquiries | 37 |
| Taps on the phone number on the website | 15 |
| Online bookings | 7 |
| Calls straight from the ads | 3 |
| Total | 62 |
The quiet first week, 19 to 25 October: $514, two enquiries, $257 each. The 12 days from 26 October to 6 November: $1,377, 60 enquiries, $23 each. Some of those came from people searching for the clinic by name. That’s fine to pay for, as long as you know it’s in there.
Numbers are from the Google Ads account, pulled 7 November 2026.
What Gary said
“Hands down, the guy definitely knows his stuff. Very knowledgeable when it comes to Google Ads, SEO, Facebook and Instagram content and ad creation, lead funneling and just being able to connect all the dots together like a smart marketing agency should be able to in the first place. He was able to answer all of our queries and took the time to understand the needs of our business at a level no one has even bothered prior. No pushy marketing gimmicks, just straight up information, facts and numbers that every business owner should be looking at all day.”
Gary Sidhu, Cranbourne West Dental. Google review, 31 August 2026, after the workshop and before the ads went live.
What any practice can take from this
Start with the searches closest to booking. People searching for a dentist near them did nearly all of the work here. The treatment campaign is the one to improve next, not the one to lead with.
Give it a week before you judge it. The first week cost $257 an enquiry. The next 12 days averaged $23.
Count enquiries once, by type. A form, a booking, a call and a phone tap tell you different things, and a report that adds them up twice tells you nothing.
The cheapest patient enquiry is the one from someone who already needs a dentist this week.
Want more of the right patients?
Book a call with me. We’ll look at what people search for around your practice, which treatments you want to grow and whether your tracking can be trusted. See how we work with dental practices and how we run Google Ads.
