S SGA Dental Partners  ·  Growth Strategy

A paid-media strategy built around your practice

Prepared for Drs. Randy & Ross Buntyn — Smile Gulf Coast, Gulfport MS. Grounded in your practice's own patient data and a market read specific to the Gulf Coast.

Prepared by: SGA Dental Partners  ·  Date: August 2026  ·  Investment: $3,000 / month Google Ads

Executive Summary

The plan, and why we think it works

Your practice already has the demographic mix and market position that make a well-built paid program pay for itself several times over. The Q2 spend was not efficient — but the fix is in the setup, not the market.

Our recommendation

Launch a focused four-campaign Google Ads program on $3,000 / month, built around your existing patient base and 60-year Gulf Coast legacy. Target case: 24 new patients per month — four times your goal of 6 incremental. Even in the worst case, the program still delivers your 6-new-patient target.

Your Goal 6incremental NPs/mo On top of your current ~8/month baseline
Our Target 24NPs/mo from paid At a $125 cost per new patient
CPA Ceiling $375–$600 Based on your $587 production per visit
Your Practice, By the Numbers

What we found when we looked at your book

Before we designed the plan, we pulled 12 months of your practice performance from Power BI and reviewed your 531-patient marketing-targeting export. Here's what we learned — and how it reshaped the strategy.

Practice performance (past 12 months)

Net Production $1.19M ~$108K / month · stable and healthy
Visits 2,025 ~184 / month · $587 production per visit
New Patients 88 ~8 / month · this is our starting line

Where your patients actually come from

Ranked by share of your current 531-patient book. This is the map we'll bid against — not a demographic guess.

Ocean Springs28.6%
Gulfport23.5%
Biloxi16.8%
D'Iberville5.3%
Vancleave4.5%
Saucier3.8%
Gautier2.6%
Pass Christian2.4%
Long Beach2.1%
Diamondhead1.3%
What surprised us: Ocean Springs is your largest source — bigger than Gulfport. And the inland communities of Vancleave and Saucier show up as a real cluster we weren't originally planning to target. We rebuilt the geographic bidding plan around what your book actually shows.
What the data confirmed: Zero patients in your book from Fort Walton or Destin, Florida. It's a three-hour drive — we won't waste ad dollars there.

Your patient demographic — a legacy practice, in the truest sense

Age distribution

75–8921.8%
65–7422.2%
55–6415.4%
45–5414.1%
35–449.8%
18–3411.5%
Under 184.0%

Gender split

Women57.8%
Men42.2%

Median age 62. Sixty percent of your book is aged 55 or older. Your positioning — legacy, unhurried care, third generation — is exactly what this patient wants to hear.

One in four of your patients is a man 55 or older, so we're not going to gender-target ads. We'll bias the creative toward the women who make up most of your book, but we'll keep the men in the funnel too.

The Campaign Structure

Four campaigns, each with a specific job

Not one campaign trying to do everything. Each of these is designed to reach a specific searcher intent, with the budget concentrated where the conversion odds are best.

Week 1
Brand "Smile Gulf Coast" · "Dr. Randy Buntyn" · "Dr. Ross Buntyn". Highest-converting, lowest-cost searches. Non-negotiable.
10%~$300 / mo
Week 1
High-Intent General Dentistry "Dentist near me" · "New patient exam" · "Dentist in Ocean Springs / Gulfport / Biloxi / Vancleave". Your workhorse.
55%~$1,650 / mo
Week 1
Fee-for-Service / Private Practice "Fee-for-service dentist" · "Out-of-network dentist" · "Doctor-owned dental practice". Filters for patients who want what you actually are.
20%~$600 / mo
Week 3
Comfort & Experience "Best dentist" · "Dentist that takes their time" · "Comprehensive dental exam". Adult-focused — no "family dentist" keyword (Dr. Buntyn doesn't see kids under 13 unless born into the practice, so the term is confusing to searchers). Layers on after we have a two-week performance baseline.
15%~$450 / mo
The Landing Page

Where the ads will send patients

We're building a dedicated landing page specifically for these ads — not sending traffic to your current website. That's an intentional choice, and it's one of the biggest levers we have.

Front and center

Your primary phone number as the biggest button on the page — tracked so we know which calls came from paid ads.

An online booking option as a secondary path, showing 5–6 days of open slots so patients can grab a time without waiting for a callback.

Photos of Dr. Randy and Dr. Ross, together — the father-and-son story shown, not just told.

What the page will say

Sixty years on the Gulf Coast. Third generation. Doctor-owned, private practice. Fee-for-service, and here's what that means for you and why our patients choose it.

What the page will not say: "affordable," "$X off," "same-day," or any language that competes on price. Your positioning is quality, legacy, and time — the ads and the page will match.

The Numbers

Forecast — what your $3,000 buys

Modeled across five cost-per-patient scenarios. Even in the worst case, this program clears your 6-new-patient goal.

ScenarioCost per New PatientNPs from PaidTotal NPs (incl. current 8/mo)
Target case$12524~32
Best case$9532~40
Modest improvement$24912.0~20
If Q2 pattern persists$3119.6~18
Break-even at your goal$5006.0~14
Why the Q2 cost per patient was so high — and why we don't expect that to continue. Industry benchmark for dental Google Ads is roughly $73 per lead. Q2's $311 was about four times that. Almost always, when we see a number that far out of line, it points to a setup or tracking problem, not a market problem. The three fixes below are what we believe will bring that number back down.
Three Fixes That Matter More Than Keywords

The funnel changes we'd like to make in the first two weeks

These aren't optional. Every well-run keyword strategy in the world can't outrun a leaky funnel — and we've identified three specific leaks. Fixing them is what moves cost per patient from $311 toward $125.

1. Missed calls after 2:30

The practice is closed roughly 60% of the paid-search week. If those calls hit voicemail, the ad dollars that generated them are wasted. Neurality — the AI receptionist you're already using on the landing page — can answer those calls, capture the caller's information, and offer to book the next available slot.

2. The Google review pipeline

No new Google reviews in about twelve months. Your Solutionreach system should be sending review requests automatically — most likely it's a small configuration problem (a broken link, a paused campaign) rather than a broken system. We'll diagnose in fifteen minutes with the office manager and fix in-house if we can.

3. A simple missed-call recovery routine

Every missed call gets returned within 15 minutes during office hours, or before 9:15 the following morning. Three attempts (call, text, call again) before marking a lead closed. One page of process, run by the office manager. This alone typically converts 40–70% of "lost" calls into booked appointments.

Timeline

The first 90 days

Week 0 · Pre-Launch

Route the phones through Neurality for after-hours coverage. Fix the Google review pipeline. Build the dedicated landing page. Set up conversion tracking end-to-end. Nothing goes live until these are ready.

Week 1 · Launch

Brand, High-Intent, and Fee-for-Service campaigns go live. Daily monitoring for the first week. Expected early cost per patient in the $180–$250 range as the system learns.

Week 3

Add the Comfort & Experience campaign. First Google reviews should be appearing.

Week 4

First formal review meeting. Rebalance budget toward what's winning. Test a second version of the landing page (hospitality-style headline vs. legacy-style).

Weeks 5–12

If cost per patient is holding under $150, we start the conversation about expanding budget or layering a single-implant or sedation campaign in months 4–6.

What We Need From You

Two decisions, both now answered

Both of the pre-launch questions are resolved. The plan is ready to move into Week 0 execution.

✓ Call tracking — you use PeerLogic on the main line

This simplifies the plan. PeerLogic already handles call recording, transcription, and missed-call SMS recovery — so we don't need to migrate the main line to a second tool. The paid landing page can share the same number, with a source parameter so we can separate paid from organic in reporting.

Downstream implication: the "missed calls after 2:30" funnel fix becomes a PeerLogic configuration check (SMS auto-response pointed at the landing page), not a new vendor setup. Fastest, cleanest option.

✓ Landing page — branded URL live

Your dedicated paid-media landing page: book.smilegulfcoast.com

Note: this is your permanent branded URL, kept off search engines so it doesn't compete with your main website. Every ad click and phone lead is tagged to this page for clean attribution.

Nine more questions we'd like to discuss (but they don't hold up the launch)
  1. The Gulfport / Ocean Springs / Biloxi mix. Your book skews to Ocean Springs. Anything specific driving that — your family lives there, a referral relationship, historic marketing decisions — or is it just proximity plus retiree density?
  2. The Vancleave and Saucier cluster. Roughly 8% of your book comes from these inland communities. Any specific relationship — employer, church, community — or is it word-of-mouth?
  3. Diamondhead. On paper it should be a top target (higher-income retirees). In reality it's only 1.3% of your book. Is there a competitor locked in there, or has the practice just never marketed to Diamondhead?
  4. Male patients 55+. They're 24% of your book. Are they mostly spouses of your female patients, or standalone?
  5. Pediatric patients. Only 4% of your book is under 18. Are they children of adult patients (family loyalty), or standalone pediatric referrals?
  6. Ideal patient. Your 55+ skew is real. Is that what you want, or would you take more 35–54 patients if we could bring them?
  7. First-year new-patient value. Your production averages $587 per visit. For a new patient, how many visits would you typically expect in that first year? Answer sharpens our cost-per-patient math.
  8. Fee-structure detail. Does your FFS fee schedule run meaningfully above the $587/visit blended average we see in the data?
  9. Solutionreach → Google reviews. When we diagnose the review pipeline, does the office manager have login access and time for a 15-minute walkthrough?