Hire a Marketing Agency for Your Practice or Do It Yourself?

This article originally appeared in the July/2026 issue of the Academy of General Dentistry’s AGD Impact magazine.

If you ask a dentist why they chose to open their own practice, they’re unlikely to say they always dreamed of running a business full time. However, that’s the reality of having your own practice. Beyond seeing patients, practitioner-owners also have to manage staffing, finances, and daily operations. With such a full plate, marketing the practice is usually an afterthought, often assigned to a team member with a number of more important responsibilities. 

On the surface, marketing may seem uncomplicated. Still, even the most organized team can become overwhelmed without sufficient knowledge, skills, and time to do it right, raising the question: Should you keep marketing in house or hire an agency?

What It Takes to Market a Dental Practice

Marketing a dental practice entails more than simply posting on social media a couple of times a week, running a few Google ads, and keeping the website updated. Effective marketing requires various skills, including an understanding of consumer behavior, SEO, paid ads, and conversion strategy, as well as tracking key metrics, writing, editing, testing, optimizing and more. Planning and execution are time-intensive processes, and if you aren’t well-versed in the basics, there will be a decent learning curve, which means plenty of trial and error.

Most practices that keep their marketing in house rely on a team member to manage it all, and normally, marketing isn’t their primary responsibility. In some practices, the doctor is the marketing manager. When the person tasked with marketing the practice also works with patients or has administrative duties and can’t dedicate sufficient time to marketing, results suffer.

That’s not to say every practice that entrusts marketing to a staff member has the same experience. In some cases, it makes sense to manage marketing internally, for example:

• New or small practices without a marketing budget
• Practices in markets with little competition
• When marketing can be a team member’s sole responsibility
• The doctor has a passion for marketing and the time to commit to it
• When establishing a base, e.g., social media accounts, basic web content
• For short-term efforts, individual campaigns, and events

If you’re leaning toward DIY marketing to save money, it may not work out that way. While you won’t be paying a company, you’re still paying resources and time. Consider what your time is worth as a practitioner or the cost of the time a team member will spend on marketing versus their other responsibilities. Consider the opportunity cost as well. Would the savings be worth sacrificing growth?

What A Marketing Agency Can Do

Hiring a marketing agency means working with professionals who understand the business of marketing as well as you understand the practice of dentistry. More than that, it’s a partnership in which the agency has a vested interest in the success of your practice. Most importantly, a marketing agency takes on the bulk of the work, allowing you and your team to run the practice without having to worry about ROI, engagement, reach, impressions, and other metrics. 

Choosing a Marketing Agency for Your Practice

As with every company you establish a business relationship with, your marketing agency should align with your values and goals. Marketing agencies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are general, while others are industry specific. Some are hands-off, while others are high touch, and there is everything in between. The type of marketing agency that will work best for your practice will depend on your goals, resources, and expectations. 

A specialized marketing agency may require a higher initial investment than a general one, but the industry‑specific expertise it brings to the table will translate to high-quality leads and sustainable growth. When your marketing partner understands the unique aspects of dentistry, your overall strategy can be precisely targeted to the types of patients you want to see.

Which Strategy Is Right for You?

If you’re unsure which direction to take, start with your goals. Outline a simple marketing plan that lists every channel you intend to use: social media, your website, reviews, email, blog, online ads, etc. Then estimate how much time it would take to execute each component over the course of a month, a quarter, six months, and a full year. Assign a dollar value to those hours based on the cost of the team member who would handle the work. Once you have a realistic picture of the time and cost of DIY marketing, compare it to investing in a marketing agency. From there, weigh what you stand to gain or potentially lose with each option, and the right path should become clear.