Saturday, 10:40 pm. Someone develops a toothache, searches Yandex for “urgent dentist near me” and calls the first clinic on Maps with a rating above 4.5 and appointments the next morning. The decision takes three minutes.
Another patient spends six months considering clear aligners. She watches VK videos, compares dentists on ProDoctorov, reads reviews and checks prices on three clinic websites before booking a consultation.
These patients find a clinic through very different routes. That is why a single advertising campaign covering every service usually performs poorly.
Now a third scene: an agency reports “leads at RUB 3,500, an excellent result”. The owner assumes a new patient costs RUB 3,500. As we calculate below, a patient who actually attends costs more than RUB 7,700, before the agency’s fee.
Where patients actually look for a dental clinic
Yandex Maps and Yandex Business. The main entry point for urgent pain, treatment, children’s dentistry and “near me” searches. Basic listings are free. Yandex explicitly says the paid “Presence on Maps” plan does not itself improve ranking. Buying it instead of completing your profile, prices, photographs and reviews makes little sense.
2GIS. The platform reports 80.4 million monthly users. Advertising, starting at roughly RUB 18,000–21,000 a month, should follow a complete listing and reviews.
ProDoctorov. One of the more transparent channels: 3.7% of the service price for a successful booking, subject to city-specific minimums and maximums. The clinic’s medical information system supplies schedules and prices, and portal bookings flow back into it.
NaPopravku and SberZdorovye. Patients compare doctors, prices, reviews and appointment availability. Measure the cost of a patient who attends, rather than a booking.
Yandex Direct. It can generate calls in the first days, but it is an auction. Without a good website and reception team, it produces expensive clicks.
SEO. A steady source of “service + neighbourhood” searches, but it takes months.
**VK** suits longer, visual decisions: braces, aligners and cosmetic dentistry. Telegram and influencers come last in the queue for a single clinic.
Reviews influence every channel. NaPopravku’s research suggests patients particularly consider the doctor’s qualifications, reviews, price, reputation and convenient appointment times.
Match the channel to the patient
- Acute pain or urgent extraction: maps, search and Direct.
- Decay and root canal treatment: maps, search and directories.
- Implants and prosthetics: search, Direct and directories.
- Braces and aligners: directories, search and VK.
- Children’s dentistry: maps, directories and search.
- Veneers, whitening and cosmetic treatments: VK, search and Direct.
The guiding principle is to separate services into campaigns and send visitors to relevant pages. In one published dental case study, the budget was split across numerous services, all traffic went to the homepage, conversions were not tracked and irrelevant search terms were not removed. A lead cost around RUB 8,000 until the approach was rebuilt.
What the clinic’s website needs
A dental website should resolve doubts left unanswered by maps, directories and adverts. That gives it a practical purpose beyond simply having a business website.
The homepage
Within seconds, it should explain where the clinic is, what it treats, who provides treatment, approximate prices, availability today or soon, and how to book.
A separate page for each patient need
Instead of one text about “all types of dentistry”, create pages for:
- urgent appointments and acute pain;
- tooth extraction, with separate pages for complex extraction and wisdom teeth;
- decay treatment, root canals and restorations;
- implants, separating single implants and full restoration if offered;
- prosthetics and crowns;
- braces, aligners and orthodontics;
- children’s dentistry;
- hygiene, whitening and veneers, limited to services the clinic actually provides.
These pages match searches such as “dentist [neighbourhood]”, “urgent tooth extraction”, “dental implant cost [city]”, “aligners [city]”, “children’s dentist near me” and “[clinic name] reviews”. I explain how to build such pages in What is SEO?.
A useful case from the Yandex Direct blog concerns Moscow’s Dento-Lux network. Before promotion, it updated the website with services and prices, callback forms, SEO and call tracking, then separated advertising messages by audience. The average enquiry cost was around RUB 1,000 against a RUB 3,000 target. However, “conversions” included calls, forms and clicks on telephone numbers. That figure is therefore not the cost of a patient who attends.
A page for every dentist
Include a real photograph, full name, specialism, education, accreditation, experience, cases handled, schedule, first appointment price and verifiable reviews. Some of this is a legal requirement in Russia: Ministry of Health Order No. 118n, effective from September 2025, requires names, positions, education and accreditation details to be published. Photographs and a clear description of experience support booking.
Patients need a specific person they can trust with treatment, rather than a generic “team of experienced professionals”.
Prices without traps
A full price list is required. Russia’s new Rules for Paid Medical Services, Government Resolution No. 659, effective from 1 September 2026, require a list of services with prices in rubles.
A poor approach is:
“Implants from RUB 19,900”
when the implant, abutment, crown, surgery and diagnostics later turn out to be excluded. Patients feel misled before reaching the chair. Show the stages and explain what changes the total. “From” is useful only alongside a clear description of what that price includes.
Booking linked to the actual schedule
The ideal patient journey is:
website, maps or directory → real appointment availability → booking → the clinic’s medical system → patient source → reminder → appointment → treatment plan → payment → return visits.
Patients should not submit a request only to hear four hours later that their chosen time is unavailable. On a phone, keep calling, booking, directions and the next available appointment within easy reach.
Explain instalment terms, contractual obligations and follow-up visits instead of promising “100% guaranteed implant results”. Promising a medical outcome risks breaching advertising law.
Medical advertising: where clinics face the greatest risk
This is not legal advice. In Russian dental marketing, some of the most expensive mistakes concern adverts, patient stories and personal data.
Medical service advertising must not, under Article 24 of Federal Law No. 38-FZ:
- refer to specific cases of recovery or improved health;
- use patients’ expressions of gratitude;
- suggest that viewers have a disease.
A warning about contraindications and the need to consult a specialist is mandatory and must occupy at least 5% of the advertising area. Advertising specific treatment methods is restricted further, so have a lawyer review a campaign promoting a particular technology before launch.
Reviews and before-and-after photographs. “Thank you, doctor, you gave me my smile back” conflicts with the ban on expressions of gratitude in advertising. Before-and-after pictures refer to a specific treatment outcome. Avoid both in adverts. Content on the clinic’s own website is not always advertising, but a page saying “this patient’s result could be yours” increases risk. Seeking medical care and a diagnosis are also confidential medical information; publishing patient data requires separate consent.
Advertising labels. Online advertising must identify itself as advertising, name the advertiser and carry an identifier obtained before display. This includes influencer posts and Telegram integrations. Legal entities face RUB 200,000–500,000 fines for a missing identifier, with the same range for breaches of special medical advertising requirements.
Mandatory website information. Order No. 118n and the Paid Medical Services Rules require the clinic’s full legal name and registration number, addresses, contacts, opening hours, licence information, doctors’ education and accreditation, services and prices, sample contracts, patient enquiry procedures and other prescribed information. A licence image in the footer is insufficient.
Personal data. Health information is a special category of personal data. Since 1 September 2025, processing consent must be separate. An appointment form asking “Describe what is troubling you” collects health data through the marketing website. At the first step, it is safer to request only contact and scheduling details, leaving medical information to a protected medical system. Foreign forms, CRMs and analytics add risk: Russian citizens’ data must initially be stored in Russian databases. Further checks are covered in Website fines in 2026.
Why the price of a lead misleads
Here is the promised calculation, using hypothetical figures rather than a market forecast:
- a click costs RUB 350;
- 10% of clicks become qualified enquiries;
- 60% of enquiries become bookings;
- 75% of booked patients attend.
Then:
- an enquiry costs 350 / 10% = RUB 3,500;
- a booking costs 3,500 / 60% ≈ RUB 5,833;
- an attending new patient costs 5,833 / 75% ≈ RUB 7,778.
This excludes the agency, call tracking, content and website costs. If the agency reports leads at RUB 3,500 and the owner assumes a patient costs RUB 3,500, the economics are distorted by more than twofold.
Expensive treatments complicate matters. One person attends a consultation, receives a RUB 300,000 treatment plan and never starts. Another starts two months later. The final economic measures are an attending new patient and paid treatment.
Consider a published VK aligner case: RUB 608,161 spent, 189 leads at RUB 3,217, and clicks at around RUB 50. Leads cost RUB 4,500–5,000 during the first 7–10 days, falling to RUB 2,800–3,000 by the end of week two. The case does not report how many attended and started treatment. Its advertising also used a patient video testimonial with before-and-after images, creating substantial Article 24 risk. Comparing “VK at RUB 3,217” with “Yandex at RUB 5,000” is premature without attendance figures, and copying a successful advert needs legal review.
What it costs
The website. Prices range from Kwork landing pages at around RUB 19,000 and simple medical websites at RUB 68,000–90,000 from small studios to around RUB 300,000 from specialist medical studios and custom projects from RUB 1.2 million. A Tilda subscription at RUB 500–750 a month only covers the platform. See How much does a business website cost? for the components of the price.
My multi-page websites start at RUB 60,000. A clinic’s total depends on services, doctors, branches and integrations. Compare the scope: service and doctor pages, price lists, legal sections, forms storing data in Russia, medical system booking integration, analytics and the ability to update prices and schedules yourself. A RUB 40,000 website that cannot support promotion or clinic integration can cost more over time than a RUB 250,000 one that works for years.
SEO. Specialist providers quote dental campaigns from RUB 40,000 and RUB 85,000 a month. Pay for work on service and doctor pages, technical quality, local visibility and booking analysis. A promise of “top three in a month” has little value.
Direct. Marketers estimate Moscow implant clicks at RUB 250–650 and qualified enquiries at RUB 4,000–10,000. Dento-Lux began with a monthly budget of around RUB 80,000.
Choosing a contractor beyond an attractive report
A contractor should establish the connection:
source → enquiry → booking → attending new patient → treatment plan → treatment started → revenue → return visits.
Without it, even an honest specialist cannot demonstrate which advertising generates revenue.
Specify in the contract which services need patients, how many patients the clinic can accommodate, what qualifies as a suitable enquiry, where data is stored and who handles advertising labels. Crucially, the clinic owns the domain, website, Yandex Business, Metrica and advertising accounts. The contractor receives access.
Red flags:
- guaranteed top-three rankings or “100 patients a month at a fixed price” without reviewing the city and schedule;
- every service advert leads to the homepage and reporting stops at lead cost;
- the agency owns the advertising account;
- manufactured reviews or proposals to copy before-and-after advertising;
- no questions about chair capacity: implant advertising makes little sense if the implant dentist works once a week;
- no call reviews: patients are often lost at reception.
For any “fourfold lead cost reduction” case, ask five questions: which city, which service, which period, what counted as a lead, and how many people attended and began treatment?
Launch sequence
- Analytics and reception. Make the new patient’s source a required field in the medical system and add call tracking. Do not increase advertising spend before this works.
- Maps and reviews. Complete Yandex Maps and 2GIS profiles and establish an honest process for collecting reviews after appointments.
- Doctors on directories: complete profiles, prices and schedules, synchronised with the medical system where possible.
- The website with patient-specific service pages, doctors, prices, booking and legal information.
- SEO so the website, maps and reputation support one another.
- Direct for services with available chair capacity, each campaign linked to its own page.
- VK for orthodontics and cosmetic dentistry; Telegram and influencers as targeted tests.
Patients can come from maps and search without paid advertising. Maintaining listings, schedules, reviews, pages and prices still takes ongoing work.
What the owner should see each week
Report the chain separately for each service: fillings and full implant treatment cannot be combined into one meaningful report.
- Qualified enquiry cost by channel.
- The share of enquiries becoming bookings, reflecting reception’s work.
- The share of bookings that attend.
- The cost of an attending new patient, the key measure.
- The value of proposed treatment plans and how many patients started them.
- Actual revenue from patients acquired in each month.
- Return visits.
A higher implant patient acquisition cost can be reasonable. Cheap implant enquiries that never attend are the problem.
After 1–3 months, you can see which services and sources produce attending patients. After 3–6 months, assess SEO. The full economics of implants and orthodontics may take 6–12 months.
Frequently asked questions
Can we publish reviews and before-and-after photographs?
Not in advertising: the law prohibits patient gratitude and references to specific treatment outcomes. On the website, use them only with separate patient consent and a lawyer’s review.
Do we need directories if we have our own website?
Yes. Patients compare doctors on ProDoctorov and NaPopravku before visiting the clinic’s website. Directories help them assess which doctor is trusted; the website explains why they can confidently book with this clinic.
Conclusion
Each channel has its role. Maps capture nearby and urgent demand. Directories help people choose a doctor. Search matches specific problems. Direct provides speed. VK builds interest in longer decisions. The website sits at the centre: an official clinic resource meeting legal requirements, an advertising destination, evidence of doctors’ qualifications, prices, booking and measurement.
The guiding rule is to measure attending new patients before buying more leads, and understand who starts and pays for treatment before increasing patient volume.
A dental website connecting search and maps to appointments: service and doctor pages for Yandex search, transparent prices, online booking, legal information and analytics through to the attended appointment. See multi-page website development for details, or contact Roman Mikhaylov, developer.
