For years, marketing a dental practice was about mailers, local ads, and referrals. Today, the conversation around oral health is taking place online, on platforms like TikTok.

This TikTok Ads for Dentists guide will show you exactly how to tap into that digital conversation, making your clinic the trusted expert and filling your schedule with the patients you need most.

What is TikTok Ads?

TikTok Ads is a different platform from the TikTok app you use every day. It allows you to create and control ads that target specific individuals. Your normal TikTok page is for building a community, but TikTok Ads exist to help you achieve business goals, such as getting a patient to book an appointment or ask for a consultation.

When the TikTok app became popular, millions of people started using it. Businesses saw all those people and wanted to show them their products and services. TikTok saw this and knew they could help. They created TikTok Ads as a special tool for businesses. This way, companies could pay to reach a lot more people than they could with just their free videos, and they could set specific goals, like getting more sales or new patients.

Now, we will walk you through the process of creating your first ad on TikTok. We will cover how to set up your account and how to build your first campaign.

Account Creation

Before you can make ads, you need to set up your business account on the TikTok advertising platform.

Step 1: Go to the Website

Go to the TikTok for Business website on your computer or mobile phone.

The official website for TikTok for Business is business.tiktok.com.

You can also go directly to the advertising platform at ads.tiktok.com.

Both will take you to the right place to get your account set up.

Step 2: Sign Up

Click on Sign Up and enter your email or phone number. You will create a password here.

Step 3: Add Your Business Details

Fill in information about your dental clinic. This includes your business name and address.

Step 4: Add Payment Information

Connect a payment method, like a credit card, to your account. This is how you will pay for your ads.

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Campaign Creation

Now that your account is ready, you can start building your first campaign to find new patients.

But before we launch a single ad, it’s important to understand the fundamental difference between posting content and running an ad. Your organic presence on TikTok is about building a community and connecting with people.

TikTok Ads, on the other hand, is a dedicated platform designed to achieve a clear business goal. It’s the powerful engine you use to turn interested scrollers into high-value patients.

Choosing Your Campaign Goal

Every ad campaign starts with a goal. TikTok asks you to define your objective so its algorithm can find the right people to show your ad to. You can think of these goals in three simple tiers:

1. Awareness — The goal here is pure visibility. This is for getting your practice in front of as many eyes as possible to build brand recognition.
2. Consideration — This objective is about engagement. It’s for getting people to take a step toward your practice, whether that’s visiting your website or simply watching more of your videos.
3. Conversion — This is for the ultimate goal: getting a new patient. Conversion objectives are built to drive a specific, valuable action, like a booking or an inquiry.

Why Lead Generation is the Top Choice for Dentists

For a service-based business like a dental clinic, the most effective campaign objective is almost always Lead Generation. The core goal of your marketing is to get a potential patient to contact you, not just visit your website. The Lead Generation objective is built specifically for this purpose.

It uses a feature called an Instant Form, which allows interested users to submit their contact information without ever leaving the TikTok app. This removes all the friction from the process and gets you a warm lead you can follow up with directly.

Campaign Name

Choose a name that is descriptive and easy to understand. A good naming convention helps keep your account organized, especially as you add more campaigns in the future.

Let’s move on to the next level of the campaign structure: the settings. This is where you will define the details of how your ad will run.

Campaign Setup

Once you’ve chosen your objective, the next step is to configure your campaign settings.

Manual Campaign vs. Smart+ Campaign

Manual Campaign

This gives you complete control over your ad settings, including targeting, bidding, and budget. It is the recommended option for a dental practice because it allows you to target the right local audience precisely.

Smart+ Campaign

This is an automated option where TikTok’s AI makes most of the decisions for you. While it can be useful for beginners, it provides less control and is not ideal when you need to be precise about who you are reaching.

Sticking with a Manual Campaign is the right choice for a service-based business like a dental practice, as it gives you the control needed for precise targeting and budget allocation in a specific area.

Ad Group Name

Each campaign can have one or more ad groups, which contain your specific ads. Use a name that helps you easily identify the audience you are targeting.

Optimization

This is a critical setting for a Lead Generation campaign. It tells TikTok’s algorithm to focus on finding users who are most likely to convert into a lead.

Location

For a Lead Generation campaign, your optimization location will be Instant Form. This is the most efficient way to capture a lead’s contact information, as it keeps them on the TikTok platform and reduces friction.

Goal

You will want to choose Deep Funnel Optimization. This means you are telling the algorithm to look for people who are not just likely to click on your ad, but are also likely to become a valuable, high-quality lead. It helps you get the most out of your budget by focusing on the people who are most likely to follow through and book an appointment.

Now that your campaign is set up, it’s time to choose where your ads will appear and who will see them.

Placements

This setting tells TikTok where to show your ads. Your choices include:

1. TikTok — Your ads will appear on the For You page and other native TikTok feeds.
2. Pangle — This is TikTok’s audience network, which shows your ads on third-party apps and websites.

Sticking with TikTok as your only placement is the best option. This ensures your ad appears in the native, high-engagement environment of the TikTok app itself, where users are most likely to respond to a video ad.

Targeting

Targeting is the most important part of your campaign. It allows you to deliver your ad to the specific type of person who is most likely to become a patient.

Demographics

1. Location — This is important. You should target a specific radius around your clinic. You can target by country, state, city, or even a specific zip code to reach people in your immediate service area.
2. Age — While you can target all ages, most dental services are sought by adults. It’s often effective to target adults from 25-54, as this demographic is typically financially stable and proactive about their health. While 25-54 is a great general target, your ideal age range can shift depending on the specific services you want to promote:
   • For Cosmetic Services (Whitening, Veneers) — You might narrow your age range to 25-45. This group is often highly motivated by appearance and social media trends.
   • For Implants or Dentures — You would want to target an older demographic, perhaps 45+, as these services are more common for this age group.

   So, while 25-54 is a strong and safe range for a general practice, feel free to create different ad groups with different age ranges if you have specific services you want to promote. This allows you to test what works best and get the most out of your ad budget.

3. Gender — You can target all genders or choose to focus on male or female audiences depending on the specific service you are promoting (e.g., cosmetic services might be more effective for a female audience, while general dentistry is for everyone).
4. Languages — Set this to English by default unless you have specific ad creatives in other languages.
5. Spending Power & Household Income — TikTok offers these targeting options in the US. You can use these to reach users who have a higher likelihood of affording your services. For high-value procedures like veneers or Invisalign, targeting a higher income bracket can improve your lead quality.

Audience

Custom Audiences

This is a powerful feature that lets you target people who have already interacted with your brand. You can upload a list of existing patients to show them a special offer, or create an audience of people who have visited your website or engaged with your organic TikTok videos.

Lookalike Audiences

Once you have a Custom Audience of high-value patients, you can ask TikTok to find a “Lookalike” audience. The algorithm will find new users who have similar characteristics to your best existing patients.

Device

Operating system, OS versions, Connection type, etc.

These settings are usually not necessary. The most important targeting for you is demographic and location-based. You can typically leave these settings on their default to allow TikTok to optimize your ad for the widest possible audience within your chosen location.

Budget and Schedule

This is where you tell TikTok how much you want to spend and when you want your ads to run.

Budget

You have two options for setting your budget:

1. Daily Budget — The maximum amount you are willing to spend per day. This is the most common and recommended choice for a local business. Recommendation: Start with a minimum daily budget of $50 to $100. This gives the algorithm enough data to learn and optimize.
2. Lifetime Budget — A total budget for the entire duration of your campaign. This is useful for short-term promotions or special events.

Schedule

This determines how long your campaign will run.

• Start Date — The day your campaign goes live.
• End Date —The day your campaign stops. You can leave this open-ended if you want to run the campaign continuously.

Dayparting

This is a more advanced setting that allows you to choose specific days and times for your ads to run.

Recommendation: Unless you have data showing that your audience is only active at certain times, it is best to leave this on “All Day”. This allows the algorithm to find the most efficient times to deliver your ads.

Let’s cover the next critical part. This is where you set the rules for how TikTok will spend your budget to get you a lead.

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Bidding and Bidding Strategy

Bidding tells TikTok how much you are willing to pay for a specific action, whether it’s a click, a view, or in your case, a lead. Since you have chosen a Lead Generation objective, the best bidding strategy is Target CPA.

Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

This is the recommended bidding strategy for a dental practice. It’s a goal-based strategy. The algorithm will then work to find people who are most likely to become a lead at that target cost. This gives you much more control and predictability over your marketing budget.

How to set your Target CPA:

• The average cost per lead for a dental practice on the platform TikTok can range from $40 to $100, depending on the market and the ad’s quality.
• A good starting point for a high-value service like a dental consultation is to set your initial target CPA somewhere in this range.
• You can then adjust it up or down as your campaign gathers data, aiming to get the best quality leads for the lowest possible cost.

The final, and arguably most important, is the ad creative itself. This is what will stop the scroll and get a potential patient interested.

Use Smart Creative to Create Ads

The creative is the actual ad content—the video, text, and call to action. On TikTok, the best ads don’t look like ads at all; they look and feel like native, organic content.

Ad Name

Just like with your campaigns and ad groups, a clear naming convention will help you stay organized.

Identity

This setting determines how your ad is presented to users.

• Option 1: Use a linked TikTok account This is the recommended option for a dental practice. By linking your ad to your business’s TikTok profile, you build brand recognition and can grow your follower count and engagement even from a paid campaign.
• Option 2: Use a Custom Identity This allows you to set a display name and profile picture for your ad that is different from your organic TikTok account.

Ad Details

This is where you bring your ad to life by adding the video, text, and interactive elements.

Add Videos

Your video is the most important part. It should be vertical (9:16 aspect ratio), visually engaging within the first 1-2 seconds, and feel authentic.

Content Ideas for TikTok Ads for Dentists:

• “Before & After” — A quick, powerful video showing a patient’s smile transformation (with their permission). This is one of the most effective ad formats for a dental clinic.
• Educational Content — A short video answering a common question like “Do I really need to floss?” or “Why are my teeth sensitive?”
• Behind-the-Scenes — A fun, casual video tour of your modern clinic or a clip introducing your friendly team.

Ad Creative

This is the complete package of your video and text. The goal is to make it feel natural to the platform. Add text overlays with captions to the video itself and use trending music to capture attention.

Add Text

This is the text that appears under your video. It should be concise and compelling.

Call to Action (CTA)

This is the button that prompts a user to take action.

Interactive Add-ons

These are extra elements you can add to your ads to increase engagement, such as a Countdown Sticker for a limited-time offer.

This is where you can put your offer. Interactive add-ons are special features that you can add to your video to make it more engaging and to highlight the offer in a way that stands out from the video content itself.

The Display Card is an excellent way to make your offer stand out, but you need the right image for it. The image for the Display Card should be simple and very clear, because it’s a small pop-up on the video. Its only job is to get someone to see the offer.

You can use a free tool like Canva to design this.

What the Image Should Look Like

The image should not be cluttered. Here are a few examples of what the image’s text could say:

• For a New Patient Offer: New Patient Exam $99. Limited Time Offer!
• For a Teeth Whitening Special: Brighten Your Smile. 50% Off Teeth Whitening.
• For a Free Consultation: Free Consultation. Tap to Claim.

Destination (Instant Form)

As we covered earlier, this is the best destination for a lead generation campaign. It allows potential patients to submit their information easily, without leaving the app.

Instant Form Templates:

Tracking

Tracking is how you measure success. You need to know what a patient did after they saw your ad—did they fill out the form? Did they call? Did they book an appointment? Setting up your tracking correctly is how you answer those questions.

TikTok Events Tracking

This is the most important part of your tracking setup. TikTok has a tool called the TikTok Pixel. The Pixel is a small piece of code you install on your website that communicates information back to TikTok. For a dental practice, it is used to track “events.”

Lead Generation Events:

The primary event you’ll want to track is a Complete Registration. This event fires every time someone successfully submits your Instant Form.

Other events you can track on your website include ViewContent (someone viewing a specific service page) or CompletePayment (if you offer online booking or deposits).

Third-party Tracking Settings

While TikTok’s built-in tracking is excellent, you can get a more complete picture by using third-party tracking tools. This often means:

• Call Tracking — Using a service that gives you a unique phone number for your ads. This tells you exactly how many calls came from your TikTok campaign and records the conversation for quality control.
• CRM Integration — Connecting your TikTok Leads Center to your patient management system. This automatically syncs new leads from your ads directly into your system, ensuring no potential patient falls through the cracks.

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Conclusion

After a series of easy-to-follow steps, you now have a full plan to launch your first TikTok ad campaign. We have covered everything, from choosing the right goal, like Lead Generation, to creating videos that feel authentic and natural. We’ve also talked about how to find the right people with targeting and how to know if your campaign is working with tracking.

For even faster and better leads, you should also look at Google Ads. It is a different kind of marketing, but together, these two platforms will make your practice very visible. To learn more about how Google Ads can help you, please read our detailed Google Ads for Dentists article.

You can also see the real results we have achieved for other dental practices by checking out our case study articles: YoYoFuMedia Case Studies Page, and learn how a Dental Clinic got 38 new appointment requests in 2 months with Google Ads.

It’s clear that TikTok is a powerful place to grow a dental practice, but we know your time is best spent with patients, not on social media ads. This is where we come in. We have helped thousands of businesses like yours succeed, and we can handle everything for you.

We know what works, and our team of experts will create a plan that brings in new patients and helps your business grow, so you can focus on what you do best.

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