Dental practice manager marketing: what to own, what to hand off

In most UK practices the dental practice manager ends up running marketing. Nobody decides it. It simply arrives, one Google review, one website change and one recall query at a time. This guide sets out which marketing jobs genuinely belong to the manager, which to hand to the front desk or an agency, the rules from the GDC, ASA, ICO and Google that apply, and a routine that keeps it all to a few hours a month.

What marketing does a dental practice manager actually own?

The short answer: the jobs where accuracy and patient contact matter more than creativity. A dental practice manager is usually the right owner for these seven things.

1. The Google Business Profile. Hours, holiday closures, services, photos and who has access.
2. Reviews. A steady system for asking, and replies that go out within days.
3. The NHS website profile, if you hold an NHS contract in England.
4. Website accuracy. The information the GDC requires, the team list and the prices.
5. Recall and reminders. Who gets which message, and whether it counts as marketing in law.
6. Enquiry handling. How calls, forms and messages become booked appointments.
7. Reporting and suppliers. A short monthly view for the principal, and keeping any agency honest.

What the manager usually should not own personally is the creative side: writing long treatment pages, filming, or running paid ads day to day. Those can be delegated or bought in. What cannot be delegated without oversight is anything that touches patient data, regulated claims or your listings, because the practice carries the risk either way.

Where marketing sits in the dental practice manager job description

Dental practice manager responsibilities vary by practice size, but marketing has long been part of the role on paper. The Level 4 dental practice manager apprenticeship standard, now retired but still published by Skills England, described the job as managing "all non-clinical aspects" of a practice. Under marketing it listed knowing the market's size, share and competitor profile, effective strategies for attracting and retaining patients, and how to represent the practice in the local community, plus presenting internal and external marketing plans to the team.

That is a sensible definition to work from. Notice that it starts with knowing your market, not with posting on social media. A manager who knows which practices patients see before them on Google, and why, will spend the budget better than one who is simply busy.

The manager is often the CQC registered manager too. The CQC says that any provider that is an organisation, such as a company or partnership, must have a registered manager for each regulated activity, while an individual provider who is in day-to-day charge does not need one. If that is you, marketing competes with compliance for your time, which is the strongest argument for a fixed routine rather than ad hoc effort.

Google Business Profile manager access, done properly

Searches for "google business profile manager" are common because access is where practices get into trouble. Google offers two roles. According to Google, owners have full control, including adding or removing users and deleting the profile, and a profile can have several owners but only one primary owner. Managers have mostly the same access but cannot add or remove users or remove the profile.

A sound setup for most practices:

• The principal or the company holds primary ownership through a Google account the practice controls, not a personal account belonging to someone who might leave.
• The practice manager is a second owner, so access never depends on one person.
• Any agency or freelancer is a manager, never the primary owner.
• Everyone uses their own Google account. Google's own tip is that each user needs their own account so nobody has to share a password.

Google also suggests, in its tips for working with third parties, working with one third party at a time, because your business can only appear once on Google and running two suppliers side by side makes results impossible to compare.

Reviews: steady asks, quick replies, nothing that breaks the rules

Google says plainly on its local ranking help page that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking", and that replying shows you value feedback. So reviews belong on the manager's list. How many you need depends on your town. In our study of 1,489 UK places, the median practice in the local pack had 113 reviews, but it was 70 where five or fewer practices compete and 249 where twelve or more do. Our guide to working out a review target walks through it.

The rules are where managers need to be firm with the team. Google's fake engagement and rating manipulation policy does not allow businesses to offer incentives for reviews, to discourage negative reviews or selectively ask only happy patients, or to pressure people to review while on the premises. It also names two things practices often do without thinking: asking staff to collect a set number of reviews, and asking for reviews that mention a staff member by name. Set targets for asking every suitable patient, not for review counts.

Replies should be short, personal and never confirm that the reviewer is a patient or mention treatment. A reply that says "thank you for coming in for your filling" has just disclosed health information about a named person.

Keep the website and listings accurate, because the rules require it

The GDC's guidance on advertising is specific about practice websites. Whoever is responsible for the site must display:

• the practice name and the geographic address where care is provided
• contact details, including an email address and phone number
• the GDC's address and contact details, or a link to the GDC website
• the complaints procedure, and who patients can contact if unhappy with the response (the relevant NHS body for NHS care, the Dental Complaints Service for private care)
• the date the website was last updated

Every dental professional named on the site needs their professional qualification, the country it comes from and their GDC registration number. The guidance also says you must make clear whether the practice is NHS, mixed or wholly private, and that dentists not on a GDC specialist list must not use titles that imply specialist status. It must be kept current, so a dentist who left last year should not still be on the team page.

Marketing claims on your own website and social media also fall under the CAP Code. The ASA confirms that since 2011 the Code has applied to advertising on a company's own website and in other non-paid space online that it controls.

If you hold an NHS contract in England, the NHS website profile is part of this job. The NHS Business Services Authority says practices must confirm all their NHS website profile information every quarter, including whether they are accepting new NHS patients, using the NHS Profile Manager. The quarterly deadlines are 30 June, 30 September, 31 December and 31 March.

Recall, reminders and when a text becomes marketing

Practice managers often run recall, and recall sits right on the line between a service message and marketing. The ICO says a service message is one sent for administrative or customer service purposes, and gives "confirm or remind them about appointments" as an example. Those are not direct marketing. But a message that "actively promotes or encourages people to make use of a particular service, special offer, or upgrade" is likely to be direct marketing, even if it is mostly administrative.

In practice that means an appointment reminder is fine to send, while a text promoting whitening to your recall list is marketing. Marketing by text or email needs consent or the soft opt-in, which only applies where the details were collected while selling or negotiating to sell, the marketing is about similar services, and the person was offered an opt-out when their details were taken and in every message since. If you are unsure whether the soft opt-in fits, for example for NHS patients, ask for consent instead. Keep a record of who agreed to what.

A weekly and monthly routine that fits the job

The difference between practices that keep on top of this and those that do not is rarely talent. It is whether the jobs have a slot in the diary.

The role of a dental receptionist matters here more than most job descriptions admit. Receptionists answer the calls that marketing generates and are best placed to ask for reviews. Training them on both is the single cheapest marketing improvement most practices can make.

Is practice manager a stressful job?

It can be. The role carries compliance, staffing, money and patient complaints, and marketing adds a stream of small, urgent-feeling tasks on top. What makes marketing stressful is usually not the work itself but the lack of a boundary around it: a review that needs answering tonight, a supplier asking for logins, a principal asking why a rival is ahead on Google.

Three things reduce that. A fixed routine, like the table above, so nothing depends on memory. Clear sign-off rules, so receptionists can handle routine replies and you only see the difficult ones. And one source of truth for how the practice is doing in search, so you are not logging into six tools to answer one question.

Dental practice manager training: is marketing covered?

Dental practice manager courses and training vary widely, from short CPD sessions to Level 4 and Level 5 qualifications. How much marketing they include, and how practical it is, differs from one provider to the next. If you are choosing a course, ask the provider directly what the marketing content includes and whether it covers the GDC advertising guidance and the ICO rules above. The underlying rules are all free to read, and the official sources linked in this guide are a sound reading list.

Working with an agency or a marketing manager

Some practices hire a marketing manager or an agency. Either way the practice manager remains the person who knows what is true: which dentists work which days, what you charge, what the GDC allows. Whoever does the marketing needs that from you, and you need a few things from them.

• Manager access to the Google profile, not ownership.
• Reports in your terms: calls, bookings, reviews and where you rank against named rivals, not only impressions.
• Sight of every claim before it is published, because the GDC registrant is responsible for it.
• A clear written list of what they do each month.

Our guide on whether to use an agency or do it in house sets out the trade-offs. If you want a quick outside view first, the free search audit shows where your practice appears for its main searches without asking for an email.