Targeting Your Local Area

When you run ads through Dental Marketing Tool, you control exactly who sees them. This article walks you through setting your geographic targeting so your budget reaches people who are actually close enough to become patients at your practice.

Why Location Targeting Matters

An ad shown to someone 45 miles away from your office is essentially wasted spend. Most patients travel no more than a few miles for general dental care. Tightening your targeting area keeps your ad dollars focused on the neighborhoods your practice already serves and the ones you want to grow into.

Before you adjust targeting, make sure you have your Facebook Business account connected and that your practice address is filled in on your profile. Dental Marketing Tool uses your practice address as the center point for all location targeting.

Where to Find Location Targeting Settings

1. From your dashboard, open the Launching Ads section in the main menu.
2. Select an existing campaign or start a new one. (If you haven't launched a campaign yet, see Launching Your First Ad Campaign.)
3. Inside the campaign setup, navigate to the Targeting step. You'll see a map preview alongside your targeting controls.

Setting Your Radius

The most common approach is a simple radius centered on your practice address. In the Location field, you'll see your practice address pre-filled. Below it, use the Radius slider or input box to choose how many miles out you want to reach.

• 5 to 10 miles is a solid starting range for most urban and suburban practices.
• 10 to 20 miles may make sense if you're in a rural area where patients regularly drive farther to see a provider.
• Under 5 miles works well in dense cities where most patients live very close to the office.

As you adjust the slider, the map on screen updates in real time so you can see which neighborhoods fall inside the boundary.

Adding or Excluding Specific Locations

Beyond a simple radius, you can layer in additional targeting by typing a city name, neighborhood, or zip code into the Add Location field. This is useful when your practice sits near a city boundary and you want to include a neighboring town that isn't covered by your radius alone.

You can also exclude locations. If a zip code or neighborhood falls inside your radius but produces few patients and you'd rather not spend budget there, click Exclude next to that location after adding it. Excluded areas appear in red on the map preview.

Age and Demographic Filters

Below the map, you'll find basic demographic filters. For most dental campaigns, the default age range (18 and older) works well because adult patients make their own scheduling decisions. However, you can narrow or expand the age range if your campaign is promoting a service aimed at a specific group, such as orthodontics for teens (where parents in the 30 to 50 range are the real decision-makers) or implants and full-mouth restoration for patients 45 and up.

Adjust the Minimum Age and Maximum Age fields to match the audience most likely to benefit from the offer in your ad. For guidance on pairing your audience with the right promotion, see Choosing the Right Offer for Your Ad.

Saving and Confirming Your Targeting

1. Review the map one more time to confirm the shaded area makes sense for your practice.
2. Check the estimated audience size shown below the map. If the number looks very small, widen your radius slightly. If it looks very large, consider tightening it or layering in demographic filters.
3. Click Save Targeting (or Next, depending on where you are in the campaign builder) to lock in your settings.

Next Steps

With your targeting set, the next thing to review is your budget. Head over to Setting Your Ad Budget to make sure you're allocating enough daily spend to reach the audience size you've defined. Once your campaign is live, you can monitor how your targeting is performing in Reading Your Ad Results.