Facebook ads for dentists in Tampa are useful for two things and useless for a third. Useful: filling new-patient slots in a specific drive-time zone, and selling cosmetic and elective work (Invisalign, whitening, implants, veneers) to people who weren't searching yet. Useless: emergency toothache traffic, which lives on Google. Most dental "marketing agencies" sell you a Facebook funnel for the emergency stuff and then blame the platform.
Drive time, not radius
A dental practice draws from about 10-15 minutes of driving. In Tampa Bay that's a strange shape, not a circle, because of the bridges, the bay, and I-275 traffic. A Westchase office pulls from Citrus Park, Odessa and Town 'n' Country but not from Carrollwood at 5 p.m. A downtown St. Pete practice draws the Old Northeast, Snell Isle and Kenwood but loses anyone north of Gandy. Use Meta's drive-time-ish approximation (a tight radius plus ZIP inclusion), exclude across the bridges, and split ad sets by the two or three neighborhoods that actually feed the chair.
Watch the health-category restrictions: Meta limits some detailed targeting and tracking for medical advertisers. Build reporting on booked appointments in your practice software, not Meta's dashboard.
New-patient campaigns
Tampa Bay adds new residents constantly, and every one needs a dentist within a year of moving. The growth corridors (Wesley Chapel, Land O' Lakes, Riverview, Apollo Beach, Lakewood Ranch, the new apartments in downtown Tampa, Westshore and downtown St. Pete) are full of people who haven't picked one. A plain ad works: "New to Wesley Chapel? We're taking new patients, here's what a first visit costs and how long it takes." Show the front desk and the doctor. Mention the insurance plans you take, since that's the first question. If you serve a Spanish-speaking area (west Tampa, Town 'n' Country, Brandon, parts of Pinellas Park), a Spanish-language version with a Spanish-speaking team member on camera is worth running.
Snowbird season matters too. From November through April, seasonal residents in Sun City Center, Clearwater, St. Pete and along US-19 want cleanings and work done while they're here. A short "seasonal residents welcome" campaign in those areas pays for itself.
Cosmetic and elective campaigns
This is where Instagram earns its keep. Invisalign, whitening, veneers and implants are visual, planned purchases, and people scroll past them for weeks before booking a consult. Structure it as a sequence: a short doctor video on what Invisalign actually costs and how long it takes, retarget viewers with a real patient testimonial (with consent), then a consult offer. Put a price range in the ad. Meta's rules mean no implied before-and-after of the viewer, so use smile close-ups from consenting patients and treatment-room video rather than dramatic transformations.
Neighborhoods that support cosmetic spend: South Tampa, Westchase, Carrollwood, Avila and Lutz, Belleair, Safety Harbor, Palm Harbor, downtown St. Pete and the Old Northeast, Lakewood Ranch. Implant demand skews older and toward Pinellas and Sun City Center.
Creative that isn't a stock smile
The doctor on camera for 20 seconds, saying something plain and slightly reassuring, beats every stock image. Show the office, name the neighborhood, show parking (real concern in South Tampa and downtown St. Pete). A "here's exactly what happens at your first visit" video is the best new-patient ad in dentistry and almost no practice makes one.
Booking and follow-up
Send ad traffic to a page with online scheduling. If the front desk takes eight hours to call a lead back, the lead already booked elsewhere. Text confirmations within an hour. If your site is a template with a phone number and no booking, the free SEO & AI score will show what a new resident sees, and it's usually the first thing to fix.
What it should cost
New-patient leads on Meta in Tampa Bay typically run $25-$75; cosmetic consult leads $50-$150; implant leads more. A single-location general practice should plan $1,500-$4,000/month in spend, more if pushing implants or Invisalign. A new patient is worth several hundred dollars a year and a cosmetic case several thousand, so the economics hold if the front desk converts.
Dental marketing agencies commonly charge $1,500-$4,000/month plus spend, often for a templated funnel shared with five practices in the same metro. A fair local rate at $2,000-$4,000 in spend is $700-$1,500/month with your ad account and pixel in your name. How Arbor runs your ads: Growth plans start at $2,500/mo including ad management and the website with the booking flow, since the two have to work together. Google handles the emergency and "dentist near me" side; the Google Ads Management in Jacksonville, FL: A No-Nonsense Guide gives a fair sense of search costs in a Florida metro of similar size, and there are more growth guides for other practices.
Target the drive-time zone, welcome the new residents and the snowbirds, put the doctor on camera, and get the appointment confirmed within the hour. Dentists across the bay who do that get Facebook to fill the schedule; the ones running "$99 exam and X-ray" ads to the whole metro get price-shoppers and cancellations.