Innovate Digital
#9 in Dental
Dental Marketing that Drives Predictable Growth
- Founded
- 2015
- HQ
- Avonhead, Christchurch, Canterbury
- Team
- 1-5
Founder
Meet the founder
Anna Hayes
Founder & CEO
Anna Hayes is the founder of Innovate Digital, a Christchurch-based digital marketing and web design agency she started in 2009. The public founder story on the site is brief; most of the narrative focuses on the agency's values and team rather than Hayes' prior career in detail. What the site does establish is a long tenure in digital — Hayes references remembering the early commercial web, and the agency cites more than 14 years working with New Zealand businesses and over 20 years of collective experience navigating Google's search landscape. Innovate Digital is family owned and operated, and runs from Bishopdale in Ōtautahi Christchurch with a small in-house team. The thesis guiding the firm is explicitly 'people first': Hayes positions the agency as a partner to growth-minded SMBs where strategy precedes tactics, and where client success is treated as the scoreboard. That shows up in the service stack, which leads with marketing strategy before execution across web, SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads and social content. The agency has built out formal partner credentials — Certified Google Partner, Meta Business Partner, HubSpot Partner and Shopify Partner — which signal a preference for platform-native, measurable work rather than generalist creative. Hayes has also tied the business to community impact through the Upstream Supplier programme, donating services and funds to youth-focused charities. Innovate Digital does not publicly position itself as dental-exclusive; its client base skews toward health, wellness and local service SMBs across New Zealand, with dental and allied health practices among the verticals served.
Editorial
Editor’s take
We partner with growth focused dental clinics and orthodontists throughout New Zealand and Australia, to help them get consistent patient growth and long-term clinic success through a proven marketing framework. — Member-submitted notes for editorial team — Team size → 3-5
What they do
Services
Marketing Strategy
Strategy engagements are treated as the entry point rather than an add-on, mapping a dental or allied-health practice's patient journey, service mix and local catchment before any campaign spend. Hayes personally runs complimentary strategy sessions to scope fit.
Website Design & Development
Builds conversion-oriented practice websites with the foundations new-patient acquisition depends on — clear service pages, booking paths and local SEO structure — rather than purely brochureware. Positioned as a sales tool for growth-stage health and wellness SMBs.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO/AIO)
Leans into user-first, long-horizon SEO aimed at sustained visibility in Google — relevant for dental practices competing on geographic 'dentist near me' intent. Recent content from the team covers tactics like FAQ schema, suggesting an emphasis on structured content and AI-overview readiness.
Google Ads
Delivered under Certified Google Partner status, with campaigns built around qualified lead generation for service businesses. For a dental practice this typically means tight keyword targeting around high-value treatments and location-based search.
Meta Ads
Strategy-led paid social on Facebook and Instagram, used to build local brand awareness and drive enquiries for practices whose patient base responds more to lifestyle and trust signals than to search intent.
Social Media Marketing
Offered as either fully managed content or coaching, with an emphasis on generation-aware messaging — a theme Hayes writes about on the blog — so a practice's content speaks differently to older patients versus younger families.