Establishing a dental practice is just the beginning of the story. The practice needs to grow in order for you to achieve the success and rewards that you are looking for. In today’s competitive market, you need to make sure that prospective patients know what your practice has to offer. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
If you get it right, PPC advertising can provide significant benefits. It does require the investment of time and patience up-front, but the results make the effort worthwhile. As a guide, there are some factors to consider when looking at PPC for dentists.
Use categories for keywords
The aim of PPC for dentists is to attract patients by using the keywords that they are searching for online. The best way to do this is to categorize your keywords, so that the advertising, and content, you provide is relevant. This always helps with Google ratings; the more relevant the content, the better.
For instance, you may want to attract people who are looking to straighten their teeth, so grouping keywords and phrases like “braces for adults” and “adult teeth straightening” is appropriate. Grouping keywords makes sense because you want people to get what they are looking for from the search they are making. If this happens, they are more likely to use your services.
Action Points
Implementing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is essential for the growth of a dental practice, ensuring prospective patients are aware of the services offered. Categorizing keywords facilitates targeted advertising, improving relevance and Google ratings, ultimately increasing the likelihood of attracting potential patients seeking specific treatments such as adult teeth straightening.
Use Google Ads effectively
Google Ads is an important aspect of PPC for dentists. This is because using Google ads gives you a way of attracting people to your practice, without having to pay for clicks. Including the phone number of your practice, prominently, in all of your ads means that people are more likely to pick up the phone and call. This advertising practice can be used in conjunction with paying for clicks, making your campaigns more cost effective. Always make sure that people can clearly see if someone is available to take their call.
Action Point
Maximizing Google Ads is pivotal for dental practices’ PPC success. Emphasizing the practice’s phone number in ads enhances direct inquiries, optimizing cost-effectiveness and responsiveness.
You can learn more about Google Ads for dentists here.
Make use of extensions in your ad campaigns
There is no charge for using extensions in your PPC ad campaigns. This means that it makes sense for you to use extensions, such as a map of your location or a download button, to generate clicks. It’s worth mentioning that although you do not pay extra for including extensions, you do still have to pay for the clicks that they generate.
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Test your PPC for effectiveness
Creating a campaign, using PPC for dentists, is just the start. You cannot just sit back and relax once the campaign has been set up. You need to test the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. It’s a case of seeing what works and what does not. Use three separate ad groups for each campaign, with three ads in each one. Each group should contain eight separate keywords. Having this range of content means that you can accurately test which keywords are performing the best.
Having this information means that you can make slight changes along the way, so that you improve the effectiveness of your campaign. If you do not do this, you are unlikely to get the clicks that you are looking for. PPC for dentists evolves and is not something that you use once and then forget about.
Action Plan
Continuous testing is crucial in PPC for dentists to gauge effectiveness. Utilizing multiple ad groups with various ads and keywords allows for accurate performance assessment. This iterative approach enables adjustments for enhanced campaign efficiency and desired click rates.
You can find out more about PPC here.
Use Geo-Targeting for your PPC campaigns
You do not want to waste your efforts on advertising to people who are never likely to visit your dental practice. Your ads should be aimed at people who live, or work, in your area and want to register with a local dentist. This means that you need to use geo-targeting when creating your PPC campaigns. You can use maps of your location and include the postal code of your practice. Remember to use keywords that also show where you practice is located.
You can also restrict the appearance of your ads, so that they only appear to people for whom they have relevance. This means that you advertise directly to people who are looking for a dentist in the area where your practice is located. Making sure that you target the location of your practice in this way means that you should generate more clicks from your PPC campaigns. It also means that the clicks you get should have a better conversion rate, as people should find just what they are looking for.
As you can see, PPC for dentists is an excellent tool to use, to help grow your dental practice, by attracting more patients to your services.
Action Plan
Geo-targeting is essential in PPC campaigns for dental practices to maximize relevance and minimize wasted resources. By focusing ads on individuals in the vicinity of your practice, using maps and postal codes, you ensure optimal targeting. This approach enhances click-through rates and conversions, as potential patients find precisely what they seek, driving practice growth effectively.
Our Expert Opinion
“Google Ads are still 100% the easiest and quickest way to get yourself to the top of Google. I always recommend every dental practice uses Google Ads in at least a small way in their marketing strategy. They don’t have to be expensive, they don’t have to be constantly running. You can run a simple, cheap brand awareness campaign to get your name out there. You can also run expensive, perfectly-optimised adverts that act as your main lead magnet.
One thing I would absolutely recommend is that you use Google Ads if your SEO is not getting you to the front page of Google. If you’re not on the front page (the top 10 results) of Google then how are people going to find you? Google Ads will solve this pretty swiftly.
Remember, Google Ads are an auction. You need to adjust your budget so that you are beating your main competitors and muscling them out of the top spots.”
Chris O’Shea
Head of Digital Marketing
Marketing a Dental Practice: Further Information
For further information on how to effectively market a dental practice, check out our Learning Centre here, where you can find articles and webinars like our guide How to Market a Dental Practice.
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