Dental PPC Management: Google Ads for Dentists

What is Dental PPC?

Dental PPC stands for dental pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Meaning, when a dentist’s advertisement appears on search engine result pages (SERP), such as Google or Bing, everytime a prospective patient clicks on the paid ad the dental office pays a certain fee for each click. Hence the name pay-per-click.

Dental PPC is one type of paid online advertising. How does dental PPC work? Your dental office bids on keywords your patients might use to search for dental services, like implants, root canals, or Invisalign. If you win the keyword bid, like an auction, Google (or Bing, etc.) shows your dental ad to your target audience on their search results page. If a user clicks on the ad, your dental office pays for the click, which goes to your website or landing page.

Why is Dental PPC Important?

Having a dental PPC strategy helps your dental clinic show up immediately in Google search engine result pages (SERPs). While SEO helps dentists show up on SERPs organically, it is never guaranteed that their site will appear in the top 10 right away, or at all. It can take at least 6 months to see some type of progress. With PPC, you are guaranteed a spot at the top of SERPs right away, if you win the PPC keyword bid.

Having a dental PPC strategy is important because it helps generate traffic faster and therefore quicker conversion results your dental office needs. Building an online presence for your dental office is the first step to success in a dental internet marketing campaign. Adding proven marketing techniques, such as PPC, gives your dental office quick lead generation results.

5 Benefits of PPC for Dentists

Dental PPC advertising can bring your practice multiple benefits. Here are a few examples of some of the best benefits of PPC for dentists:

1. 1. Increased Visibility

   PPC advertising is one of the quickest ways to reach the top of the Google SERPs. Google dominates the search engine market share, averaging an 86-96% market share worldwide.

   When your dental PPC advertisement is located high on the search page, especially higher in Google SERPs, it can bring more patients to your dental office. It also gives you a competitive edge by staying top of mind and helps to build brand awareness with people in need and searching for dental care.

2. 2. Control Over Targeted Keywords

   SEO involves targeting strategic keywords. And keywords are a very integral part of PPC strategies as well! PPC makes it easy to manage your campaign's targeted keywords.

   a. Your dental office has complete control over which keywords we use in your PPC campaign. You can even change keywords during the campaign if they are not producing the desired results your dental office hopes for. Your dental office has customizable control of the keywords you want your ads to be shown for.

3. 3. Targeting the Right Audience

   Once you've found the right keywords, incorporate them within your Google Ads to help target the right audiences. Google pay-per-click ads have one of the biggest ROIs (200%). With this in mind, including keywords helps focus on the right target audience and increases a dental practices' exposure to individuals looking locally.

4. 4. Clearly Monitor and Analyze Success

   Our Google Ads technology platform makes it very easy and clear for your dental office to monitor and track the success of your PPC ads. Our reports include your PPC ad successes on web traffic, conversion rates, and your dental practice's marketing efforts. When one ad method isn't showing its expected results, you can quickly pivot and adjust your keywords, geotargeting, budget, ad type, etc.

5. 5. Easily Manage Budgets

   Your dental office can set your PPC ad daily budget. The budget will not surpass the maximum allotted amount unless specified otherwise. This gives you control over your spending, especially if you're on a tight budget.

Avoid these Common PPC Dental Mistakes

While there are multiple benefits to pay-per-click advertising, it's important to be mindful of some of the cons to PPC advertising. Dental offices should be wary of the following:

• PPC Can Be Costly (If You Don't Know What You're Doing):

  While budgeting can be adjusted for PPC advertisements, if not done properly it can become costly with no return on investment. If your dental office is not aware of how to manage budgeting through PPC ads, it can result in throwing away money on advertisements that don't actually generate any positive results.

  Similar to SEO, PPC campaigns operate based on many PPC rules and optimization strategies that generate the best results possible. It takes years to learn these tricks of the trade. Working with actual PPC consulting experts can ensure that your dental practices' time and monetary resources are used most efficiently and effectively.

• PPC Requires Ongoing Time and Management:

  As a dentist, your day-to-day is already full of appointments, cleanings, fillings, etc. Finding the time to build an effective and successful dental PPC campaign can be overwhelming.

  Having a PPC expert take the time, bandwidth, resources, and expertise to work on your dental PPC campaign can help make the most of your PPC ad budget. Most digital marketing strategies require multiple technical steps that dedicated marketing professionals know how to implement for your dental practice. Let PPC experts do your dental Google ads, while your office focuses on its normal day-to-day tasks.

• Clicks and Impressions Don't Equal Conversions:

  Sometimes the difference between an impression and a conversion is confusing.

  An impression is when a user clicks on an advertisement.

  A click is when a user clicks on PPC ads.

  A conversion is the process of when a user clicks on an ad and produces a desired action/result such as a sale or call to your dental office.

  Don't assume higher impressions and clicks are the same as a conversion. These two aspects are valuable, but if they don't end up leading to a desired result or conversion, then your PPC campaign isn't successful. The results you desire from building PPC ads aren't doing what you want them to without conversions.

  Our PPC campaign experts will create and optimize Google Ads that generate high quality leads that result in new patient appointments.

Dental PPC Advertising Best Practices

If you're not ready to partner with a dedicated PPC consulting agency, or don't have the funds to do so yet, there are some dental PPC best practices to keep in mind when taking this on yourself. Google PPC ads for dentists is a great place to begin.

Start by coming up with a budget, learn how to choose the right PPC keywords, utilize local Google Ads for dentists, and optimize your landing pages.

1. 1. Determine Your PPC Ad Budget

   Setting yourself up for success and profitable dental PPC ads begins with planning your budget.

   A good rule of thumb is between 5-8 percent of your dental practice total annual revenue for your dedicated total ad budget. This statistic should help you gauge how much to put toward Google Ads for dentists. For reference, greatinflux's PPC consulting agency offers local PPC ad campaigns starting at $500 per month.

2. 2. Target the Right PPC Keywords

   Using the right keywords for your dental PPC campaign is critical to increasing online visibility with the right audience. Here's a step-by-step list on how to target the right PPC keywords for your dental practice:

   • Do your Research: Leverage websites like WordStream, Semrush, or Moz to find high volume keywords relevant to your dental practice. Google Ads also has a keyword planner tool. These websites will give you keywords that a majority of your potential patients are searching online.
   • Check Out Competitors: After researching the best keywords to use, you can look into competitors’ websites and gauge what keywords they're using for their PPC ads and landing pages.
   • Think About your Audience and Services: What are some of your niche specialties at your dental practice? Do you offer teeth whitening or root canals? Find ways to incorporate those niches into your keywords. This can help better set you apart from competitors who may also offer similar niche services.

3. 3. Create Local Google Ads for Dentists

   People want a trusted dental practice that is close by. Convenience is key, and your dental practice can gain a major competitive edge by showing up in Google searches for people within a specific radius or specific locations. Even more, leveraging local Google ads for dentists helps reduce the waste of ad spend on locations that won't convert.

   Local search is crucial for dental PPC advertising. By leveraging local Google ads for dentists, you are refining your ads to show only to those who are searching for the services you offer, no matter how general or niche, in your geographic location. Our PPC ad creation technology allows you to geo-target specific areas and regions, and even allows you to exclude locations you wish to exclude from targeting.

4. 4. Create Tailored Landing Pages

   As you work to create effective dental PPC ad campaigns, you also want to make sure that your landing pages are tailored to your PPC ad campaign, ad copy, keywords, audience, etc. Users should be able to see your dental PPC ad and have a user-friendly experience upon visiting your landing page.

   For example, if your dental PPC ad includes a discount or specific service offered, the landing page the user is brought to should have some sort of information that further explains what you said in the PPC advertisement.

5. 5. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

   You can also optimize your landing page for better conversions by doing the following:

   Include a Call-to-Action

   A landing page call-to-action can include a link to book an appointment, or a specific link or code to access a special discount. This generates more clicks on your website, and increases your overall conversions and revenues for your practice.

   Each landing page should include one direct call-to-action that tells visitors what to do next. Competing CTAs create confusion among visitors, which results in fewer leads. Research shows that landing pages with one link led to an average conversion rate of 13.5%, while pages with two to four links led to an average conversion of 11.9%. For five or more links, conversions dropped even lower to 10.5%.

   Visual Appeal

   Once you’ve created a great and visually appealing dental PPC ad, make sure your website is holding up to the standard design aesthetic of your advertisement. Incorporate high quality videos or designs such as an infographic to help elevate your landing page’s visual appeal. This will ensure that user’s aren’t quickly leaving your website due to a poor user experience.

   Optimize for Mobile

   Since your dental PPC ads can be optimized for mobile, optimize your landing page and other website pages for mobile as well. That includes making sure your online sign-up forms and other documentation users need to fill out are mobile friendly.

6. 6. Use Ad Extensions

   Ad extensions allow you to feature even more valuable information people are looking for when searching for a dentist. Ad extensions permit dentists to include things like addresses, phone numbers, hours of operation, driving directions, etc.

   Overall, ad extensions provide more information about your dental practice which Google can then pull from when showing ads to your audience.

   When setting up your ad on Google, make sure you also fill in your information in the “Ads and Extensions” settings.

7. 7. Optimize Ads for Phone Calls

   Google Ads for dentists will cost your practice money for each click, but phone calls will not. You should optimize your dental PPC ad by including a phone number so people have the option to call in for more details and not just be limited to clicking on the ad. This step can save your campaign money while still generating the intended results.

8. 8. Monitor Results and Analyze Performance

   Monitoring your dental PPC ad performance gives you the opportunity to see if your ad campaign is working as expected or not. Google Ads showcase an array of important information such as your number of ad impressions, click through rate, and cost per click. By reviewing your data, you can more easily see where to make changes to your PPC ad campaign.

   You can track your ad performance in your Google ads account by clicking “All Campaigns” in the navigation menu. Then, click “Ads and Assets” or “Keywords” to see statistics tables. There are tables that show you a customizable view of all your data.

9. 9. Optimize and Pivot PPC Strategy

   Taking time to refine your strategies will go a long way in reaching your desired audience, increasing website traffic, and increasing overall revenue. Make sure you’re collecting data to guide the decision making process and pivoting your strategy if needed.

Dental PPC FAQ

• 1. Can I Do PPC Myself?

  Yes. You can choose to do PPC by yourself if you so choose. While there are multiple benefits supporting hiring a marketing professional to do it for your dental practice, PPC advertising platforms allow anyone to create and maintain a PPC advertising campaign on their own.

• 2. How Much Should I Pay for Dental PPC?

  There is not a clear cut answer as to how much your dental office should pay for dental PPC advertising. It truly depends on your dental office’s goals, expectations, location, and results you’re wanting to achieve.

  Here are a few considerations your dental office should evaluate before deicing on a PPC campaign:

  • Local Competition: If there is a large volume of dental offices in your area, your dental office needs to find ways to stand out amongst the crowd. Investing in a PPC campaign can help your dental office appear at the top of SERPs to be there for people searching for dentists in your local area.
  • Budget: Instead of looking at PPC as having a set budget, you should also consider framing it as an equation where you introduce variables such as cost-per click, conversion rates, etc. In a PPC campaign, you control a lot of the variables, however some may result in negative results which brings you back to stage one. Depending on how well your advertisements succeed, you may need to spend more than expected.
  • Skill and Ability: Even the most earnest dental practices in competitive areas can lessen their investment by skillfully bidding on the best keywords, tracking results, and optimizing campaigns.
  • Dental Office Goals: How many new patients are you accepting? Does your dental office have a large influx of new patients? With this in mind, your dental office might want to consider SEO strategies over PPC.