PPC Advertising for Dentists

Many experts say that dentists should see 8-12 patients each business day. Since practices lose up to 10 percent of their patients each year due to normal life events, you have to develop a marketing strategy to ensure you meet industry benchmarks regarding the number of patients you see. Pay-per-click, or PPC advertising for dentists, is one of the most effective ways to market your practice online.

What Is PPC Advertising?

PPC Advertising for Dentists Google Ads Accelerate Dental Marketing You see PPC ads every time you conduct an online search, but you probably don’t realize it. If you went to Google and searched “dentist near me,” you would see some ads directly under the search bar. “Ad” is written next to the URL. Dental practices bid on keywords, and when you type those words into the search bar, the ads are triggered. If you click on one of the ads, the practice is charged. That’s why the ads are called pay-per-click. The owner of the ad pays every time someone clicks on the ad.

What Are The Benefits of Pay-Per-Click Ads?

Many of the most successful dental practices use PPC advertising due to the numerous benefits. Let’s go over some of the benefits you can expect if you start a PPC campaign.

Does PPC Provide Immediate Results?

If you’re behind your competitors regarding SEO, it can take months or even a year to catch up. That’s not the case with PPC advertising, though. Even if your competitors have been running ads for years, you can jump right in and compete. If you set up and manage your account properly, your ads can show up at the top of the search results immediately. If you’re ready to go head to head with your competition, it makes sense to run PPC ads.

How Can PPC Increase Phone Calls?

How Can PPC Increase Phone Calls - Pay Per Click Ads - Google Ads - Accelerate Dental Marketing Most new patients book appointments over the phone, meaning the more phone calls you can drive to your practice, the more appointments you can book. PPC advertising can help you generate more calls. Take Google Ads, for instance. This PPC platform is responsible for more than 40 million calls each month. You just need to enable the call feature on your ads, and potential patients can flood your lines. Then, you can fill your schedule with new patients.

What Targeting Options Are Available with PPC?

PPC advertising is a popular choice in part due to the targeting options. It’s easy to reach your target market with these ads. You can target based on demographics, location, and so much more. You can even create different ads that target different groups. Then, each ad can speak directly to potential patients.

Is PPC Measurable and Trackable?

When you engage in PPC advertising, you can measure and track everything, from the impressions to the conversions. It’s very easy to see if a campaign is performing as expected. If it isn’t, your marketing team can quickly change it, so it generates better results.

What Are Some Common PPC Advertising Mistakes?

If you were to audit different PPC campaigns, you would find lots of mistakes. Many dental practices are not sure how to effectively manage these campaigns, so they make serious mistakes that cause them to waste money.

No Call Tracking

Far too many dental practices use PPC advertising to generate calls, but they fail to use call tracking. Call tracking allows you to match the traffic source to the phone call. You can find out what keywords and ads triggered calls when you use call tracking. If you’re serious about running an effective campaign, PPC call tracking is a must.

Bidding on Generic Keywords

Broad and generic keywords won’t provide the results you want. Instead, you need to bid on longtail, intention-based keywords.

Dental-Keyword-Research---SEO-for-Dentists---Keyword-Research---Accelerate-Dental-Marketing Assume you bid on the word “dentist.” That’s a very generic term, so your ad can be triggered even when people aren’t looking for a dentist. Someone might Google “dentist memes” and see your ad. Someone else might look for “how to become a dentist,” only to see your ad. Neither searcher has any interest in making an appointment, so your ad will be ignored. On the other hand, if you choose keywords that show intent for making an appointment, such as “dentist near me,” your ads will get the conversions you want.

You might think this isn’t important since you only pay for ads when people click. However, Google assigns a quality score to each advertiser. It analyzes different factors, including your click-through rate. A poor click-through rate will cause your score to drop. Then, your ads will cost more to run, and they might not show up as often.

Failing to Split Test Ads

You always want to improve your campaign, whether it is your website’s SEO or your PPC advertising. Split testing is the best way to tweak and optimize your campaign. To do this, you will create two ads that are almost exactly the same but have a small difference. You might tweak the ad copy or the call to action in the ads. Then, run the two ads to see which one performs better. Keep in mind that split testing shouldn’t be a onetime thing. You can run another split test using the ad that performed better in the first test and just keep going. There’s always room for improvement in digital advertising.

Copying Ads

This isn’t just a problem for dentists who run PPC ads. It seems like companies in every industry copy ads. They tweak the ads slightly, but the text is far too similar to the direct competition. You cannot stand out from the crowd if your ads look the same as other ads. Get creative with your ads, so you can draw eyes to the text. Then, you can get the clicks you need.

Poor Targeting

It’s true that just about anyone can become a patient at your practice. You serve men and women and possibly children. As long as people have teeth, you can help.

However, you do have geographic limitations. Unless you serve a rural community where people have to travel for all services, your patients likely won’t drive more than 10 miles to see you. Many don’t even want to go that far and prefer to find a dentist that is only five miles away. You need to use location targeting, so your ads don’t appear to people who aren’t likely to drive to your practice. There’s no sense in displaying ads to people who will click on the link, only to see you’re too far.

Get Help with PPC Advertising Today!

PPC advertising is probably one of the most difficult marketing methods to master. Between choosing the keywords and creating the ad copy, there are lots of steps you must take. A single mistake can cause your ad spend to increase while your conversions decrease.

Accelerate Dental Marketing can set up and manage your PPC advertising campaign. Our marketing firm specializes in dental marketing for small to medium-sized practices. With our help, you can go head to head with the big box practices. You’ll generate more leads, schedule more patients, and generate more revenue with our help. Also, you can always check in on the campaign by accessing our client portal. It contains analytics and reports, so you never have to wonder how your campaign is performing.