PPC – Over the last few years, dentists have discovered the value of search engine pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to grow their practices. Dentists who use PPC find that their websites see more traffic, and as a result, they see more new patients. Ultimately, PPC for dentists results in a higher rate of conversion from web searches to new patients.
The fact is, dental PPC is a very effective way to reach potential patients at the exact time they need your services. By promoting your dental practice with both search engine and social media PPC, you’ll get highly targeted results from your marketing campaign.
Table of Contents
What is Pay-per-Click Advertising?
You can find PPC advertising platforms on social media sites, as well as on search engines. In fact, pay-per-click ads are the most popular feature of Google AdWords; Google ads not only show on search engine results, but also allow you to place display ads on thousands of locally targeted websites.
The way PPC works is you bid on keywords that are relevant to your dental practice. If your bid wins, your ad will show up on top of the search results. When someone searching for your keyword clicks on your ad, you pay the price of the bid.
PPC ads dominate the internet:
- Every month, Google PPC ads get an astounding 180 million impressions.
- PPC search engine ads are highly targeted, getting your ads in front of the exact people searching for your services.
- Paid search ads generally result in 1.5 times more conversions.
- Almost half of the population can’t tell the difference between search ads and organic search results.
- PPC ads immediately get your dental practice onto Google search results.
- They provide immediate, measurable, and trackable results.
- PPC ads complement dental SEO strategies.
However, running a successful dental PPC campaign involves following a few rules:
- Carefully choose your keywords according to your practice, specialties, and the local area.
- Include a clear and robust call to action in your ad text.
- Optimize your landing pages with strong calls to action.
- Target your ads to your local area.
- Integrate tracking codes into your landing pages and website.
- Use the Google analytic tools and call tracking to analyze results.
- Set a reasonable budget to control your costs.
- Target patients with social media ads based on demographics and your local area.
Dental PPC Advertising is Highly Targeted
Search engine result ads are not the only option you’ll have with PPC advertising. Your dental PPC ads can also appear on Google maps, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. The purpose of PPC ads is to convert the people who see the ads into new patients. This makes proper targeting very important.
Dental practices need to tailor and target their ads to their local area. If you are a dentist in Houston, your ads only need to run in the Houston area. Running ads for a local dental practice nationwide is a waste of money.
It’s also important to create demographically targeted ads. For example, a children’s dentist can target Facebook and Instagram ads to platform users with children.
Dental PPC ads can also be scheduled at the right times for your target audience to see them. Ads can be scheduled to run on specific times of day or on certain days. For example, Google ads with a call extension can be scheduled to only run during your office hours.
PPC ads can be targeted to specific geographic areas, such as your town, city, or neighborhood. Also, geo-targeted mobile ads can target search ads on smartphones to very small areas, such as your immediate neighborhood.
If you’re considering PPC advertising for your dental practice, be sure to take advantage of the targeting options available to you. This not only can save you money but also narrows your audience down to the people most likely to convert into patients.
Tracking PPC Results is Easy
One of the best things about dental PPC ads is that you can track your results from your ad control panel. However, as Pranjal Bora with Digital Authority Partners points out, analyzing and interpreting the results takes expertise. The average person might not be able to make heads or tails of the data they see. That’s one reason why working with a digital marketing professional pays off.
A digital marketing agency working for you can use the data to:
- Revise your dental PPC campaign based on the data
- Adjust the times your ads run to maximize conversions
- Change your ads as search behaviors change
- Pause the campaign and use the data to revise it if it’s not performing
Dental PPC is Cost-Effective
You know that your budget is limited. But by allocating enough to your dental PPC campaigns, you can generate enough conversions for the ads to pay for themselves.
Working with a digital marketing agency increases your costs, but it also maximizes your dental PPC campaigns. Professional handling your campaigns can:
- Find the best keywords for your locality and dental practice and craft ad campaigns and landing pages around those keywords.
- Retarget your ads by tagging every visitor to your website. In this way, your display ads will follow them across the internet.
- Remarket your ads by collecting user emails from your website and using that to launch an email campaign.
[Dental PPC] is the Launch Point for Success
A dental PPC campaign is just the beginning. The demographic data gathered can also form the basis for other types of marketing campaigns for your practice.
Dentists who take advantage of PPC advertising see a noticeable difference in the number of new patients they see. Dental PPC ads target the exact people who can easily be converted into new patients.
However, launching an effective dental [PPC campaign] is not as easy as it looks. It requires quite a bit of time and it also requires quite a bit of data analysis skills. You’ll also need to be an excellent copywriter.
If you’d like to take up digital marketing as a new hobby, then go for it. But, if you don’t, let an expert digital marketing agency handle your dental [PPC campaigns].
