10 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Pay-Per-Click (PPC) for Dentists

If you’re a dentist with questions about running PPC campaigns in your dental practice, you are not alone. Many dentists—and marketers—have challenges with running PPC campaigns. That’s why we put together a list of the most frequently asked questions about PPC for dentists.

In this article, you will learn the importance of PPC for dentists, how to run PPC campaigns, the success metrics to look out for and how to get start running PPC campaigns for your dental practice.

FAQs About PPC for Dentists

What are Paid Ads?
What are PPC ads?
How do PPC ads work?
What is the difference between PPC and SEO?
What are the different types of PPC ads?
Where do dental PPC ads appear?
How much do PPC campaigns cost?
What are the best practices for running PPC campaigns?
What are the KPIs for PPC campaigns?
How do I get started with PPC campaigns?

1. What are Paid Ads?

Paid ads refer to any kind of advertisement that you have to pay for. For dentists, this means any form of dental marketing strategy that involves paying for ad space that showcases your ad copy and content. Paid ads involve paying for digital ad spaces on paid ads networks such as Google, Facebook or Microsoft. The goal of running ads on these networks is to drive traffic back to your dental website.

2. What are PPC ads?

PPC stands for Pay-per-click marketing. This type of paid ads involves paying for ads only when they are clicked. In other words, you don’t pay for your ads up front. Instead, you pay retroactively as web users click them. With PPC ads, you can promote your dental practice on search engines, social media platforms and popular websites using text, images, videos or banners.

3. How do PPC ads work?

With PPC ads, dentists can optimize their dental marketing strategy by targeting current and prospective patients. To run a PPC ad, you have to create a campaign on a paid ads network. Paid ads networks, such as Google and Facebook, allows you to predetermine the audience or members of their networks who will get to see your ads. You can also choose your ad format (text, image, video etc.) and the geographical locations where your ads will show up. These are some of the targeting factors to consider when you create PPC campaigns for your dental practice.

Depending on your choice of ad network, you can run your PPC ads on search engines, social media or third-party websites that get a lot of traffic. For example, PPC ads on Google’s ad network can be displayed on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), Google Maps or websites of Google’s partners. Your ads can also be optimized for different devices and targeted based on the interests of your current and prospective patients.

4. What is the difference between PPC and SEO?

While you have to pay to run PPC campaigns for your dental practice, SEO is a mostly free optimization marketing strategy. This is the main difference between PPC and SEO. With SEO marketing, your goal is to boost your online presence, traffic and conversion by getting your dental website and content to rank high on SERPs. With PPC ads, your goal is to showcase your dental practice through targeted campaigns regardless of your dental website’s ranking on SERPs. Both strategies have their merits and can be essential to the sustained growth of your dental practice.

Depending on your goals, budget and dental marketing strategy, you can choose to focus on implementing both SEO and PPC marketing strategies for your dental practice or prioritize one over the other. Both strategies are important to remain competitive in a crowded dental industry. A Connect the Doc specialist can work with you to assess your needs and make the best marketing choices for your dental practice.

5. What are the different types of PPC ads?

PPC ads can be run in different formats to reach your target patients and generate patient leads. The most common types of PPC ads amongst dentists are search ads, display ads, social media ads, local service ads, remarketing and instream ads. The PPC ads type you choose should always depend on your target patients’ preferred medium, platform and format of engaging with digital content.

As you run PPC ads campaigns, be sure to track and measure your results. These insights will help you understand the types of PPC ads that work best for your dental practice. When you run your PPC ads with Connect the Doc, you receive monthly reports about your PPC campaign performance and progress. Our reports help you save money by investing only in the ad types that can generate the most patient leads for your dental practice.

6. Where do dental PPC ads appear?

Dentists run PPC campaigns that appear on search engine result pages (SERP), websites that dental patients tend to visit, social media platforms and Google’s service platforms (such as Google Maps.) You can often find PPC ads for dental practices on SERPs. These ads appear in the format of text ads at the top or bottom of the search engine result pages. The location of your PPC ads should depend on the online engagement and behaviour of your current and prospective patients.

7. How much do PPC campaigns cost?

As much as we would like to provide a straightforward answer to this question, the reality is there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The cost of a PPC ad varies and depends on the paid ads network you’re running your PPC campaign on, changes in patient behaviours, the level of competition, the bidding strategy you implement, ad formats, bidding methods, location and timing of ads, target keywords, your dental practice’s ad budget and much more. That said, the average cost of a dentist’s Google ad ranges between $1 and $20.

8. What are the best practices for running PPC campaigns?

It is important to have a strategy in place when running your PPC campaigns for your dental practice. Connect the Doc’s digital marketing strategists can support your dental marketing efforts by developing a concrete plan for running your dental practice’s PPC campaigns. This plan will put into considerations all the best practices and metrics needed to run a successful PPC campaign.

Such practices include conduct industry research to learn more about patient behaviours and competitors’ ad strategies, using long-tail keywords, creating quality ad copy and content, running your PPC ad in the right format at the right time and location, amongst others. These practices optimize your PPC campaigns and improve your results.

9. What are the KPIs for PPC campaigns?

If you’re going to invest time and money in running and managing PPC ads, you must identify your PPC campaign’s success metrics. Key performance indicators (KP1s) help you monitor your PPC campaign performance and stay on track. With the right KPIs in place, you can audit your PPC campaign, access your progress, make necessary changes as you go and measure your campaign success.

Amongst the most important KPIs for a typical dentist PPC campaign are the number of clicks, click-through rates, ad quality score, average cost-per-click, conversion rate and cost-per-conversion. As you run your campaign, pay close attention to the KP1s that tell you about the evolution and progress of your PPC campaign over time.

10. How do I get started with PPC campaigns?

You need to have a comprehensive dental marketing strategy before you start running PPC campaigns for your dental practice. This article has discussed the different nuances of a typical dentist PPC campaign. With a strategy in place, you can make sure you don’t miss any important factors or considerations as you run your PPC campaign.

Your dental marketing strategy should detail your dental practice’s ideal PPC keywords, your ad budgets and formats, ad copy and content type, location and timing of your PPC ads, industry research, relevant ad copy, and a landing page conversion path. Your KPIs and success metrics should be well defined in your strategy and most importantly, you must have a system for tracking your progress.

To ensure you’re getting the most out of your dental marketing efforts, you should work with a digital marketing strategist who can guide you as you go. You already have a lot going on as a dental healthcare provider who is managing a dental practice. You will benefit from having an expert spend time overseeing the management of your PPC campaigns. If you are going to invest money in your dental marketing strategy, you might as well do it right and give yourself the best chance to succeed.

Connect the Doc empowers dentists to execute successful dental marketing strategies. We have worked with dentists in the United States and Canada to optimize their dental marketing strategies and run PPC campaigns that generate and convert patient leads. When you work with Connect the Doc, you are assigned a specialist who manages and reports on your dental practice’s PPC campaigns regularly. To learn more about running PPC campaigns for your dental practice, contact a Connect the Doc specialist today