With more than 180,000 and 20,000 dental practices in the United States and Canada respectively, the dental industry is becoming more and more competitive. It can be challenging for local dental practices to attract and retain patients.
But with a targeted dental marketing strategy, like Google Ads campaigns, in place, you can be a step closer to winning out on your competition.
Google Ads are a type of pay-per-click (PPC) advertisement displayed on Google platforms such as Google Display Network, Google Search and Google Maps.
This means that your dental practice’s ads can be shown to prospective patients while checking their Gmail inbox, looking up addresses on Google Maps, watching videos on Youtube or searching relevant dental-related keywords on Google Search. As such, you can spread the word about your practice to several patients who are actively using Google’s services.
Why Dentists Should Run Google Ads Campaigns
With many dental marketing strategies available to you, you might be wondering about the importance or benefits of running a Google Ads campaign. Well, the answer is simple and, frankly, quite obvious: it’s Google, and everyone uses it.
There are more than 4 billion Google users worldwide, and 75% of the US population are active Google users. So, without a doubt, your current and prospective patients are using Google more times a day than you can imagine. In marketing, it is essential to meet customers, or patients, where they are. Hence, the need to use Google Ads.
But asides from Google’s massive reach and usage, here are three more reasons you should be running Google Ads for your dental practice:
1. Targeted Dental Marketing
Google Ads allows you to reach your ideal prospective patients where they are. Your ideal prospective patients are those who are interested in or actively looking for your exact services. Using Google’s data about search activity, you can identify patients who have historically, or recently, shown interest in what you have to offer and show them your ads.
2. Save Costs and Increase Dental Marketing ROI
Gone are the days of spending hundreds of dollars to secure billboard spaces or create standing banners. With Google Ads campaigns, you no longer need to pay for dental marketing channels with returns that you can’t accurately account for. You only need to pay for Google ads when prospective patients click them.
Also, you can track your conversion rate regularly to assess your ad performance so you can make necessary adjustments while the campaign is still running. This ensures you get the best bang for your buck.
3. Gather Patient Insights
In addition to targeting and attracting more ideal patients while saving costs, Google Ads are great for learning more about your patient behaviours, interests and tendencies. Throughout a Google Ads campaign, you can see how patients respond to each ad design or ad copy. This information helps you figure out and understand the designs and messaging that work best for your patients. You can apply these insights to all other aspects of your dental service and practice.
Tips for Optimizing Your Dental Practice’s Google Ads Campaigns
Now that we know the importance of running Google Ads campaigns for your dental practice let’s discuss how to ensure you’re getting the most out of these campaigns.
Here are six ways to improve your practice’s Google Ads campaigns:
1. Identify your unique value proposition
If you’ve been a business owner long enough, you’ve likely heard about UVPs or unique value proposition. But in case you haven’t, here’s what it means: a unique value proposition is a statement that highlights how your dental practice solves your patients’ problems and how your practice stands out from its competition. When running a Google Ads campaign, or any marketing campaign for that matter, it is essential to know your UVP.
Identifying your UVP helps you position your ad in a way that grabs the attention of your prospective patients and ultimately attracts them to your dental services. For some dental practices, same-day or weekend appointments are part of their UVP. For others, it’s the fact that patients don’t need to have insurance to use their services. You know yours best, so lean into it and find creative ways to include it in your ad.
2. Use the Right Keywords
When creating Google Ads campaigns, you need to include your target keywords. Your target keywords are the terms that your ideal patients are liking looking up online. You must use the right keywords; otherwise, you’d end up showing your ad to patients who won’t use your services.
By conducting keyword research, you can learn the keywords that are relevant and specific to your dental patients. If you’re unable to conduct this research, hire a dental SEO expert to do it for you. Either way, there are three kinds of keywords you should be looking for when conducting keyword research for your dental practice’s Google Ads campaign.
- Location-Based Keywords: As the name implies, these are keywords that are specific to a location, such as ‘Dentists in Phoenix’ or ‘Boston Invisalign Dentist.’ These keywords include the location, city or community that the user or patient hopes to find the right dental service in. As a local dental practice, you can win more conversions by using location-based keywords.
- Localized Niche Keywords: In addition to using location-based keywords, you should also consider keywords that are very specific to the exact dental services you offer. For example, a user or patient looking up ‘professional teeth whitening near me’ or ‘restorative dental procedures’ isn’t interested in a regular dental check-up. Instead, they have specific needs, and by using these keywords, your Google Ad can cut through the noise and highlight your practice as their best option.
- Emergency Keywords: Patients will likely search for dental services when they have dental emergencies. Targeting keywords like ‘urgent teeth extraction’ allows you to reach patients who need your services right away. Keep in mind that these keywords have low search volume, but since you only have to pay for Google Ads when they are clicked, you can expect a low cost-per-click for such keywords.
3. Include Location and Call Extensions
It can be challenging to fit in all the information you want to share with prospective patients in a Google Ad. To help you navigate this challenge, Google allows business owners and markers to include additional information as a subtext to your main ad copy. These additional details are called extensions.
There are many types of extensions you can include in your Google Ads. We highly recommend using one of, or both, location and call extensions. Location extensions help local patients find your dental practice easily by showing your location on Google Maps or displaying details such as your hours of operation, interior and exterior images of your practice and directions.
Call extensions allow patients to contact your dental practice by phone. To include this extension, you have to add your phone number or use the call button when creating your ad campaign. You can learn more about call extensions here.
4. Advertise on Google Maps
Like many Google services or platforms, Google Maps is all about making location details and information readily accessible to internet users. In addition to publishing your Google ads on Google Display Network, you should consider advertise them on Google Maps.
Advertising on Google Maps is highly recommended for any dentist or dental practice to showcase their dental services to local patients. These ads do not only show up on the Maps platform, but it also helps you rank higher on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for location-based keywords.
5. Use Ad-specific Landing Pages
If you’re running Google Ads, you should be tracking your conversion rate and cost per conversion. Your conversion rate tells you how often your ad leads to a new appointment after it’s been clicked, while your cost per conversion tells you how much you pay for each new appointment made after an ad has been clicked. More comprehensively, these metrics tell you if your Google ads are working or not.
If your conversion metrics aren’t great, chances are the problem is with your landing pages. Landing pages are the webpage, usually, on your dental practice’s website, that prospective patients are led to after they click your ad. You should make sure that your landing page includes information that speaks precisely to the needs or interests of prospective patients.
Consider creating a landing page specifically for your Google ads. This landing page can include more details about your dental practice, including your unique value proposition and a Call-to-Action that prompts visitors to book an appointment right away.
6. Work with a Google Ads Specialist
If you’re finding it challenging to implement any of these tips, you should reach out to a Google Ads specialist who can help you find and close the gaps in your Google Ads Campaign. The Google Ads specialists at Connect the Doc can pinpoint errors or missteps in your PPC campaigns, fix them and help you manage your campaign to ensure you’re getting the most of them.
The world is evolving quickly, and the dental industry is changing along with it. You mustn’t get left behind. Use these tips, or connect with a dental marketing specialist, so you can optimize your dental practice’s Google Ads and be as competitive as possible in these times.
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