PPC Campaigns with Google and Bing can be very effective for dental practices looking to generate new patient leads for a range of treatments and services. However, it is very easy to waste a large portion of your ad budget if you do not pay attention to the details and optimize around several variables. Below we will highlight some tips that we found help to optimize dental PPC ad campaigns and provide a better return over the long run.
Tip #1: Focus on the ‘core’ keywords more likely to convert
It’s important to focus your advertising budget on targeting keywords which have the highest propensity to convert into a lead. If you are doing ‘broad’ keyword targeting within Google ads, there’s a good chance that a significant portion of the terms your targeting may not be these ‘core’ keywords. For example, terms like schedule a dental appointment, dentists near me, and emergency dentist are all ones that indicate intent and should also indicate a higher quality individual, while dentist salary, dental jobs, dental clinic or dental grants are lower quality terms that generally are lower quality and not ones your want to spend precious ad dollars on.
This is especially true for terms around emergency dentist, urgent dental appointment or same day dentist. In our experience these are not terms that people search casually, as in any emergency they are looking for immediate help and a same or next day dental appointment, so focusing on these terms generally had a stronger ROI.
Tip #2: Avoid targeting informational queries with your ads
Building on the previous point about targeting quality keywords that are more likely to convert, you want to avoid informational queries and related keywords with your advertising. When individuals undertake informational searches, often they are looking for answers or resources rather than looking to schedule an appointment with a dental office. So in our experience we do not target key phrases related to who what when where and why searches.
If you do have the budget for your Google ads, you could target some information terms related to higher value cases, usually related to cosmetic dentistry and dental implants. When individuals look to undertake major dental treatments, often they will research and do searches to help them understand their options and get answers, however these terms are generally more expensive in terms of click charges, so you need to weigh your budget against general dentistry terms that are likely to convert in the near term and ones that represent a more informational and longer-term search for potentially higher value treatment cases.
Tip #3: Geographic ad targeting and searcher locations
As a local dental office, you likely have a pretty good understanding of the geographic area where the majority of your patients come from. As such your PPC ad campaigns should dovetail along these lines, using your knowledge. If you’re not completely sure of these locations, generate a patient report that includes zip codes, and use that data for your Google ads targeting. If you are a new dental practice or don’t have significant patient data, we generally recommend radius targeting around your office. Depending on location, often we recommend 8 – 15 mile radius targeting.
Conversely while you can target specific areas, you can also exclude specific areas. So if you do not want to target people in a particular area or maybe in a different state or in a different county, you can add these as exclusions so your ads will not appear. Often we use a combination of geographic targeting and exclusions when doing radius targeting. So for example we may have ads run in a 15 mile radius around our client’s business, but part of that area may overlap in an area they don’t want to target so we exclude that area, either by state, county, town or zip code.
Additionally in your settings for your Google ads campaigns, under targeting under advanced search, you can indicate whether you want to Target people who are physically in your targeted areas, or have expressed an interest in your targeted areas. for the majority of our Dental clients we select who are in the specific areas were targeting. this has been performing better compared to a wider search of people who have an interest in your area.
Tip #4: Schedule your ads to show on relevant days and times
The timing of your ads can also be an important consideration. The default for Google ads campaigns will be to have the ads run 24/7, however we found that generally more quality searches are undertaken during the day and early evening rather than in the middle of the night.
To prevent budget from being wasted on low quality searches and off hours, usually we will target ads to run from say 7:00 a.m. till 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. at night. This way you can focus on specific times and also get better data to see when people are searching and what times convert better so you can allocate your budget accordingly.
Another consideration could be the days you want your ads to run. For example, when we are targeting ‘Emergency Dentistry’ keywords, many times we find that people look for an emergency dentist who can see them immediately if not within 24 hours. So if your dental office is only open Monday to Thursday or maybe is not open on the weekends, your ads should be timed on days when you are open that day or the following day. So in these examples maybe your emergency targeted ads do not run Friday evening through midday Sunday, and then they start again Sunday afternoon and evening assuming you’ll be open Monday morning.
Need Help Optimizing Your Dental PPC Campaigns?
PPC can be one of the most productive marketing campaigns to attract new patients, with many options to specially tailor and optimize your campaigns. If you are looking for assistance with your PPC campaigns, whether for a one-time optimization or for ongoing campaign management and optimization, the team at Gazz Digital is here to help.
Schedule your PPC consultation today, and next of luck with your campaigns!
