Best PPC Practices For Dentists

Dental offices and professionals can benefit from PPC for dentists. PPC or pay-per-click is one of the pillars of online marketing. When used correctly, it’s a strategy that can boost engagement and improve overall revenue.

What Is PPC?

PPC is a marketing strategy that allows you to pay for ads only when your customers click on them. Compared to regular digital and traditional ads where you need to pay hundreds of dollars to post your ad, PPC is a cost-effective way to advertise.

PPC is ideal for small to medium-scale businesses with limited budgets. If your dental practice is still in the works or you're just starting, you can use PPC to improve site traffic and lead your customers to your dental services. PPC ads are commonly placed on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. You'll also find PPC ads on search engine results pages, at the top part of the search page.

Do you have a service that's unique to your practice? Let your potential customers know by using PPC. In fact, you can use PPC marketing to get instant traffic. There is no need to pay hundreds of dollars just to get an ad online, on TV, or in a magazine.

Best PPC Practices for Dentists

The success of PPC strategies lies in the keywords you use for your campaigns. The broader your keywords are, the less targeted your ads will be. The more you narrow down your keywords, the more effective and targeted your PPC campaigns will be. So how is this done?

Smart keyword use in PPC starts with a careful assessment of your business. Are you the only dental office or dentist in your area? Do you have several competitors? Avoid a broad term like “dental office” or “dentists” as you will be less likely to come up in search results for terms like these. Narrow it down by deciding on which area you will concentrate on. So instead of a broad term, use “dental clinic in Brooklyn” or “Las Vegas dental office.”

Microfocus your keywords, this time with services that you specialize in. Try "teeth whitening expert in Las Vegas" or "San Diego dental implants." With these keywords, your PPC ads are much more likely to come up every time there’s a relevant search.

Now that you have a set of dental practice keywords, it’s time to develop your first dental PPC campaigns. Consider these strategies:

Understand Google Ads Structure

Google helps marketers make sense out of their PPC campaigns through Google Adwords. This tool has a structure that will guide you as you start your PPC ads.

Adwords has settings that will allow you to change your account, marketing campaigns, and group level. Your campaigns will dictate the structure of your account. For instance, broad services such as dental checkups may qualify as a campaign, but you must also create campaigns for other services such as teeth whitening and cleaning.

Get To Know Google’s Quality Ranking

The success of your PPC ads depends on your quality score. Your score affects the cost-per-click and positioning. Quality scoring is from 1 to 10, with one being the lowest and ten the highest. Factors like CTR or click-through rate, text and keyword relevance, keyword and search term relevance, and landing page relevance all play significant roles.

In all your PPC ads, you must always aim for the highest CTR. This may depend on the market or industry you belong to and the keywords or key phrases you're using to target your audience. Having relevant text, keywords, and landing pages means that these platforms should complement each other.

If your PPC ad is about a free teeth whitening service, the ad must lead to a landing page that’s about that same service. Assess your ads and these components to maintain relevance in your PPC marketing campaigns.

Find out your campaign’s quality score so you'll have an idea of which part you need to change and which part is getting the best results. Marketers working on their first PPC campaigns may have a low score at first. They can improve their scores by updating their ads, landing pages, and keywords. The higher your quality score, the lower the cost-per-click, so take time to improve your score.

Understand Your Audience Demographics

From your PPC settings, you can further enhance audience targeting by updating the audience demographics. From this section, you can change your audience location and the language of your campaigns.

If you have a local dental office, set your demographics to focus on your local audience. If you plan to focus on different countries, you must create ad campaigns to target your audience from every region or country. You can fine-tune your location options by including or excluding people coming from different locations.

Enhance your targeting preference by including your dental office or practice location and starting an advanced search. You can choose the radius of your coverage (how far or how near). You can closely target specific places and demographics for better PPC ads campaigns success by adjusting these features.

All About Budget and Bidding

There's a daily budget set for your PPC ads, so consider your needs and your set budget wisely. PPC ads target keywords with an ad per keyword set. You may be tempted to spend only $10 for five keywords, and although this seems cost-efficient, you may not get the results you expect. We recommend starting on at least a $30 daily budget to target 1 to 2 keywords, considering the competitiveness of your selected keywords.

Adjust your ad spend settings to get full control of your PPC campaigns. Choose “Manual CPC” for maximum control and avoid running over your budget.

Final Words

PPC may seem complicated, but once you've learned to maximize your PPC efforts, you'll find this strategy efficient and practical. Your dental office can compete with other local offices and clinics with smart marketing strategies like PPC. With dental PPC, you'll be in the lead with your audience and customers supporting your services. 2022 is your year; start investing in smart campaigns like PPC marketing today.