How to Start Using PPC for Your Dental Practice

When you opened your dental practice, you may have never considered needing to invest in marketing services. When patients need dental services, they’ll come to you — right?

Unfortunately, the dental industry is highly competitive, and your practice probably isn’t the only one in the area. You must implement marketing strategies to stand out from competitors and reach more patients. And pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can help you get there. 

Read on to learn everything you need to know about dental PPC ads.

What is PPC?

PPC, which stands for pay-per-click, is a form of paid advertising that you can use to promote your dental office. PPC ads can appear across a wide range of platforms and target specific people who may be interested in your dental practice. You will only pay for these ads when a person clicks on them. 

Your dental office can use several types of PPC ads to increase your profitability and grow your practice. The main types of PPC ads include the following:

• Search ads: Ads that appear in a user’s search results on search engines like Google and Safari
• Display ads: Ads that appear in front of people who have shown an interest in dental services
• Remarketing ads: Ads that appear in front of people who have previously visited your website or searched for your specific dental office
• Video ads: Ads that appear at the beginning or in the middle of videos or TV shows
• Social media ads: Ads that appear on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Your PPC ads can occur on various platforms. The following are the most popular ad platforms:

• Google Ads (previously Google Adwords): Paid ads that appear in a user’s Google search when they search for related keywords, such as “dental clinic near me” 
• Facebook Ads: Paid advertisements that appear in a person’s Facebook feed alongside organic posts
• Google Display Network: Paid advertisements that can occur across over 200 million sites, videos, and apps

Your dental practice can implement a paid ad strategy to reach more potential patients and improve your profitability. But approaching dental PPC advertising effectively is essential to make the most of your ad spend. 

Benefits of Using PPC

PPC advertising boasts numerous benefits for your dental practice. While you should incorporate several strategies into your digital marketing plan, PPC marketing offers benefits that other advertising strategies do not. 

Here are a few of the most significant benefits of using PPC in your dental marketing campaign:

• Visibility: PPC advertising is one of the most visible, direct forms of advertising your dental practice. Your PPC ads can appear in search engine results, social media feeds, website pages, and other locations where potential patients will see them. 
• Competitive: A dental PPC campaign can help you stay competitive with other dental care practices in your area. These ads can reach potential patients before they learn about other clinics, bringing more business to your practice. 
• Targeted traffic and keywords: Dental PPC marketing can help you target the types of people who may be interested in your dental office. You can place ads on search results for terms like “dental practice in (your state),” “dental cleaning,” “dental exam,” and related words. 
• Control overspend: You only pay for PPC ads when users click on them. You can also set a budget to limit the amount you spend on your ad strategy. As such, PPC ads can seamlessly fit into your marketing budget, no matter how big or small. 
• Tracking success: Platforms like Google Analytics can allow you to track the performance of your PPC campaign to ensure that it is delivering the desired results. You can see which ads perform better than others and shape your Google Ads campaign accordingly. 

Potential Downsides of Dental PPC

While dental PPC can be highly beneficial for your practice, it poses a few downsides compared to other marketing strategies. Here are a few of the disadvantages to consider before beginning this type of advertising strategy:

• Costly if you don’t know what you’re doing: Unlike email marketing, dental SEO (search engine optimization), and social media marketing, PPC is a paid advertising strategy. This marketing campaign can be expensive if you don’t approach it correctly or know what you’re doing. You risk awasting money on an ineffective campaign.
• Active campaign management: PPC services are not “set and forget” marketing services. If you’re running your own Google ad campaign, you’ll need to manage it actively to ensure that it produces the best results. Alternatively, you can hire a dental marketing agency to oversee your PPC for you. 
• X spend doesn’t always equate to conversions: While PPC can help you reach your target audience and improve conversions, it doesn’t provide guaranteed results. Spending more money on a PPC ad strategy doesn’t necessarily equate to a higher payout. 

You can minimize each of these downsides by approaching PPC strategically. If you don’t feel confident implementing PPC ads, we recommend working with a professional digital marketing service to improve your outcomes. 

How to Maximize Dental PPC

Your dental office should take the proper care to maximize ROI on your dental PPC ads. You can take several measures to tailor your ads to the right audience and increase the conversions you receive from them. 

Here is our guide to maximizing dental PPC:

Targeting the Right Audience

PPC ads work well because they target specific people who may be interested in your dental practice. However, you need to structure them in the right way to reach these people. 

Targeting the right audience requires several steps in the PPC process. First, you should understand geo-targeting. 

Geo-targeting is the process of targeting people in your geographical area. Most of your dental patients probably come from a 15-mile radius of your dental office. As such, targeting people who live outside this area may be a waste of your time and money. 

Local SEO services and geo-targeting go hand in hand. You can place ads on keywords that include your city name and also include those keywords in your dental website content. 

Next, consider the time of day you would like your dental ads to appear. If your ads prompt users to call your practice and schedule an appointment, you should limit the ads to your business hours. If they invite users to fill out an online scheduling form, they can appear at all hours of the day — but the middle of the night may not be fruitful. 

Understanding and implementing negative keywords can also help your ads reach their target audience. A negative keyword is a term that you would not like your ads to appear for in search engines. For example, if your practice doesn’t offer dental implants, it’s best to include the term as a negative keyword to avoid misleading potential patients. 

Finally, you can consider tracking leads on your website to determine the types of people to target. For example, with Weave Email, you can track the people who have signed up for your email list and analyze who consistently opens your emails. You can then target PPC ads toward those people. 

Creating Great Landing Pages

You also need to consider what will happen when users click on your PPC ads. In most cases, PPC ads take users to the company’s website. As such, your website landing pages need to cultivate conversions. 

Your landing page should include clear, simple content that enables visitors to navigate easily. Users should be able to gain a comprehensive picture of your business after spending only a few seconds on your landing page. The page should look high-quality and well-designed to reflect your dental office positively. 

Next, your landing page should include an eye-catching call-to-action that takes the visitor further into the lead generation funnel. This call to action may be to:

• Fill out a short form for a free dental exam
• Enter their email to receive a coupon
• Chat with a representative for assistance
• Call today to schedule a dental cleaning

Calls to action serve a few benefits for your ad strategy. First, they can convince users to schedule services, ultimately becoming paying patients. But they can also provide you with contact information that you can use to nudge leads who haven’t become conversions. 

You may consider adding a few reviews to your landing page to show visitors why your patients choose your practice. If you struggle to obtain patient reviews, check out our blog post about habits to increase dental Google reviews.

Researching and Selecting Keywords

The keywords you target in your Google ads can significantly impact the success of your digital marketing strategy. As a result, you’ll want to spend ample time researching and selecting the right keywords. 

There are many types of keywords in digital marketing, and you should bid on ones from several categories. The main types of keywords to focus on include the following:

• Market segment keywords: Generic keywords associated with your industry
• Customer-defining keywords: Keywords for a specific category of customers, such as adult dental patients, child dental patients, etc. 
• Competitor keywords: Keywords that your competitors use and rank for
• Long-tail keywords: Keywords that are more than a few words long (such as “best pediatric dentist in Atlanta, GA”)
• Intent-targeting keywords: Keywords that match a user’s intention while they’re searching for a specific keyword phrase 

The most straightforward way to identify keywords is to brainstorm the terms potential patients may search for that could indicate their interest in your dental service. These terms could include the following:

• Dental care near me
• Dental cleaning (your city)
• Dentist near me
• Pediatric dentist in (your city)
• Free dental exam near me

These keywords should also be included on your landing pages. Instead of brainstorming them from scratch, you can scan through your home page, internal ad copy, and other dental service landing pages on your website to identify keywords. 

You can also find many keyword research tools and Google ad extensions online that you can use to narrow down relevant keywords. These programs typically invite you to describe your services or list a few relevant keywords, then provide you with hundreds of other keyword phrases you can consider. 

Other Considerations for Dental PPC

Making a comprehensive marketing plan is an important step in the PPC ad process. You want to be sure that you have all the details planned out before you begin paying for these advertisements. Otherwise, you risk wasting money on too much trial and error. 

First, consider your competition. You can complete a few Google searches for your relevant keywords and look at your competitors’ websites directly. Ask yourself questions like:

• What are they doing well?
• What keywords are they ranking for?
• What does my dental office offer that theirs doesn’t? 
• Have I noticed any PPC ads for these practices?

Understanding the competition can help you narrow down your digital marketing process. You don’t need to have the best PPC ads in the world — you just need to outperform your competitors. 

You also need to consider your marketing budget. You can set a maximum ad spend for most PPC ads, making it easy to stay within your budget. However, you may not see much success with low-budget PPC ads. 

Your CTA is another important factor to consider before rolling out PPC ads. Determine whether to encourage users to visit your website or make a phone call. With Weave Phones, you can easily track each caller and make outgoing calls from your computer. You can also invite users to complete online scheduling forms, removing a barrier to new appointments. 

Finally, be sure you understand how to analyze your PPC results before rolling out your campaign. Your ad platform should include internal analytics that you can reference in real-time. 

Final Thoughts

Implementing an effective PPC strategy in your dental practice can pay dividends. If you’re looking for other ways to reach more patients and improve your profitability, consider a marketing automation platform like Weave. 

Request your free Weave demo today to learn more.