Embrace yourself doctor because in this article I am going to share how exactly I booked 30 dental patients using PPC (Pay Per Click) Marketing.
It was a warm summer evening when I received a call from a dentist in the US. Upon asking how we could help her, she said she wanted to book patients. She mentioned, “Despite offering exceptional dental care, I don’t have my calendar filled with patient appointments“.
Don’t worry, because in this article you are going to discover how dental clinics can secure 30-40 new patients or even more.ย All is done by the power of PPC (pay-per-click) marketing.
I scheduled a Zoom meeting with the dentist and discussed every detail about how Pay Per Click marketing is going to fill her calendars. We launched the ad campaigns for her dental clinic, and in the next 3 months, we were securing 25-35 patient appointments per month by spending $800-$900 every month on Google PPC Advertising.
Why dental clinics are facing challenges in attracting patients irrespective of exceptional dental care?
Couple of important factors that I need to highlight here so dentists can know what is going wrong.
1. Increasing Competition
Every year approximately 12,000 to 15,000 new practices start in the country. This is enough reason why your dental clinic can fall short of new patient appointments.
2. Not Leveraging The Power of Internet Marketing
Remember the old days when you needed to advertise anything, you simply published it in the local newspapers and distributed flyers. But in this internet world, internet marketing has taken over and dental clinics can attract more patients by advertising themselves on digital platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, and Instagram.
3. Local patients are unable to find them on the Internet
Patients search for nearby dentists on the Internet, i.e. Google. Dental clinics must appear on Google searches when people search for “dentist near me”, “dental care near me”, or other dental services that you offer. Not showing on Google searches is a matter of significant concern.
4. Your competitors are winning the Top Spots on Google search page results
There is a famous saying in India- “Jo Dikhta hai wo Bikta hai“. This means – “what is visible, sells“. Not advertising on popular platforms like Google will give your competitors an advantage in the digital world space, and they will acquire more patients than you.
How I booked 30 patients for a dental clinic using PPC Marketing: The PPC Marketing Strategy for your Dental Clinic Success.
What is PPC Marketing and why it’s crucial for Dental Clinics?
PPC, the terms stands for Pay Per Click. Advertisers will pay every time someone clicks on an Ad they see.
PPC marketing comes with lots of benefits that make it crucial for dental clinics. Some of them are:
- Custom targeting options like geographic location, income level, keyword search phrases, and device types like smartphones, computers, and tablets.
- Automatic and manual bidding options for keywords, geographic location or distance, and devices on which you want to advertise.
- Run various ad types such as call ads, search ads, display ads, video ads, and local ads.
- Control over your marketing budget. Set your daily or monthly budget so dentists won’t spend more than their monthly budget.
- Tracking calls and online appointments using the conversion tracking option to know if your ads are productive and fruitful.
- Detailed report of key metrics like number of clicks, average cost per click (CPC), number of phone calls, number of scheduled online appointments through the website, which of your ads are producing higher ROI, from which location most of your customers come, and many more.
Now the Dentist’s PPC Marketing Strategy for advertising on Google
There are multiple things to consider before starting your PPC Advertising campaign. Let’s go through them one by one:
1. Define your Budget
Allocate a marketing budget. Here in her case, she was OK to spend $1000.00 on marketing. This was sufficient for her because of her geo-location. The population count was less, and $1000.00 was enough in this case. You can spend more or less depending on your goals.
2. Campaign Type
As you want your dental clinic to be visible when patients search for dentists, search campaigns is what you want to start. Through Google search campaigns you can run search ads and call-only ads. We used a combination of search ads and call-only ads for her dental marketing campaigns.
3. Use Dental Keywords relevant to your dental clinic
There are thousands of dental keywords available and you can get them from Google Keyword Planner. Choose the ones that are important to you. If your dental clinic offers cosmetic dental services, then go for keywords like “cosmetic dentists”, and “teeth cleaning”. Keywords play a vital role in search advertising, so we discovered all potential keywords that were important for her dental clinic.
4. Bidding on dental keywords
Bid on these keywords so your ads can be visible on the Top when patients search for these keywords, or phrases on Google. You will want to know that there are two types of bidding. One is automatic, where Google will bid on your keywords. The second type of bidding is manual, where you can set a bid limit on your keywords. The bid limit allows you to control your cost per click. I prefer manual bidding because I like to control my cost per click.
5. Ad Copy and extensions
Now write creative ad copies. You can take references to see how other local dentists are writing their ads. You can copy their style or write unique ads for your campaigns. We used ad extensions like call extensions, callout extensions, sitelink extensions, and location extensions to add more weight to the ad copies. Because the more information we give through the ads, the more chances are that patients will click on it.ย You can read more about Google extensions here.
6. Location Targeting
Target people in a city, multiple cities, or people in a radius of 5-10 miles of your dental clinic to allow Google to show your ads in these locations when people search for nearby dentists from their smartphones or computers.
7. Ad Scheduling
We scheduled when we wanted her ads to show, and when not to show. Manually pausing and activating the ads is a lot of work and as a dentist, you might lose track of time when you are occupied with patients and your family.
8. Set up conversion tracking to track the outcome
It helps keep track of people calling her dental clinic, and people scheduling online appointments. This conversion data is going to help us understand how effective the dental marketing campaigns are.
9. Last but not least, Optimize your website/landing pages
After we made the campaigns live, ads were ready to be visible on Google and drive clicks and conversions. To make the most use of it, we kept her landing page/website presence precise, and to the point. Added Easy navigating buttons and contact options so patients can quickly schedule their appointments. We also showed other patient experiences by using images of happy patients and patient testimonials to build trust.
10. Review Daily and weekly performance and optimize the ad campaigns
Your marketing campaigns are never done as they require regular optimization. We monitored various metrics like Cost Per Click(CPC), phone calls, impressions, clicks, conversion count, ad extension visibility, performing keywords, and non-performing keywords. We kept making regular changes until we noticed that most of our clicks were relevant.
11. Negative Keywords
All non-relevant searches were added as negative keywords to prevent ads from showing and getting clicked. By the end of 3 months, we nearly added 1000 negative keywords.
Now the Dental PPC Marketing Strategy for advertising on Social Media- Facebook and Instagram.
Do you know how many people are using Facebook and Instagram? Almost everyone, right?
Therefore, your dental clinic’s reach and popularity can be further expanded by advertising on popular social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
An effective Facebook advertising campaign is made up of two main elements:
- Great design that demonstrates your dental service offer. Be creative with your design or offers as it is the only thing that will make your patient pause for a few seconds and check your offers while scrolling through their Facebook/Instagram.
- Precise audience targeting to reach people in your city, or within 10 mile radius.
- Pixel Tracking. It is like conversion tracking on Google. People clicking on call buttons or online scheduling buttons can be tracked, allowing you to understand the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
- Use Clear CTA’s (Call to action). As a dentist you want patients to call your clinic, or schedule online appointments. Using CTA’s like Learn more, and Contact Us will guide users to take action after they see your ad.
The other things in Facebook Ads are very similar to advertising on Google. If you already know about Google Advertising, Facebook advertising should be a piece of cake for you.
Final Takeaways for a Winning Dentist PPC Marketing Strategy
- Dental clinics can do a lot of things to drive new patients. By using Online advertising strategies like PPC marketing dentists can secure more patient appointments.
- Don’t let other dentists/competitors take all the limelight. Maintaining your online presence by advertising on search engines, and popular social media platforms.
- Optimizing your campaigns and landing pages is a must. Not doing it is more like putting money in the gutter because you might not receive a lot of conversions.
- Precise targeting like keywords and locations is essential so your ads appear for the right searches.
- To get extended reach, advertise on social media because there are a lot of social media users.
I hope and wish reading this article was worthy of spending time. If you have questions regarding your dental marketing strategy, feel free to comment here below and I or someone from my team will reach out to you.
Visit our website to learn more about us: www.leadschief.co or, call +1 407 794 1333 for a free quote.
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