What is PPC?
PPC stands for Pay Per Click. PPC is otherwise known as Google Adwords. Google Adwords is an affordable way to get more patients to your dental website and into your practice and to increase brand awareness online. It’s also a great way of growing your dental practice quickly and filling diaries when it’s looking a bit gappy. By only paying when someone clicks on your ad is a smart way to market your practice. It’s also a great way to make sure you’re showing up in front of potential patients when they are searching for you.
The paid ads appear on Google and they can also appear on YouTube, and across the web making it easier to find the patients you want.
If your dental practice isn’t ranking in the Google search results for certain treatments or phrases then using PPC/Google Adwords will be a big help. It can get you a paid ad listing on page one of the Google search results, right at the top in one of the top 3 paid ad positions above the map listings.
PPC is also used in conjunction with other digital marketing campaigns such as dental SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Social Media ads on Facebook and Instagram. Not every shopper has the same buying habits so covering the various different marketing platforms with a mixed campaign approach can really get the most out of your marketing budget .
How can Google Adwords help bring more patients into my practice?
When potential patients are using Google to find a local dentist that offers the treatment they are searching for, Google serves your ad to the user as an option to click on. The ad will be positioned in one of the top 3 listings on page 1. Depending on your ad budget your ad won’t be there 24/7 as this would require an extensive ad budget, however, Google learns the times of day that your ads are getting clicks and conversions and will use this information to serve your adverts at the best times of the day.
How much ad budget should we invest per month?
This depends on your overall marketing budget and also your practice targets. For example – if you know you’d like 10 new dental implant leads per month then we’d recommend a Google adwords budget of anywhere between £700-£1500. We also need to know what your conversion rates are from lead to appointment and from appointment to sale to be able to tell you your expected ROI. Some clients have a conversion rate of 80% on high value treatments like implants whereas some dental practices have a conversion rate of nearer 30%.
To be able to make the most of the new leads/enquiries coming into the practice we can help you and your team work out these conversion rates so that we set the ad budgets correctly.
Our dental marketing knowledge and experience means we know the average cost per lead by treatment type so if you’d like to know what your ad budget should be, just email through your monthly treatment targets with conversion % rates from lead to appointment and appointment to sale and we can let you know the investment you’d need to put in to get out what you need to keep your clinicians happy and busy. If you aren’t sure what your conversion rates are then we can run through this with you.
What do we need to do in the practice to be prepared?
There is an important side note to be mentioned here. Sometimes when a PPC campaign is switched on the practice isn’t fully ready to be able to deal with the number of leads that are coming through and very quickly it becomes clear that there are some gaps in the process that need filling. We have a great online course that is suitable for any members of the team, but with TCOs in mind or any team members that want to train up as a TCO. It is also very useful for reception and it can even be useful for some associates to do if you feel they need help lifting their conversion rates.
What treatments should we invest our PPC ad budget into?
It’s useful that we review your current organic ranking positions and also your strategy for the year along with your monthly treatment targets, we can then recommend where you need to see the uplift. Generally though the majority of treatments that dental practices offer do very well in a PPC/Adwords campaign. Some of the ad budget we recommend investing is into general dentistry. This means that you can have a steady number of new patient enquiries per month. Then allocating your ad budget into the higher value treatments like implants, orthodontics and composite bonding, for example, gives you a really good ROI.
How can I track the campaign to know if it’s working or not?
We provide a monthly report with stats taken directly from Google Analytics and offer performance call tracking tracking data to show how many leads are converting from having visited your website from a paid ad. However, to truly capture the channel source and team conversion performance , it is useful to use a lead management platform like DenGro. You can then look at the reports real-time and know the stats instantly.
If you’d like to demo DenGro to see how it can be used as a tool to help grow your practice, let us know. We can also get a good deal for our marketing clients if it’s something you’d like your team to get started with.
How long do I need to run the PPC campaign for?
The longer it runs the more optimised it becomes, this is because it optimises through both manual and machine learning. We recommend that you give it at least 3 months to see what the results will be looking like in your geographical area for your ad budget. Most of our clients leave their PPC campaign running all year round as it’s easy to see the ROI and the value it gives the practice in terms of revenue and growth possibilities. We have a very experienced PPC team here managing campaigns for dental practice across the UK and Ireland, who make sure that they get the best for your ad budget by investing in the search terms that are turning into new enquiries.
Have you discovered the magic of PPC/ Google Adwords yet?
