As dental marketing experts, we know how powerful a tool Google Ads can be. We use it every day, and for good reason: it’s one of the best ways of reaching your target audience and driving customers with real buying intent to your website.

However, when new clients come over to us, they’re often disillusioned with ads – and when we look at the results of their previous campaigns, it’s easy to see why. If they’re not managed properly, the results of campaigns can be disappointing. And yet, with so much potential in the channel, it really needn’t be this way.

There are many obvious reasons why practices struggle with their Google Ads campaigns. Here, we’ll consider some of the most common explanations for ads not paying their way.

1. There’s no clear strategy

Before kicking off any campaign or marketing activity, it’s important that you first understand your strategy. This incorporates things like your target audience, your reach, how far from your practice you want to be marketing, and whether there are any areas you want to include or exclude. Plus the treatments you wish to market and an idea of the volume of enquiries you would like to attract for each treatment category.

With this firmly set, your ad campaigns can form the tactics you use to deliver the strategy. If you don’t have one, it’s hard to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and, in turn, to make informed decisions about how to allocate budget and resources.

2. Your keyword research is lacking

Often, keyword research will be tackled by your agency, but it’s vital that this research is guided by what you want to focus on as a practice. For instance, you might want to use Google Ads to increase conversions for Invisalign or implants, but the agency, without knowing this, could choose to build a campaign about general dentistry or emergency dentistry. This isn’t necessarily wrong – their research might show that searches for these terms are far higher and easier to build traffic for – but it could well be wrong for you.

Emergency dentistry will generate a high number of clicks and conversions, but if you don’t want this type of patient contacting you (some practices do, and some don’t), it’s not the best use of your budget. For this reason, ensure that you have some input into the research around keywords to build out your campaign and get the results that you really want.

3. The landing page experience is poor

Ads should direct users to the most relevant page on your site, and when they arrive, that page should perform well. It should have good information, prominent calls to action, and other information such as practice USPs, FAQs, reviews, video testimonials or team profiles. This will all combine to deliver a positive user experience.

In contrast, certain elements – like a video that autoplays with sound – might cause a user to click away immediately. Your bid strategy and keyword research is valuable, but if a user clicks in and out again, it’s all for nothing. With this in mind, we’re able to take a look at your landing pages and make recommendations for optimising them for the best possible performance and experience.

4. Your budget is too small

Many practices see marketing as an expense rather than a necessary means of building awareness and enquiries. This is somewhat understandable, as there’s no denying that Google Ads is expensive. The typical cost per click has gone up over the past 18 months, and some areas, such as orthodontics, can be hugely competitive, with many practices bidding for the top sponsored area. For this reason, you will need to increase your budget to keep up with market changes.

However, having a healthy pot of money to draw on makes the results of your activity far better. If your budget isn’t big enough, you won’t have coverage throughout the month and may miss out on serving your ads at optimum times like lunchtimes, evenings, or weekends. If you have good coverage, you have more opportunities to gather both conversions and data. You can then make decisions based on performance and review the quality of your conversions. With a restricted spend, there’s less data to use, and it can take a bit longer to gather a meaningful pool to work with.

5. You don’t know what’s working

So, you’re spending all this money on Google Ads, but how do you know it’s making a difference? Yes, you can track the number of clicks you’re prompting, and the amount of traffic to your website, but this isn’t precise enough to be helpful. A surprising number of campaigns (over 57%, according to Google) don’t have any conversion tracking set up, meaning there’s no way of knowing how many sales they’re prompting.

Instead, set up meaningful tracking so that each web form or chatbot submission can be linked back to the advert the user clicked on, and the specific search terms and copy that prompted them to click. It’s also worth bearing in mind that 50-60% of conversions are phone calls, so if you don’t track these, you’re missing out on half the story. And, because calls are considered “hot leads” (they care enough to seek an immediate solution), they’re valuable to track. We advocate setting up performance call tracking, with dedicated dynamic numbers that correlate to each of your ads. This way, you’ll know exactly what’s working and what isn’t.

6. Your spend is inefficient

Success isn’t just about how much of your budget you’re spending on ads – it’s also about how efficiently you’re spending it. This means regularly reviewing which terms are converting (as we’ve just mentioned) and removing those that aren’t. Many campaigns will spend money on terms that simply aren’t converting. Alternatively, if you have the data on which specific terms are driving conversions, you can, over a period of time, weed out those that are wasting your money.

Another mistake that many make is bidding on their own branded search terms. You could be using valuable budget on existing patients with this tactic. If your brand already has a good web and Google Maps presence, it shouldn’t be necessary to pay for this spot – your organic ranking will be high enough. Of course, you might choose to strategically target the search terms of your competitors, but that’s another story.

7. You’re not testing and improving

Not all ads are equally effective, so do keep testing your ads and landing pages to find the most effective. Even in a best-case scenario, when your data shows that your ads are working, you should be continually testing your copy for efficiency. In this way, you can refine what you’re doing to improve conversions and lower the cost of acquisition.

Knowing what’s working can also give you the confidence to increase your budget where it’s needed. With a good record of the cost-per-lead for a particular treatment, you can make the decision to increase your budget by the right amount to achieve a set number of leads. In a perfect world, you’ll be beating your competitor by getting lower value enquiries thanks to your robust measurement criteria.

8. Nobody is on top of it

Managing Google Ads can be a skilled and full-time job. We recommend working closely with your chosen agency to be sure that they’re on top of things – or switching to one that is.

As a full-service dental marketing agency, Hive has the in-house expertise to create tailored campaigns that deliver. We manage the entire PPC journey on your behalf, from start to finish, considering elements such as landing page performance. With our support, you can have faith that your budget is being spent wisely and will generate the right leads for your practice. If you’d like to get started with an initial conversation, get in touch.