6 Dental PPC Strategies

PPC advertising can help dental professionals grow their online visibility and attract new patients. Learn how these dental ppc strategies can help your campaign be more effective. 

Focused on providing dental services and healthcare, it’s easy for those in dentistry to forget about marketing. After all, their priority is, first and foremost, to take care of their patients.

However, at the end of the day, dental practices are businesses and they must attract new patients to remain operational.

Building an online presence and improving the visibility of their practice is how dentists can grow their clientele, promote their services, expand their business, and compete with other dental practices in their area.

Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, is a great way for dental practices to build their online presence.

Looking to create a PPC campaign for your dental practice? Hire a digital marketing company from Top Design Firms’ list of highly-ranked agencies to get started on your project.

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Based on your budget, timeline, and specifications we can help you build a shortlist of companies that perfectly matches your project needs. Get started by submitting your project details.

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Why Dentists Need to Invest in PPC Ads

PPC ads are a great advertising strategy for dental practices because they attract traffic quickly, increasing the number of appointments set by new patients.

Unlike other digital marketing strategies, such as SEO, PPC campaigns provide results almost immediately. Once an ad is set up, it is visible to online.

Search engine optimization (SEO) in comparison, can take months to move up in SERP rankings and increase traffic. Even then, results aren’t guaranteed.

Additionally, PPC ads make it easy for dentists to target potential patients in their area, retarget existing patients, and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Using this information, dental marketers and dental practices can increase the click-through-rate of their PPC ads

Benefits of PPC for Dentists:

  • Immediate increase in traffic
  • Increase visibility by appearing high on SERPs immediately, resulting in a boost in brand awareness
  • Easily target potential new patients
  • Can improve other digital marketing strategies

What is PPC Advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising, known as PPC, is an online advertising model in which companies pay every time a user clicks on one of their online ads.

There are many different types of PPC ads, but paid search ads, such as Google Ads are among the most popular. This includes:

  • standard search ads
  • display ads
  • video ads
  • shopping ads
  • app ads

Additionally, many social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram ads, follow a PPC model as well.

To place an ad on any of these platforms, dental practices need to go through the ad auction — a system in which they must bid on keywords or terms they want their PPC ad to be featured on.

Additional reading, ‘What Does PPC Stand For & Why Invest in It’

6 PPC Strategies to Improve Dental Marketing

To create your own dental PPC campaign and earn a positive return on investment, follow these tips.

  1. Focus on Local Ads
  2. Invest in keyword research
  3. Create unique landing pages
  4. Optimize for phone calls
  5. Use ad extensions
  6. Hire a PPC expert

Focus on Local Ads

Local PPC ads use geo-targeting and location-specific keywords to reach customers within a certain region.

This is particularly applicable for dentists who would want to attract patients that live within a certain driving distance of their offices.

Additionally, this limits the cost associated with PPC campaigns because it only generates impressions among those who are most likely to click — those nearby. As a result, an ad’s conversion rate is likely to increase and the practice is more likely to see a positive return on their investment.

Here are a few tips to manage your local PPC strategy:

  • Use a specific location or use radius targets to reach people nearby
  • Use keywords related to your area, like “dentists in Washington, DC”
  • Add your dental office’s address to your Google My Business Page so it appears on Google Maps

Additional reading, ‘PPC Google Ads Tactics for Local Businesses.’

Invest in keyword research

Choosing the right keywords to target is one of the first steps in creating a PPC ad campaign.

Dental practices need to focus on relevant keywords that potential patients may use to conduct a Google search.

To get started with your keyword research, you should make a list of relevant topics to dentistry and highlight potential keywords.

Then use tools such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Google Keyword Planner to assess the cost, ranking difficulty, and search volume associated with those keywords.

In addition to focusing on location-based keywords, keywords that highlight the dental services your practice provides may be the key to attracting new patients.

Consider targeting words such as:

  • dental cleaning
  • dental implants
  • teeth whitening
  • Invisalign
  • emergency dental
  • pediatric dentistry

While these terms may be competitive, and therefore, more expensive to advertise on, the ads will have more impressions.

To find less competitive keywords, consider targeting long-tailed keywords — longer words or phrases that are more specific. Even though they may generate fewer impressions, long-tailed keywords are often more affordable for PPC and have higher click-through rates.

Dentists should us SEO tools for keyword research

For example, using Ahrefs’ keyword research tool, we were able to identify that the keyword “Dentist teeth whitening” costs about $5 per click, while “teeth whitening and dentist” costs about $6 per click.

While this may not seem like a big difference, if your ad gets 100 clicks, the price difference adds up.

Additional reading, ‘How to Do PPC Keyword Research.

Create unique landing pages

Landing pages are the web pages that users are directed to when they click on a PPC ad.

How the landing page is designed can have a major impact on whether or not a potential patient believes a site is credible and will book an appointment.

It’s well known that it takes a fraction of a second for a user to establish an opinion on a website. By investing in their web design and building appealing landing pages, dental marketers can improve conversion rates and increase bookings.

Usually, landing pages highlight a product, service, or offer. For example, if the PPC ad targets “teeth whitening,” it would make sense for the landing page to include information about the service.

However, an ad targeting “dental emergency” as its keyword, may want to provide immediate information about how to schedule last-minute appointments.

Additionally, it makes sense for landing pages on dental websites to include calls to action (CTAs) that encourage users to schedule an appointment.

Tend Landing Page

For example, Tend, a chain of dental offices, uses bright blue CTAs that contrast the site’s green background to catch grab the user’s attention. They say “Book Now,” making it clear to users how they can schedule an appointment.

By including eye-catching CTAs on their landing pages, dental companies improve the usability of their site and make it easier to book an appointment.

Optimize for phone calls

Do your patients book online or call to schedule an appointment? PPC ads that include contact information, such as the dental practice’s phone number, can also maximize leads and increase bookings.

If the phone number is displayed clearly on the ad or the connected landing page, potential patients that have questions or wish to schedule an appointment will easily be able to contact the dental office.

Use ad extensions

Ad copy provides information about what services a company offers, prices, and more. Think of it as a teaser for what will be included on the landing page.

However, there is only so much space available in standard PPC ads. Ad extensions expand the character count on a PPC ad, allowing websites to provide additional information.

Dental practices like yours can use this space to add your address, phone number, and information like your open hours.

Types of ad extensions

Hire a PPC expert

Want to invest in PPC, but aren’t sure where to start? PPC experts can take over your digital advertising strategies and make them more effective, letting you focus on what you do best — providing dental care to your patients.

PPC companies are able to create a PPC ad campaign from scratch and manage it. In fact, they offer a variety of services such as:

  1. Keyword analysis
  2. Bid strategy
  3. Geo-targeting
  4. A/B testing 
  5. Channel targeting
  6. Copywriting & ad design

If you don’t have the resources to manage your own PPC campaign, or you aren’t seeing the results you expected, you may want to consider outsourcing your PPC efforts.

PPC Can Help Grow Your Dental Office

PPC is a great strategy for businesses looking to attract more traffic to their site. Dental offices in particular can benefit from promoting their business online because it can help them increase the number of appointments they schedule.

If you’re looking to grow your dental business, it may be time to invest in creating a dental PPC strategy.

To earn a positive ROI, make sure you focus on keyword research and local search. Then optimize your campaigns by including your office phone number and including eye-catching CTAs on your landing pages.

PPC experts can also help dentists get the most out of their ad spend by creating a unique PPC strategy.

Looking to create a PPC campaign for your dental practice? Hire a digital marketing company from Top Design Firms’ list of highly-ranked agencies to get started on your project.
 

Need help selecting a company?

Based on your budget, timeline, and specifications we can help you build a shortlist of companies that perfectly matches your project needs. Get started by submitting your project details.

Get Started