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Profitable AdWords PPC Marketing for Dentists 

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Profitable AdWords PPC Marketing for Dentists

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Profitable AdWords PPC Marketing for Dentists 

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Attracting New Dental Patients with Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a highly advanced pay-per-click (PPC) marketing system that allows you to reach the right prospects at a time when they need you the most. While Google didn’t invent PPC marketing, they certainly have refined it, creating one of the most advanced ad placement systems in existence today.

On any given day, thousands of prospects fire up Google looking for help with dental procedures. Some searches are urgent, where patients need relief from pain as quickly as possible.   While others are more routine or cosmetic, as a variety of dental services are researched and explored.

In either situation, there is a tremendous opportunity for dentists to reach new patients at the most opportune time through Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.

A prospect exploring dental services is engaged in “buying intent”.   There is recognition of a problem that needs to be satisfied, and they are actively searching for a solution.

The Google AdWords pay-per-click system is brilliant. Never in the history of time have we been able to position our offerings before such large and highly targeted audiences.   In no time at all, we can create ads and reach people with high commercial intent.

As marketers of dental services, it is vitally important to not only make ourselves available to anyone searching dental services within our local market, but to create advertising and helpful content so engaging, that we pave a smooth path from prospect to patient.

The Reality of PPC Marketing for Dentists

Unfortunately, most dental marketers are coming up short. In fact, we estimate that up to 80% of AdWords PPC budgets for dental practices are completely wasted.

In this guide, we will explore what it takes to create profitable Google AdWords PPC campaigns that are structured in a way that attracts the right prospects for your practice, resulting in conversions, revenue, and growth.

Profitable Dental Marketing Starts with the Basics

In order to discuss proper account structure, it’s important to touch on the basics. In many instances, a Google AdWords marketing account for dentists has been misconfigured during set up, which only compounds inefficiencies and contributes substantially to a lack of performance later on.

Creating an AdWords account is a lot like building a home. A proper foundation and structure must be in place.

The Basics of Bidding

When your prospect enters a search term into Google, this sets off a very advanced bidding system that, within in a split second takes in a wide variety of bidding factors to determine the ranking order of all advertisers on a page.

For every single search, an auction takes place for each ad unit, with Google AdWords looking at factors like your bid amount, location, quality score (more on this below), ad history, and other factors.

As we proceed through this guide, a visualization of this auction is essential, as so much of what you do as a marketer of dental services will be related to putting your advertising in front of the right prospects, at a cost that is reasonable in comparison to the lifetime value of a customer.

In many ways, dental marketing through Google AdWords is like buying patients off of a shelf, but on a click-by-click basis. Understanding the auction and what goes into Google’s ranking factors is essential to not only controlling costs, but optimizing your campaigns so they drive the right patients to your practice.

Dental Keyword Selection

At the heart of PPC marketing are the keywords that dental marketers bid on for page placement. This is such an important step, but most marketers don’t spend the proper time strategizing the selection of proper keywords.

An expert dental AdWords marketer will take the time to assemble all of the top keywords using tools like the Google Keyword Planner (free), AHREFS, Moz, SpyFu, and SEMRush.

Keywords are important because they represent your best guess as to what someone will type into Google as a search term.   The keywords that are the most meaningful for your practice are those that represent revenue.

Google is a fantastic search and marketing engine that allows us to capture a prospect’s actively searching for dental services, but there are varying levels of commercial intent. As you assemble your keywords, keep this in mind as its money out of and into your pocket.

Take a look at the following keywords as an example.   Always try to put yourself into the prospect’s frame of mind as they type in these search terms

Search term: “dentist”

Someone searching for “dentist” could be looking for one, or they might be looking to become one. This is a very general search term with low commercial intent. As a result, you’ll see a lower cost-per-click for terms like this.

Search term: “family dentist”

We’re starting to get more defined, but this is still pretty loose. This could easily be someone just curious about family dentistry. Cost-per-click at this level is still pretty low.

Search term: “best family dentist in Phoenix”

At this point, we can see that the prospect is starting to show signs of active research. In marketing terms, they are in the consideration stage of the buyer’s funnel and making their way closer to an eventual purchase.   Cost-per-click is starting to rise at this point.

Search term: “schedule family dentist phoenix”

Now we’re talking!   This search term has a very high degree of commercial search intent. The prospect is no longer considering dental work; they are actively looking to schedule a service.   The cost-per-click at this level will be the highest.

When selecting your keywords to bid on, also think about how people consider dental services.

Many dentists will run ads for specific procedures, such as root canals and dental implants.   From our experience, searches like this are typically related to cost and comparison.

This isn’t always true and it’s very location-dependent, so take the time to strategize and test different campaigns before going all-in on ads for procedures.   This could make sense for certain procedures like teeth whitening, or emergency tooth extractions.

Generally speaking, keywords such as “dentists near me” or “dentists in my area” are better for reaching new patients. But again, the power of digital advertising is the ability to test and measure results in real-time.

Keywords vs. Search Terms

To reach future patients that represent long-term value for your practice, it’s important to invest quality time assembling your list of keywords that you’ll bid on.   The keywords chosen will be matched up to a prospect’s search terms entered through Google.

Note the words keywords and search terms. They are not the same. To truly understand AdWords is to maintain a solid understanding of keywords and how they relate to search terms.

Keywords are what you bid on, but search terms are what you pay for.

This is a very important distinction between the two. Keywords are what you enter as you create your ad groups.   While we bid on keywords, it’s the actual search terms that trigger our ads.

After performing keyword research, these are the words and phrases that you believe future dental patients will enter while searching Google.

You are essentially betting that someone will enter a search term that matches your keyword, or comes close to matching.   Whether a user’s search term matches your keyword or not depends on how tightly you’ve defined your match types.

Finding Your Perfect Match With AdWords Match Types

Match types are a lot like dating. We are able to define how selective or available we are through Google’s four different match types.

Broad Match

For the bachelor keywords who want to explore and have a little fun, there’s broad match.

Broad match is the wild child that plays the field and “hooks up” with a wide variety of search terms. This can be dangerous and expensive.

Broad match can also lead to meeting a search term that we never anticipated, which could flourish into a wonderful, fruitful relationship.

Broad match works great for some accounts, especially advertisers offering high margin products that can afford to “test the waters” for a while before landing a big sale.   (For more on this see Fishing with Dynamite)

But for marketers of dental services, we recommend staying away from this particular match type.

Exact Match

For keywords that are extremely selective and looking to settle down and build something long term, there’s exact match.

Exact match knows what it wants and will wait patiently until it finds it. Exact doesn’t make booty calls at 1 am with search terms just because it’s lonely.

Exact match stays true to itself, and will wait until the end of time before it matches perfectly with a search term. It’s that virtuous.

Phrase and Broad Match Modified

For anything in between, there’s phrase match (selectively open to dating) and broad match modified (likes to have fun, but plays it safe).

You get the point. The match type that we assign to each keyword is very important in the laws of attraction to search terms that your future patients enter while searching for dental services. 

It’s Time to Date! Getting your Keywords and Match Types in Order

Now that we understand match types, we can talk about proper campaign structure for marketing dental services in AdWords.

For most dentists using PPC to attract new patients, the structure of ad groups and keyword match types has often been configured incorrectly.

This lack of a proper foundation immediately results in the targeting of the wrong search terms, wasteful spend, and an ad budget that depletes prematurely.

As a result, many dentists will deem AdWords expensive and ineffective, when in reality, the account wasn’t configured or managed correctly.   Let’s get started!

Doing Dental PPC Marketing Right with Single Keyword Ad Groups and Tight Thematic Groupings

As we develop our dental ad groups and keywords, keep in mind the dating analogy above.

Our aim is to take our keyword list developed earlier and create ad groups that are tightly defined.

This will keep our more “free-spirited” keyword match types in check and ensure that we have better control over our ads matching search terms entered in through Google.

To begin, we take our keyword list and start segregating them into groups and themes. Our goal is to create tight, specific thematic keyword groupings.

For our most profitable search terms, we will create single keyword ad groups (SKAGs). This is a single keyword tied to an ad group with three of the four match types – exact, phrase, and broad match modified.

We do this to truly optimize the pathway from search term to keyword, creating a quality and relevant search experience with ad copy and a landing page that addresses the user’s search intent perfectly.

This serves two main purposes.   First, by creating a single keyword or tight themes within your ad groups, the connection between what someone enters into Google as a search term has a MUCH better chance at triggering the right keyword that you bid on.

By making this connection from search term to keyword, you’ll be able to see exactly which ads are truly profitable for your dental practice, and which are not converting at all and just costing you money. (more on this below)

This is a very important point that was made above. Most of the problems in AdWords are created when the account is initially configured. If a dental marketer creates ad groups that contain many different keywords, then it is impossible to know which search term triggered the ad. Without this knowledge, there is no way to truly optimize the account.

By getting this ratio of search terms to keywords as close as possible to 1:1, you can follow the money from cost-per-click (CPC) to cost per customer acquisition (CPA).

A Quality Connection Between a Dental Keyword and Search Term are a “Match Made in Heaven”

Another benefit of structuring your ad groups with single keywords or tight themes relates to cost.

Google’s Quality Score (detailed below) is based on a highly relevant search experience that you’re providing through their network.

By creating your ad copy and landing pages around specific dental keywords and related search terms, you provide a consistent, cohesive, and relevant search experience.

As a result, Google will reward you for it through a higher Quality Score.   The higher the score, the less you’ll pay for ad clicks from future dental patients.

Monitoring the Search Terms Report

Now that we’ve organized our keywords into SKAGs or tight thematic groupings, it’s time to monitor the actual search terms that are coming in from people searching for dental services on Google.

Keep in mind that our ad groups contain exact, phrase, and broad match modified match types. While our structure will serve you well with significantly reducing waste, you’ll still have unwanted search terms coming in through the phrase and broad match modified keywords.

Through constant monitoring of this report, you’ll identify search terms that should not be triggering our ads, which should be quickly added as negative keywords to keep them from showing up again.

In addition, the search terms report will likely show us queries that we didn’t even think about, which we can use to create new ad groups to properly capture this intent.

More about Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are a great way to keep your ads from showing up for irrelevant search terms and triggering clicks, which costs you money.

Smart dental marketers not only monitor the search terms report regularly to identify wasteful search terms, they also preload negatives with common phrases that are known to trigger dental PPC ads, costing you money.

Here are some of the words that should be added as negative keywords at the campaign level.

• Free
• Review
• Information
• How
• Define
• Job
• History
• Example
• Samples
• What are
• What Is
• Books
• Career
• Courses
• Education

Quality Score. Driving a More Relevant Search Experience for Dental Services

In the early days of search engine marketing, placing PPC ads was pretty simple. You identified your keywords, and then established your bid price through a standard auction. What you bid was what you paid.

Within a short period of time, advertisers started bidding on a vast array of keywords, many of them unrelated to the services provided.

For anyone searching for specific information, this led to a poor user experience, and Google had to work quickly to address the challenge.   Nothing leads to search engine abandonment faster than a service that doesn’t provide relevant information.

The result was the Quality Score, a brilliant metric that rewards a search experience that provides value to the end user. The goal was simple. To create a score that was built to reflect relevancy and results.

Advertisers who created ad copy and a landing page experience that was on target with the user’s search terms would receive a higher score, which then resulted in a lower cost-per-click.

In addition, Google then added a measure of engagement through the click-through-rate (CTR). A higher CTR would also factor into a more favorable Quality Score and lower click costs.

While nobody outside of Google knows the exact formula for Quality Score, a large number of tests have been performed where we have a high degree of confidence around several factors.

According to Search Engine Land, here are the major components.

Quality Score = Expected Click-through-rate (39%) + Landing Page Experience (39%) + Ad Relevance (22%)

Reverse-engineering AdWords Quality Score factors

For smart dental marketers, it’s easy to see how knowing and understanding the Quality Score can result in a significant competitive advantage. This another reason why we separate our ad groups into single keywords or tightly defined themes.

By creating a total advertising experience where our dental keywords, ad copy, and landing pages match a user’s search term, we not only create a better experience, we are also rewarded for it by Google through a higher Quality Score and lower CPCs.

Writing Your Dental PPC Ads

At this point, we have chosen the keywords that have the highest likelihood of converting a prospect into a patient.

We have also structured our ad groups correctly and put the procedures in place to watch our search terms report for wasteful queries, which we will eliminate through negative keywords.

The structure is in place, but we still need to write dental PPC ads that are compelling enough for future patients to click on.

To begin, it’s helpful to engage the imagination and put yourself into the mindset of someone searching for a dentist and all of the related services.

What exactly is someone thinking about when they’re dealing with tooth pain?

For many people, going to the dentist is something they fear. For others, they are unhappy with their smile and are looking for something to bolster confidence.

There are many emotional triggers that should be included in your AdWords PPC advertising. Remember – people purchase products and services based on benefits, not features.

While your dental practice might have all of the most advanced equipment in the world, at the end of the day, most patients are invested emotionally for other reasons. Your ad copy should reflect that.   Sell the benefits, not the service.

As an example, let’s look at two separate headlines.

DENTAL AD HEADLINE #1

Tooth Extraction Experts in Phoenix, AZ

DENTAL AD HEADLINE #2

Feel Better Now with a Gentle, Pain-free Tooth Extraction

In the first example, just touting expertise might seem appealing, but for certain purchases, emotional appeal is far more powerful.

With dental services in particular, there is a substantial amount of emotion invested, whether someone is looking to eliminate pain or improve their looks.

While writing your ads, it’s equally important to craft the ad copy to also include the target search term. As mentioned earlier, Google analyzes your total advertising experience to ensure a high relevancy between a dental prospect’s search term and the value received.

Ad copy and landing page should mirror the search term as closely as possible in order to earn a high-quality score and lower costs per click.

Targeting Your Dental Office Location(s) in AdWords

As a local service provider, the bulk of your customers come from specific areas around your practice.   We have found that setting a 5 to 10-mile radius around your location covers the majority of new prospects.

But not all of your future patients are searching for dental services from home. We spend a good portion of the day at work, which can be in an entirely different section of town. For this reason, we recommend setting up two separate campaigns that address both scenarios.

The first will cover the immediate area around your dental practice, while the other will cover areas of high employment. For large cities, this is often downtown.

In addition, certain ads will probably do better in select areas of town. If you offer elective cosmetic procedures, consideration should be given to promoting ads for these services in specific areas of town through affluent targeting.   You can also pinpoint the distribution of your cosmetic ads to specific zip codes with higher median incomes.

Is Your Dental Practice Ready for Incoming Leads?

Now that our keywords have been optimized, our ads have been written and our landing pages are in place and customized for each individual search term, it’s time to turn on the spigot and let the revenue come flying in.  Correct?

Not so fast.   Once a prospect has clicked one of your ads and read enough compelling information about your dental services, they will contact you through a phone call or website form.

At this point, the prospect becomes a lead, and in order to get to this juncture, we have invested marketing funds – not only paying for the click that generated this lead, but all of the other clicks that didn’t turn into leads.

Since this incoming lead represents both a cost and revenue opportunity, it will be very important that someone on your staff is highly trained on what it takes to bring a new customer onboard.

Response time will also be paramount, as prospects looking for dental services are often trying to fix an immediate need.   Office staff will need to understand the urgency of all incoming calls and emails.

Without the proper training, all of the money invested on each lead becomes completely wasted, and the dental office forfeits the tremendous upside of new customers and the lifetime of value they bring not only in revenue, but also referrals.

Scheduling Ad Distribution

Another targeting option available to dental marketers establishes day and time distribution.   A PPC campaign’s cost-per-click is typically higher during the day due to increased competition between dental practices for top keywords.

Ads rotating outside of normal business hours will often have much lower click costs, but it’s important that any dentist that opts to run ads during this time still have the support in place to accept new calls and leads. Without someone there to answer questions, prospects will simply move on to the next dental office.

By implementing the tips provided in this AdWords guide for dental marketers, you should experience a decrease in your CPCs for all keywords since we’re controlling the distribution between search term and keywords with tightly defined matches.

You should also see a decrease in cost-per-acquisition since we’re eliminating a tremendous amount of waste by structuring ads and ad groups correctly, monitoring the search terms report, and adding negatives as needed to constantly optimize performance.

All of these measures taken together should provide you with a competitive advantage and allow you to maintain top position during normal business hours.

The savings recouped through proper structuring and optimization should also allow you to shift budget over to running ads outside of normal hours with the required support to accept and convert leads.

Call Only Campaigns

As we have seen, standard AdWords campaigns are a powerful way for dentists to find new patients, putting your message in front of someone actively searching specifically for the services you offer.

And for many services, the need is urgent. To address this, Google provides another advertising option that makes it even easier for prospects to connect with your practice.

Call-only campaigns include a button within your dental ad that activates an outbound phone call rather than a click to your website, making it easier for prospects to call you through their mobile phone.

Calls are registered as a click, and conversions are defined by an amount of elapsed time that you designate. For example, most 30-second calls do not result as valid leads, but calls that last several minutes often do.

Let’s examine the steps needed with a standard AdWords placement vs. a Call-only ad.

How a prospect contacts your dental office through a standard AdWords ad.

1. Search for “dentists near me”
2. Click ad
3. View landing page
4. Find proper contact info
5. Calls or emails your practice

How a prospect contacts your dental office through a Call-only ad.

1. Search for “dentists near me”
2. Click ad to call your practice

You can see that the amount of time and effort for a prospect to call you is substantially less.

It should be noted that Call-only ads are not for everyone. They should definitely be tested in a side-by-side campaign so you can see whether this format results in additional patients.

Remarketing Your Dental Ads to Stay “Top of Mind” with Future Patients

Within the super-competitive world of Google AdWords, smart dental marketers understand that attracting new customers requires going beyond the competition by expanding advertising outside of standard keyword targeting.

It’s often important to look beyond the click, and remarketing services offered by Google AdWords allows us to maintain a connection with prospects who have already interacted with your practice.

By placing a snippet of code on your website, we can track user engagement throughout, then custom-deliver ad messages that match up with what prospects are actually interested in.

As an example, a prospect clicks a standard dental ad that you’re running on Google AdWords.   They visit either your landing page, or set of pages that are related to a particular service like dental implants.

This prospect is in research mode, so they leave your site as they are considering all options. With Google remarketing, we measure all engagement activity, then smart-serve ads that are specifically related to the services your prospects are interested in.

Ads show up across many different websites and apps, so your dental office remains top-of-mind until the prospect is ready to move forward with the service.

Branded Searches

Branded searches are an alternative way that dentists can reach prospects who are actively comparing options while engaged in research.

Prospects could be searching based on name familiarity, recommendations, or external reviews. By targeting competing dentist names, you can provide another choice for anyone consideration options.

As a cautionary warning, understand that by targeting others dentists in your area, you can easily trigger a counter-campaign where your own name is targeted in return.

In addition, someone searching for a competing dentist might already be a patient or they’ve been pre-sold through a referral or recommendation.

Market dynamics are always different in each area. Providing that this option aligns with your practices marketing strategy, always test it in a separate campaign to determine whether branded searches result in new patients.

Custom Intent Audiences for Dentist Related Searches

In November of 2017, Google released a new targeting opportunity within the Display Network for advertisers. Located within the new Google AdWords interface, Custom Intent Audiences are Google’s response to Facebook’s arsenal of demographic and intent-based targeting.

With a combination of machine learning and predictive analytics, Google is able to monitor intent and traffic patterns in order to target users who are showing a high level of interest in specific products or services.

The data is then used to properly position your dental ads in front of prospects that have a higher propensity to convert into actual patients.

Here’s how Google described this new and innovative targeting feature:

“Custom intent audiences help you define and reach the ideal audience for your business. Built with performance advertisers in mind, custom intent audiences allow you to go beyond predefined audience categories and reach people as they’re making a purchase decision.”

In order to take full advantage of this new targeting option, dental marketers have two options.

1. Create your own. By choosing to customize, you can combine dental topics relevant to your customers, along with competitive URLs in your local area. This provides a base for Google to start building a rich data profile of traffic that is more likely to convert.

2. Auto-created. For advertisers who are unsure where to start, Google provides an automated option where AdWords harnesses the power of machine learning to identify and calculate high commercial intent markers. This is then used to create audiences specifically for your account.

One can imagine the enormous amount of calculations and advanced math that feeds the predictive analytics, and many times the actual results fall short of the promises.

But in Google’s case, Custom Intent Audiences are already showing great potential as unique offerings. We have found that audience segments are highly defined to an advertiser’s unique offering.

In Conclusion

Our goal in writing this comprehensive guide on AdWords marketing for dental marketers was to provide you with helpful information to truly harness the tremendous power of AdWords at a level that rarely utilized.

By incorporating the tips provided here, we believe that you can gain a substantial competitive advantage in your local market.

Google AdWords is an effective channel for PPC marketing that captures a high degree of commercial intent.   But most dental marketers are coming up short when it comes to basic account structure and creating a quality search experience that captures profitable keywords with very little waste.

For many markets, the dental business is ultra-competitive on AdWords, but by embracing and implementing several of the advanced techniques discussed here, you can gain a quick advantage in profitable targeting.

By understanding your Quality Score and the benefits behind creating single keyword ad groups and tight thematic groupings, you can not only reduce your costs-per-click substantially, but also drive the right traffic through a quality, cohesive search experience.

There are numerous AdWords features that are underutilized or not deployed by many dental practices. By exploring options like custom intent audiences, SKAGs, and advanced remarketing, dental marketers will see vast improvements in maintaining a top-of-mind position with prospects today, who will become patients tomorrow.

Work with Our Dental AdWords Marketing Experts

Local dental markets can be very competitive, which requires marketing differentiation and a high degree of performance optimization.

Contact one of our dental marketing experts at BrandRocket today to discuss how we can structure or enhance your AdWords PPC advertising to drive conversions, sales, and growth.

Happy marketing!

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