Introduction
Google Ads is one of the most effective ways to get new patients to your dental practice. The platform gives you access to a wide variety of audiences and allows you to target those audiences specifically. If you’re unfamiliar with Google Ads, don’t let that scare you! It’s surprisingly simple, and this article will walk you through everything you need to know about setting up an ad that works for your practice.
Keyword research
Before you get started on your keyword research, it’s important to define the problem. What do you want to achieve? What are your goals?
It might seem obvious that you want to generate more traffic or leads for your business. But if that was all that mattered, everyone would be hiring an SEO company and running Google Ads campaigns! The truth is that this may not be feasible for every business owner in healthcare marketing. Some businesses have very limited budgets and/or time constraints. Others simply aren’t interested in pursuing aggressive growth strategies at this stage of their business’ life cycle.
For example: Your goal could be “Generate 50 leads per month by July 1st.” Or maybe it’s more like: “Increase brand awareness among new audiences by 20% over three months.” However ambitious these goals might sound (and trust me—they are ambitious!), they’re also realistic because they’re based on tangible fitness goals like losing weight or gaining muscle mass (which most people can relate to).
Intent keywords
Intent keywords, also known as conversion-oriented keywords, are the ones that people search for when they’re ready to make a purchase.
For example: “dental insurance.” This would be an intent keyword because someone who is looking for “dental insurance” has likely already made up their mind about what type of dental insurance they want to buy and need help finding it.
This is important because intent keywords are more expensive than non-intent keywords; advertisers will pay more per click if you’re targeting someone who is ready to buy something instead of someone just browsing around or doing research on products/services like yours.
Ad position and quality score
Quality score is determined by three factors:
- Click-through rate (CTR) – this stat measures how many people click on your ad after seeing it for the first time. If you have a high CTR, then your ads will appear above those with lower values in the SERPs.
- Cost per click (CPC) – this is how much you are paying to display an ad each time someone clicks on it. Ads with higher CPCs tend to rank higher in the SERPs, as Google would rather give its advertisers exposure than save money by showing cheaper ads that don’t get clicked on much (or at all).
- Conversion rate – this statistic represents how often people who see your ad actually make a purchase or take some other action after they’ve landed on your website from their search results page*. If a user clicks on one of your advertisements but doesn’t convert into a lead, sign up as a customer or otherwise buy something from you (which we’ll define as “conversion”), then that’s going to hurt both their quality score and yours!*Conversion can also mean signing up for an email newsletter or downloading an ebook/guide
Location targeting
Location targeting is one of the most powerful features of Google Ads. It allows you to target people who are searching for dentists in your area, or target people who are searching for dentists in a specific city or town. For example, if you want to advertise to people looking for teeth whitening services in San Francisco, CA, then all you have to do is use this location modifier with your ad copy and Google will automatically show your ads only when someone searches for “teeth whitening service” on Google within 100 miles of San Francisco.
Mobile bid modifier
The mobile bid modifier is a feature that allows you to increase the cost of your ads when someone clicks on them from a mobile device. This helps you to get more conversions from mobile devices and can be modified by going to campaign settings.
Google Ads is a great way to get new patients to your dental practice.
Google Ads is a great way to get new patients to your dental practice. It’s an affordable tool that can help you reach the right people in your area, which is necessary for getting new patients and growing your business. If you want an expert to handle this, you can reach out to us at info@pinecone-media.com. You can also use the link on our homepage to download our dental case study.
