Dentists are one of the most important practitioners in the medical field. Not only do they perform procedures on our teeth, but they also guide us in keeping our teeth and gums healthy.
Besides dentistry being a noble profession, the competition in the field is fierce. So, it’s safe to say that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows if you’re getting started with your dental clinic.
Whether you’ve stumbled upon this article through social media or received this article’s link via email newsletter, we’re happy to tell you that we have your back.
Let’s break down the topic and discuss everything you need to know about Google ads for dentists.
You’re about to learn:
- Why Google ads for dentists are important
- The types of Google ads dentists should pay attention to
- How to get started with Google ads for a dental clinic
- A bunch of best practices to keep an eye on when running ad campaigns
So, without any further ado, let’s get right into it.
Why dentists should run Google ads campaigns
We can’t stress enough the importance of running Google ads campaigns in a super competitive niche like dentistry. Here are the four reasons why every dentist should be running Google ads to promote the clinic:
Get discovered by the new patients
The core reason why dentists should be paying close attention to running Google ads is that they could reach an entirely new audience which could potentially be new patients. Google ads allow dentists to set a laser-focused targeting strategy on the buyer intent keywords.
Build an additional source of lead generation
Dentists use all sorts of platforms to communicate and interact with people. They use social media content, word of mouth, SMS marketing, and pamphlets to spread the word about their clinics. Google ad campaigns turn out to be yet another source of lead generation for dentists.
Stay ahead of the competition
It’s essential to stay up to date with the latest marketing trends. Otherwise, the competitors would take the edge and put you out of business. It’s a solid reason why dentists should be either learning how to run Google ads or hiring professional Google ads specialists to run their Google ad campaigns.
Compare the ROI of Google ads to other channels
It’s vital to analyze two or more marketing channels to see which outperforms the other. For instance, one of the reasons why a brand or sole proprietor should run Google ads and Facebook ads is to just compare the ROI of both these advertising platforms. It would give the advertiser some perspective on where and how they should be spending their advertising budget.
How to promote your dental clinic
Promoting a dental clinic doesn’t necessarily mean you distribute pamphlets across the town or put up a billboard outside the clinic.
A dental clinic’s promotion requires various stages; all of them may not be implemented simultaneously. However, all of them are crucial to growing and establishing a dental business.
Let’s discuss some modern-day methods to promote a dental clinic:
Publish social media content
Social media content publishing is one of the best ways to engage the audience regardless of the industry. Not only does it help in engaging existing clients/patients, but it also helps dentists reach a new audience.
By sharing informative posts on relevant subjects, such as dental hygiene tips, toothcare, patient testimonials, and clinic services, dentists can build trust and authority in the space.
Choosing the right social media platforms matters as well. Make sure to choose platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook to post high-quality images and videos of your services, procedures, and facilities.
Improve dental clinic’s branding
Branding is vital to growing any business. It’s a phenomenon that differentiates brand A from brand B. As far as dentistry is concerned, improving the dental clinic’s branding is essential for making a lasting impression.
Developing a consistent and unique brand identity through a recognizable logo, perfect color scheme, and other brand visual aesthetics across all marketing channels, such as websites, flyers, social content, etc.
Keep in mind that a strong brand reputation and image of the dental clinic go a long way if it stands out from the crowd. The clients should be able to clearly identify your brand if they come across your ad, pamphlets, or social media ads.
Pay attention to SEO and content marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are two of the most important digital marketing strategies that pave the way for improving a dental clinic’s online visibility, reach, and targeting.
SEO is the strategy to fine-tune the website pages, content, and links to increase the relevance to certain topics (or keywords). An SEO-optimized website increases the likelihood of getting more organic traffic as compared to an unoptimized website.
Besides SEO, pay attention to content marketing as well. Regularly publish high-quality, informative content across different avenues, such as blogs, landing pages, and social platforms (like Mediums and LinkedIn). Try to publish blog content related to dental care, so that you can position your clinic as an authority in the field and help the respective audience along the way.
Collaborate with influencers
Influencer marketing has been on the rise for quite some time, and a lot of businesses are making the most of the opportunities they can get their hands on. Undoubtedly, collaboration is a fantastic way to promote a dental clinic.
Dentists can collaborate with influencers, especially those in the health, wellness, and fitness niches can significantly boost their clinic’s reach and visibility. Such collaborations and endorsements can particularly be effective in reaching new audiences. However, make sure to choose influencers who align with your clinic’s values and target audience to maximize the impact of these collaborations.
Run Google ad campaigns
Running Google ad campaigns for dentists can be a very effective marketing channel to get your business in front of the potential audience. Millions of hospitals, laboratories, and private clinics run Google and social media ads to attract new patients who are actively searching for dental or other medical services in the area.
Google ads allow users to set specific targeting parameters, such as location, demographics, and search keywords, ensuring your ads appear to the right audience. Moreover, it also provides complete control over the budget spending and analytics for performance measurement.
As a result of running Google ad campaigns, any dental clinic can significantly enhance its clinic visibility and drive more appointments.
Types of Google ads for dentists
There are several Google ad types to choose from. However, dentists need to opt for the ones that are relevant to them. Here are the types of Google ads suitable for dentists:
Search ads
Search ads are text-based ads that appear on the Google SERP and are widely popular for their keyword-oriented targeting. A lot of brands, influencers, and SAAS companies try to use search ads to stay ahead of their SEO competition and target high-CPC keywords for generating sales.
Dentists use search ads to reach their target audience in the local market by bidding on the relevant keywords. Moreover, search ads are effective in campaigns involving search queries.
Display ads
Display ads appear on websites and apps across the internet. The best part about display ads is that the algorithm behind them understands the intent of the website visitors and showcases ads relevant to user behavior.
For instance, if a person is searching for website hosting on Google, then this person might see web hosting-related ads on the sites that are serving Google ads. Therefore, display ads can be helpful for dentists who are trying to utilize Google ads to generate leads and bring prospective patients one step closer to the conversion.
Video ads
Video ads appear before, during, and after the YouTube videos. These types of ads are extremely effective if the product is tangible and visually appealing. Video ads work well for B2C businesses where businesses reach out to the relevant audience using the power of behavior targeting.
Dentists can showcase patient testimonials, expert opinions, and dental tips in the video ads to make them more interesting and engaging.
Local services ads
Local service ads are effective for geographic targeting and local marketing. These ads show up in the Google SERP against certain types of keywords involving queries related to phone numbers, addresses, and locations.
This type of Google ads can come in handy for dentists because they can help new patients discover the dentists in the town or city along with their addresses and phone numbers.
How to set up a Google ads campaign for a dentist
Launching a Google ads campaign doesn’t seem like a daunting task. However, the technical aspects of running a Google ads campaign are crucial to success in advertising. Let’s take a look at the important steps to take when setting up a Google ads campaign for a dental clinic:
Set up your Google Ads account
First things first, set up your Google ads account. To do so, go to the ads.google.com and click on the Start Now button.
You might have to provide some necessary details to set up the Google ads account.
Add business information
Provide the details about the business, such as the business name and what you’d like to advertise. All this data helps Google understand the purpose behind the campaign.
Furthermore, you’ll be asked to link up your accounts, such as YouTube channel, Google business profile, phone number, etc.
You can skip this step if it isn’t relevant at the moment. Feel free to add them in whenever necessary.
Choose a campaign goal
Campaign goal refers to selecting the relevant conversion for the campaign. Any advertising campaign without a goal isn’t going to help advertisers.
The campaign is essentially the level of the Google ads setup where the advertiser chooses the intent behind the ad campaign.
Pay close attention to choosing your campaign’s goal. It could be the purchase, lead generation, phone call leads, page views, or brand awareness. Feel free to explore more campaign goals if you the above-mentioned ones aren’t enough.
Select the campaign type
Once the campaign’s goal is checked off the list, you might want to look into the campaign type by clicking on the other campaign types’ three-dotted options on the top right of the page.
It’ll take you to the Choose Campaign‘s page where you can select what type of campaign you want to run. It allows you to choose where you want your ads to appear, for instance, Google search, Display ads, YouTube, Discovery, or others.
Add keywords for targeting
The next up is the stage where you enter the keywords for targeting. Google ads might suggest some initial keywords based on your website URL. However, you can remove all those keyword suggestions for adding them manually. Pick the right keywords for Google ads campaign for dentists.
Google allows advertisers to enter keywords in three patterns. Keep in mind that if you mention the keyword without any bracket or quotation marks, it will be considered broad targeting. Whereas, when you enter keywords in the quotation marks, it will be a phrase match targeting. However, if you use brackets [], it would mean that you want exact match targeting.
Besides adding keywords at this point, you’d also need to select the location, audience, language, and networks.
Create an ad
This is the step where you create the ad for the campaign. You’ll be asked to provide the website URL where you want to drive the ad traffic, the URL to display on the ad, headlines, descriptions, site links, and other details.
Be advised that all the above-mentioned elements will show up on the Google ad. Google provides a ton of options to advertisers to make their ads as relevant and appealing as possible.
So, try to make the most of this step and proceed to the next step.
Set bid strategy
Once the Google search ad is created, the next step is to make your bidding strategy. It’s basically a way of telling Google that what we want to achieve from this campaign.
The advertiser can select conversion, clicks, or any other option from the list. However, most advertisers choose between clicks and conversion as their focus for the campaign.
Furthermore, the advertiser can also set a maximum CPC limit for the campaign at this step – what it means is that the advertiser tells Google not to charge cost per click more than this limit.
Decide budget
Budgeting is probably one of the most important steps in setting up a Google ads campaign for dentists or any other business whatsoever.
It’s not recommended by digital marketing experts to go with Google’s recommended budget strategy. In fact, every beginner must go with a custom budgeting strategy to have full control over their ad spending.
Therefore, choose the “Set custom budget” option and choose the custom daily budget for your campaign
Launch the ad campaign
Once the bidding and budgeting are done, you’re almost there. Provide the payment details to proceed. After providing the required payment details, you can submit the ad campaign for approval.
It might take from half an hour to five hours to get your ad campaign approved. The ad will go live as soon as the campaign is approved.
Analyze campaign performance
The advertiser can start analyzing the ad campaign performance after a few days or go through the campaign’s performance report after the completion of the campaign.
The campaign performance analysis gives you an in-depth report on the campaign’s effectiveness and allows you to ponder on the areas that need to be improved in the follow-up campaigns.
Best practices for a Google ads campaign for dentists
Comprehending the fundamentals of any digital marketing strategy helps marketers start on the right foot – a Google ads campaign for dentists is no different. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices to consider when starting an ad campaign for a dental clinic:
Define clear campaign goals: A prerequisite of a Google ads campaign for the dental clinic is to have a clear road map for the Google ads. It’s worth knowing whether you aim to increase sales, leads, or build brand awareness as it will guide the dentist’s Google ad campaign accordingly.
Choose campaign keywords wisely: It’s important to conduct thorough keyword research using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to identify dentistry-related keywords with high search volume and low competition. Try to focus on keywords that match the intent of your target audience, targeting the audience that wants to visit a dental clinic.
Write a compelling ad copy: Crafting compelling ad copy is crucial regardless of the type of the ad. When running a Google ads campaign for dentists, make sure that the ad copy is clear, concise, and engaging. Moreover, it must be hitting the bullseye when it comes to audience targeting by highlighting the unique selling points.
Add an actionable call-to-action: A strong call-to-action that encourages users to click on your ad goes a long way. A call-to-action that paves the way for the audience to take the desired action, whether it’s a free dental workshop, booking a consultation, or signing up for a dental appointment.
Optimize destination pages: Make sure the dental clinic’s landing pages are optimized for both relevance and performance. The landing page should closely match the content of the ad, load quickly, and offer a seamless user experience. A well-optimized landing page is more likely to convert visitors into customers.
Install conversion tracking: Implementing conversion tracking is essential for monitoring the performance of the Google ads campaign for dentists. By tracking conversions, you can understand which keywords, ads, and landing pages are driving results. This data is crucial for making informed decisions and optimizing your campaign for better results.
Analyze campaign performance: To ensure ongoing success with your dental clinic’s Google ad campaign, it’s important to regularly monitor and optimize the campaign. Review key performance metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost-per-click, and make adjustments to keywords, bids, and ad copy as needed.
Wrapping up: Ready to launch your Google ads campaign for the dental clinic?
Running a Google ads campaign isn’t as complex as it may seem, especially for those who haven’t had a chance to advertise through Google ads.
We have explained why dentists must pay attention to Google ads, the types of Google ads suitable for dentists, and the steps involved in launching the Google ads campaign.
Undoubtedly, this Google ads tutorial is going to help several dental clinic staff or dentists who are trying to break into Google advertising and dominate the SERP with paid ads.
Reach out to us if you’re looking for an ads expert or digital marketer for your Google ads campaign management.
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