If anybody ran a survey about the most competitive business sectors these days, dentistry stands a high chance of being right on top of that list.
Look around your city, and you’ll probably find a dental practice in every corner. And with practically every single one of them engaged in digital marketing—which includes search engine optimization or SEO in most cases—in a bid to grow their roster of patients, the competition just got so much tighter.
For a dental practice website to get the top spots in search engine results pages or SERPs, it must engage in SEO. However, while SEO has proven to be quite useful in raising rankings and drawing more organic traffic, it needs some time to help you get there.
If you want a faster way to get that organic traffic, you might want to give PPC advertising a try.
What is PPC advertising?
The PPC in PPC advertising stands for “pay-per-click, ” and it’s an Internet advertising model that allows you to pay for visits instead of just waiting for them to come along naturally the way you do when you’re doing SEO. If you opt for PPC, then you only have to pay a fee for every click on your ads.
So why should you consider PPC in your bid to grow your dental practice?
Instant traffic
Once you’ve set up your PPC ads both for desktop and mobile, anyone who clicks on them will become an instant visitor to your dental practice website (or HealthEngine Professional Profile) and a potential lead that will become your patient. Having a strong Google Ads presence as well as organic presence in the Google search results work hand in hand to drive higher volumes of traffic to the website. Appearing simultaneously in first position for natural and paid search increases credibility as far as users are concerned and as a result, websites stand to gain up to 50% incremental traffic.
Easy results tracking and measurement
Tracking and measuring your PPC performance is easy with Google Analytics and the Google Ads tool. With these tools, you can check the clicks, impressions, bookings and calls of the PPC ads you’re running through Google Ads to help you assess your PPC campaign’s effectiveness. Having these tools is handy for figuring out whether or not the money you’re spending on the drive is helping you reach the goals you’ve set for yourself.
HealthEngine makes tracking and reporting even easier with detailed reporting which identifies patient initials, appointment type & more – something that’s only available for HealthEngine run Google Ads campaigns.
Total control
With a PPC campaign, you have the final say on the placements or keywords to be targeted, among other things. The direction you want the whole thing to go is entirely up to you.
Flexible budgets
PPC gives your budget more flexibility than you can have if you were running more traditional advertising campaigns. If you think you’re spending too much for the cost per click, you can always pause or halt your PPC advertising anytime you want. Conversely, it’s up to you if you want to spend more if you see encouraging results and you want more.
PPC and SEO complement each other
PPC may bring faster results than SEO, but they actually complement each other. The performance data gathered by PPC tools can give your SEO strategy a bit more insight. SEO strategies as well as the data from organic traffic, meanwhile, can come in handy for people who want to improve the way their PPC campaigns are being conducted.
Partner with the best
As a Google Premier Partner specialising and focusing on healthcare, you can leave your Google Ads campaign in HealthEngine’s trusted hands while you focus on your dental practice.
All HealthEngine Google Ads accounts receive support from our dedicated Google Ads Specialist, Laura, and you can enjoy flexibility with your monthly budget based on results you want to see.
These are just some of the reasons you need to think about incorporating PPC into your dental marketing strategy. Give PPC advertising a try and see the results for yourself.
About The Author
Shawn Byrne, founder and CEO, started My Digital Dentistry after years of developing and executing successful marketing strategies for Venture Capitalists and business owners in and out of the medical field. He saw a growing need for quality digital marketing specifically in dentistry, and had the foresight to create an agency specializing in understanding and solving the unique problems of dentists and their practices from General Dentists to Endodontists.
