Bring in More Patients With Google Ads: 3 Strategies You Can Use Today
Overwhelmed with all the online marketing options for your dental practice?
In 2019, there’s so many different options to market your dental practice online – Facebook, Google, Youtube, Instagram, Bing, the list goes on.
With so many options it can be hard to know which one’s you should be using… and which will actually get patients in the chair.
If you’re new to online marketing, I’m here to give you a big tip – start with Google ads.
Google ads work really well for most practices to bring in people that are actively seeking treatment or a solution to their dental problems.
They’re often highly motivated and it’s relatively easy to convince these patients to move forward with treatment.
Even though I always recommend most practices start with Google ads (there are some exceptions, of course), there is one big problem with Google ads.
They’re competitive… and they’re only becoming more competitive as time goes on.
Don’t get me wrong, Google ads can still be hugely profitable… but you have to do it right. Gone are the days when you could setup a simple campaign targeting anyone searching ‘dentist in [CITY]’, send people to the homepage of your website, and get a positive ROI.
You have to be a little bit more savvy in setting up and running your ads. Specifically, there are 3 strategies that I always use with my clients to ensure their ads are profitable.
STRATEGY #1: Run Ads for Dental Emergencies
Ads targeting patients who have a dental emergency have 3 advantages:
- When a patient has a dental emergency/dental pain, they are highly motivated to get their problem solved. This means that the patient is going to come in right away and not have an issue accepting your treatment plan.
- Emergency patients can will usually require more than just an x-ray, exam and cleaning. This means that they will be a higher value patient for your practice.
- If you provide them with excellent and caring treatment that fixes their problem(s), they are likely to come back.
How we Target Dental Emergency Patients
There are a lot of different searches words or phrases that patients use when they have a dental emergency. Some are more problem based searches like “tooth knocked out” or “severe tooth pain.” These searches mean that the patient has a problem and they may be trying to gather some information before they solve the problem.
Then there are others that are more solution based searches like “emergency dentist”. With these searches, the patient has more intent to solve their problem right now.
I’ve found that targeting the solution based searches are more effective at bringing in patients, and this is where I would suggest that you start. However, sometimes those solution based keywords are very expensive (over $8-20/click). When this is the case, you can still get good results with the problem based searches.
If you need help deciding what the best course of action is based on your location and cost for various keywords, send me an email at justin@predictablepatientsystem.com. Let me know where you’re located and what keywords you’re trying to target.
If your practice is able to accommodate dental emergencies, this can be an excellent source of new patients. And again, if they are satisfied with your care, you will likely have a new patient for life.
STRATEGY #2: Ditch the Generic Ads
When you do a Google search for a dental office, most of the ads look the EXACT SAME. For example:
Most ads tend to be very generic and don’t focus on how you’re going to help the patient/how you can help the patient better than other dentists.
Using words like experienced, best, top, caring, don’t really mean anything because all of the other dentists use the same descriptions. Using different angles helps you stand out and connects with potential patients better.
Here’s a couple ideas/angles that I use for my clients to help them stand out in a sea of generic ads:
- Judgement-free dentist
- Extended hours (a lot of patients appreciate and look for this)
- Spa-like dentist
- Discounts* and special offers
- Kid friendly dentist
- Watch Netflix At The Dentist
- No pressure dentist
- Anxiety free dentist
*Note about discounts:
I don’t usually encourage discount offers because they tend to bring in patients that expect everything to be cheap, although they can be profitable with the right offer. If you have questions about an offer you want to run, shoot me an email at justin@predictablepatientsystem.com and I’m happy to provide some feedback.
STRATEGY #3: Use Negative Keywords
Again, when auditing adwords accounts, I often find practices waste a lot of money on searches that don’t bring in high quality patients (or any patients at all!).
A lot of times it’s because they’re not using negative keywords in their Google ad accounts.
These are words/phrases that you use to tell Google when they should NOT display your ad. For example, you probably don’t want to be paying for ad clicks when someone has searched for “dental school” or “free dentist”.
In my client’s Google ads accounts, we have a list of over 100 negative keywords. This means that our clients won’t be wasting money on irrelevant searches or cheap minded patients.
To get started, I would recommend making sure that your negative keyword list includes school, free, cheap, discount, and job based terms.
Questions or Want to Book a Google Ads Audit?
Hopefully this article has given you a few ways to improve your Google ads.
If you have questions about the strategies I discussed or would like me to do a free Google Ads audit of your account, send me an email at justin@predictablepatientsystem.com.