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New Market Behavior Arrives with COVID-19

According to a recent post by iCrossing’s VP of Programmatic, Amanda Betsold stated that media consumption is up as people spend more time at home. Her blog, published on March 27th reviewed the following points:

• 46% of consumers are using social media more vs. a week ago
• Visits to news sites are up by 33% as people look for information related to COVID-19
• Visits to eCommerce sites like Amazon, Walmart, and Target are up by 3.8% and continuing to trend upward
• Visits to travel sites increased by 9.5% as people cancel upcoming travel plans
• 40% of consumers are using their desktop or laptop more vs. a week ago
• Out of Home advertising has decreased by 47% vs. a week ago

In addition, there are 382,000 job openings and counting as Amazon, Walmart, Domino’s, 7-Eleven, Kroger, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, CVS Health, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, and more businesses hire to meet the coronavirus demand.

Observations on the Dental Industry 

According to the latest Microsoft Advertising updates on US consumer behavior, there has been a significant spike in telemedicine, telehealth, and digital health-related searches. Between February 16th and March 16th, each one increased by 690%, 528%, and 242%, respectively. Adjusting to the current condition will allow you to stay connected with your customers as they switch to dentists who offer mobile & portable services.
That said, we have started to see:

• An increase in traffic of: 
  • Dental emergency services
  • Online & dental consultations
  • Mobile & portable dental services
  • Wasted or vulnerable ad spend due to COVID-19 terms on the rise
  • Exit rates on pages with no live support or no interactive components
  • Clickbait news and articles on search results
• Shifts in: 
  • Online traffic with a jump in news reports, policies, and guidelines related to the COVID-19 virus
  • All non-elective services by dental practices

Responding to the Current Market:

Before you approach your audience, define how you will support them during the coronavirus crisis.

• Concentrate on emergency dental care, such as knocked-out or loose tooth after an injury, a cracked or broken tooth that causes pain, tooth infection, or unbearable toothache.
• Concentrate on virtual & online consultations. Make sure to adjust your website for patients to be able to fill in form submissions

Use PBHS Secure Video service to improve your practice’s web presence.This teledentistry solution provides unlimited encrypted, HIPAA-compliant teledentistry consultations right through your desktop, iOS and android devices. It also includes secure two-way clinical chat, screen sharing and file transfers.

• Create informative written or video for your patients to share on your blog, Google My Business, and via email remarketing. For example, you can address some FAQs: 
  • What to expect from an online consultation?
  • What are dental problems that require immediate attention?
  • How can I reschedule my appointment?
  • Tips for dental hygiene to help combat the virus.
  • What precautions are you taking as a dental practice?
  • How to prepare for a dental emergency?
• Inform patients on opening hours, changes in service, or home visits. Update your website and your Google My Business / Bing Places with these specifics. 
• Reroute office calls to mobile phones.
• Add a chatbot to your website for easy interaction. For more on how to use chatbot technology in the healthcare industry click here.
• Communicate with your existing patient base through email remarketing. You could offer discounted packages & services for aesthetic services that can be redeemed within the next six months.
• Given the estimated shift in time spent online, reallocate your traditional marketing budget to online marketing.
  
• Set up video consultations to follow up with patients post-procedure.

Revising Your PPC Strategy:

• Prioritize emergency dental care (by creating search and call-only campaigns & allocating budgets accordingly.
• Increase your ad extensions to increase/gain direct engagement. Prioritize call extensions, lead forms extensions, sitelink extensions, and click to call extensions.
• Establish yourself as a trusted healthcare provider via ads on the search results page through Google My Business.
• Monitor developing events and modify your budget through budget management.
• Update your negative keyword lists at both account and campaign level using trending search queries.

Solutions For Your Business

• Google My Business: This free and easy-to-use tool helps businesses and organizations manage their online presence across the Google platform, including Search and Maps. Update your business information to help patients find your business and share your story with them.
• SEO: Organic traffic is rising fast. Make your content relevant with trending keywords to appear on the top of the SERPs
• Bing Places: This free tool enables local business owners to add their listing to Bing Maps. Being featured on Bing Maps ensures visibility and it displays content that is useful in real-time.
• Yext: The Yext Search Experience Cloud allows businesses to control facts available online wherever patients are searching for them–across search engines, maps, apps, voice assistants, and chatbots. 
• Call-Only Campaigns: Call-only campaigns encourage patients to contact you by simply clicking or tapping your ad. With call-only campaigns, your bid prioritizes calls to your business over clicks to your website.
• Audience Targeting: This feature helps you narrow down probable methods to reach your target audience. As your consumers engage online, connect with them by narrowing down interests, behaviors, demographics, and locations through your ads campaigns.
• YouTube Campaigns: As consumers engage on YouTube, video marketing can help you create brand awareness, prompt consideration of your services, and drive traffic to your website.
• Microsoft Advertising: Showcase your business to exclusive audiences and expand your brand with Microsoft Advertising. We are offering a $250 coupon for new accounts who add Microsoft to their marketing mix.

Conclusion:

Once again, as we all struggle to navigate these unprecedented waters, our team is committed to working ‘round the clock to share the insights and facts that can help you and your business. Stay safe, practice social distancing, and stay up to date through our blog as we will be sharing our experiences, insights, and strategies to help you keep your Paid Advertising healthy.  

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Though many industries experience fluctuation of seasonality, the medical field is one that can always count on there being people searching for relevant products or services. What’s changing is the way people are looking for healthcare providers. 

Whether your dealing directly with a patient or selling/acquiring medical supplies, investing in well structured PPC campaigns is essential for growth and making profits. Not having these ad campaigns in place or managing them poorly can be the thing that is holding back you.

Your competitors may be better aligned with best practices that connect them with their target audience and place their ads where they are needed. Your competitors are most likely implementing certain strategies to beat you out of leads. 

Here are some you can look into to:

Contact Information

Is your contact information easy to get a hold of? Consider yourself in a state of panic or urgency. Medical situations tend to experience degrees of seriousness, it’s important to make your contact information easy for them to get to. 

Ad extensions are a good way for prospects to reach out to their business. They expand your ad with additional information. They tend to increase an ad’s click-through-rate. Extension formats include call buttons, location information, links to specific parts of your website, additional text, among others. 

What’s neat about ad extensions is that Google Ads selects which format goes best with each individual search on Google. 

The more content that you add, the more relevant these ads can be which leads to an increase in engagement and more clicks.

Furthermore, if you are in the business of selling medical products and a consumer has a question, it is easy for them to access questions and concerns.

Your Audience

People don’t look up healthcare providers like they used to. Most people search for their symptoms prior to reaching out to someone. If you know when they will be in their time of need, it’s important for you to take advantage of that receptivity and peaked interest. 

If you are prepared with your PPC strategies when users are looking to address healthcare issues, you can turn searchers into leads. Together, SEO and PPC can help you show up at the top of the search results page and connects with the right person before competitors. This can result in an increase in leads as well as long-term patients!

Monthly Insights

As we’ve mentioned many times before, PPC campaigns are not “set and forget”. Campaigns must be watched and analyzed in order to pinpoint what is not working for your brand. Whether it varies among markets or seasons, the only way to really narrow things down is trial and error… and monthly reporting!

Of course, working with an agency is ideal for this kind of dynamic. They stay up to date on trending strategies, changes in algorithms, and they have the experience to catch and tweak settings that aren’t working. 

White Shark Media attends Google and Microsoft webinars and training all year round to stay informed on digital advances. We also have an in-house learning department and workshops to tackle everything from some basic campaign set up to sophisticated optimizations.

Though many healthcare providers may experience slower periods, they don’t have to. PPC can make sure that they can help those in need of their services as soon as they begin searching for them.

To learn more about how White Shark Media can help you increase leads and book appointments, reach out to one of our strategists today!

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Will you show up? Here are some practices that will get your practice on that page. 

Find Your Patients

Your objective is to connect with the users searching for your services. You reach your audience successfully when you use the correct targeting methods. Here are three ways to take advantage of this:

Geo-targeting: This will be targeting based on IP addresses. When someone who lives in your area searches for “dentists”, your business will have a better chance of showing up.

Keyword Targeting: This will combine your service with localized keywords. If potential patients are looking for a dental clinic near them, you want to make sure that your ads are showing up when someone is searching for: 

• Dentists Near Me
• Dentists In Manhattan
• Teeth Whitening in Queens

Negative Keywords: Your campaigns will need to exclude irrelevant terms to avoid unnecessary expenses. An example of this will be people searching for jobs in the industry. You’ll want to exclude words that would be relevant so that you aren’t investing campaign money on the wrong user.

Daily Budgets

You will need to set a daily budget for each of your campaigns. Your monthly budget, coupled with the advertising goals, will determine your everyday spend.

It might be useful to determine what a local business spends per month in your area. Below are some numbers to use as a helpful guide:

Here are some average Cost-per-clicks:

Search Standalone

• Emergency Services $12.50 – $16.00
• General $11 – $18
• Location $15 – $18
• Services $17 – $25

Call Only Campaigns

• Emergency services $15 -$20
• General $20 – $25
• Location $16 – $25
• Services $17 – $25

Conversion Tracking

Understanding how well your campaigns are performing is necessary. It’s the only way to know if you’re marketing tactics are working. Where are you investing? You need to make a list of what and how much you are spending. Then, evaluate if either of the scenarios is more effective than the next. 

Because of the nature of your business, you will need to learn more about call tracking. Yes, you can track everything from phone calls, traffic, and costs’ round the clock. Doing this will help you understand where you are thriving, and when your campaigns are slumming. 

You will want to avoid anyone who isn’t going to visit your venue. Having this in mind will guide you in how to invest in placements and ads that reach the people are interested. As you adjust strategies, you can compare efforts month over month to determine which are the most feasible outlets for you to pinpoint. 

Don’t Miss the Moments

Many patients will go straight to their phones when a symptom shows itself–this can be an opportunity. Though their intent to act may depend on the seriousness of the symptoms they are experiencing, it is still a moment where the user is receptive to your products and services. You don’t want to miss this opportunity. 

One you can take advantage of by:

• Having the right keywords that offer the services relevant to searches in your area
• Providing ready-to-book ads
• Having the answers to their inklings available on your ads, landing pages, or website. 

Conclusion

Again, because most people are searching for immediate solutions with types of services, you must match their intent with the information that they require. PPC is the secret weapon to get patients at your door. To learn more about how PPC can help your business, follow our blog.

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Are you the best dentist in town? Of course! But, do people actually know it? They may not, if you are not visible enough to reach your potential patients, they are going to your competitors instead.

Let’s work on that together. In Q2 of 2018, 60% of dental related searches came from mobile devices. This means that it is crucial for you to not only market your dental practice online, but that you have an advanced mobile strategy in place.

Let’s face it, mobile has become a way of life. About 94% of consumers look for local information on their smartphone and 90% of these users take action as a result. It’s time to stop putting it off and instead start thinking about your mobile strategy. With that in mind, let’s discuss some of the basic best practices that could have a huge impact on how visible you are to the right people, at the right time.

5 Tips You’ll Certainly Want to Know

#1 Click-to-Call Bid Adjustments

As a dental practice, calls are the most important source of new customer Leads. For this reason, of course, you want to increase your call volume. To help you generate more phone calls, industry experts suggest that you implement a click-to-call bid adjustment, which allows you to control how often the call option appears with your search ads. You can modify your bid anywhere from -90% to +900% at the campaign level. A higher adjustment means your phone information is more likely to be shown as a click-to-call extension within your ad copy. Are you now wondering how to set this up? Easily navigate to the tab “Advanced bid adj” in the left side column and click on “Bid adj”.

#2 Ad Extensions

We all know the importance of ad extensions and how they can boost your click-through-rate and SERP without any additional costs. But which are the ad extensions that you should implement to take the mobile strategy for your dental practice to the next level?

a) Location Extensions

One of the main factors in deciding which dental practice your potential Leads will visit is the location. These people are only willing to travel a certain amount of miles to fulfill their dental needs. This is precisely why we have the location extension! Not only does the location extensions increase your SERP, but they allow the end user to get directions at a click of a button. How convenient!

b) Message Extensions

Many people, especially Millennials, just don’t want to talk on the phone. Your potential Lead could be at work, they could be in class, or they could just not have a moment to spare from their daily routine. By enabling them to reach you another way that they feel more comfortable with, you may just get a leg up on the competition. Plus, wouldn’t it be much easier for you too if your potential Leads to be able to contact you directly by text message?

These message extensions have been around for a while, yet are often underutilized. With one tap on your ad, people can contact you to book an appointment, ask for information or get a quote. Message extensions can help you grow your dental practice by giving people an option to reach you that fits best into their schedule and lifestyle.

c) Price Extensions

Price extensions give you the option to provide potential Leads with all service pricing information immediately on their mobile phone. You can use them most effectively by putting them to work in conjunction with location and message extensions, in order to generate potential Leads from highly qualified to ready-to book-patients.

#3 Mobile-preferred Ad Copy

Even though Google Ads has removed the checkmark for mobile-preferred ads, there is still an option to tailor your ad copy specifically to mobile without the need to create a separate campaign or Call Only ads. Are you curious on how to do it? The answer is IF functions!

IF functions allow you to insert a specific message for users searching from their mobile device. Through a lot of research and some common sense, industry experts have discovered that potential Leads take different actions on mobile than desktop. To put this knowledge to work for you, you should use different call-to-actions for your mobile users. While a mobile user will “call” you, a desktop user may instead “click here.”

Example:

#4 Keyword Selection

User search and behavior are completely different when comparing desktop to mobile. Voice search has become more and more popular and users often search with different keywords and phrases when typing on their mobile device. Keywords that are more likely to be used on mobile are those for emergency services. After all, if someone knocks a tooth out, they probably aren’t going to sit down and turn their desktop on in order to figure out what to do. Using this knowledge to your advance, you must have your mobile keywords tailored to emergency-related queries such as “emergency dentist”, “dental emergency”, “after hour dentist”, “emergency dental repair”, “emergency tooth repair” and others that are similar. You may also consider bidding on symptom-related keywords where immediate action is needed, such as “tooth infection”, “broken brackets”, or “chipped tooth.” Chances are good that users will be looking on their mobile phones for such an immediate need.

Where using emergency-intended keywords on mobile could be a great idea to revamp your mobile strategy, there are also keywords that you would instead want to exclude on mobile. Think of research-intended search queries for those customers that are looking to read more information before making a decision. You still want these users to be able to read more in-depth pieces on your website, but not at the expense of your mobile clicks. You can think of searches for cosmetic dentistry or that include education keywords such as “information”, “before and after”, “pictures”, “where to get” and the like. These potential Leads will most likely take you more time to close, yet could still be relevant to reach on desktop.

#5 Call Only

When talking about revamping your mobile strategy, call-only campaigns are impossible to leave out of the equation. Not only do they simplify the process for the user by taking out the step of having to go to the website, but they also tend to have a higher conversion rate than your regular search campaigns. Remember, what works extremely well on mobile devices is using emergency related keywords and a mobile-optimized ad copy.

We want to make sure that you are not only advertising your dental practice online but that you are doing it the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. You already know that you are the best, so let’s show your community that you are! By implementing these five best practices, you will have a much better shot at reaching this 60 % of users that are looking for your dental services from their mobile phones and will close their sales loop very soon.

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Dental industries tend to target a radius location since users are only willing to travel a certain amount of miles to fulfill their needs. This is not only applicable to dental services but any other local service you can think of, too. The only thing that would make a client travel further than usual is a lower pricing, a promotion, or anything else that would compensate for the extra time taken up by travel.

When it comes to online marketing, you need to know the right location or radius you want to target to get potential patients who are actively looking for a practice close to them.

To run your dental practice successfully, you have to think about business operations, in addition to consistently delivering quality service to create loyal patients. It can be even harder to find new patients. You know how to be an outstanding dentist, but in a competitive market, how can you stand out?

Here are the top 7 things you need to do to stay ahead of your competition:

1. Define the Difference Between You and Your Competitors

You probably already know what sets your practice apart from the rest, but it is crucial that your potential clients are aware of your unique selling propositions, too. Focusing on your practice’s unique characteristics are sure to make you stand out. Remember, there are thousands of users out there who could be potentially looking for you or your services, but if they see the same thing on all the ads they encounter, there is no reason for them to be drawn to your practice over that of a competitor.

At the end of the day, you want to bring more clients to your office, get them to set up appointments, or have interest in your dental services. Therefore, make sure you:

• Highlight your discounts
• Emphasize that you take insurance
• Outline the type of insurance accepted
• Detail the type of services you can offer

Providing this information will not only save the users time but will also work as a filter to bring the right audience type to your clinic.

It is also important to mention, that you need to stay competitive in the market. If you are going to use messaging like “We offer the lowest price in the area,” make sure that this is true. You can lose customer loyalty if, after going to you, they find out your prices are not really the lowest in town. This is especially true if lower prices are what got them into your office in the first place. That could lead to bad publicity, like bad reviews.

2. Earn Your Patients’ Trust

The healthcare industry is all about trust, reviews they can find from your current patients, certifications you have earned through years of practice, or local listings you are enrolled in. To cultivate trust, make sure you keep these certifications and listings updated, and invest as much attention to detail as you would to your PPC efforts.

Make sure you encourage patients to leave feedback on your social media pages and review sites and ask them to provide testimonials based on the experience they had with you. Provide incentives that they will find beneficial if possible, so they feel appreciated and you can reward their loyalty. There is nothing better than having real-life testimonials about how awesome your practice is, especially when it comes from a credible source, like a patient.

Now, let’s be honest – not every patient will be happy and it is not your fault. However, something you can be blamed for is how honest and responsive you are whenever an unhappy client chooses to leave a review about your practice. Being responsive will not only show your dissatisfied customers that they are your main priority, but it will also show your potential customers that even though not everything is perfect, you are able to listen to what they have to say and make changes about it.

Focus efforts on the following review sites. You, or an expert digital marketing partner, can add your practice to these sites without paying an extra dime, which means more exposure at no additional cost. These listings are not only free of charge, but the traffic generated through them is ideal for local businesses like yours.

• Yelp
• InsiderPages
• CitySearch
• Merchant Circle
• Angie’s List

3. Define Your Campaign Goals

A common mistake you can make when starting your AdWords campaign is setting it up for a sole purpose, like brand awareness. It is true that brand awareness will get your practice’s name out there, but having awareness as your only goal will set you off track at the beginning. One account can have multiple goals, and each campaign should be set up for a specific goal. Knowing what is it that you want to accomplish before you set everything up will help you better gauge the success of your campaign.

But, before you define these goals, you need to take a hard look at your practice and identify the current state of your business. Is your practice not yet established compared to the local dental practices? Or, have you been in practice for years now and you want to promote a new service? Though these objectives might sound similar – they both are geared toward getting a new type of patient in your practice – the approach for each would be different.

Keep in mind that brand awareness can be accomplished with a Display setup, which wouldn’t require you to spend thousands of your marketing budget to get your name out there. While in the second example, the best approach would be to work on keywords related to the new services you offer with local variations.

4. Focus on Your Services

While selling yourself and your practice will be your number one goal to generate more patients, keep in mind that customers won’t be looking for your name or practice name, unless they know you. You need a different approach if you want to reach is new customers who are actively looking for dental services.

Therefore, instead of using keywords like “dentists near me,” you should consider using keywords that are focused on services you offer like “dental implants near me.” The second approach is targeted to people that already know what it is that they need from a dentist, while the first searcher is looking for a dental practice they can go to whenever they need it. The more specific you are with your keywords, the closer you come to generating a conversion, based on the searcher buying intent or funnel.

This keyword setup will not only reduce irrelevant searches you could potentially generate with your campaign, but it will also help you invest your pay-per-click budget efficiently. For example, if you do not offer Invisalign aligners, and only offer braces, you would want to by adding a keyword that reads “dental braces” and excludes Invisalign as a negative keyword. This tailors your traffic and gets the right audience to your site.

5. Create Attractive Ad Copy

Now that you have a clear goal in mind and know what it is that you want to accomplish with this campaign, you need to make sure your ads depict what clients will be able to find in your practice. No matter how much money you allot to your campaign or if you have set up your bids to be in first place at all times, you need enticing ad copy. If you don’t have that, potential customers will barely glance at it before they move on to the next ad.

When it comes to dental procedures, people like to get an idea of the cost of the procedure, especially if it is cosmetics related since most insurance plans don’t cover it. Including this, as mentioned before, will help with excluding irrelevant clicks on your campaign. Also, make sure you include keywords you have on your ad groups in your ad copy to increase relevancy and mimic the client’s search intent.

6. Include Extensions to Your Campaigns

Extensions are your best friend to include information you want to share to your potential clients, not only will it help your ad real estate, but it will help with the ad rank you can have when it comes to the additional information you could not include in your ad this is the place to add it. Here are some examples of extensions you can have on your PPC campaign to stay ahead of the game:

Location Extensions

When it comes to local campaigns, local extensions come in very handy to users, especially the ones that consider distance a main decision-maker for conversion. Not only will it show where you are located, but it also saves them time. They won’t need to click on the ad and look all over your site to try to identify where is your practice located.

Another great thing a location extension can provide is the hours you are available to take care of clients’ needs. Keeping this information up to date on your Google My Business page is imperative. You definitely want to highlight if you are open 24/7 versus an 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. schedule, especially for users looking for an emergency dentist. If your GMB only mentions your regular hours, you could be driving patients away for having mismatching information.  

Sitelink Extensions

This extension will help you take patients to additional pages you consider important or provide them with additional services you have to offer in the practice. For example, if you have an appointment-setting page or a “Contact Us” page, you can take them directly there through a site link. Or, if you have a services page where you can find all services you offer, you can have a site link for each service and link to your high-level service page.

Remember to add descriptions to your sitelinks and use all available space. This will help users identify what they will find on each page in case they click a site link instead of the original ad.

Callout Extension

Callout extensions are mainly used for unique selling propositions. You can highlight additional information about your business within a 25 character limit. Callout extensions are very similar to sitelinks. The only difference between a site link and a callout is that callouts are not clickable, meaning it will not send you to a different landing page or require for you to set up a landing page when you are adding them to the campaign.

Call Extension

Call extensions, just like location extensions are a priority for a local campaign. More and more searchers are now using their mobile devices to look for services on the go, especially if it is an emergency. When you’re in a time crunch, the last thing that will cross your mind will be, “Let me get home and Google this.” So, having the phone number visible and ready to dial from the ad will be a great advantage.

Structured Snippets

Lastly, structures snippets are ideal for giving a list of options available in your business. When it comes to dental services, we recommend highlighting services, brands, amenities, and accepted insurance if available.

7. Using Campaign Types that Work

So far, we have covered extensions, services, ad copy, competitors and more. Now, let’s look at the ideal type of campaign you should use. When it comes to this, there is no right or wrong answer, because it all depends on the budget, goal, and audience you would like to target. Explore the types of campaigns we recommend and a common scenario for each campaign type.

Call Only Campaign

Call Only campaigns are a great traffic source for the dental industry. You want to target mobile searchers since they commonly remember to visit when they have a pain or realize they are overdue for a checkup. Now, keep in mind this will be the same mindset a lot of competing advertisers will have. So, you need to make sure you have the right budget if you want to launch this campaign type since the CPCs tend to be more expensive.

Searchers will also use their phones for an emergency, like a chipped tooth, the never-ending pain of a tooth infection, broken brackets, or any other pain. These would be considered emergencies for anyone experiencing them at the moment. So, the first thing they will do is take their phone out to look for dentists near them, while they look for their car keys or wait for a friend for a ride. The terms they will search will be closely related to location and/or emergency.

Search Campaign

Search campaigns will have the same approach as a call only campaign. They intent to drive traffic and generate conversions. The users that look for dental services from the comfort of their home or office are very methodical. They are not trying to rush their decision. They are actually looking for the best fit, based on their needs. These users will shop around, compare prices, look for discounts that may apply to the service they are interested in or search for a schedule that will allow them to go after they are out of work.

This is the type of user you want to demonstrate your unique selling propositions to and you want to be in front of them as often as possible. Top positions are important for this type of industry due to the fact that people tend to compare practices with top results.

Display Campaign

Lastly, display campaigns are amazing for brand awareness and cost-efficient exposure. This not only means getting the name of your clinic out there but also promoting new products or services you will be introducing to the practice. You can incentivize signups by offering free service or special discounts. Again, all depends on what your end goal is and how you want to take advantage of the campaign type.

While some of the marketing ideas shared in this guide are easy to follow up on and implement in your account, you need to devote time to set these things up the right way from the beginning. Failing to do this can lead to spending money out of your pockets without securing high returns. But, if you do it the right way, you will be investing time and money in loyal customers. In turn, these patients will help your business grow by sharing their positive experiences with others.

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When it comes to running a successful PPC campaign, there’s always some degree of trial and error involved. From determining your highest performing keywords to gathering the right creative assets to entice potential searchers, you have to be willing to experiment with various growth hacking techniques to increase your awareness and drive traffic to your site. But while you’re focusing on convincing people to click on your ads over your competitors’ PPC campaigns, you might be overlooking what happens once visitors land on your site.

Web searchers, especially mobile web searchers, don’t have the time or patience to search for information on a site. If your ad’s landing page does not answer the questions searchers are seeking, you can guarantee they’ll flee the scene almost immediately. In fact, HubSpot reports that visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on a site before bouncing. That’s a fraction of a minute to answer their questions and convince them that your services are far superior to your competitors. How well your site greets incoming visitors, especially first-time visitors can be the differentiator between a thriving practice and a sinking one.

Employ Consistent Messaging

The first thing potential patients will look for when they land on your site from the SERP is consistent messaging. Let’s say a potential patient clicked on an ad promoting your practice’s expertise in root canals, the first thing he is going to want to see when he lands on your site is similar language promoting that service; if he is led to a landing page without a single mention of the procedure, he’s going to be more likely to leave and never look back. Running PPC campaigns requires ongoing copy testing, but this also means that you might have to tweak your landing pages on a consistent basis to maintain consistency across customer touchpoints. Matching keywords with ad copy will give you a better chance at prolonging each patient visit on the site. In addition to the actual words used, there should be continuity in your messaging. A landing page that reads as disjointed from the ad that led your customer to your site in the first place will create a jarring and confusing experience.

Add a Clear Call to Action

It doesn’t do your practice much good to attract potential patients and then lose them in an instant. The ultimate goal is to convert them from a one-time visitor to lifelong patient on the landing page through clear calls to action. The only way a visitor will know when and where to input their information is through call-to-action buttons. Call-to-action buttons can be tricky; too many buttons lead to an obtrusive, annoying site experience and too few buttons lead to visitors missing the call to action. These buttons also need to stand out to entice your potential patients to offer up their information. A visitor might not want to take the time to fill in his information if your call-to-action simply reads as “submit here.” On the other hand, if your CTA reads as something like “Learn the secret to whiter teeth” or “This way to a cavity-free mouth” then they’ll immediately understand that by offering up their information they will get something valuable in return. Using click-worthy copy shows users the value they have to gain from interacting with your practice.

Eliminate Distractions

The purpose of a landing page is, ultimately, to convince a visitor to fill out an information form and join your practice’s list. However, the searcher may have landed on your page for a very specific reason and may not want to be bothered with filling out a contact form at this moment, which means you can’t fully disregard his intentions to serve your own purposes. One of the best ways to meet both demands is by limiting the navigation on your landing page. The last thing you want is to serve potential patients a defunct landing page – this will, almost assuredly, result in their swift exit – but you may also not want them to become immediately distracted by all of your site’s pages. You can eliminate potential distractions, like the About Us or Social Pages, and just include navigation to your dental services and FAQs.

For many practices that fail to optimize their pages, the landing page is the last point of contact with potential patrons. Don’t lose out on a slew of patients just because of a confusing, obtrusive, or unhelpful landing page. It’s true that everyone needs a local dentist, but thanks to more sophisticated search options it’s easier than ever for people to find new practices. What people really need is a dentist who utilizes optimal PPC strategies to always stay connected with the local community.

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Here’s the good news: The Internet has made it easier than ever for you to connect with potential patients. Here’s the bad news: The Internet has made it easier than ever for your competitors to connect with potential patients. Every opportunity the Internet offers is accompanied by its own set of challenges, namely, competition. Most dental practices today maintain some online presence. But if you want your practice to flourish, you have to think beyond the digital basics and deliver cutting edge PPC strategies.

Encourage Calls

Dental practices are all too familiar with emergency calls; from cracked molars to chipped front teeth, often when people are searching for a dentist it’s not out of leisure, but rather emergency. They want to be able to find a practitioner in their vicinity and connect immediately. In some cases, they may not even take the additional step to review your site in detail. So rather than making potential patients spend the time digging around for contact information – especially when they might not have much time in the first place – provide it upfront with click to call. Click to call is when a local business or service provider included a telephone number directly in local search results. All searchers have to do is tap on the telephone icon to call a provider. Click to call is powerful because it eliminates common mobile search pain points, including outdated UX and slow-to-load contact forms. Contrary to popular thought, consumers still like to pick up the phone and talk to a business representative. A 2015 Marchex study estimated one billion clicks-to-calls from consumers in 2015. Mobile searchers in need of specific, immediate information often feel that they can get more (and in less time) from speaking to a human rather than sifting through a site. People in need of immediate dental care especially don’t want to be bothered with endless site searching – whether they’re in severe pain and need to communicate the urgency with a provider or worried about symptoms and looking for reassurance, including phone calls in your PPC strategy can spell the difference between a new or lost patient. In 2016, Google expanded click-to-call reporting to make it easier for advertisers to understand how often customers call and for how long.

Don’t Waste PPC Spend

As a small practice, you likely don’t have an unlimited monthly advertising budget to burn. Most small businesses and medical practices need to be mindful of every dollar spent to drive new customer awareness and transactions. But are you also aware that you need to be mindful of the dollars you’re spending that isn’t driving anything? That’s right, if you’re not currently bidding on negative keywords, you’re likely throwing money out the window. A negative keyword is a bid on a word or phrase that you don’t want to target.

Perhaps your practice does not specialize in procedures like teeth whitening, but searchers won’t know you don’t offer this service if you don’t bid on the negative keyword teeth whitening. In this scenario people searching for local practices in need of these specific procedures will click on your ads only to be disappointed and move on to the next dental provider; they’ve just wasted their time and you’ve just wasted your spend.

Get on the Map

Thanks to mobile-first mindsets, on-the-go searching mobile searching is more prevalent than desktop searching. Furthermore, a third of mobile searches have local intent, which means searchers want to connect with practices in their areas. To maintain a successful practice, you simply cannot afford to not be on the digital map. Luckily, in 2016 Google unveiled new local search ads to make connecting with your neighboring community even easier. The new format offers more ad real estate on Google Maps and Google’s SERP to advertisers running location extensions.

The key to running an effective PPC practice is constant experimentation. You have to be willing to incorporate some of the latest trends and tools into your practices, as well as think outside the box and growth hack your way to success. The world of PPC is never static, and if you want your ads to outperform other local practices you have to employ an ongoing commitment to testing and connecting with local searchers.

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You could have the best dentist office in your town, but without ever allowing yourself an opportunity to be found by online users, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to ever reel in enough of the new traffic needed to grow your business. Pay-per-click ads or PPCs are an auction-based tool used by marketers hoping to reach audiences combing through the search engine results page for answers. It can be an incredibly valuable instrument for any small business, particularly those in the world of dentistry. For dental offices competing with others in their region, PPC gives you a chance to outrank competitors in the paid areas of the search engine results page and allow you to earn the visibility and clicks needed to boost your business.

Of course, this is just one out of many reasons why you should be investing in PPC. Here are a few others:

PPCs Boost Brand Recognition

 Brand awareness is increased by almost 63% when businesses used PPC as a marketing tool. This comes as a result of the online facilitation of a stronger association with a brand. Users who see the ads of business online are more likely to make a connection with those that are offline, meaning they also have a greater chance of boosting results of offline ads. The ranking will never be directly dependent on pay-per-click advertising. However, when PPC ads are paired with good search engine rankings, they can produce higher click-thru rates and increase traffic. Mostly this is because as an advertiser you’re taking up more search engine real estate and growing your audience pool.

They Generate Leads at a Faster Rate

 PPCs have quite a few benefits, but one that stands out the most is the opportunity it grants businesses to get their name and services out in front of an audience straight away. Unlike SEO tactics, which require marketers to wait for the accumulated value to increase rankings for their sites, PPC ads can give your dental practice the results it desires immediately. Additionally, PPCs also allow you to serve advertising to users of all types including those who are on mobile, desktops, and tablets. This offers quite a bit more than traditional media displayed on television, print, and radio ads.

Even more, PPCs can help dentists keep their budgets within a reasonable range. In fact, when compared to other forms of advertising, PPC ads can be quite a bit less costly because they only require payment when users actually click on the link. In traditional or even digital media advertising, marketers are forced to pay for general advertisements that never have a direct correlation to site traffic or conversions. With PPCs dentists have the ability to only pay for when traffic is driven immediately to a landing page. This allows the capacity to see a direct relationship between the type of ad they created for their business to how it performs and is received by an audience.

 It Can Produce Phone Inquiries

 PPC ads give you a chance to match what potential patient searches, ultimately this generates more leads and inquiries about your business and appointments. This click to call ad extension allows users who are on their phones to get into contact with your business without ever actually clicking on your ad, meaning you gain business from your ad without ever paying for it. When users get into contact with your business, without ever clicking through to the landing page assigned to your ad, they sidestep the costs that come with clicks.

You Can Track and Test Your Advertising Campaigns

 Similar to every other marketing strategy out there, PPCs require a bit of trial-and-error to produce good results. With AdWords, you can track and analyze the campaign metrics of your PPC so that you can decipher what strategies and methods are working and which ones are not. This allows you a chance to stay on top of your click-through rates, conversions, and other campaign metrics. All of which, when combined, can give you a more clear understanding of your PPC ROI, as well as factors that need to be tweaked in order to see improvement. With PPC you can experiment with different keywords, background colors, CTAs, and formats and then test and compare the different ad variations to see which combination will give you the most conversions.

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Similar to every other small business, dental practices have quite a bit to gain from adding pay-per-clicks or PPC advertising to their marketing plan. PPCs allow businesses to display ads on millions of websites within the Google Display Network and advertise their work for lower and more efficient prices than traditional marketing strategies. They’re great for building brand awareness, and when used correctly, a good PPC can create generous leads.

To truly get the most out of their PPC marketing, dentists have to ensure they are implementing four key strategies into their campaigns. If you’re a dentist hoping to maximize the effectiveness of your ads and reel in the best return on investments, consider these tips:

Be Consistent With Your Ads and Landing Pages

For every ad you create, there should be a customized landing page backing it. Remember, the role of your ad is to get the attention of potential customers and engage their interest. On the other hand, your landing page takes on the role of building trust and facilitating a connection between your practice and site visitor. As you lead users from your ad to your site, you have to ensure you have them fully engaged, mostly because each step will build off of the previous one. In this way, ensuring that the transition from ad to a landing page is smooth and vital. A confused visitor won’t only lose interest quickly, but they’ll also abandon your page and lead to a wasted spend on their click. Having too many of these deterred visitors can significantly lower your Google quality score. Remember, Google awards those who are able to maintain a consistent design and message throughout their PPC ads, which in turn hurts those that don’t.

Optimize Ads for Phone Responses

Keep in mind that clicks shouldn’t be the only response you seek from your PPC ads. It’s crucial that you also focus your attention on generating calls to your office. Remember, PPCs will only cost you when a user clicks on your ad. If you can get your user to call your office before ever clicking on your ad, your PPCs will be free. Start getting your office phone ringing off of the hook and boost your return on investment by generating free call-in leads.

To elude PPC cost, you have to start by 1) making sure to feature your phone number in every one of your ads, and 2) restricting your ads display hours to those in which you or your staff is in the office. This will ensure that every call your ad generates is handled by someone who can funnel potential clients through the process of signing up for an appointment at your practice.

Promote Your PPCs on Mobile

Most of today’s ads are still designed for desktop users despite the fact that the number of mobile-targeted ads has practically exploded in number. More and more online users are searching for their dental services while they’re on the go. Instead of using desktops, they’re accessing their mobile devices to research dentists and book appointments. To ensure you see success with your PPC campaign, start focusing on mobile users.

Mobile PPC campaigns should be optimized for easy conversions on a portable device like a smartphone or a tablet. Ad extensions can be a useful tool in your efforts to simplify the user experience and increase ROIs. Ad extensions are an ad format that allows you to display extra information about your business such as site links that will help grab user attention, location information, and clickable phone numbers. Extensions streamline the conversion process by allowing them to occur in just one click. This compacts the process for users and allows them to take fewer steps to produce the conversion you’re looking for. In the need, they increase and accelerate conversion rates.

Use Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are the phrases or keywords used in a PPC campaign that keep an ad from being displayed in search queries that will only lead to dead-end clicks without booked appointments. So, say for example you’re looking to start a PPC campaign that reels in patients searching the web for dental crowns into your office. Displaying your ad to someone searching for braces, crown moldings, or actual tiara crowns would be a massive waste of money. Negative keywords, however, allow you to combat the costs that come with misled clicks. By choosing keywords such as “crown moldings” as your negative keywords, search engines will know not to display your ad for people who are searching for pageantry like crowns. Ultimately, with negative keywords, you avoid having to overpay for wrong clicks and wasting time on advertisements to people who aren’t looking for the services your practice provides.

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Getting your business to the top slot of Google’s results page is no easy feat, particularly for dentists. Not only do you have to adhere to proper healthcare marketing strategies, but you also have to keep up with the ever-changing algorithms Google will throw your way. Also, with so much competition swirling around the same keywords, results can be hit or miss.

Fortunately, for dentists looking to solve these problems and get their ads to the top of the results page, there’s always PPC. Pay-per-click ads (or PPC) will help distinguish your dental practice from the rest of the crowd by putting you at the top of Google’s search results for related keywords. While a solid PPC strategy is one of the best forms of advertising for dentists to hedge their bets on, there are still several potential problems you should learn to avoid in the process.

Here are three strategies you should avoid while developing your PPC ads for your dental practice:

Directing To Your Home Page

This one is a common mistake that most businesses make and fail to realize actually hurts them significantly. In fact, 1 in 5 small businesses directs their PPC ads to their home page. These companies who lead their target audiences to their homepage massively underestimate the fact that their potential customers are looking for a streamlined experience. Today’s consumers are mostly looking up information related to their healthcare, on the go or as they multitask—meaning they’re not seeking to go on a scavenger hunt for your services. Your method of directing click-thru to your site should always start with helping users find relevant information immediately.

Don’t send users in search of “teeth whitening” to your homepage when you have a page on your site devoted to this service specifically. Remember, relevance is always important when it comes to search, so be sure to always steer your users to where they want to go. Avoid making your visitors go through extra steps and risk losing them to the frustration that comes with combing through your page. Instead, send them directly to where you know they want to go with your dental PPC. Your aim should always be focused on making it easy for the visitor to use your site.

Permitting Broad Matches

 All advertisers mean well with their broad matches, and they want to be able to be found in results by as many people — so they tack on a general audience to their PPC whenever they set one up not knowing how much it hurts them. At the end of the day, however, the average account owner wastes more than 25% of their AdWords budget, on broad matches. The problem is that when advertisers create broad matches in AdWords, they’re paying for useless dental pay per clicks. They’re failing to target solely to the people who will click on their ads because they’re interested in their services.

Avoid allowing click-thru from visitors who have no interest in your site or service by narrowing down your target audience. Although it will decrease the amount of traffic to your site, it’ll ensure you’re hooking visitors who want your services. What’s more, it’ll save you from burning through your budget.

Creating Generic Headlines

By now you’ve probably noticed that some keywords like “dentist,” “dental,” and “teeth” cost more than others per click and that this largely has to do with demand. These expensive words might be tempting to spend on, but it’s important to know that their price tag doesn’t necessarily reflect their worth. Not only are these keywords more likely to burn a hole in your pocket, but they also put you against every other dentist out there.

To create a proper headline find search terms that are unique enough so that every other dentist isn’t using them, but still broad enough that users can find you. Consider bidding on words related to your name and your location. If you have a strong enough presence online, your website and local listings should show up first for your business name. This will allow you to save yourself some money on clicks.