admin, Author at Dental Patient Marketing

December 5, 2017February 17, 2018

Be Careful When Using A Dental AdWords Company

We Eat AdWords!

At ConversionSmiles, we live, breathe, and eat everything AdWords. For that reason, we consume a lot of content related to AdWords Management.

Nice guys / Bad AdWords Practice

One of the things we do is listen to a podcast that exclusively talks about PPC management strategies. Sounds fascinating right? Professional AdWords managers talking for an hour about AdWords Management strategies. OK, it is not for everyone, but we usually learn a couple of tidbits or it at least causes us to think differently about how we manage our own dental AdWords campaigns. The guys we listen to seem to be pretty smart, honest and well-intentioned. These guys are not charlatans they are decent human beings. However, we completely disagree with their philosophy of how they run their AdWords Management companies.

Keep AdWords Stupid Simple Philosophy

These guys are constantly talking about how the top goal when setting up an AdWords campaign is to keep the AdWords management as simple as possible. We agree that making an AdWords account crazy complicated is a bad idea because it will be too difficult to manage. An AdWords account that is too difficult to manage is a bad AdWords account regular maintenance and optimization won’t happen like it should. However, these guys seem to make most decisions based on how easy it will be them to manage the AdWords account rather than what is best for the customer.

Why Do AdWords Management Companies Take Shortcuts?

It is easy to understand why most PPC companies take shorts cuts and make AdWords accounts as basic as possible. If they can reduce the number of AdWords campaigns, AdWords groups, and AdWords keywords they can reduce the number of areas they need to maintain for the customer on a monthly basis. This way the PPC company can maximize the number of customers they have and increase their profits.

Why Keeping AdWords Management Too Simple Is A Bad Idea

Keeping AdWords management simple sounds pretty smart on the face of it. But, in some ways, AdWords is necessarily complicated. There’s a temptation, for instance, to only have one AdWords campaign set up for a dentist client. But, that’s a bad idea if you want to manage budgets and scheduling independently. Want to run certain (cheaper) ads that only run on nights and weekends? You need a separate AdWords campaign to do that. You can learn more about Google AdWords scheduling here… About ad scheduling Want to turn off the budget for Teeth Whitening at 3pm but keep your super profitable dental implants campaign budget going all day? You need a separate Adwords campaign to do that. Learn more here… Set a budget for your campaign

Smart Dentist AdWords Management

At ConversionSmiles, we believe there a million complicated things we need to do for our dental AdWords Management customers. However, because we focus on dentists, we know the smart things to do and we have repeatable processes to help each and every customer in a scalable way that helps us grow our business profitably while we help dentist practices do the same.

If this article interested you, you might also be interested in our blog post… You 5 Reasons You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Manager

December 4, 2017

Why Your Dentist Website Should Have Video…

Dental PPC Focus

ConversionSmiles is mostly focused on helping dental practices with dentist PPC management. However, we believe smart dentist AdWords management and dentist search engine optimization should work hand in hand.

Good PPC Management = Better Dentist SEO

Here’s how good PPC management helps SEO efforts. More organic clicks and a higher organic click-through rate tells Google that your website is worthy of better placement in Google search results. Paying more money for paid clicks will never directly impact organic search but it will help indirectly. As more dental patients find your website with paid search, they will inevitably come back for more visits with natural search. Example: Sheila searches for dental implants in Google. She finds AcmeDentistCo.com one time. Her browser now remembers that is a website she visited and favors that website in future searches. One week later she searches for “dental implants” again. She sees AcmeDentistCo.com and clicks. Later, she does another search for Acme and clicks. Google sees these clicks as a sign of popularity and rewards AcmeDentistCo.com with magical SEO points. You can learn more how we think AdWords impacts SEO here… Why Your Dentist AdWords Manager Should Know SEO

More Time On Website = Better Dentist Seo

Google has a magical formula that helps them decide if a webpage should get better or worse placement in their search results. One of the things the magic formula (algorithms) considers is how long visitors stay on a website. For instance, if Roger clicks on a search result and immediately clicks back to the search results page 3 seconds after viewing the webpage, Google gets a pretty good clue that the results did not satisfy Roger. This would give the page a high Bounce Rate because roger bounced almost immediately. Google hates high Bounce Rates and punishes websites with high Bounce Rates.

Dentist Video = Better Bounce Rate

One of the best ways to keep visitors on your website longer and reduce bounce rates is to have at least one video. A two-minute video will likely hold most visitors attention for most of that time. That means you can dramatically increase the length of ‘on page’ time by simply adding video. Presto! More on page time, better bounce rate, better SEO.

How To Get A Dentist Video…

Video production costs have gone way down in the last few years. You can get a good quality dentist video for less than $1,000. If you only have a few hundred dollars, you can probably still get a decent video made locally. There are also websites like Fiverr where you can have videos made super cheap. If you are really, really cheap, you can make a decent video for free with your iPhone and MacBook if you have the time and interest. You might also want to consider shooting dental patient testimonials and stringing them together in one video.

In Conclusion…

To sum up, if it makes sense to invest in dentist AdWords management, you should make sure you get the most value out of your Google AdWords spend by also improving your dentist search engine optimization at the same time.

December 2, 2017August 11, 2019

Examples Of Most Common Dentist Google Ad Mistakes

Why Do So Many Dentists Make The Same Dentist Google Ad Mistakes?

When it comes to AdWords, most dentists have the same problem. They want to be found for every relevant Google search related to the word dentist but they don’t want to be found for the irrelevant searches. Most dentists using AdWords (or their dentist AdWords Managers) are so hungry to find new dental patients they set up AdWords to trigger for as many dentist-related queries as possible.

Unfortunately, if you don’t limit the number of dentist-related queries, your dental practice will pay for absolute junk. (Junk = Money that goes into Google’s pockets but will never turn into new dental patients for your dental practice.)

Wrong Place, Wrong Dentist Google Ad

The first thing a dentist practice should worry about their AdWords account is where their dentist Google ads are showing. It is so sad how often we say dentist Google ads that are showing in places where the dental practice will never find new dental patients.

Here’s a Google ad example we found a while back. Google is millions of dollars richer (maybe billions) from AdWords advertisers that throw money away on ad clicks in locations that don’t make sense for their business. Below, you can see a dentist ad from a Bay Ridge dentist that was showing up in Google searches in North Carolina. Make sure your dental practice (or dentist ppc company) is taking advantage of location targeting in AdWords so you are only advertising to prospective dental patients in your area. Here’s Google advice about how to… Target Ads to Geographic Locations

Wrong Dentist Search, Wrong Google Ad

Dentists should also be very careful about what search terms their ads are showing up for in a Google search. If you don’t reign in the Google robots they will show your dentist Google ads for anything remotely related to your search keywords. For instance, if you are using the Broad Match type in AdWords, your ad for the term “dentist” could easily be showing up for searches for “dentist schools”, “dentist jobs”, “dentist equipment” and lots of other that will never turn into dental patients.

Below is an example of a dentist showing up for the term Dentist AdWords. “Dentist AdWords” is a term that would be likely be used for a dentist PPC management company but would be a complete waste of money for a dental practice.

The next example proves that Google will literally show your Google ad for almost a “related” query. We did a Google search for the term “dentist fool” a San Jose, CA and sure enough a dentist Google ad is showing.

Negative Keywords Are A Dentist’s Best Friend

If your dentist ppc management company insists on using broad matches in AdWords, you must make sure they are adding negative keywords to limit when your Google ad is displayed. By adding negative keywords, you make sure your Google ad does not show up for dumb wasteful, keyword searches like “dentist AdWords”, “dentist fool” or some other crazy thing. Check out this blog post to learn more about Negative Keywords for Dentist PPC Campaigns.

ConversionSmiles is a Dental Adwords Management Company.

November 30, 2017February 18, 2018

Is Dentist PPC The New Yellow Pages?

Set your calendar back to 1985 for a moment. Back then, if your dental practice was looking to find new patients, the number one way to do so was to advertise in The Yellow Pages.

Pay To Play Dentist Ads In Yellow Pages

Of course, there was only one way to be included in The Yellow Pages and that was to pay the local phone company big bucks. An ad could range from a couple hundred of dollars (in a tiny market) to tens of thousands of dollars in a big market. It was a simple equation. The more space and the fancier the ad you wanted, the more money you would need to pay.

The good news was if you had the money you could get the yellow page ad space. Who had the money? Typically the bigger more successful dental practices had the budget to advertise in a more significant way in The Yellow Pages. This meant the smaller dental practices (unless they were big risk takers) would stay small and the big dental practices would continue to have the biggest megaphone and continue to get bigger.

Who Used The Yellow Pages To Find A Dentist?

If you didn’t already have a family dentist or a referral from a friend, The Yellow Pages was probably the first place you would look for a dentist. There was no Yelp! There was no Facebook. There was no Google organic search to help you find a dentist. So, that meant almost everyone used The Yellow Pages when looking for a new dental practice.

Why Dentist PPC Is Better Than The Yellow Pages

With Dentist PPC campaigns, a small dental practice can run a dentist AdWords campaign and beat the pants off the big dental practice that has more money and a bigger name. With Dentist PPC campaigns, the “little guy” is rewarded if they play by the AdWords rules and create relevant ads that truly help Google searchers looking for new dental practices.

More Relevant Dentist Ads Mean Lower Dentist PPC Costs

With Dentist PPC campaigns, it is not all about money. It’s not about how big or fancy the dentist ad is. Small dental practices can create better, more relevant ads that perform better than the big dental practices. For every search, there is a new AdWords auction so there is always a new opportunity to improve relevance, increase bids and optimize your dentist AdWords campaign.

Dentist PPC Campaigns Allow You To Target Prospective Dental Patients

If you want to only find patients looking for “dental implants” or only looking for “dental emergencies” or only looking for “teeth whitening” you can do that. With dentist PPC campaigns, you can also create ads that are highly relevant to the particular type of search. This is something a dental practice never could have done with an old Yellow Pages ad.

Yup, Dentist PPC Is The New The Yellow Pages

Dentist PPC is the new Yellow Pages much better because now dental patients can find your dentist practice anywhere they are thanks to their mobile phone. Why Mobile Matters For Dentists.

Dentist PPC Campaigns Are More Work But Worth The Effort

Dentists can become frustrated with complexities of dentist ppc campaigns. They can even become frustrated with ‘managing’ their dentist AdWords managers. The process certainly can be more challenging than the old days of having one lunch meeting a year with the Yellow Pages salesperson. However, the dentists who have cracked the code with dentist PPC campaigns are laughing all the way to the bank. Those dentists see consistent budgets and a constant flow of high-quality dental patient leads month after month. If you are having trouble with your dentist PPC management company, you might want to check out 5 Reasons You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Manager

ConversionSmiles is a Dentist PPC Management Company. Learn more about dentist PPC stuff at Dentist AdWords Blog.

November 25, 2017February 17, 2018

5 Reasons You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Manager

Most AdWords management companies have good intentions and are able to help dental practices grow their businesses. However, there some AdWords management companies that are inept, incompetent or downright fraudulent.

Reason #1 You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Management Company – NEW LEADS

Your AdWords budget is increasing but you are not seeing new patients regularly. If you are paying for Google ad clicks and paying for professional AdWords management, it should be very obvious that you are getting new customers. Tell your AdWords manager you don’t want to hear about impressions, clicks or other industry mumbo jumbo. Tell them you only care about getting new dental patients. If you are not scared to death that your AdWords account could be accidentally paused you don’t have the right AdWords manager company.

Reason #2 You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Management Company – AUTOMATIC REPORTS

You are not seeing regular AdWords reports showing new patient form fills, phone calls etc. Reporting should be easy and automatic for your AdWords Manager. Your PPC manager should be bragging about how many new leads they are regularly finding for your business. AdWords reports should focus on what is working and opportunities for improvement.

Reason #3 You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Management Company – SEARCH TERM REPORTS

You are not seeing what keywords are being searched for when your Google ads are being clicked. Only the best dentist AdWords agencies will show you the Search Terms Report that is provided by the AdWords system. The reason most AdWords managers won’t show you the search term report is because you would FREAK OUT!

Don’t be led astray by the keyword report. The keyword report will only show you keywords that were bid on as opposed to the actual keywords that were searched for and paid for. For instance, you might see that you paid $7.30 for the search term “dentist annual salary” in the search terms report. That is money that could have been used for a valuable search term like “dentist near Toledo” but was completely wasted.

If your dentist AdWords manager refuses to show your search terms report you should fire them immediately. You are likely paying for ‘garbage clicks’ that will never turn into new dental patients. You can learn more about the AdWords Search Term Report directly from Google here.

Reason #4 You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Management Company – MOBILE OPTIMIZATION

Your dentist ads are not being optimized for mobile. Adobe said 61.1 percent of shoppers’ visits to retailers’ websites stemmed from mobile devices on Black Friday 2017. If you think your new patients are dragging out their old PC or laptop to find a new dentist, you are out of your mind. Your best prospects are casually searching from their phones or tablets when they get a free moment. Your dentist PPC manager should be segmenting traffic and optimizing for mobile. They should be helping your dental practice use AdWords call extensions so new patients can ‘click to call’ directly from a Google ad. Learn more about AdWords Call Extensions From Google.

Reason #5 You Should Fire Your Dentist AdWords Management Company – NEGATIVE KEYWORDS

Negative keywords are not regularly added to your AdWords account. Your dental practice can avoid paying for ‘garbage keywords’ by regularly adding negative keywords. In order to get the farthest reach with AdWords, some unwanted keywords are unavoidable. However, adding negative keywords will ensure certain keywords never trigger search queries. For instance, you would not want to pay for terms like “dentist college”, “dental hygienist”, or “dentist equipment”. It is the job of your dentist PPC manager to continuously collect and add negative keywords to your account. If you are paying for ‘garbage keywords’ but negative keywords are not being added to your AdWords account it is time to consider firing your AdWords manager. Here’s some information about negative keywords for dentists.

ConversionSmiles is an AdWords PPC Company.