Online ads are one of the best ways to direct new patients to your website and get them to book an appointment. However, without a strong foundation and detailed plan, online ads can be ineffective and expensive. How can you make sure you’re getting the results you want from your online ads?

Time For A Website Check Up

Your website is at the center of any online marketing you do. Take the time to run through this quick checklist and make sure it is ready to work hard for your practice! By ensuring your practice’s website is up-to-date, you can turn it into a new patient attracting machine.

3 Website Check-Up Questions

Is my practice’s website new-patient-friendly? Your site should focus on answering all questions a new patient could have, provide an easy way (like an online form) for patients to contact your office and feature an up-to-date FAQ section.

Action Step: Sit down with your front office staff once a quarter to update your website’s FAQ section. Your front office staff have a direct line to the most current new patient questions and worries, so take advantage of their knowledge!

Does my website have current photos of me and my staff? This may seem like an insignificant detail, but studies show that new patients connect strongly with current photos of their healthcare team. Seeing smiling faces on your website puts them at ease and increases their likelihood of booking an appointment.

Bonus Tip: Have a professional take photos of you and your staff. This not only gives your photos a polished, high-quality look on your website, but ensures every picture is consistently sized.

Are there clear calls to action? Is it easy for a new patient to contact your practice using your website? Make sure there is a clear call to action on every page directing patients to call or email your practice.

Once your website has passed it’s “check-up”, your practice is ready to launch a successful online advertising campaign and start seeing that dramatic increase in your marketing return on investment (ROI).

Online ads (or pay-per-click ads as they’re often called) are created around 3 simple principles:

1. The advertiser only pays when someone clicks on the ad
2. The purpose of the ad is to drive targeted traffic to your website
3. The ad is displayed when Google searchers type in specific keyword phrases

The reason online ads are so effective is that you’re able to instantly put your ads in front of patients already looking for a dental practice in their area. A person searching for a keyword like “Emergency Dental” will immediately see your ad and use it to visit your website and book an appointment.

Google Search shows approximately 6 billion ads per day. That’s a staggering number! It means that you need to be ready to set up your online ads to be shown to the maximum amount of potential new patients.

Where should you start? And how can you make sure the ROI from your online ads is where it needs to be?

Pro Tip: Work with an experienced marketing professional with a proven track record in designing online ad campaigns!

As promising and as exciting as having new patients instantly see your ad, don’t make the mistake of thinking online advertising is simple. There are many facets your practice needs to consider while implementing a successful campaign. If you ignore any one of them or get a detail slightly wrong, it can have a negative impact on your ROI.

If you do have a background in successfully running online ad campaigns, check out the expert strategies below. This is a great place to get started if you aren’t ready to bring on a marketing professional to run your ads for your practice. You can also use it as a checklist with your current marketing company to ensure they’re designing your online ads for success.

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Top 5 Expert Strategies To Running Successful Online Ads

(1) Have a clear goal for your online ad campaign. The purpose of online ads should always be to drive more patients to your practice in order to increase your production.

Key Questions: What specific action are you trying to get potential new patients to complete? Is it completing a form on your website? Calling your practice to book an appointment? Before you go live with your ad campaign, make sure that goal is not only clearly identified, but that you know how to measure the results.

(2) Don’t mislead potential patients. Your online ads need to be 100% accurate for the website page they advertise. Use targeted keywords that match the content on the webpage.

(3) Remember mobile users are important. 80% of internet users are using their smartphone instead of a traditional desktop to search. Make sure your online ads are optimized to display well on mobile devices!

(4) Put the proper conversion tracking in place. Without a reliable tracking method in place, you can’t know how your online ads are performing. This information is vital to the success of any online ad campaign. 

Definition: Conversion tracking helps you see when your ads lead to actions being taken by potential new patients from websites, apps and phones. Need help setting up conversion tracking? Google Support can easily walk you through the steps you need to take.

(5) Use re-marketing to make your online ads even more successful. You can set up Google’s re-marketing feature to track who has visited your website through your online ad campaigns. Using this information, Google identifies who is statistically most likely to “convert” into a new patient. Google pushes that information back into your online ad campaign to be used to show ads to people who have already visited your website.

Example: When people leave your website without booking an appointment, re-marketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads as they browse the web, as they use mobile apps, or as they search on Google.

Online ads can be one of the most powerful pieces of your practice’s marketing strategy. If you’re considering launching an online ad campaign or already have one in place, make sure your campaign is set up to succeed.

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Discover how one dental practice was able to use online ads to
consistently see 300+ new patients per month!

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