We doubt any dentists would say “No”, to having more patients sign up for their dental practice whether that be for regular check ups or even dental implants. Simple economic principles will tell you that when patients leave a dental practice unless that dentist has any means in place of actively seeking new patients, ultimately their business will diminish until such point it is no longer viable.
That is all relatively simple to understand, but what many dentists do not find so easy is finding a means to attract new patients. Many rely on nothing more than current patients referrals, and a standard entry in the Yellow Pages. However, the problem they face is many other local dentists aka their competition, who are more proactive, will be acquiring the lion’s share of new dental patients.
This brings us to what we believe is one of the most effective ways of attracting new patients to your dental practice and that is Google Ads. Google Ads is exactly what the suggests, and that is advertising on Google. The easiest way to see a Google Ad is to enter a search on Google that has some commercial relevance, for example, “car dealer + your town/city”.
When the results appear, at the top you will see entries that have ‘Ad’ on the first line. These are there because the business which those ads refer to and for which there is a link that takes you to their website, paid for them. Rather, they made a bid for the keyword phrase you just entered will and pay that amount only if their ad is clicked. Bidding is how businesses compete for their ad to be shown the most often. In other words, the more you bid the more your ad appears.
This is where a local business, such as your dental practice can achieve huge wins with Google Ads. The reason is that the amount you have to bid to win for each search term you want you had to appear for is governed by how many other businesses are also bidding on it. So, a term that might attract businesses from across the world such as “website hosting” and has no geographic limits, can have huge costs per click upwards of $15.
That high click cost occurs because website hosting companies hope to attract customers from all over the world and that there are dozens if not hundreds of hosting compares which are all competing to attract those vast numbers of customers. Now, compare that scenario with dental practices in your local area and think about how many dentists practices there are which compete with you for new patients.
The number is bound to be less than 20 and may even be in single figures. Whichever it is will be nowhere near the number of worldwide website hosting companies and thus what you need to bid to gain clicks from a Google Ad will be a lot less.
Let us say you run a Google Ad targeting “best dentists + your town” and 100 people click it. It could be that each click costs an average of $2 so a total of $200 in ad costs. If are extremely conservative and say just 5 out of those 100 people to sign up for your dental services and become long-term patients, compare the total revenue they would generate for your dental practice versus the $200 paid to Google Ads. That is a huge ROI, and best of all you can repeat it, multiple times.