AdWords For Dentists – Quick Wins With Ad Extensions
Making the most of your pay-per-click adverts.
If you are one of the increasing number of dentists who runs AdWords (pay-per-click) to draw new patient enquiries from Google, you may or may not be aware that small changes in how your advert is configured, can make a big difference to the success, or otherwise, of your advertising campaigns.
You may have noticed that some adverts stand out much more than others in that they occupy more screen space and have extra features in addition to simple text? This is because the ads have been configured to use something known as “ad extensions” which are useful add-ons to really help your ads to stand out and catch the eye.
So what are the main ad extensions and how are they configured?
There are actually quite a number of ad. extensions but unless you are a really experienced advertiser, it is likely that you will not use all of them. The ones you will normally see employed in better dental AdWords campaigns are as follows:
Call extensions
This is pretty much as it sounds and it’s a technique whereby you can add a unique telephone number to your advert which is linked to your main number. This allows a person who has seen your ad. to click the number to call you directly. Call extensions can be configured in a few different ways, including scheduling i.e. you can choose to display the number only when you have someone on hand to answer during regular practice hours. This type of extension is very important for analytics too, as it certainly helps to show how many people got in touch via ‘phone as well as by completing your website contact form. This can really make a difference when calculating the ROI for a PPC campaign.
Call-Out extensions
These are simple to add and allow you to add a few extra headlines below the standard ad text. The overall effect is to significantly boost the size of your advert to occupy more screen real estate. They also give the opportunity to add some catchy headlines to encourage users to engage by clicking on your ad. Such examples might be “20 Years of Experience”, “98% Success Rate” etc. Like most extensions you can also configure them is various ways, for example which devices to show them on.
Site-link extensions
These look quite similar to call-outs but they also provide a link through to an appropriate page on your website and hence offer users the opportunity to click-through to find exactly the information they want. It’s usual to configure 4 site-link extensions with your main ads.
Location extensions
These extensions are linked to your business address and details as published in your Google ‘My Business’ account. They serve to embellish your ads with your address, hours etc and make you ad much more user friendly, prominent and appealing. Of course it is very important to ensure that the details in your Google My Business account are accurate and match those on your dental practice website. Your Google reviews can also sometimes appear via the location extension technique. Data direct from Google suggests that click-through rates can be improved by as much as 10% through using location extensions.
Review extensions
These are a bit trickier to set up and maintain but can be very rewarding if done correctly. You can now add reviews which are quoted or para-phrased from legitimate third-party sources. Google checks this so there’s no chance of trying to spoof it! Google has a fairly strict set of guidelines for this e.g. quoted reviews should not be more than a year old, don’t repeat your business name in the review etc. Hence the need for care with this particular extension.
Summary
Experienced AdWords advertisers know all about the power of advert extensions and employ them diligently to maximise user engagement and click-through rate to your landing pages. Ad performance can be improved markedly if you use ad extensions and configure them correctly. With dental AdWords actually costing quite a lot to deploy, it makes sense to do everything possible to maximise the return on your investment.
If you would like to know more about AdWords extensions, AdWords in general, or simply to have your existing pay-per-click campaign audited, please call the Dental Media digital marketing team on 01332 672548 for no-obligation assistance.