Investing in Dental Pay-Per Click in 2025

Investing in Dental Pay-Per Click in 2025

Why Google Ads for dentists make sense.

Many of our dental marketing clients run Google Ads, also known as pay-per-click (PPC), alongside their search engine optimisation and social media campaigns. For those dentists who may still be skeptical about PPC, perhaps worried about the cost, in today’s blog I’ll explain why PPC is important and also very effective when done well. Hopefully this will give some confidence that it’s a promotional channel well-worth investigating in the new year ahead.

First let’s have a short recap about what PPC is and then how you can use it to your advantage.

Google Ads – how they work

If you use Google, and who doesn’t these days, you’ll very likely have seen the three or four results at the top of the page which advertise various products and services, including dentistry. These ads are typically very prominent and look very much like the traditional organic (non-paid) results. What is very important to know is that around 30% of all traffic from Google now results from clicks on ads.

In basic terms, Google Ads are a form of auction whereby the advertiser bids on clicks – so every time someone clicks your ad, you pay a sum of money to Google. The more you bid for clicks, typically the higher up and hence more prominent your ad appears in the Google results. There are actually quite a few more factors in play, not just your click bid, but in principle you can consider that Google Ads is an auction of the type just described.

When a user clicks on your ad, they will be taken to your landing page (an optimised page specific to the treatment you are advertising) or a selected page on your website. Alternatively you can also deploy your ads with call assets attached, so people call you directly from the ad instead.

Understandably, competition plays a big part in Google Ads bidding and treatments such as implants and Invisalign tend to attract higher click bids than other treatments. This should be kept in mind when starting an ads campaign and factored into the return-on-investment calculations. Seasoned PPC practitioners such as the team here at Dental Media, will be able to advise.

So now we know a little bit more about what Google Ads actually are, let’s consider how and when a dentist might use them to bring new patient enquiries to the practice.

When should dentists consider using Google Ads?

There are a number of scenarios where a dentist can use Google Ads to great effect as follows:

  • A new start-up where the practice has not had chance to establish itself in Google. With ads you can get a prominent Google presence very quickly. We also run a lot of campaigns for dentists where the practice is yet to open and where they wish to gain advance registrations.
  • Where the practice and website is already well-established but there is a desire to access the 30% of traffic which is being wasted if the practice is not using ads. This is a considerable proportion and continues to grow as Google pushes the ad initiative for all businesses. Unfortunately it is becoming a little bit “pay to play” but even if that rankles a little bit, remember that you can still make excellent returns from ads.
  • Where a practice introduces a new service or expands and wants to bring in new patients quickly, ads offer a real opportunity

What to expect from a Google Ads investment?

Firstly there needs to be a little bit of explanation around what it costs to launch a professionally managed PPC campaign and also the click costs you might expect to pay to Google. Unfortunately we get quite a few enquiries where dentists expect to launch a campaign for a few pounds in ad costs per day – this is unrealistic.

Sometimes there is also an unrealistic expectation that you can hire a professional dental marketer to set up and manage ads for a few tens of pounds per month, but again this is some way off the mark. Consider that a typical campaign will need a couple of hours of management input weekly and this should help to put it into context. So then, what should you expect to pay for ad campaigns, both click costs and the management fee?

Click budget

This will vary considerably on the treatment you are targeting and the area you are in, so basically driven by competition. For example, in London you may need to pay £3 and upwards for an implant click in the most competitive areas. Invisalign can also be similar. In contrast a more general “brand awareness” campaign would be considerably less than this, perhaps less than a pound per click.

In terms of daily budget, we recommend starting campaigns with a minimum budget of £20 per day, up to £50 – £60 per day for the most competitive treatments and locations. You can aim lower than this of course but it then becomes more difficult to get the traction required; simply your local competitors will be out-bidding you to the point where your ad rarely appears.

How well your campaigns have been set-up and managed will also have quite a significant impact on what you pay for clicks. Elsewhere in this blog we’ve discussed “quality score” and how accounts with higher scores benefit from lower click costs. The saving from running well-optimised dental PPC campaigns will often pay for the management fees, so you should consider this carefully before trying to run ads yourself.

Management fees

I mentioned earlier that well-managed campaigns need at least a couple of hours of intervention per week. So you should expect to pay a minimum of a few hundred pounds a month for a service of this nature. In addition to this, good PPC teams will also schedule time to review your campaigns with Google’s dedicated team of PPC experts. This is where Google’s own Ads specialists provide new tips and insights to further optimise accounts. It also provides a second opinion and further assurance that your campaigns are being managed optimally.

What returns should you expect?

Again this is dependent on competition and what you are prepared to invest, but as a guide, expect to pay in the range of £10 – £50 per enquiry, with the more competitive treatments e.g. ortho and implants towards the higher end in more competitive locations. You then have to consider that some of those enquiries won’t result in treatment but given that Google Ads are very targeted compared to say social media ads, a good local team should expect to convert at least 30%.

It doesn’t take too much number crunching to determine that Google Ads can provide some great returns and good quality treatment enquiries at very manageable costs. Whilst this will impact your treatment margin, it’s treatments you otherwise wouldn’t have secured.

Summary

Hopefully I’ve illustrated that investing in Google Ads can be very rewarding and allows quick exposure in a number of different scenarios. However, it isn’t something that can be done for just a few pounds and a realistic click and campaign management budget will be required, often pushing north of £1k per month if you wish to advertise a range of treatment types. Whilst it’s very important to understand what you are spending, the real clincher is what you stand to make from your investment – and this can be very attractive indeed.

If this has piqued your interest to find out more about what Google Ads can bring to your own dental practice, please give the ads team here at Dental Media a call to find out more. We’ll take a close look at your requirements and build a personalised proposal for you – contact us today on 01332 672548 to get the process underway.