Budgeting for Dental PPC – Google Ads
Why you need a realistic budget to succeed.
Last week we added two more dentists to our popular Google Ads (pay-per-click) management portfolio. They had both been trying to run Google Ads themselves but not getting any meaningful return on their investment; fairly typical for DIY Google Ads in the dental sector unfortunately.
On checking closely, it became obvious why their ad campaigns were failing, including basic set up problems but also unrealistic click budgets. It’s the latter element, click budget, that we’ll focus on today as it seems that there is very limited understanding amongst the dental community of what is realistic
We’ll also make a quick review of what Google Ads actually are, how they work and why the budget you allocate to click costs is a key to whether you succeed or fail.
How do Google Ads for dentists work?
We’ve reviewed this in detail elsewhere in the Dental Media blog but as a quick recap, let’s take a look at Google Ads in the context of an online auction. When running an ads campaign, you effectively bid against competitors with similar interests in your location. Every time a user clicks on your ad, you pay Google the “click cost” – this can range from pence to several pounds depending on the level of competition (“the auction”) in which you are taking part.
Whilst there are numerous factors which dictate where your ads appear in Google searches, one of the key factors when it comes to who sits at the top, is your click bid i.e. the money you are willing to pay to Google when the ad is clicked. In very simple terms, those who are willing to spend more, can typically expect their ads to appear highest. Hence the importance of your “click budget”.
What is a realistic budget for your Google Ads?
As you might expect, this is highly variable and as mentioned earlier, depends on the level of competition. By competition, I mean the number of dentists who also have ads targeting similar treatments and in the same locations as your own ads. For example, in a large city, if you are targeting say implants or Invisalign, you can expect to pay a lot more than if you are targeting more general treatments in a less competitive environment.
The main problem we encounter when discussing Google Ads with dentists, is their naivety regarding what it actually costs to do it properly. The guys I mentioned earlier who came to us having failed with their own campaigns, had only allocated £150 and £200 per month respectively to their click budget. In this they expected to target a range of treatments including highly competitive implants and orthodontics. Frankly they didn’t stand much chance at all, although Google still spent their money of course!
Unfortunately, given the nature of the ads auction, campaigns with insufficient click budgets struggle to get traction as the ads are shown in positions which do not attract much attention and also infrequently. Whilst you will still get some clicks, please remember that many of them won’t actually convert to enquiries – you need quite a lot of clicks to get a sensible number of enquiries simply because of this drop-off. There is then further drop-off where someone enquires but doesn’t follow through to treatment.
What then might you expect to have to allocate to your Google Ads click budget to stand a reasonable chance of success? As mentioned, there is no definite answer here as all cases vary, however years of experience with dental Google Ads allows us to suggest some reasonable starting points. There are also tools you can use, including Google’s own, which allow you to get a good idea of what you might expect to pay per click for certain keyword searches.
For the really competitive implants and ortho clicks, in a city location, you may expect to pay several pounds per click and need to allocate a budget in excess of a thousand pounds per month. You can run “low key” campaigns with a lower budget than this but please don’t expect them to churn in a large number of enquiries. For context, we run campaigns for clients who spend in excess of £4k per month on click fees alone.
For more general campaigns, you may be able to work with a budget of £15 – £20 per day, but again expect this to rise as competition increases. What I’m trying to demonstrate is that you can’t expect to compete with just a few hundred pounds per month, particularly for very competitive treatment keyword searches. Chances are you will simply end up wasting money as you won’t get enough clicks to convert into meaningful enquiries.
Summary
Google Ads for dentists can give great returns but they need to be set up and managed correctly and used with realistic click budgets. Get either of those things wrong and you will likely be disappointed and out-of-pocket.
It can be a minefield so if you need professional guidance from experienced ads practitioners, please get in touch with Dental Media on 01332 672548 for no-obligation advice.