Dental AdWords – What Does It Cost?

Rule-of-thumb performance figures for dental pay-per-click campaigns.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is becoming increasingly important for dentists who wish to publicise their services via Google search pages and other associated networks.

As I’ve covered in more detail elsewhere in this blog, the main reasons for embarking on PPC are where a website is new and has no useful organic (free) rankings, or where the advertiser already has decent organic traffic but also wants a slice of the traffic which goes to websites via the paid route.

The split of traffic, paid to organic, varies by industry but as a rule-of-thumb, consider that it’s around 30/70 in favour of the free results. It’s also quite easy to demonstrate that conversions i.e. actual enquiries from clicks on the free listings, are typically better than clicks on the paid listings. So we have a couple of factors which support our general recommendation that dentists should seek good organic ranking positions in the medium to long term.

That said, Google PPC (AdWords) can deliver new enquiries if you do it diligently and have sufficient budget to make it worthwhile.

It’s the last part of the statement above, i.e. “sufficient budget”, which I’ll try to cover in a little more detail in this blog article; particularly because it’s a question we are frequently asked by dentists who are considering starting their own paid advertising campaigns in Google.

Budget – how much is enough?

This is a very broad question and no one answer will be correct. By design, AdWords is a competitive process, with higher bids earning more prominent advert placements; so chasing clicks for treatments such as dental implants or short-term orthodontics in inner city locations means higher click-costs and consequently bigger budgets. There is no escaping these basic fundamentals.

We currently manage click budgets ranging from around £250 per month for single surgeries with niche campaigns, right through to £15k per month for very broad campaigns. More typically, practices are spending anything from £400 -> to £2500 on their monthly click budgets and we are seeing an increasing trend as competition continues to drive click budgets northwards.

Typical AdWords metrics for dental campaigns

Again, these figures should not be taken as definitive and are only quoted to give an idea of the range of results you might expect to see in a typical AdWords campaign.

• Click costs – anything from £1 or less for “long tail” non competitive keywords, through to £8 + for implant terms in competitive areas
• Click-through-rate (CTR) – ranging from 2 to 10% (or better) with an average of around 3. This is the ratio of ad. impressions (how many times they are shown) to actual clicks

A specific implant or orthodontics campaign would be at one end of the cost scale, whereas other treatment terms are much less competitive and hence a lot cheaper to target.

To give an idea of how some of this knocks through into budget, consider a campaign targeting implants in a fairly competitive location with an average click cost of say £3.00. A budget of £30 per day or £900 per month will yield around 300 clicks of which you might expect 3 – 4% to convert into genuine enquiries. Of these, perhaps half proceed to treatment giving an implant acquisition cost of £150. Whilst the ratio of spend to enquiries may seem quite high, when factored against the profit made on the treatment, it’s still very worthwhile.

To compare, a practice advertising for new NHS patients might expect to see patient acquisition costs below < £50. It really does depend on where you are located and the types of treatments you are targeting.

The numbers above are very broad and you may find them a little surprising if you’ve been taken in by some of the advertisers emails littering your inbox which claim to deliver lots of conversions with very low costs. Whilst these companies may be able to deliver traffic to your website, it’s typically in a non-targeted way, poor quality and with limited chance of actually delivering real new patient enquiries.

Being realistic

Many dentists see AdWords recommended budgets as a big number and shy away without factoring the spend against the potential returns. In my opening paragraphs I mentioned that you need to have sufficient AdWords budget to make it worthwhile and I hope I’ve demonstrated that a few hundred pounds per months is unlikely to be sufficient, particularly if you are chasing the “big ticket” treatments. However, if you do have the budget and you invest in some experienced guidance to help you set up, then the rewards are there.

Summary

Advertising using Google pay-per-click (AdWords), may not be for everyone but it does have a place in the suite of tools which can be used to bring new patient enquiries to practices. However, you do need a realistic budget to be successful and “a few hundred quid” isn’t going to cut it if you are seeking out high value treatments such as dental implants and short-term orthodontics.

Once you’ve come to terms with what AdWords costs and you wish to proceed, then it’s absolutely essential to use an experienced marketing practitioner to help you set up and manage your campaigns – ‘DIY’ pay-per-click can be very wasteful on budget and is not recommended.

If you would like to know more about PPC opportunities, please call the Dental Media digital marketing team on 01332 672548.