Over the past five years, we’ve tested more than 400,000 Google and Facebook adverts for dental treatments. The data generated has given us an in-depth understanding of what ads perform best and why.
The advert that you place on Google or Facebook is the first impression and one of the most important parts of the puzzle that is digital marketing.
The advert is what generates the click and brings people to you. Get it right and you will get more people visiting your offers and therefore more patients at the end of it. Get it wrong and a lot of money will be wasted.
What does a high converting Google ad look like?
Here are the key elements:
- The first line (headline) needs to contain the keyword the person used when searching, in this case “emergency dentist”.
- Lines 2 and 3 need to convey benefits and contain a call to action.
- The link at the bottom should again contain the searched for keyword.
As you can see from the data above, this ad gets an almost five percent click-through-rate. This is five times higher than most ads on Google. Google in turn rewards this by giving you a lower cost per click
What does a high converting Facebook ad look like?
Here are the key elements:
- To avoid falling foul of Facebook rules you must not use the word “you” or ‘call out’ the user in healthcare adverts.
- The image must be eye catching and relevant for the target group. And it must not contain more than 20 percent text (another one of Facebook’s rules).
- There should be a strong call to action.
- There should be a special offer if possible.
Targeting is just as important
For Google ads you should only target the search terms that will actually generate patient enquiries. You must also use a negative keywords so that your ads do not appear for lots of irrelevant searches. Think of all the different types of implants that you would not want your dental implant ads to show for.
For Facebook ads the targeting possibilities are a marketer’s dream. Imagine being able to target people that have recently moved home with ads for private dentistry. Or imagine being able to target people that have recently become engaged with ads for orthodontics. All this is possible, and a lot lot more.
For our clients we typically create hundreds of adverts in their Google and Facebook advertising accounts.
The reason is simple, by creating highly relevant ads, and by split testing different variations, you get the best results.
The above results show how many new patient enquiries (column 1) were generated, and at what cost per enquiry (column 2), over the past 30 days for one client. This client received almost 100 new patient enquiries across all campaigns.
Over to you
Google and Facebook ads can quickly generate new patient enquiries for your practice. To discover other ‘quick wins’ plus proven short and long-term growth strategies, download the Ultimate Guide to Dental Marketing.
