If you are an orthodontist looking for more leads and customers, you may be looking into Google Ads and wondering if it could provide you the customers you are looking for. Good news – the answer is yes! When Google Ads is done right, it can be an affordable and dependable channel for a stream of new customers – week in, week out.
Before you start your Google Ads campaign and start paying to show ads, however, you want to be sure to get the most out of your investment. Here are several key tips that you should take advantage of.
1. Set Your Locations Strategically
Where do your patients usually come from? If you are located on the east side of Chicago, and 95% of your patients live on the east side as well, then it may be a smart move to only target the east side.
If you targeted all of Chicago, it’s possible you may pick up some new clients from the west side, but it’s also likely that you’ll get a lot of clicks from people who see your location and bounce off quickly, since you’re too far away for them. Likewise, targeting the whole state of Illinois would be a bad strategy.
So to maximize the likelihood that every click becomes a customer, you need to set the location targeting settings on your Google Ads campaign to the geographic areas where your customers are most likely to live.
2. Don’t Forget Invisalign and Braces
A lot of orthodontists only target keywords like “orthodontist near me”, “local orthodontist”, etc. While those are great keywords, you will boost your traffic significantly by also targeting keywords for braces and Invisalign – “invisalign near me”, “where to get braces”, etc.
Additionally, we don’t recommend targeting competitors. Oftentimes, someone searching for your competitor has already made up their mind that they will use that competitor; they may even already be patients of that competitor. So most clicks you get from competitor searches will be wasted. Try to stay away from targeting competitors when you can.
3. Block Strategic Negative Keywords
Using negative keywords is a crucial tool that will help you avoid showing up on searches that don’t benefit your business. If you don’t want to show up on competitor searches, list out all the competitors in your area and add them as negative keywords. So if Dr. Smith, Dr. Thomas and Dr. Scott are competitors in your area, add “smith”, “thomas” and “scott” as negative keywords. Doing so will prevent your ads from ever showing up for searches like “dr smith chicago orthodontist business hours” or “doctor smith ortho”.
Another key set of negatives to add is other types of braces, such as “knee”, “ankle”, “wrist”, etc. When you target the keyword “braces near me”, that keyword will occasionally pick up searches like “knee braces near me” or “where to get an ankle brace near me”. So be sure to add other types of braces as negatives so you only show up on the searches that are relevant to you.
Best of luck to you and your Google Ad campaign! If you’d like more help managing your campaigns to get the most bang for your buck, feel free to contact us. We’ve successfully managed multiple orthodontist campaigns and we’d love to help you too.
