If you have not used Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising or if you’re not completely up-to-date with the current PPC offerings, then now’s the time to educate yourself on this medium and implement a strategy to help you boost new patient enquires this year.

As with all forms of on-line marketing PPC is constantly evolving. Today it can deliver far better results in more sophisticated ways than ever before.

PPC is not ‘rocket science’ but it does take an investment in time to fully understand and to be able to maximise its benefits. I have had a number of clients say to me “I can’t get my head around all this on-line stuff” and I usually have to remind them that they qualified as a dentist; so coping with a bit of new jargon is well within capabilities.

Ultimately you might engage a company like IDM to handle your on-line marketing, but even if this is your choice as you can use your time more effectively, it is essential you understand what’s available. Through this knowledge you will work out what is best to help you achieve your goals.

Let’s start with the basics. Pay Per Click is an advertising model to direct traffic to your website. The main PPC system is Google Adwords – Facebook, Linkedin and Bing all offer similar systems. One of the great things about PPC is that you only pay when someone ‘clicks’ on your advertisement unlike advertising in a newspaper where you pay for the ad upfront irrespective of the results generated.

In the early days of PPC you simply bid on the key phrase you wanted your advert to be found on – maybe as simple as the name of your suburb and the word dentist, set a daily budget and ‘bingo’ your advert would appear when people searched on this phrase.

The more you bid for the phrase the higher up the page your advert would be displayed and each of the PPC providers had on-line tools that help you maintain control. Today, there are a number of additional features to PPC advertising that, in my opinion, have now made PPC a relevant and worthwhile advertising medium for a dental practice.

The first of these new features is called ‘Re-Marketing’. The premise of all successful advertising is repetition.

In traditional mediums such as flyer drops you will get a response from your first flyer drop, but if you repeat the flyer drop every four to six weeks, by the time you have got to your fourth or fifth the response rate will have increased significantly. Well the same is true of the internet. So the ‘Re-Marketing’ facility offered by Google Ad Words, Facebook and others mean once a potential patient has visited your website, it’s possible to run display ads on other sites this person now visits for the next 90 days.

For example, your potential patient clicks on your PPC advert in Google as they need to visit the dentist. They view your website but do nothing else. Their next thought is of booking a holiday and they visit a holiday booking site that is part of the Google Ad Words system, and ‘bingo’ they see an advert for your dental practice on that website, reminding them they need to visit you and building your brand in the process.

As we all flit about the internet like busy bees this same potential patient could be seeing your display ad time and time again over the coming weeks. This significantly increases the chance of them contacting you and not another practice the area. This is marketing GOLD.

Facebook very recently introduced a re-marketing facility to their advertising offerings that allow you to run display ads just to your patients. All you need to do is load up all your patients’ e-mail addresses into Facebook and if they have a Facebook account they will start to see your advert. I personally think this is an excellent tool to improve recall compliance and keep your brand alive with your patients between visits.

Up until recently getting your website found first in Google and the other search engines organically through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was the ‘Gold Standard’ of on-line marketing. SEO remains highly relevant to successful on-line marketing, particularly in suburban areas where there is less PPC marketing going on. However, PPC can be a highly effective tool, particularly when used in an intelligent and strategic way and integrated with all your other marketing.

Google, Facebook and all the other platforms have easy to understand user guides to help you set up your PPC campaign, but don’t hesitate to call me and my team if you need some help and advice.