Once lockdowns were lifted, a number of states began to see a resurgence in COVID-19 cases. Experts predict that fall will bring a COVID-19 resurgence or a second wave. It also doesn’t help that the World Health Organization recently urged people to avoid the dentist after deeming it unsafe even though not one single COVID-19 case has been traced back to a dental office. The ADA strongly disagreed with their claim. With a resurgence likely to take place in the near future, it doesn’t hurt to start preparing now before restrictions and lockdowns are put into place again.
One way we’re helping our clients stay ahead is with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of dentists lose out on the success of PPC because they scale back their budget too soon. Discover why you should invest in PPC during a COVID-19 resurgence and how to gain the most success.
Don’t Give Up on PPC
One of the biggest issues with PPC is that businesses will pull out of their campaigns before they really have a chance to take off. PPC results don’t happen overnight.
For example, one of our clients started a campaign months ago and after a few weeks without results, they pulled the plug. Fast forward to months later when COVID-19 caused shutdowns of dental offices and the client decided to give PPC another go for an emergency dentistry campaign. After waiting patiently for a few weeks, their campaign delivered an exceptionally high conversion rate for emergency patients. Without that PPC campaign, that office would still be struggling today.
PPC Results Take Many Factors Into Consideration
Before you write off PPC as a waste of time and money, you need to evaluate the entire picture. One factor might contribute to an entire failed campaign. The three main factors that go into every PPC campaign include budget, landing pages, and consistency. However, ad copy, keyword selection, demographics, and more also play a factor. Learn how each of these factors can affect your campaign for better or for worse.
Budget
If your budget isn’t high enough, you’re not going to get a lead. At the end of the day, we believe if your cost per lead is a profitable and a reasonable number for you, there’s no reason not to increase your campaign’s budget. You’re guaranteed to get a return on investment so unless you’ve completely run out of time to take on new patients, you should continue increasing your budget for that campaign.
On the flip side, if your business is already struggling because of COVID-19, scaling back on your marketing isn’t going to help you repair your lost revenue. If you can’t increase your budget, at least keep it the same, otherwise, you will have to restart your entire campaign over again which can cause you to spend even more money down the line.
Landing Page
Another factor that plays into your PPC campaign results is your landing pages. If a prospective patients click on your campaign and visit an unsightly website that’s confusing or lacks a call to action, you’re not going to get results. Monitoring engagement metrics like quality score, bounce rate, and time on page for your campaign can help us determine if your landing page is the problem.
Consistency
Lastly, your campaign must stay consistent. You can’t turn it on and off a dozen times and expect results. After we noticed many short-lived campaigns falling flat without results, we theorized that Google favors consistent campaigns. To put our theory to the test, our lead SEO specialist, Bob Weber, did some investigating.
Bob recently spoke to a Google Account Strategist who claimed that the first two to four weeks of a campaign are the learning period. After the second week, you should make the necessary adjustments to your campaign to deliver the results you want. Using their automated bidding strategies and correctly configuring the attributions can also lower this timeframe. They also claimed that if a campaign pauses for longer than two weeks, Google automatically resets the campaign and starts the learning period over again. With this new knowledge, we can conclude our theory was spot on.
In the end, if you’re not seeing results from your PPC campaign, you need to inspect your budget, landing page, or consistency. Geographic targeting, ad copy, keyword selection, negative keywords, scheduling, and demographics also come into play.
PPC Isn’t Just About Conversions
Although you might think the main point of PPC is to convert leads into patients, that’s not always the case. Although PPC is an excellent way to get new patients, it’s also an easy way to improve your online visibility. If someone conducts multiple Google searches about procedures in their area and they continue to see your dental practice pop up, they’re going to remember that. The more exposure, the better. That’s why marketing theories like the rule of 20 exist. A consumer has to be exposed to your business at least 20 times before they are ready to make a purchase. Although they might not need to visit the dentist right now, these prospective patients will think of you next time they need a dentist or know of someone who needs a dentist. Your PPC campaign accomplishes more than just instant conversions.
If your dental office is ready to combat a COVID-19 resurgence with a rock-solid Pay Per Click campaign that will keep you ahead of your competitors, now is the right time to get started. Call (970) 672-1212 to schedule a consultation with our team at Pro Impressions Marketing to learn if pay per click for dentists is right for you.
