How much do you need to spend on Google Ads to get new patients?
Everyone talks about how important Google Adwords is to your marketing strategy, but how do you know if it’s a good investment?
In this video, we tell you where Google Adwords fits into the overall marketing strategy, the different components that need to be in place to make your ad campaign a success, and how many patients you can expect to get from your Google Adwords investment.
Marketing Strategy
Successful orthodontic marketing is shaped like a funnel, with a large number of strangers being gradually reduced to prospects, leads, scheduled appointments, and eventually, new starts. Google Adwords is at the top of the funnel because online ads make strangers aware of your practice and turn them into prospects. Your website, calls to action, office staff, email marketing, and social media then all work to convert these prospects into leads, new appointments, and patients.
Our marketing process adds a step before the top of the funnel and at the bottom of the funnel. Because having an effective brand is so important, an assessment of everything that represents your practice, from your logo to your voice, should occur before you even begin introducing strangers to your practice.
Our next three steps - attract, convert, and start - correspond to the original parts of the funnel, leading people to your practice and turning them into patients. Our other additional step at the end is to continue to nurture and satisfy your patients, which will turn them into super fans who bring referrals to your practice.
Our Orthodontic Marketing Process
We add reviewing your brand to the traditional inbound marketing strategy to ensure it accurately represents you and your orthodontic practice before attracting, engaging, converting and delighting new patients.
The right look and voice increases prospects, patients and profits.
Discover who your ideal patients are and make a meaningful connection.
Provide useful content as a reward for those who connect back.
Turn prospects into patients with persuasive
follow-up.
Don't underestimate the power of opinions or the value of referrals.
Understanding this orthodontic market strategy is important because even the largest ad budget will not lead to new starts if the rest of the process is missing or doesn’t work.
Search ads in Google show up at the top of the first search engine results page (SERP), making them the first thing someone sees when they search for a topic. The more you pay for an ad, the higher it will appear. Ads should include keywords your prospects would be looking for and a link to a quality website with clear calls to action.
In the first 11 minutes of the video, we use the search “luxury home builders” to see what an ad looks like in Google and to discuss what should be included on the landing page for it to effectively turn the prospect into a lead.
Google Adwords Calculator
Using industry and client averages, we have created a calculator that shows approximately how many patients you can expect to get based on your Google Adwords investment. However, it’s important to keep in mind the amount you spend is only one of the many factors that affect the end result.
- Your ads need to be well-written and based on your patient personas, so they appeal to your target market and reduce the cost per click.
- The website or landing page your prospects are sent to needs to have an obvious, enticing call to action that makes them either call your office or provide their email or phone number so you can contact them.
- The staff your leads interact with need to be knowledgeable and personable, and should encourage every lead to schedule a consultation.
- If a lead does not become a patient after the initial contact or consultation, they need to continue to be nurtured through emails, promotions, follow-up calls, and social media.
If any of these factors are subpar or non-existent, the return on your ad spend will be diminished.
Examples of how to use our Adwords calculator are provided in the last half of the video (about 11:20). To apply it to your practice, download the calculator below and plug in your own numbers. Once you have a formula that works and your ad results become predictable, you can increase or decrease your ad budget based on how many new starts you want each month.
Click below to download the Calculator
