Pay Per Click advertising is a brilliant way to drive extremely targeted traffic directly to a conversion page on your site. If you have been following this blog you know that conversions are all that matter. See my post on converting web traffic to patients on this blog. You must convert traffic to your site into new patients for your dental or physicians practice.

I won’t go into the setting up of Adwords as Google has made a living out of making it easy.

Once you are set up, you will create a campaign. When conducting online marketing campaigns for doctors, dentists, and others in the professional services industry I always begin setting up a Pay Per Click campaign by targeting my geographical area.

1. Click on ‘+New online campaign’

2. Select ‘Start with placements’

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After you name your campaign and ad group you will:

3. Click on ‘Change targeting’. Notice that the default target is the entire United States. Not good.

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This will open up a Google Maps interface and you will need to:

4. Type in the location of your practice. You can use zip codes, counties, cities, etc.

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Adwords will create a shaded box that indicates where your ads will be displayed. Play with this until you are happy with the zone they are using. Use different methods (e.g. zip codes, counties, etc)

5. When you are satisfied with the geographical area, click on ‘Done’

You will now be able to target potential patients by Language. I recommend selecting each language unless your practice targets a particular Language.

Notice that your location targeting at the bottom has changed to your selection.

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6. Click on ‘Continue’ and begin setting up your Ads.

Look for a post about building good Pay Per Click Ads when you are improving your online marketing strategies for your dental or physicians practice.

Do: Set up Google Adwords to target only the geographical area that your patients live and work.

Don’t: Throw money away by attracting web traffic from all over the country or world.

If you have questions or comments please post them in the Comments section. I will respond to any questions you might have.

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SEO is a long term strategy for your site. It requires a site to demonstrate a slow build up of quality content over the course of time. It requires (ideally) a natural build up of links from quality sites. It requires the building of trust with the search engines.

This is the argument for incorporating Pay Per Click advertising in your short term online marketing plan. When the search engines don’t trust you yet, you can pay them to trust you. However, there are sound arguments for continuing to pay for that space on search results pages well after your long term SEO strategies are paying off. If you have been properly measuring the results of your PPC campaigns for positive ROI, here are some reasons to continue:

Real Estate
Paying for space on the search results pages occupies valuable space “above the fold” on a search results page. This is space that your competitors are not occupying.

Conversion
There is evidence that searchers will click on a paid result when they are ready to purchase. As searchers move from the information gathering stage of purchasing (organic results) to the buying stage data suggests that they are likely to click on paid results.

Control
Paid results are infinitely easier to control. You can send your potential customer to the exact page with the exact product with the exact promotion that you have devised. With a clear conversion goal, you are likely to see a sale.

Second Impression
If a searcher has seen you in both the organic results and the paid results you are giving yourself a second opportunity for them to recognize you as someone that can provide the product or service they are looking for.

Do: Run your PPC ads at the outset of your online marketing plan as a short term fix.

Don’t: Stop running your PPC ads with positive ROI when your long term SEO pays off.