If you have a dental practice that advertises online, you have no doubt looked into using pay-per-click (PPC) to boost your site’s traffic. PPC is effective in driving traffic to your site, and your business can benefit greatly from adding PPC advertising to its marketing plan. By using AdWords on Google, for instance, your business has access to millions of websites within the Google Display Network. If used correctly, it can generate great brand awareness and can get you leads, which are just not possible through regular marketing campaigns.

Some businesses have a difficult time setting up PPC campaigns correctly, and wind up putting money and effort into a losing battle. Here are a few things that you can do to correctly set up PPC campaign in order to avoid some common pitfalls.

Relevant niche keywords

Target words are what will bring your prospective client to your webpage or landing page. You will need to decide on which words will work best to bring your target to you. These targets will be searching for specific words through their search engine of choice. You need to decipher which ones they use the most and create an ad campaign based on those words. Once your keywords have been decided on, you should organize them and choose the most effective. Having ads that speak to different needs are good to keep in mind as well. Once your prospects have clicked on your words a few times, the words are assigned a quality score. High scores mean great AdWords.

Consistency between ad & landing page

Having a PPC campaign means having a page for your prospects to go to upon clicking the ad. Your landing page must look like the ad it was linked to in order for your prospect to remain on the page. If the pages are inconsistent with the ad, the prospect may think it’s a scam, or that they were directed to the wrong page. Either way, your dental practice will have lost credibility in the eyes of your prospects.

Optimize ads for phone calls

Generating phone calls is another bonus your PPC campaign can provide. The return on investment per call is pretty clear. Google will charge your practice for clicks on advertisements, while your prospect calling you is free. Tailoring certain PPC campaigns to focus on the call-in aspect will save you money and will help you get the most out of your PPC ads.

Maximize the character limit

By using ad extensions, you will be able to stretch the amount of information you can provide to your prospective clients. Since AdWords only allows so many characters per ad, you need to use these extensions in order to get your marketing information out to them. There are many extensions offered through Google, such as location, product, SiteLink, social media, and seller rating. These extensions allow you to put different information on the ad that you believe could be beneficial to your prospect, such as the business location, or Facebook page.