Local Service Ads for Dentists: Boost Your Leads

Dental experts must know how to effectively employ advanced promotional methods and marketing technologies to boost their practice’s growth. In today’s competitive digital landscape, local service ads for dentists have emerged as one of the most popular ways to attract new patients for dental practices. Local service ads or LSAs help dental experts achieve a prime position in search engine results and build trust among their potential and existing patients. This way they can promote their treatment offerings more impactfully and expand their practice on digital platforms. 

A study claims that local service ads receive 13.8% of local search engine result page clicks. These statistics show the significance of local service ads for any professional no matter which industry they work in. Many may think that healthcare practitioners like dentists don’t need proper marketing plans to promote their offerings and grow their practice online. However, this is completely a myth as dental professionals also require effective marketing strategies to stand out in the competitive healthcare industry. This is where local service ads come into the picture with their uncountable benefits. 

Sometimes traditional marketing techniques are not enough for dental professionals. LSAs seamlessly fill that gap and provide numerous marketing opportunities for dentists. No matter how top-notch treatment services a dentist offers, he/she must effectively promote these services to reach a wider audience. These ads help a dental practice show up on the first page of search engines with an eye-catching “Google Screened” badge. This badge prominently shows a dentist’s credibility and brand authority in the market. 

Here we have provided you with a comprehensive guide to create local service ads for dental experts and achieve the desired online visibility. Additionally, you’ll get to learn the benefits dentists can leverage with local service ads and the challenges they can face. But let’s learn more about local service ads for dental professionals before we dive into the details. 

What Are Local Service Ads for Dentists?

It refers to a Google advertising approach that allows dental professionals to connect with local dental care service seekers directly through search results. These local service ads usually appear at the top of Google search results. Patients who seek local dental treatments can initiate instant phone and messaging contact with a dentist through these local service ads. Google searches the location of the potential patients and combines the knowledge of their transactional search intent to serve the ads of local dental care businesses. Local service ads for dentists can be considered an indispensable tool of digital marketing that displays dental practices or clinics as Google’s priority listings on relevant search results. These ads actively present your dental practice to potential patients within your service location. 

Traditional Google ads are fundamentally different from local service ads due to the latter’s strong connection with Google’s ‘Guaranteed ads’. It actively inspects the licensing status and insurance certification to verify professional service providers. These ads effortlessly surpass traditional advertising as they offer unmatched visibility to your dental practice and position it at the pinnacle of Google search results. Dentists can establish trust among their potential patients with these Google-guaranteed ads. Local dental care businesses can leverage these guaranteed ads to attract superior leads for their practice. 

However, they must undergo an extensive verification process by Google to receive the confirmation to run local ad campaigns. They must live in their service area and be genuinely interested in your treatment service offerings. In the past few years, local service ads have significantly transformed the dental care businesses and ensured exceptional growth for them. However, they must undergo an extensive verification process by Google to receive the confirmation to run local ad campaigns. 

LSA connects dental care professionals to their local community the conventional pay-per-click model doesn’t. It ensures that your dental practice is the first thing your potential patients see when they search for the services your clinic offers. The process of verification and multiple approvals may seem complex to dentists. So they can consult with a professional healthcare marketing agency to avail of their local service and solutions. 

Benefits of Local Service Ads for Dentists to Boost More Leads

Local service ads for dentists offer you numerous advantages that traditional Google ads don’t. Dental experts can significantly benefit from local service ads as these provide more advantages compared to traditional advertising methods. 

It helps dental experts achieve their desired online visibility and attract more potential patients to their practices. Dentists who want to effectively promote their service offerings and thrive on digital platforms must consider Google local service ads. Here are 5 key benefits of local service ads that will help you understand why you must invest in this for your dental practice. 

1. Increased Visibility

Dentists like any other healthcare professionals must have a strong online presence to showcase their credibility and brand authority. Patients are more likely to choose a dental clinic if they see a positive online reputation and a robust online presence. 

Local service ads for dentists help dentists showcase their treatment expertise as a trustworthy resource. Additionally, it offers maximum visibility and a top search engine result page position to dental practices. It ensures your dental care practice appears above traditional Google ads and organic search results. 

2. High-Quality Leads

Local service ads help you generate high-quality leads for your dental clinic. It ensures your practice reaches the right audience who have actively searched for the treatment your clinic offers in your locality. This is a great way to acquire local patients and retain them for repeat business.  

The leads dentists generate through local service ads are of greater value as these potential patients are more likely to schedule an appointment. This is also directly associated with better conversion rates and unparalleled revenue growth of your dental clinic. 

3. Google Guaranteed Badge

It is one of the most significant benefits that dentists can leverage with Google local service ads. Google Guaranteed badge is like the extra feather on a hat that enhances the online reputation of dental practice. It showcases authority and positions a clinic as a thought leader in the market. 

The badge influences the potential patient’s decision to choose the clinic’s treatment services due to its verification status. A dental practice can gain more credibility because of the license verification, insurance and background checks. 

4. Reviews and Ratings

Local service ads for dental professionals make your potential patients encounter the reviews and ratings your dental clinic has received till now. They prominently see the reviews that effectively encourage them to reach out to your clinic. 

It portrays your dental clinic as more trustworthy to your prospective patients who seek dental care treatment services. Reviews and ratings play a huge role in the higher conversion rates of a dental clinic. Additionally, positive reviews result in a positive online reputation for your dental clinic. 

5. Pay per Lead Model

One of the biggest disadvantages of traditional paid advertisements is that it makes dental professionals pay for every ad click even though these payments may not lead to conversions. However, local service ads can offer numerous benefits in this context. Because LSA makes dentists pay only when their system notifies their practice about incoming patient inquiries from local prospects. 

This pay-per-lead model can benefit a clinic in many ways. A dentist can optimize his/her advertising budget and reduce the wasted click costs of the ad campaign. 

The Process of How Local Service Ads Work for Dentists 

The local service advertising model significantly differs from traditional Google ads. The difference lies in the display of local service ads as the display occurs when the potential patient’s location matches the dentist’s service location. Similarly, their treatment requirements must align with the dentist’s service offerings. Your local service ads will exclusively appear to those potential patients who perform a dentist search online while situated in your defined dental care service territory. Let’s know how the entire process of local service ads for dental experts works. 

1. Imagine a person who is actively searching for reliable dental care treatments makes an online search query to find a local dental care provider. 
2. Then your local service ad will appear at one of the top positions in Google’s search results. It will show the key information of your dental practice like the contact details and operation hours. Additionally, it will flaunt your dental practice’s Google Guaranteed badge. 
3. Then the potential patient can reach out to you either through direct calls or message communication. 
4. Local service ads work according to a pay-per-lead model that allows you to pay only for those clicks that will convert into leads. This way you can minimize your wasted click-spending and leverage meaningful outcomes. 
5. You can use a different payment structure and completely focus on qualified leads with effective local service and strategies for your dental practice. 

Step-by-Step Guide to Create Google Local Service Ads for Dentists

This process is quite complex yet straightforward and requires dental professionals to follow certain significant steps to create impactful and promotional Google local service ads for dentists. You can enhance the performance of your local service ads if you follow this comprehensive guide. Let’s have a look.

1. Check the Eligibility of Your Dental Practice for Google Local Service Ads

Your dental practice must be eligible for local service ads and you need to submit certain significant information about your practice to get the approval. There are some eligibility criteria that your dental practice must meet to sign up for Google local service ads. Here are some eligibility requirements for dentists regarding local service ads.

1. You must have a valid business license for your dental clinic in the state you offer the treatment services. Additionally, you need to have an active dental license and expiration of your dental practice.
2. General liability insurance is mandatory to get approval for local service ads for dentists. Similarly, professional liability insurance plays a huge role as a significant eligibility criterion.
3. A dentist must upload proof of malpractice insurance and have an active NPI for verification.
4. Your dental practice must have a minimum number of Google reviews to showcase its credibility.
5. Google generally conducts background checks on dental care businesses and professionals via a third-party service such as Evident ID. It effectively verifies the criminal, legal, and professional history of dental care experts to showcase their trustworthiness. Google local service ads for dental experts require them to submit relevant information like their contact information and business hours.

Furthermore, you must ensure your dental practice’s Google Business Profile is complete, completely optimized, and contains accurate information. It may take you a few weeks to get the approval for your Google local service ads but it can vary based on your treatment service areas. The approval process can take more than the mentioned time if any complexity arises during verification. Create a Google Business Profile (GBP) for Your Dental Practice 

Google Business Profile (GBP) is your dental clinic’s online shop front that showcases every significant information related to your dental practice. You must create A GBP and ensure that it is completely optimized. You need to ensure your GBP contains accurate information about your practice that can improve your practice’s online visibility and rankings in local Google searches. You need to claim your dental business on Google listings to make it prominently visible on Google Maps.

How Can You Create GBP for Your Dental Practice?

1. You need to first claim your dental business listing and verify the accuracy of all the information. You need to ensure your practice is updated with all the latest information like your dental clinic’s address details and contact information.
2. You must choose relevant categories for your GBP to make your profile more relevant to your potential patient’s search intent. You can choose categories like ‘cosmetic dentist’ or ‘dental services’ to increase the relevancy.
3. High-quality and attractive images can enhance your practice’s credibility. You can use images of your dental clinic’s interior environment, staff members, clinic infrastructure or any advanced technology you have employed in your clinic. These images will showcase a lot of positive attributes of your expertise and help you attract more patients.
4. We suggest you encourage positive reviews from your existing patients regarding the experience they had with your dental treatments. You can influence them to leave their reviews on your GBP as a good number of positive reviews will reflect your commitment towards excellent healthcare services.
5. Another important thing you must do is to add an appointment scheduling button in your dental clinic’s GBP. This process will streamline the process of appointment booking as it prevents them from redirecting to another page. 

2. Set A Budget for Your Ad Campaign

You must decide on a budget for the local service ad campaign for your dental care business. Google allows you to control your spending and set a maximum budget for monthly campaigns. The cost of the leads that you can generate through the local service ads for dentists varies based on diverse factors like location and competition of your service area. You must not overspend your local advertising budget and make mindful decisions to ensure the success of your local ad campaigns. 

However, the budget you allocate for your local ad campaign largely depends on your dental clinic’s revenue growth. Below we have explained how you can intelligently set the local service ad campaign budget for your dental practice. 

Tips to Set A Budget for Your Local Service Ad Campaign 

1. You must analyze your niche dental care market to understand the level of competition it has in the location where you offer treatment services. It will also help you identify your potential patient profile and understand the lead cost. 
2. It is crucial to set realistic goals regarding your new patient acquisition and monthly return on investment (ROI) through your local service ads. 
3. It is safe to start with a moderate budget to check the impact and performance of your local ad service. This way you can understand whether your local ads make your dental practice rank higher on Google search results. 
4. Additionally, you can adjust the budget or reduce the allocated budget based on the lead quality and cost. 
5. We advise you to adjust bids accordingly to prioritize your specific dental treatment services or locations. It will help you achieve your desired lead volume within your allocated time frame.

3. Verify Your Dental Care Business

Google requires dental care experts to complete a verification process before they sign up for local service ads. The process involves the submission of important documents to prove the credentials of the dental care specialists. They need to submit a valid dental license, their insurance information, and a background check of their staff members. Additionally, they can get a Google Guaranteed badge after successful verification

This information effectively proves the business legitimacy of your dental practice. Google verifies these details to examine whether your dental care business is eligible to run local service ads. This verification significantly helps local service providers of dental treatments to enhance their local presence in Google Maps.

Steps to Verify Your Dental Care Business for Local Service Ads

1. You need to log in to your Google ad account and click on the Local Service Ads section. After that, you must provide all the necessary information about your dental care practices in that sector in respective spaces.
2. Local service ads for dentists also require you to upload copies of important documents like your state business registration, NPI (National Provider Identifier) number, and liability insurance details.
3. You need to complete the process of essential background checks based on your dental service location.
4. You have to wait for the completion of your Google verification and you are ready to run local service ad campaigns for your dental practice once Google verifies it. 

4. Get the Google Guarantee Badge

It is the one attribute that differentiates Google local service ads from normal Google ads. Google Guarantee badge helps dental experts make their practice prominently visible on search results for local patients before they choose other dental care providers. Local service ads feature a Google Guarantee badge that significantly increases your patient trust. Dental practices that Google approves for local service ads are awarded with these badges which adds a layer of credibility. Let’s learn how your dental care business can achieve this badge. 

1. Dental experts must ensure that their practice is completely eligible for local service ads.
2. They can start the automated process to assess the suitability of their dental practice with LSAs. 
3. Your dental practice must pass a series of Google screenings and verification processes to get the Guarantee badge. 

Google may take 2-5 weeks to review the documents you have submitted and get back to you. Google mostly refunds patients for the dental treatment they have taken from you if the patient is not satisfied with the service quality. However, these decisions can not be considered as a substitute for any insurance or legal action your patients might take against your treatment services. 

5. Sign Up for Local Service Ads

It is one of the most crucial steps to create local service ads for dental experts. Though the step is quite straightforward, dental experts need to remember certain important things before they sign up for these ads. They need to visit the Google local services website and sign up for their account. It requires them to provide some important information about their dental practice or clinic like their practice’s name, contact details, and service areas. They may need to mention the name of the treatment service they offer as these details are essential to create a profile. 

Significant Steps to Complete the Sign-up Process for Local Service Ads

1. You need to make sure your Google Business Profile is updated with all the latest information about your dental practice. 
2. Additionally, you must add a detailed description of your dental practice and the services you offer. 
3. You need to add professional photos of your practice and clinic to showcase the authenticity of your dental expertise. 
4. Some essential documents like practice licenses and insurance are also needed for these local service ads sign-up process. 
5. Furthermore, you must ensure to accurately specify the geographic area of your service to attract local patients and make a prominent position in the market. 
6. Dentists need to mention a budget that they can spend on local service ads. 
7. You are now ready to manage and monitor your ad performances. Google also allows you to make necessary adjustments in these settings based on your preferences. 

6. Optimize Your Local Service Ads

It is extremely crucial to optimize the local service ads for your dental practice as it can help you create targeted ad campaigns and ensure maximum reach. This way you can use relevant keywords like ‘best dentist near me’ or ‘affordable dental care in town’ to focus on hyper-local targeting for your service ads. We suggest you highlight your unique dental care service names in your keywords to reach the potential patients who have searched for the same services. 

Additionally, you need to incorporate high-quality images and actively encourage reviews from your satisfied patients. You can even adjust the bidding and patient targeting strategies after you thoroughly research about local audience. 

Key Tips to Optimize Your Dental Practice’s Local Service Ads

1. Dentists must effectively utilize location-targeting facilities to reach their potential local patients within their service area. 
2. They need to appropriately explain their practice’s USPs in the local service ad copy like specialized service facilities or same-day appointments. 
3. The call-to-actions you use in your ad copy must clearly reflect what you want your potential patients to do like ‘Sign up for Free Consultation’ or ‘Schedule an Appointment’. 
4. Strategies of local service ads for dental professionals require you to encourage your satisfied patients to leave their reviews on Google and other platforms.
5. Features like call extensions in local service ads allow the patients to directly call your dental clinic from the ad itself. You must know how to leverage these features for your practice’s benefit. 
6. You need to regularly monitor key metrics like conversion and click-through rates to understand the performance and adjust your ad campaign strategy. 
7. You can get another benefit from the local service ads for your dental practice if you highlight the latest updates like limited-period offers or treatment service discounts in your ad copy. 

7. Manage Your Leads

You can leverage numerous benefits for your dental practice if you know how to effectively manage the leads you generate from your local service ads. Dentists need to access their Google Ads accounts and navigate to the ‘leads’ section that will help them see their incoming leads and update the status of the leads like whether it is booked or pending. It also allows them to respond to the messages the potential leads have sent and add notes to every lead. 

Dental experts can seamlessly follow up with their potential patients to increase the chances of conversion. One of the best facilities Google local service ads offer you is that you can manage these leads through the local service app on your mobile. This helps you analyze the quality of the patient leads you have generated through your local service ads and track the conversion rates.

8. Track and Optimize the Performance of Your Local Service Ad Campaign 

Sometimes dentists struggle to boost their leads with traditional PPC ads. That’s when Google local service ads come into play as it offers them a range of exceptional advantages for their practice. If you don’t measure your local service and campaign success, you cannot reach the highest potential of your campaign efforts no matter how perfect your campaign is. Success measurement will help you understand its effectiveness and make thoughtful decisions to optimize your dental care ad campaign accordingly. Furthermore, it provides them insights regarding their ad performance and helps them identify the areas that require adjustments. 

5 Factors to Measure the Success of Your Local Service Ads for Dentists

1. Ad spending is one of the first things dentists must track to run their campaigns with the allocated budget. They need to track the amount of money spent on their local service ad campaign for their dental practices.
2. Dental experts must track the number of times their potential patients have seen their dental care ad. 
3. Additionally, they need to check the number of leads they have successfully generated from the local service ads to track the conversion rates. 
4. Another significant factor dental experts must track is the return on ad spend (ROAS). This helps them to identify the changes in the revenue that they have generated from the ad campaign compared to the amount they have spent on the ad. 

3 Common Local Service Ad Challenges Dentists Can Face 

It offers dentists a beneficial opportunity to attract new patients to their practice and retain the existing ones through engagement. However, there are also some challenges dental experts can face while creating local service ads for their clinics. Below we have mentioned the three most common LSA challenges to help you prevent these issues that can ruin your marketing efforts. 

1. Approval Related Difficulties

Local service ads for dental professionals require you to undergo an extensive verification process. You need to submit all the essential documents and carefully follow the instructions to get the approval to run local service ads. Google has their eligibility criteria that dentists must meet to get started with the process. You may have to wait a significant amount of time to get the approval or face some documentation-related issues to verify your dental care business. 

2. Lead Management

There is no use of leads if you cannot manage them properly. You must have a comprehensive system to effectively manage the leads generated from your local service ads. You need to swiftly respond to each lead and follow up with them after some intervals. Many times, dentists struggle to promptly respond to a large number of leads which often leads to failure of ad campaigns. Prompt responses showcase your commitment towards exceptional patient care. 

3. Working with Google Support 

You need to work with Google support for a long period when you go through your dental practice’s verification process. You must be patient and persistent enough to follow their every rules and regulations very carefully. Additionally, you must ensure to provide them with every necessary document like your licenses or insurance. We suggest you cooperate with them to resolve any issue that may occur during the verification process. 

Conclusion 

Local service ads come with a list of advantages for every business including healthcare. Dentists like any other medical professionals can leverage these benefits to boost their advertising efforts and grow their online patient base. Apart from a Google Guaranteed badge, it offers exceptional visibility for a dental practice on digital platforms and helps it to effectively advertise the treatment service facilities. Every dental clinic must consider local services for dentists to stand out in this competitive healthcare industry. 

However, dentists must undergo an extensive verification process by Google to get the approval to run local service ad campaigns. We hope that our mentioned tips and strategies will help you effectively create and run these ads for local patient acquisition. 

Additional Resources:

9 Marketing Strategies for Dentists: The Ultimate Guide to Online Success