Orthotown March 2022 - 59

2
PAID SOCIAL
1
PAID SEARCH
With paid search, advertisers pay search engines
such as Google and Bing to place ads on their platforms.
Google is the major player here, but you also should
consider testing out ads on Bing, especially you're in
an area with a concentration of government employees.
(Most government employees are issued a computer
where Bing is the default search engine, so running ads
on Bing would be a great way to get in front of those
individuals. Outside of this scenario, Google is defi nitely
where your advertising dollars should go.)
Click volume for orthodontic-related search terms
has increased across the board year over year as more
consumers rely less on professional referrals and leverage
the power of Google search. Over the past 12 months,
there has been growing emphasis on paid search for
orthodontic specialists, so costs for running Google ads
at a national level are steadily increasing. Gone are the
days where you could try it out on your own with a few
hundred dollars; to see true success, you must have a
large enough budget and a digital marketing professional
to manage your campaigns. But rest assured that if your
budget is right and the digital marketing pro is doing
their part, you'll see results in month one!
Recommended budgets and benchmarks for
performance will vary based on factors such as local
search volume and competition, but as a general rule of
thumb you should launch a paid search campaign with
no less than $1,000 for your fi rst month and expect cost
per leads to be less than $100.
If you want to grow your practice and are ready to
invest in digital marketing, paid search should be one of
the channels-if not the only one-you focus on to drive
new patient leads.
Social media is another channel where paid advertising
is a great way to not only increase brand awareness but
also generate new leads. Meta (Facebook, Instagram,
WhatsApp and Messenger) has a combined 259 million
monthly active users in the United States and Canada.
More than 81% of people use Instagram to help
research products and services! This means that no matter
whether you choose to participate in social media activity
organically or via paid placements, patients and prospective
patients are looking up your practice on social media. So
before diving into a complex paid social campaign, be sure
your profi le is updated to be an accurate representation of
your practice-one that you would be proud of.
Similar to paid search, it's important to engage a
professional to manage your paid social ads. If the practice
wants to boost a post or two to increase engagement, it can
be a fun and low-cost way to gain a bit of brand awareness.
But if your goal is to increase leads and get serious about
local brand awareness, make sure to hire a pro.
There are many different ways to run campaigns on
social media, including:
* Image ads.
* Carousel ads.
* Interactive ads (Messenger ads and Stories ads).
* Lead form ads.
* Video ads.
The best way to fi gure out what type of ad will work
best for your area and patient groups you are targeting
is to test.
Social media advertising is considered " low intent "
because users aren't actively searching for an orthodontic
provider, like they would be if they were on Google; instead,
social media ads are interrupting users' entertainment feed
scrolling. Ad placement can still be very effective, but it's
important to run multiple versions of ads simultaneously
and change up the creative quarterly. If the creative is
changed too frequently, then the campaigns aren't given
enough runway to optimize and see results.
As with paid search, it's important to have a large
enough paid social budget so your ads are running long
enough and can gather enough data to properly optimize.
A budget of $30-$35 per day is a great place to start.
orthotown.com \\ MARCH 2022 59
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Orthotown March 2022

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