Who it is for
PPC for dentists and clinics: a diary that fills, inside the rules
Google Ads for a dental practice or clinic is judged on one thing: appointments booked, by phone or online, for treatments the practice wants more of. Everything else on this page serves that. It is also the sector with the most rules around what an ad may say and who it may follow: the GDC's guidance on advertising, the CAP Code's line on prescription-only medicines, and Google's own healthcare and personalised advertising policies. We manage Google Ads for practices and clinics from the Growth tier at £399 a month, flat, whatever the clicks cost.
What a clinic account is built around
- Treatments, not the practice name. One campaign per treatment worth advertising, each landing on its own page.
- The phone. Call reporting from week one; the schedule follows reception's hours.
- A radius people will travel. Wider for implants and aligners, tighter for hygiene and emergencies.
- Copy you have approved. Every claim checked against the regulator's rules before it runs.
Treatment by treatment
Which treatments earn a campaign, and how each is judged
A practice does not advertise dentistry; it advertises the four or five treatments where a new patient is worth the click. Each has a different search, a different radius and a different idea of a lead.
Implants and full-arch work
Searched by treatment and price, from a wide radius, over weeks. The page explains the process, the consultation and finance if you offer it; the lead is a consultation booked, and the value justifies a high cost per lead.
Aligners and orthodontics
Searched by brand as often as by treatment. Bidding on the brand terms is allowed as keywords; the ad text has to stay inside the brand's and the GDC's rules. The lead is a consultation, often booked online.
Emergency appointments
Searched in pain, on a phone, now. Tight radius, call-only ads in reception hours, the number in the first line of the page. The lead is a call answered; a missed call here is the most expensive miss in the account.
New patient examinations and hygiene
The bread and butter: private new patient searches within a short drive. Lower value per lead, so the cost per booking has to be low, and the online diary does most of the converting.
Whitening and cosmetic
Price-led and comparison-led. The page needs the price or a from-price and photographs of your own work, taken with consent. Superlatives and guarantees are where ads in this area breach the guidance.
Aesthetics, physio, optometry and other clinics
Same mechanics, different regulator. For injectables the CAP Code means the ad promotes the consultation, never the prescription-only product by name.
The rules
Three sets of rules, and what each one changes in the account
The GDC. Its guidance on advertising applies to every registrant's publicity, ads included: legal, decent, honest and truthful; not misleading; no claims that cannot be substantiated; the practice's regulatory details where required. In practice that means no “best”, no “painless”, no guaranteed outcomes, and photographs only of your own patients with their consent. The landing page also carries the CQC registration for a practice in England, because patients look for it.
The CAP Code. Prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public. For an aesthetics clinic that means the ads and the page promote the consultation and the practitioner, not the product, and the account does not bid on the product's brand name as a headline claim.
Google's healthcare and personalised advertising policies. Some healthcare advertisers need certification before ads run; general dentistry does not, but the policy is checked at setup for anything the clinic offers. And health is a sensitive category for personalised ads, so remarketing lists built from treatment pages cannot be used to follow people around. The budget goes to Search, where intent is typed, not inferred.
Bookings
Counting a booking properly, and answering the phone
A clinic converts by phone and by online diary, and the account has to see both. The diary's confirmation is a conversion; the form is a conversion; a call over a minute is a conversion, with call reporting on every ad and the practice's number swapped on the landing page so the source is known. Each is counted once, and none of them is a page view.
Then reception. A practice that answers the phone from nine to five with a lunch gap loses the emergency searches at 12:30 and the implant enquiries at 6pm, so the ad schedule follows the hours calls are answered, and where the practice adds an online booking option the schedule can widen. Monthly, reception tells us which calls booked; that goes back into the account as the number the bidding learns from, and into the report as the cost per booked appointment, which is the only figure a practice owner needs to read. The mechanics are in the call tracking guide.
Radius and negatives
How far a patient will travel is a setting, per treatment
A person with toothache will drive ten minutes; a person researching implants will drive an hour for the right practice. So the emergency campaign runs on a tight radius with presence targeting, and the implant campaign on a wider one, each with its own budget, so the cheap urgent clicks never starve the expensive considered ones. Search terms are read weekly for the towns outside the radius that still leak in through close variants.
The negative list for a practice starts with NHS registration searches if you are not taking NHS patients, jobs (dental nurse, receptionist), courses, and the treatments you do not offer, and grows every Monday from what the account actually matched.
The page
One page per treatment, written to book, checked against the guidance
The homepage of a practice is built to reassure existing patients. An ad click needs a page built to book: the treatment in the first line, the price or a from-price where you publish one, who does the treatment and their GDC number, what happens at the consultation, your own photographs with consent, the online diary or the number in the first screen, and the CQC and GDC details where patients look for them. It loads in under about three seconds on a phone, because a patient in pain will not wait. We build or fix these pages as part of the landing page service, and the copy goes to you before it goes live, because the claims are yours under the guidance, not ours.
Related
Where this connects
PPC for solicitors
The other regulated, high-value, appointment-led sector.
Remarketing
What it can and cannot do for a healthcare advertiser.
Pricing
Growth for most practices; Starter for one treatment in one town.
Get a quote
Your treatments, your town and what a new patient is worth; the plan in reply.
Questions from practices and clinics
Can we remarket to people who visited our implant page?
Not with personalised ads based on that visit. Google's personalised advertising policy treats health conditions and treatments as a sensitive category, so audience lists built from pages about a condition or treatment cannot be used to target people. Remarketing for a clinic is therefore limited to general audiences, and most of the budget belongs in Search, where the person has just typed what they want.
What can and cannot go in the ad copy?
The GDC's guidance on advertising applies to everything a registered dental professional publishes: it must be legal, decent, honest and truthful, must not mislead, and must carry the GDC registration where the rules require it. Under the CAP Code prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public, so an aesthetics clinic advertises the consultation, not the product. Before-and-after images and superlatives are where most clinic ads go wrong, and ours go to you for approval before they run.
Should we advertise NHS or private?
Private, almost always. A search for NHS dentist registration is high in volume and low in value, and if the practice is not taking NHS patients the click is wasted twice. Ads for a practice go on the treatments that pay: implants, aligners, whitening, hygiene plans, emergency appointments, and on the private new-patient examination.
How do you count a booking?
A call over a minute, an online booking completed, or a form submitted, each counted once. Where the practice uses an online diary, the booking confirmation page or the diary's own event is the conversion; where it books by phone, call reporting counts the call and reception tells us monthly which calls booked. Missed calls are the biggest leak in most clinic accounts, so the schedule follows reception's hours.
What does PPC for a dental practice cost with you?
A flat fee: £249 a month for spend up to £1,000, £399 up to £3,000, £599 up to £8,000. A single-site practice running two or three treatment campaigns is usually on Growth. One practice per treatment area and town on the monthly plans, so we are never bidding against you for your own patients.
Do you work with aesthetics clinics, physios and opticians as well as dentists?
Yes. The mechanics are the same, appointments booked by phone and form, and so are the constraints: healthcare policy at Google, the CAP Code, and the professional regulator's rules on advertising. The sector name changes; the routine does not.
Tell us the treatments you want more of and the hours reception answers.
The reply has the fee, the campaign shape and, if the account is already running, how much of last quarter went on searches that could never have booked.