Smiles by Gurms is an award-winning cosmetic dental surgery based in Leicester, specialising in treatments such as Invisalign and dental implants.
With their customer base firmly at the heart of their business strategy, Smiles by Gurms approached Axies Digital in 2021 to develop its PPC advertising activity to generate more leads, boost the number of phone calls into the practice and improve revenue. They knew their offering was strong, but they were unable to replicate the strong results their competitors were experiencing from their PPC traffic.
As a cosmetic dentistry business, Smiles by Gurms faced unique challenges when it comes to marketing their services. Traditional advertising methods, e.g. highlighting common dental problems, were not effective in reaching their target audience, and if we had gone down the traditional route, standing out from the competition would have been even more difficult due to the nature and pricing of cosmetic dentistry.
Google Ads are an effective way to reach potential patients who are searching for cosmetic dental procedures online or could be interested in them based on their lifestyle. However, there are some challenges that we had to overcome:
To overcome these challenges, we put special emphasis on making sure that the keywords we select are the right keywords to begin with, along with interest targeting to match the general lifestyle of the target audience, e.g. targeting fans of branded clothing and high-end cars. Staying on the trend, we made sure that the language used in the ad copy reflects the premium nature of the service, and that our call to actions were appropriate for what we needed to achieve in this case.
After updating and testing the ads for 3 months, we achieved a total of 50 calls, of which 20% converted. The average value of each of these closed calls is over £5,000.
After running 2 Google Ads for 3 months, this brought in £130,000 of new business. Following this success, we are now running 5 ads on 3x the budget and we will be introducing YouTube ads to push for further growth.
Starting with a full audit of the account, we cleaned up the structure and focused targeting on terms that were likely to result in a sale. To ensure our process was conducive to improving quality score and increase relevancy between search terms, keywords, ads and landing pages, the following services were provided by Axies Digital;
As cosmetic dentistry is generally perceived as a luxury treatment, there are specific types of people who are going to be interested in these services. Hence, it was important to start off by creating customer personas to attract high-value visitors, leads and customers, which are more likely to retain in the future. To begin, the initial segmentation is based on the following metrics:
After thorough research, (looking at existing contact databases, customer feedback forms, feedback from sale’s teams on the leads they’re interacting with the most), it was clear we needed to narrow down the market.
Next was to identify keywords and the right type of imagery to use for the Google Ads. By using specialist tools, such as Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner, we were able to find the search volume per month and the expected bids to actually get shown as an ad. We also applied our understanding of customer intent for each keyword. For instance, it is a better idea to bid for “Invisalign expert near me”, which could lead to getting a booking for a consultation, than “what is Invisalign”, which might be a person only beginning to try and understand their options. By honing down on the right keywords, we’re able to better connect with the audience and show them relevant messaging to match their level of intent.
Before the Google ads went live, we updated the landing pages on their website to ensure these were relevant for those who engage with the ad, making visitors less likely to click away.
In order to do so, we clarified the flow of the content, starting with:
As Smiles by Gurms is targeting a specific market, SEO, PPC and social media platforms need to have the same consistent messaging so that they all work together – especially because they share the same advertising space: Google.
In this instance, SEO took advantage of PPC’s keyword data, and by optimising page content, we were able to increase quality score (a Google metric) and lower cost-per-click.
