Why Google Ads Fail

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
probably 10 to 15 % of ad spenders on terms that will never deliver a paying customer. And sometimes I’ve heard people say, well, you know, we could go after our competitors by running their brand names. But the problem is, one, it’s just not really a thing to do to patients. Two, is that there’s gonna be a lot of patients that are gonna call you and they’re in the middle of treatment planning. Make sure you’re answering those phone calls. And that is a big area that we’ll see it fail with our.

00:25
own clients for a period of time and that’s how we started talking to All-Star. There’s times that we’ve run ads and we’ll see 22 phone calls, 23 phone calls, that should be 10 new patients, cost 500 bucks to get those patients and then the phone calls don’t get answered.

00:40
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training.

00:49
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Stars Dental Academy. And with me is Patrick Chavasti, Omnipremiere Marketing. Yay. Okay. Our topic is why Google ads fail. You fail. Please welcome Patrick. Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. Thanks for nailing the pronunciation of my last name. I appreciate that. It’s a Chavasti. Chavasti. Pretty easy. It’s a…

01:19
Yeah. Why Google ads fail. They don’t always fail obviously. Um, but for a of dental practices, they will fail. Um, we say it happened time and time again. They just, they just don’t work. And when I say we, mean, but before you even get into why they fail, yeah. But those are listening. What are we talking about? Yeah. So here’s, there’s a couple of different types of Google ads that you can run. There’s actually a bunch, but the two primary, uh, types of campaigns that we’ll see dental practices try.

01:47
before coming to work with us that will fail will be one’s called a local service ad. This is an ad that’ll show up at the top. It’s really a phone call only you only are going to get charged by Google when somebody actually calls you. It’s a Google call tracking number. Google provides that number. That’s one type and then more of your typical Google paid ad that’ll show up when somebody searches a term such as, you know, dentist near me or emergency dentist or something like that. So guaranteed.

02:16
Placement on these ads as long as your bids are high enough that work like an auction But those are the two the big types that we’re talking about today got it

02:26
Okay. So those are, you’re paying Google. I mean, like you said, people know what this is. You should know what this is now. Google is the giant of advertising and you can either miss your specialty being a marketing great marketing company is you have your SEO search engine optimization where you’re optimized for the search engine to find you, but they search engines want to get paid. So you can get on top by

02:53
paying for that or geotargeting a number of things. Okay, so what, so we’re looking into why they fail. Give me like some background, like what percent of dentists are doing it? Is it like, what’s going on in this space? You know, general, many data on what percentage of dentists are actually running. It’s not something that Google provides. Okay. We’re able to anecdotally look and see who’s running ads. There’s some

03:21
third party software tools out there that we can look and see, this, this dentist is running it or in this particular market, let’s just say in Denver, for instance, you know, these are the dentists that are running it. We can see that as long as they have those ads turned on, but it’s hard to say the percentage. I had a gas sign, I would say it’s probably less than 20%, maybe 25%. So a small amount. Yeah. And are most are using a marketing company to do that. They’re not doing themselves to people. I think.

03:47
Probably most are. think there’s a good amount of dentists who try to do it on their own. Especially if they’re a bit younger in their business. Not necessarily age, but it’s a newer startup, that sort of thing. They’ll try to go it alone to save some money. Usually that’s a big mistake. That’ll just be throwing out 100%. There’s others that will use dental specific marketing companies that may or may not provide great service.

04:17
then there’s some that’ll just use agencies that have experience in digital and may be pretty good at running ads, but they’re not niche specific. So they’re not specific to dental practices. And that’s going to be like pushing a bull turret pill too. So those are the three different areas that people run ads are used to run ads before they come to us. All right. I’m getting anxious here. What are the mistakes? Some of the big ones that we see, and these are big ones that we see with agencies that have names and

04:47
dental space, certainly not. We see them running ads towards keywords that don’t actually result in a click from a person who is interested in paying for their services. So in other words, if you go on your market right now and you, you pull up and Google and you search free dentist, free dentist near me, this is a big one that I see free cosmetic dentists. You’ll see that ads will run.

05:15
for these keywords. Dentists are actually paying Google to deliver them a click when somebody uses the term free cosmetic dentists. It’s happening all the time and all over the place. Anybody that’s searching the word free has no intention on paying. They’re probably looking for some type of a Medicaid program or potentially they’re just thinking there’s some pro bono dentist out there that does free cosmetic work. They search the term, they click, they go to your website, they’re excited, they found someone who does free cosmetic dentistry work, they call.

05:45
And your team says, no, you gotta pay. That’s a waste of money. And we see it happen all the time. There’s a lot of other keywords along the lines of free, like free dental or free like dental school. How much does dentist make? That’s another time. That’s another keyword that we’ll see. How much do dentists make? Boom, there’s some dentist running an ad for that. And clearly they’re not trying to educate the public. They’re trying to sell their services, but because they’re not using what Google calls negative keywords. In other words, when somebody uses this term,

06:14
Do not show my ads. So these ads show and it’s huge. would guess it’s probably 10 to 15 % of ad spends are on terms that will never deliver a paying customer. That’s what I was getting to. I remember when we spoke about pay per click, which I may need your help at some point to get back to it, but you said your, your negative keyword negative keyword list should be enormous dwarfing your positive keywords because like you said, if you have free anything,

06:42
Google will find a way to, if you don’t know what you’re doing, the agency or typically the dentist won’t know this, you’re just paying for a bunch of clicks you don’t want. And some agencies are lazy and they won’t do it with respect to that. So it sounds like the mistake is you’re using like this gimmick tree, gimmicks to try to get them. And even if you intended that keyword, it’s not gonna convert well. So stop spending on things that don’t convert.

07:11
Is that also part of this mistake is also the negative not being aware of the negative keywords? It is. Yeah. So that’s a big part of it as just really not having the experience to or, or it’s, know, it also could be not caring enough that that’s going to be a thing too, where they’re just not building out a negative keyword list that will cover all of the crazy things that people can search that might be dental related that you don’t want your, your

07:41
site to show up for. I think our negative keyword list right now is, last I saw it, think it was like 7600 terms. Wow. Negative keyword. How do you find all them? You just, you’re tracking what you don’t want and you add them? So just years and years and years of experience. Some of it’s just literally thinking what’s every negative keyword that somebody, you know, we’ve actually had some office parties where we’re actually like, okay, let’s work on key negative keyword list.

08:10
You’ll see them come in sometimes on, you know, there’s been a few that we’ve only found because somebody actually searched it and we’re like, wow, why would anybody search this keyword, right? This term, this negative term. And, know, that’s some ways that we found them. Some is just common sense. You know, there’s a lot of, we have an adult content negative keyword list. I’m not kidding you. You know, people that want to Wow. Yeah.

08:36
people that want to, you know, really go to a dark place. can imagine some of the dental adult content, negative keywords that could be out there, but there’s a bunch of them. another negative keyword list that needs to be built too is your competitors. So all of the dentists that, um, are probably in your state and, um, at least within 30 miles of your practice, if you’re in a bigger city, not only the names of the individual dentist, but you also need a negative keyword list of all the branded

09:05
practices too, because if you think about this situation and this happens all the time where I’m winning, when the campaigns aren’t really optimized well, where somebody calls and looking for, you know, does a search. My mom would do this XYZ dentist looking for her dentist and somebody, you know, this XYZ brand, let’s just call it Alpine dental to make this easier. So Alpine dental, she does a search for that, but a local dentist,

09:35
next to Alpine Dental didn’t use Alpine for a negative. So now he shows up and my mom calls and she goes, no, I was looking for Alpine Dental. And he’s like, this is an Alpine Dental. This is, you know, Patrick’s Dental Emporium and waste of money, right? It’s a waste of click. And sometimes I’ve heard people say, well, you know, we could go after our competitors by running their, their brand names, right? Alpine Dental. Let’s go ahead and run that ad to try to steal Alpine’s traffic. But the problem is, is one is just not really nice thing to do to patients.

10:05
Um, two is that there’s going to be a lot of patients that are going to call you and they’re in the middle of treatment plans. So, you know, maybe they’ve had a buildup and they’re coming back in for their permanent current. What are you going to do for them? Nothing. Right. You’re going to do, they’re confused. Yeah. Or they’re just confused. Right. You don’t want a patient showing up to have a permanent crown put on, um, when they’re throwing practice, like they’re not going to buy a new buildup from you or new crown or whatever. And it’s just, it’s just not good. It’s just not good. Uh, this is not being a great human being. So, um,

10:34
That’s another area that we see negatives really not being used in a way that can prevent a lot of waste. And let me say this to Alex, there’s in advertising, this is something that’s a concept that’s hard for people to kind of grasp sometimes. And I’ve recently come up with an analogy that helps, but there’s always going to be some waste in your ads. Almost always, there’s always going to be people that are, you know,

11:00
ridiculous or they’re looking for the wrong thing or they’re not the type of patient that you’re looking to bring in what have you. There’s always going to be some small percentage of that. But as we were in the middle of summer here, I know that you’re in Florida. I’m in Colorado. Air conditioners run this type of, uh, this time of year. They’re not that. And I need two air conditioners per room in Florida. But you still have a lot of that cooled air that is being lost through windows, through doors being open through your attic.

11:28
It’s just part of it. So a lot of energy, think like furnaces, a good furnace is like 90 % efficient. That means 10 % of your heating cost is literally going out the window. Um, you still run your, your heat, still run your AC, even though it’s a little bit of waste. When you, when you build a house, there’s lumber that’s wasted, there’s carpet, there’s tile, all that. So there’s always waste and, and everything that you do, there’s going to be some waste in advertising, some is to be expected, but not to the point where it’s costing you to have a significant return on investment in your, your Google ads.

11:58
That’s a great analogy. That’s a great, great analogy because so I’m hearing you say is you have to accept some waste. And this is something you coach me on a lot. Cause I’m like, I don’t want to spend that. You’re like, you have to understand some will be there. But the question is, you know, the 80 20 rule probably I think about, you know, try to get 70 to 80 % is good targeting. And because it’s like, you can work so hard with your keyword, negative keyword list, and you can only get so far. You can get to that 80%. But

12:28
You’d have to expend an enormous amount of energy that’s unnecessary to get even more every incremental from there. It’s just not worth it. Law of diminishing returns. Okay. So I understand as a marketer that there will be some ways, but I want to try and issue number one, try to minimize it the best I can. Yeah. But not obsess about it. Yeah. I’m going to tell you like the first way is to give us a call or someone who’s very experienced and done marketing. is certain what we’ll pay to add specifically.

12:56
Um, we have a team and we literally provide this service to other agencies where we’re fulfilling the work for them because we’ve gotten so good at it and we’ve gotten so good at it. It’s I’m not sitting here, you know, like trying to brag about how awesome we are to this. We spent a ton of money and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into becoming really, really efficient and running Google ads. So that’s how, right? So it’s not just, you, and you have the list, the negative keywords you’ve worked on and that’s, you can’t get that unless you. Yeah.

13:26
Keep in mind, every practice still needs to have its own negatives. Some fosimization, for sure. We’re doing a whole bunch of research. We’re pulling the names of every doctor in the area. Really? Dentists, physicians, too. Chiropractors to make sure that we negative them out. Any brand that they could potentially be confused with, we’re making sure that we negative them out, too. it’s not… Every individual location needs to have its own negative keyword list, too. And they get added in the same place in Google.

13:54
Um, it’s not like they go some new place, but they’ve got to be headed there. Um, talk about a little bit about local service ads. Those are those call only ads. And for a while we haven’t a great deal of success with local service ads and most areas they’re not that successful anymore. And the reason being is that we don’t have a control. We can’t add a negative keyword to local service ads the way that we can Google ads. And so what ends up happening is you end up getting a lot of Medicaid patients that are calling on those numbers. Take Medicaid. Sure. It could be okay. But if you’re not taking Medicaid,

14:24
you’re probably going to see somewhere between 30 % and 50 % of your phone calls be Medicaid or people that are looking for no cost options and dentistry. So I’d be very careful of LSA. We do have some practices that we saw a great deal of success with kind of depends on where they’re located. If they’re in a market that has, you know, 50 % or 25 % or more Medicaid patients in that area, it’s not going to work out so well. Give me more.

14:50
Yeah. So here’s another thing going back to the typical ads. This is a rookie mistake that I see all the time. We’ll look at, we’ll do audits and by the way, we’ll do free audits on ad campaigns. Um, so we’ll take a look at what’s going on. One of the things that I see is a top performing keyword will often be teeth whitening, um, where they’re getting a lot of clicks for that term. It is the worst term to optimize your Google ads campaign for. And the reason is, is the intent of the person doing the search. So,

15:19
For a lot of people that are doing that search, are not trying to see a dentist. They are trying to buy something on Amazon. They’re trying to have something to do or dash to them. They want crest strips. They want some kind of charcoal. They want some kind of elixir, know, or snake oil or whatever. So be very careful with that one. Understand what’s the intent of the person that is doing this search. And if they’re looking to buy something as opposed to come see you, it’s wrong from that keyword. Stay clear of it.

15:49
More, give me more, more mistakes. So some of these aren’t, we’re, you know, as far as mistakes, there’s a, there’s a million of them out there. I’ll tell you another big use. me one more. And then I want to hear like, what do do about it now? Yeah. So there’s a type of ad campaign that Google allows you to, um, build out called, uh, performance max. It’ll also be called P max.

16:13
Um, and basically that’s where Google’s like, Hey, we know better than everybody on how to run this campaign. And so we’re just going to suggest everything and we’re going to kind of do everything. And we, we have seen those be successful for short periods of time. think some somehow when they get turned on and maybe this is just, maybe I just, believe some rumors here that they get turned on and for a while they kind of perform on and then drop off again, Google will start showing your ads.

16:39
when everybody, when somebody searches, you know, Alpine dentist in your Patrick’s dental Emporium. So, um, you know, they’re not going to get those ads. We haven’t seen them really get those ads in front of the front of the right audience with the right search intent. So P max is another place that we see people waste, uh, a ton of money. Let me ask you an eyeball question. our COO Shelley showed to me, man, I went to this, to look at this company.

17:07
and they will not leave me alone everywhere I go. I’m getting ads, ads, ads, and I cannot shut it up. Uh, how do do that? Yeah. So those are, um, retargeting ads. So basically how those ads work is you have to have a significant, and for Google for them to work, you have to have, I think it’s at least a thousand visitors per month. I’m, I’m not wearing ads day to day. So I built strategy, but not ads or day to day. It’s either 800 or a thousand visitors per month. The average dentist is probably not seeing.

17:35
800 visitors per month so they wouldn’t qualify for those on on Google they would qualify them on Facebook So there’s a there’s a cookie that goes on the website that tells Facebook. Hey this person came to this website Now show them this retargeting ads Wow, those ads are much lower cost per click than the Typical ads that just run the first time on Google I like those types of ads when we’re talking about anything that’s put to cosmetic

18:03
Um, where it takes people to make a little bit of a decision. Um, but sometimes I see them that ad run, like if you search emergency dentist near me and you’re running a retargeting ad to that person, they had a dental emergency two weeks ago and you’re still rushed by your, like that just doesn’t make any sense. So you’re just literally wasting your money. So you want to be very specific on those. would keep those more towards things like veneers, cosmetic, you know, the genre, the, uh, maybe, um, implants that can be a good place to run those ads.

18:33
Um, yeah, so that, that’s where I would keep retargeting to ultimately what you want to have happen is for somebody that to search an ad with high intent dentists near me and they’re ready to book right now. Like you want them to book today. You want to talk them into booking today. And actually I take that back. You don’t want to talk them into booking today. They planned on it. You don’t want to talk them out of booking today. Um, most people are talking people out of making appointments, not in the making employment. So I’d be very careful. Um,

19:03
Make sure that they’re going to a landing page on your site that matches the keyword that they searched, the contents about the keyword that they searched. Keep them on the path that they were on. Don’t get them chasing butterflies because they will chase them and they’ll take off. You’ll never see them again. And then, you know, they’re on to the next. right. What do we do about these mistakes? How I’m dentist listening. I’m very impressed with you to say.

19:32
How do we do Google ads well? Um, or who’s going to do it for us and how do make sure that they’re good at what they do or whatever? Yep. So let me, I’m to go to one more area of failure. Um, yeah. going plug the, I’ll start down all academy here. Um, as much as yourself, we, we love Omni. Yeah. Thank you. The, know, the, make sure that you’re answering the calls. So.

20:01
make sure you’re answering those phone calls and that is a big area that we’ll see it fail with our own clients for a period of time. And that’s, that’s how we started talking to all star. As you know, Alex, um, you gotta make sure to answer the calls. There’s times that we’ve run ads and we’ll see 22 phone calls, 23 phone calls. That should be 10 new patients cost 500 bucks to get those patients, not each total, right? So 50 bucks a patient. And then the phone calls don’t get answered. Like nobody answers the phone calls. So make sure that you’re going to answer the phone calls.

20:30
It is so important that for some reason you can’t answer it, get them a text immediately and then call those people right back and keep calling them back. So I wanted to say that. Well, I want to add one thing back to you with respect to that. I’m very impressed. Our, our tagline is training with integrity and you have a lot of integrity, Patrick. I’ve seen you send people our way or say to clients, Hey, can you talk with them? Because I’m not working with them if they don’t fix their phones.

21:00
Yeah. Because Shed Holmes, one of our buddies, right? I worked for him. You read his books. Uh, he said, I don’t want to waste my time in your money. Yeah. And I think that’s your philosophy. Like if you’re going to come to me, you’re not going to get a good result. I’m not going to eat. is a non-starter. Like you’re just gonna waste your money. Like you have no problem turning away money that you don’t feel it’s going to be a good job. And you also, and I, I, I feel for you, but you take it personal.

21:29
when people get taken advantage of in this industry. what I can say, those that are listening, Patrick’s a good guy. He’s got a great company. And I think it’s, it’s nice when you people with integrity with respect to this. So thank you for the shout out. think it’s just good business sense that why spend more marketing if you are not capable of providing great customer service. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s,

21:58
It’s a big headache we all don’t need, right? So, you know, I think this kind of leads into that question that you started asking me too is like, how can you have a successful campaign? Well, some of the things that, you know, do the opposite of these negative things, right? mean, mean, look, let’s cut to the chase, right? You know, it’s funny, was a this, this statement called beat around the bush. And it’s like a, it’s an old, there’s actually some reasoning behind it. Like you beat.

22:25
The bush to get like the Fox or something that’s in the bush out So don’t beat around the I have to look at the etymology or whatever where this came from the history Anyway, interesting. We’re not gonna beat around the bush. But look Those are listening Talk to Patrick. I mean obviously talk to a marketing company that knows what they’re doing the only marketing company that I know of that knows what they’re doing is Omni premiere marketing and

22:52
All of our members and those that are followers or just followers of the podcast whatever Reach out to Patrick and like you said you’re you give them I love this completely free no commitment get an assessment, but at the end of the day The solution I’m listening is like you said Find someone who can do it for you and not do all those mistakes do it the right way The dentist you’re in no business of doing

23:21
your paper clicking and Patrick, as I’m listening to you, we’re gonna have a conversation probably this week. I’m talk to my team, but at some point I need you to help me with my paper click again. Um, and I was doing it myself and I’m pretty technical with it. was having, um, you know, a small amount of success, but it’s not worth my time. I don’t have the, the immense resources you do and I’m not going to stick with it. Yeah. So I need even, I know it’s even

23:51
And look at our website at also know Academy that was built by Omni premiere marketing and this is an enterprise level Business, so I mean a specialized in dentistry. I’m appreciate you you took us on so I want to talk to you about paid ads at some point for me because I need help with it so We’re not all let’s do we can say we’re not also for those who are watching the podcast We’re not also the hair club president or hair for clients, but also the president. No, we’re not hair club as we’re bald So a bald and beautiful

24:21
So you don’t want to get hair advice from us, but when it comes to marketing, Patrice is the guy you can learn from it. But I’m sure you’ll say, you’ll agree with me. If you can find a marketing company and you, you’re not the only one out there that’s on a lot, but there are others that can do a good job. You’re all for it. Just take care of the client. for those that don’t know that, cause I don’t talk to Patrick, get the free assessment. Appreciate it Alex. And then you’re going to call me after this podcast and say, Alex.

24:51
Stop pitching me so much. You know, like it doesn’t, it’s not a good look. It’s not as bad as a look as having a full head of hair, which there you go. You’re, you’re a good guy, Patrick. hope everyone listening learned a lot. And, um, yeah, uh, you can learn more about, uh, Omni Premier is the websites Omni, give me the, what’s the OmniPremier.com. Okay. Uh, and if you forgot it or you can’t.

25:20
Type it in right. Just reach out to us. We’ll connect you. Thank you, Patrick. And everyone listening, remember to follow us or subscribe depending on the button to Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube. It really helps when you, when you subscribe and follow, it helps our rankings. Speaking of rankings with a guru, that’s the number one thing. Following us helps us and then we get more search and more people get to learn more. It becomes this. So if you love what you enjoy, what you’re listening to or watching follow and you don’t

25:48
I’m gonna give you a trick. Go to your friend’s phone and just click follow there too. Give us a whole bunch of follows. That’ll help our ranking, right? And we really appreciate it. until next time everybody, go out there and be an All-Star.

26:05
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at AllStarDentalAcademy.com.