How a change in strategy helped increase conversions by 60%

Brief Client Description

A dental clinic in Kyiv that provides a full range of dental services: diagnostics, treatment, implantation and dental surgery.

Duration covered by a case study (12 mo.)

• Start of the project: September 1, 2021
• Milestone: September 30, 2022

Objectives

By using Google Ads service our client planned to achieve the following goals:

• Increase the amount of online appointments & calls
• Boost conversions amount for non-branded queries
• Key priorities for PPC:
  • Dental Implants Service
  • Dental Veneers
  • Aesthetic Restorative Dentistry

Reference values that are used to estimate the project performance:

• Conversions: 167
• Average CPA: 7.93 USD
• Share ratio of conversions:
  1. Branded queries: 28%
  2. Non-branded queries: 72%

Reference values: 1-st. period results Sep. 1 – Sep. 30

Challenges & solutions:

1. (Direct) / (None) Issue in Google AnalyticsWe had a bit negative luck with suddenly appearing redirects on the website that wiped out the gclid parameters, so conversions were attributed to the source (direct) / (none) instead of google / cpc.

   Among the positive consequences, we protect ourselves from recurrence with a script that automatically checks the URL in the account for errors related to the gclid parameter. It would be rude of us not to share the script code.

2. Performance Max campaign for Dental ClinicSuccessful test run – Performance Max, the new type of ad campaign at that time. While setting up the campaign for the test run, we were quite hesitant at least for two reasons:
   • Healthcare field and audience targeting tended to be such a tricky bunch. It took much longer to talk with the support team and appeal for ad rejection than the actual ad campaign took to run;
   • Optimization tools are limited: negative keywords and placement exclusions are not allowed.

   However, the results of the experiment were quite pleasant: in January 2022, Performance Max received 49 conversions (20% of the total) at a price of $4.77 (28% lower than the average account).

   

   Performance Max Campaign Dental Clinic Results January 2022

3. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). Healthcare is a complicated industry, so it takes a while to gather proper semantics that can reach an entire market segment. Dynamic ads let us get more relevant traffic to the complete range of the clinic’s services all at once. Moreover, statistics gathered through DSA groups let us correctly set priorities for setting up extra campaigns and groups with keyword targeting.

   

DSA & Regular Groups Results September 2022

Performance recap:

Over a period of 1 year, the following results (average monthly results) were obtained:

• Conversions: 270 (+60%)
• Average CPA: 3.34 USD (-57%)
• Share ratio of conversions:
  1. Branded queries: 0%
  2. Non-branded queries: 100%

Full year results: comparing the performance of the first period after launch and the last full period of optimization

Project team

• Project manager: Oleksandra Nesina
• PPC specialist: Oleksandr Shylin
• Head of PPC Department: Halyna Lyman