Dental Google Ads Management: What It Includes and When to Outsource

Setup covers the account, conversion tracking, campaign structure, keywords, ads and landing pages. Management is everything that happens after launch to keep the cost per patient falling instead of creeping up. Without it, even a well-built account drifts: irrelevant searches creep in, ads go stale and budgets end up on the treatments that are easiest to sell clicks for, not the ones that bring patients.

• Search terms report: add irrelevant searches as negative keywords and good ones as keywords.
• Budgets and bids: move money towards campaigns and treatments with the lowest cost per booked appointment.
• Conversion check: make sure calls, forms and bookings are still being recorded. Tracking breaks after website changes more often than people expect.
• Call handling: check how many calls from ads were answered, missed and returned.
• Ads: pause headlines that are never shown or clicked, and test one new idea at a time.

• Report the numbers that matter: enquiries, booked and attended appointments, cost per kept appointment and treatment accepted, by campaign.
• Review landing pages: speed on a phone, the booking form and whether the page still matches the ads.
• Check location, schedule and device performance, and adjust where patients actually come from.
• Review policy notices and disapprovals. Our guide to dental ad copy rules covers the common ones.
• Plan the next test: a new treatment campaign, a new offer or a new landing page.

• In-house: you keep full control and knowledge in the practice, but someone needs the time and skills to do the weekly work. It suits practices with a marketing manager who already knows Google Ads.
• Freelancer: usually flexible and direct, but quality varies widely and cover during holidays or illness can be thin. Check references from other clinics.
• Agency: a team, processes and experience across many accounts, but you may be one client among many. Ask who actually works on your account each week.

Whichever you choose, the practice should own the accounts and see the numbers. We cover the wider checklist in how to choose a dental marketing agency.

Google's rules for third parties that manage Google Ads say they must give you access to cost and performance data, either through reports or by letting you sign in to your own account, and must disclose any separate management fee in writing before your first purchase and on invoices (Google Ads transparency requirements).

• Keep the Google Ads account in the practice's name and give the manager access, for example by linking it to their manager account.
• Ask for ad spend and management fees as separate lines.
• Make sure you can sign in and see the same numbers your manager reports.

• Fixed monthly fee: predictable, and does not reward the manager for spending more.
• Percentage of ad spend: common, but check that it does not push budgets up faster than results.
• Performance-based: attractive, but agree exactly what counts as a result, ideally attended appointments rather than leads or clicks.

Ad spend and management fees together are your real cost. Our guide to how much Google Ads cost for dentists shows how to work out a sensible budget from patient value.

• Reports full of impressions, clicks and click-through rate, with no bookings or attended appointments.
• Smart or Performance Max campaigns left on autopilot with no review of where the money goes.
• No negative keywords added in months.
• Account created in the manager's name, or you cannot sign in.
• "Specialist", "best" or "guaranteed" in your ads.
• Nobody can tell you how many calls from ads your team missed last month.

• What will you do every week, and what will I see every month?
• How do you track calls, forms and attended appointments?
• Who owns the account, the tracking and the landing pages if we part ways?
• How do you decide when to raise or cut a budget?
• Can I see results from another dental account, with the numbers behind them?

In our own campaign for a dental clinic in Larnaca, €250 of spend produced 12 patients who attended in 14 days, about €20.8 per attended patient (case study). One campaign is not a benchmark, but it is the kind of number a good manager should be able to show you. Want a second opinion on your current account? Book a free 30-minute audit call.