Article written by Google – June, 2006 – DentalPlans.com, Inc. helps individuals, families, small businesses and other groups find affordable dental care by compiling discount dental plans into one location and enabling customers to compare them. The Dania, Florida-based company is the largest online provider of discount dental plans, featuring an extensive network of more than 100,000 dentists in more than 30 national and regional plans. Participating dental specialists, including orthodontists, oral surgeons, periodontists, endodontists and pediatric dentists are also featured in most plans. CEO Josh Babyak laughingly characterizes the company's target audience as "everybody who has teeth."

Approach
Given its shoestring budget when it started, DentalPlans.com used bulk email as its main marketing tool. "We had no money to pay for advertising," Babyak recalls. But with the advent of more sophisticated spam filters, that was no longer a good solution. The co-founders turned to Google AdWords to reach their customers more effectively. Babyak remembers typing "dental plans" into Google's search engine and seeing another company's ad listed first. Babyak's reaction was instantaneous: "We want to be there too," Babyak said. His goal was twofold: volume and conversion to online signups. "We didn't have a lot of money, so we had to make sure that whatever we spent brought back dollars," he said.

From the start, one of Babyak's favorite AdWords features was the keyword traffic estimator tool, which also reveals data on impressions, clickthrough rate, volume and cost. That tool helps him make product decisions. "We have some 30 products to choose from," Babyak said. "Using the keyword estimator, I found out which were the top five that were producing the most volume, and saw how saturated the market is for each product. It helps determine the products I'm launching. You can make a 3- to 6-month business plan from that."

What's more, Babyak adds, AdWords' cost efficiency enables him to test new business models at a low price. "You can build a website, drive in $1,000 worth of clicks, and figure out if it's going to work or not. Where else in the world can you test a business for $5,000?"

Results
The company started out with 100 keywords in its AdWords campaigns; today, those campaigns contain millions of keywords. Ninety percent of the ad budget is devoted to online advertising, and 100 percent of that is put towards pay-for-performance ads. What's more, fully 10 percent of the company's revenue comes from AdWords alone. Babyak says that from the beginning, "Google has always been a great source of revenue for us. What's nice is that it's constant – you can rely upon it, and the quality of the traffic is good."

Babyak is a firm believer in managing AdWords campaigns in-house. "If I had any advice for new advertisers, it would be do it yourself, do it directly with Google." Towards that end, the company recently launched a Spanish-language keyword campaign and has hired an employee focused on keyword research and keyword additions.

In the end, helping the DentalPlans.com customers is what matters most to Babyak. "We've saved them thousands and thousands of dollars," he said. "One woman walked up to me at a conference and gave me a hug and kiss because she saved $6,500 on a dental procedure – and she found us through Google AdWords."

About Google AdWords
Google AdWords is currently used by thousands of businesses worldwide to gain new customers in a cost-effective way. AdWords uses keywords to precisely target ad delivery to web users seeking information about a particular product or service. The program is based on cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so advertisers only pay when an ad is clicked on. Advertisers can take advantage of an extremely broad distribution network, and choose the level of support and spending appropriate for their business.

For more information on launching your own campaign or getting expert help, visit http://adwords.google.com.


*2005 Home and Garden Survey, conducted by Media-Screen and GMI (April 2005).

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