Managing Google Ads for one dental practice can get complicated quickly. Managing it across 18 locations creates even more opportunities for small mistakes to turn into major amounts of wasted traffic.
When this multi-location dental organization asked Innovate Dental Marketing to audit and take over its Google Ads account, the problem wasn’t a lack of campaigns, keywords, or budget. The problem was that too many pieces of the account were no longer working together correctly.
Over time, the account had been influenced by several different factors.
Google support representatives had made recommendations. Automated Google Ads recommendations had been applied. And internally, one person was carrying the responsibility of managing an extremely large, complicated account while also handling plenty of other responsibilities.
None of those things individually seemed catastrophic. Together, however, they created a major problem.
During our audit, we discovered that the account was losing a significant amount of potential traffic because of incorrect links, mismatched assets, and campaign settings that were sending users to the wrong places and limiting the account’s ability to perform.
For an 18-location organization, these types of errors can multiply quickly.
An incorrect landing page for one campaign may affect a single location. An account-wide setting, asset, or automated recommendation can impact dozens of campaigns at once.
It would have been easy to immediately recommend new campaigns, a larger budget, or an entirely new advertising strategy. Instead, our first priority was much simpler:
Fix the foundation.
During the first week after taking over the account, our Google Ads team focused almost entirely on cleanup. That included reviewing and correcting:
Final URLs and landing page destinations
Campaign and ad assets
Location-specific links
Automated recommendations that had negatively impacted campaign structure
Settings that had accumulated over time
Inconsistencies between campaigns and locations
Opportunities where Google automation had moved the account away from its original strategy
The goal wasn’t to reinvent the advertising strategy overnight. It was to make sure the traffic the DSO was already paying for had the best possible chance of reaching the right page, at the right location, with the right message.
The impact was immediate. After the first week of cleanup, the account experienced:
166% increase in impressions
More qualified searches were actually triggering the DSO’s ads.
44% increase in clicks
More prospective patients were reaching the organization’s websites and landing pages. And most importantly:
Conversions doubled.
That last number mattered the most. Impressions and clicks are helpful indicators, but dental practices aren’t paying Google for impressions.
They’re investing in advertising because they want more prospective patients taking action. By correcting the underlying problems in the account, the same advertising ecosystem began producing significantly more opportunities for the DSO.
When Google Ads performance begins declining, one of the first recommendations advertisers often hear is:
Increase the budget.
Sometimes that is the correct recommendation. But additional budget poured into an inefficient account can simply create more expensive inefficiency.
Before increasing spend, dental organizations should understand whether their existing budget is actually being used correctly.
Are ads directing patients to the correct location?
Are landing pages aligned with the patient’s search?
Are Google’s automated recommendations improving the account—or simply increasing Google’s ability to spend the budget?
Are campaigns competing against one another?
Are assets current and accurate?
Are account changes being reviewed strategically?
For this DSO, the opportunity wasn’t hidden inside a bigger budget. It was already sitting inside the account. It just needed to be uncovered.
Google Ads has become increasingly automated. Recommendations, automatically created assets, broad match expansion, Performance Max campaigns, AI-powered bidding, and other automated features can absolutely be useful.
But automation isn’t the same thing as strategy.
Google understands its advertising platform extremely well. It doesn’t necessarily understand the individual goals of an 18-location dental organization.
That’s why large dental accounts still need someone asking questions like:
Which services are actually most valuable to each location?
How far will patients realistically drive?
Which locations need more new patients right now?
Which campaigns are producing scheduled appointments?
Where should additional budget actually go?
Are Google’s recommendations aligned with the organization’s goals?
Technology can help execute the strategy. It shouldn’t replace the strategy.
There was another important lesson in this account. The previous person managing Google Ads wasn’t necessarily doing a bad job. They were simply carrying too much. An 18-location Google Ads account can contain hundreds of campaigns, ads, assets, landing pages, keywords, location settings, budgets, bidding strategies, and conversion actions.
Expecting one internal team member to continuously audit every element while also handling their other responsibilities creates risk. Small problems stay unnoticed. Google recommendations get implemented without enough review.
Old settings remain active. Landing pages change. Assets become outdated. And eventually those small issues begin affecting performance.
Having a dedicated dental marketing team creates another layer of oversight. Our job isn’t simply to keep campaigns running. It’s to continually ask whether they’re running correctly.
One of the reasons we love conducting Google Ads audits is that the answer isn’t always, “Spend more money.” Sometimes it’s: Let’s make the money you’re already spending work harder. For this 18-location dental organization, one week of strategic cleanup resulted in significantly more visibility, more traffic, and twice as many conversions.
No dramatic rebuild. No massive budget increase.
Just a careful audit, experienced oversight, and a Google Ads account finally working the way it was supposed to.
If you’re managing Google Ads across multiple dental locations and aren’t sure where your budget is actually going, it may be worth taking a closer look.
Because sometimes your next growth opportunity isn’t a new campaign.
