PPC vs Local Service Ads: Phenix City Dental Marketing

Introduction

For local businesses and dental practices in Phenix City, the race is on to attract new clients quickly.

Two powerful digital marketing services can put you at the top of Google results overnight: traditional PPC services (Pay-Per-Click search ads) and Google's Local Service Ads (LSAs).

But which one will fill your appointment book faster? In this blog, we'll leverage 25+ years of marketing expertise to compare PPC vs. LSAs head-to-head.

You'll learn how each channel works, their pros and cons for a Phenix City practice, and how Phenix City Dental Marketing strategies can help you choose the fastest route to growth. Let's dive in!

Understanding PPC and Local Service Ads (LSAs)

Before judging which is faster for growth, it's key to understand what we're comparing:

1.Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC typically refers to Google Ads – those text ads labeled “Sponsored” that appear on Google search results. With PPC, you bid on keywords so your ad shows up when people search (e.g. “dentist in Phenix City”). You pay a fee each time someone clicks your ad.

PPC offers broad targeting options: you can show ads to specific locations, times, or audiences, and you have full control over ad copy and landing pages. For example, a dentist might run a search ad offering a “New Patient Special” and send clickers to a signup page.

PPC ads can appear on Google Search, Maps, Display Network, and more – but in search results, they usually appear below any Local Service Ads and above the organic results.

2.Google Local Service Ads (LSAs)

LSAs are a newer ad type specifically for local service providers (dentists, doctors, lawyers, home services, etc.). These ads show up at the very top of Google's results – even above the regular PPC ads – when someone searches for a local service (for example, “emergency dentist near me”).

An LSA displays your business name, phone number, star rating, and a “Google Screened” badge for trust. Crucially, with LSAs you pay per lead instead of per click. That means you're charged only when a potential patient calls or messages you through the ad (and Google even requires calls to last ~30 seconds to count as a billable lead).

LSAs are essentially Google's “trusted recommendations” for local searches, and they require setting up a Google Business Profile with verification, background checks, and review management to qualify.

In short: PPC is a flexible pay-per-click ad channel open to nearly any business, whereas LSAs are a pay-per-lead program limited to certain local Seo services with Google's vetting. Now, let's compare how each can drive fast growth.

Speed to Launch and Initial Setup

When it comes to how quickly you can get your ads running and generating leads, PPC and LSAs differ:

1.PPC Setup

Setting up a Google Ads PPC campaign can be done in a day or two. You create an account, write your ad copy, choose keywords (e.g. “family dentist Phenix City”), set your budget, and launch.

Once Google approves the ads (often within hours), they can start showing. This means PPC can start driving clicks almost immediately. For a Phenix City practice looking for quick visibility, PPC is practically instant – you could appear in search results by tomorrow.

However, quick setup doesn't always mean instant success. PPC requires optimization (refining keywords, bids, and ad copy) to ensure those clicks turn into actual patients.

Still, if speed is the priority, PPC wins on faster setup. You could launch a targeted ad this week and start seeing website traffic or calls right away.

3.LSA Setup

Local Service Ads have a more involved onboarding. You must have a verified Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) with up-to-date information. Google will require documentation to “Google Screen” your business – for a dental practice this might include license verification, insurance, background checks on the dentists, etc.

This vetting process can take days or even a couple of weeks. Additionally, having customer reviews on your Google profile is crucial, since LSAs display your star rating.

If you're new in town with no reviews yet, your LSA might not show often until you gather positive reviews. In other words, LSAs are not an overnight switch you flip. It could take some days or weeks to go live and perform well.

The trade-off is once you're up and running, you're in a prime position (literally at the top of the page with a trusted badge). But for sheer speed to launch, LSAs are a bit slower out of the gate than PPC.

For guidance and a smoother setup process, partnering with a Phenix City Dental  marketing Agency can help ensure you complete the necessary steps and optimize your profile to get the most out of your LSA campaign.

Bottom line – setup speed: If you need leads this week, PPC is the faster channel to get going. LSAs require upfront prep and Google's approval, so factor that in if you're hoping for immediate results.

Getting to the Top: Visibility and Competition

Visibility is critical for fast growth – the more prominently your ad is shown, the more clicks or calls you'll get. Here's how PPC and LSAs compare in visibility, especially in a local market like Phenix City:

1.Local Search Prominence of LSAs

One big advantage of Local Service Ads is prime real estate. LSAs appear right at the top of local search results, even above the standard PPC ads.

They often show in an eye-catching box with star ratings and “Google Screened” labels. This top placement means if LSAs are active for a query, they tend to grab a chunk of the clicks.

(In fact, studies have shown LSAs can capture roughly 13–14% of all clicks on a local search page, and their presence can boost the total share of clicks on paid ads to over 25% of all clicks.)

For example, if someone searches “Phenix City dentist near me” and your LSA is displayed, a potential patient will see your practice first, along with your 5-star rating and phone number, making it very likely you'll get the call.

In a smaller market like Phenix City, there may only be a few providers running LSAs – or none at all yet – which could give you a huge visibility edge over competitors if you're the first to use them.

2.Visibility with PPC Ads

Traditional PPC search ads show below LSAs (if LSAs are present) and usually above the organic results. There are typically up to four PPC text ads at the top of the page.

If no LSAs are running for a query, a PPC ad can be the very first thing a searcher sees. But if LSAs are active (say for “emergency plumber” or “family dentist Phenix City”), those will overshadow your PPC ad by appearing above it.

In Phenix City, not every service category will have LSAs. For instance, dentists and some medical practices do qualify for LSAs, whereas a general retail store would rely only on PPC.

Competition in PPC can also affect visibility – you're bidding against other local businesses for those ad spots. If a larger Columbus-area practice or a national chain targets “Phenix City dentist” keywords, you may need a higher bid or highly relevant ads to beat them out for the top PPC position.

The good news: Phenix City's smaller population means PPC keyword competition is likely moderate and clicks might be cheaper than in big cities. Still, staying visible with PPC may require ongoing budget and optimization, especially if a competitor is also running ads.

Bottom line – visibility: LSAs put you literally at the top of the page with a trust badge, which can be a game-changer for quick lead generation if your category has LSAs available.

PPC ads also offer prominent placement and can cover more keywords, but they may sit slightly lower on the page and face more direct bidding competition.

In Phenix City, leveraging LSAs early could let your practice dominate the top of search results before others catch on.

Lead Quality and Conversion Rates

Growth isn't just about clicks – it's about turning those clicks or calls into actual patients and clients. Let's talk lead quality and conversion potential with LSAs vs PPC:

1.Local Service Ads – High Intent Leads

One of the strongest arguments for LSAs is the high intent of the leads. When someone taps a Local Service Ad, they're usually ready to call or book right then and there.

In fact, you only pay when they actually contact you, which inherently means every paid interaction is a lead. This tends to produce very high conversion rates from lead-to-customer.

Think about it: if a person sees “Google Screened Dr. Smith – ★4.9 – Family Dentist – Phenix City” and clicks to call, they likely need a dentist and chose you based on your trusted profile.

It's common for businesses using LSAs to see a large percentage of those leads convert to appointments, as these prospects have done their research (saw your reviews) and took action.

Another quality factor is the trust Google instills – that green checkmark and verification process filters out sketchy businesses, so users feel safer choosing your practice.

All this means LSAs often bring “hot” leads that close faster. (Imagine your receptionist answering a call from an LSA – the caller is already somewhat sold on your reputation, they just need to book a time!)

2.PPC Ads – Volume and Nurturing

PPC can generate a higher quantity of traffic because your ads can appear for a wider variety of keywords, not just service-based “near me” searches.

Some of those clicks will be people early in research mode – for example, someone might click a PPC ad for “best dental implants Phenix City” to read about your services, but they might not call immediately.

Conversion rates for PPC vary by industry; on average about 7–8% of search ad clicks turn into a lead for health services (with dentists' PPC conversion averaging ~8.3% in 2024 data).

That means roughly 1 in 12 clicks becomes a contact form submission or call. The upside is that PPC allows you to capture people at different stages: maybe they click your ad, read your website, and call a week later.

You can also use features like remarketing (following up with display ads) to nurture those who clicked but didn't convert. The quality of PPC leads can be very good as well – especially if your ad copy is clear and you use targeting options to weed out irrelevant clicks.

However, unlike LSAs, you will inevitably pay for some clicks that don't turn into customers. For instance, a person might click your ad, look around, and leave – you paid for that click, even though it wasn't a real lead.

This is why managing your PPC Services (negative keywords, compelling landing pages, strong call-to-action) is important to improve conversion rate over time.

Bottom line – conversions: LSAs deliver ready-to-act leads by design, often yielding quicker patient acquisitions from each interaction.

PPC can cast a wider net and generate many leads too, but expect to put in effort optimizing to turn a higher percentage of those clicks into actual clients.

If your immediate goal is high-quality inquiries with minimal “waste,” LSAs have an edge. If you want to build a larger funnel of potential clients (and you're willing to nurture them), PPC is invaluable.

Costs: Pay-Per-Click vs. Pay-Per-Lead

Cost is always a factor in growth. Let's compare the cost-efficiency of PPC and LSAs, and how that impacts how fast you can grow given a fixed budget:

1.PPC Costs and ROI

With PPC search ads, you pay for each click. The cost per click (CPC) can range widely based on the keyword and competition. In 2024, the average CPC for “Dentists & Dental Services” was around $6–$7 per click.

In a smaller market like Phenix City, your clicks might cost a bit less than national averages, but if neighboring Columbus or popular keywords are in play, you could also see higher costs for competitive terms.

The key is that not every click yields a patient, as we discussed. If one in ten clicks becomes a patient, and you pay say $5 per click, you effectively paid $50 per actual lead.

In some cases (like cosmetic dentistry keywords) the clicks might be $10+ each – so 10 clicks ($100) for one conversion is $100 per lead. The average cost per lead via Google Ads for dentists has been estimated around $80 or more.

The good news is that a single new patient's value (e.g. a dental patient's lifetime value) often far exceeds $80, so PPC can provide positive ROI. PPC also lets you set daily and monthly budgets, so you can control spend tightly.

If you find an ad campaign is profitable (say every $500 in clicks brings 5 new patients), you can scale up budget to grow faster, or pause anytime if it's not working.

PPC's cost model offers flexibility but demands active management – you want to allocate budget to the best-performing keywords/ads to keep your cost-per-acquisition sustainable.

2.LSA Costs and ROI

Local Service Ads use a pay-per-lead (PPL) model. You set a bid or budget per lead, and you're charged only when a lead comes in (a phone call or message from a customer).

Generally, because a lead is more valuable than a click, the cost per lead on LSAs is higher than a per-click cost. Google data shows LSA leads can range from as low as $5 up to $100+ each, depending on your industry and location.

For example, a simple inquiry for a handyman might cost $10, while a highly competitive legal lead might cost $100+. Dental practices likely fall somewhere in the middle-upper range; many dentists report paying roughly $50–$100 per LSA lead.

On the surface this sounds expensive, but remember: that $75 LSA charge might be for a caller who immediately books a $1,000 procedure. And importantly, you didn't pay for all the other people who saw your ad but didn't contact you – those impressions were essentially free branding.

With LSAs you can set a weekly or monthly budget of how many leads you want (Google will try to get you that many) and a max you're willing to pay per lead. If you hit your budget of, say, 20 leads in a month, the ads will pause unless you increase it.

One thing to watch is that LSA budgets can cap your growth: if you only budget for 10 leads a week but demand is there for 15, you might miss some volume unless you adjust.

Also, while rare, occasionally you might get charged for a junk lead (e.g. a call about a service you don't provide), but Google allows you to dispute invalid leads for credit – another safeguard for quality.

Cost perspective: PPC and LSAs can end up costing similar amounts per actual customer in many cases. PPC might incur a lower cost per click, but you pay for unqualified clicks too; LSAs charge more per interaction but every penny goes toward a real lead.

If your goal is the fastest growth, you might actually consider using both: maximize your visibility with a PPC + LSA combo, and allocate budget towards whichever channel is getting you a lower cost per new client.

Many practices find that a balanced approach yields the best ROI – for instance, LSAs bring in a steady stream of high-intent calls while PPC fills in with additional leads from other keywords.

Local Market Considerations for Phenix City

Let's zoom in on Phenix City specifically. Local population and competition dynamics can influence which channel grows your practice faster:

1.Search Volume

Phenix City, Alabama, while growing, is not a huge metropolis. This means the total number of local searches for services (e.g. “Phenix City dentist” or “Phenix City attorney”) is relatively limited each month.

An important implication: you might not receive dozens of leads per day no matter which method you use, simply because the demand cap is lower than in a big city. With LSAs, you might find you only get a few leads per week initially – but those are highly qualified.

PPC can help you capture related searches (including folks in nearby Columbus, GA, who might be searching in the area). If rapid growth is the goal, you'll want to appear for as many relevant searches as possible.

PPC enables you to target not just “near me” queries but also specific services (“teeth whitening Phenix City”) or even show up when Columbus residents search for services and Phenix City is in your radius.

LSAs are generally tied to your service area radius or city, so they ensure you get local leads, but they won't show to someone outside of the area looking to travel in.

A Phenix City practice near the border might consider PPC to attract that extra regional traffic that LSAs won't reach.

2.Competition and Ad Saturation

In Phenix City, not every competitor is tech-savvy or advertising aggressively (yet). There may be only a couple of practices running PPC ads for your keywords, and possibly only a handful using LSAs.

If, say, none of the other dental offices in town have jumped on LSAs, being the first gives you a fast advantage – you could appear as the one of the only Google Screened dentists in local searches, snagging patients who trust that badge.

Conversely, if a few competitors are heavily invested in PPC, you might see higher CPCs or have to work harder on ad quality to outrank them.

Fortunately, even if competitors use PPC, multiple ad spots mean you can still show up alongside them (it's not “winner takes all” – up to 3-4 ads can display).

With LSAs, usually the top 3 providers are shown in the LSA unit; if more are eligible, Google rotates them based on proximity, reviews, and responsiveness.

So if there are 5 plumbers in LSAs, each gets a turn on top. For fastest growth, you'd want to be in that LSA mix if available, and also present on PPC so you're covering all your bases.

Remember, reviews are king for LSAs – a Phenix City practice with 50 glowing Google reviews will outrank one with 5 reviews in the LSA listings. Investing effort into getting good reviews from happy patients will directly pay off in how many LSA leads you receive.

3.Trust and Local Reputation

In a community like Phenix City, word-of-mouth and reputation are huge. LSAs leverage your online reputation (via Google reviews) to generate leads.

If your practice is already known and well-reviewed, LSAs can amplify that quickly – people see the 5-star rating and choose you. PPC doesn't display your review stars in the ad (unless you use certain extensions or a third-party aggregator), so new patients might not realize your quality until they reach your site.

Thus, if you have a stellar local reputation, LSAs can harness it faster. On the other hand, if you're new and still building reputation, PPC might let you craft a compelling offer (“New Patient Exam $99 – Call Now”) that gets folks in the door even with fewer reviews.

If you have a solid foundation and want to build on it with more local visibility, combining Phenix City dental SEO services with LSAs can create a strong Phenix City Dental marketing strategy for long-term growth. By boosting your local SEO, you'll continue to attract organic traffic while paying for more immediate visibility through LSAs.

Which Channel Drives Faster Growth?

Time to address the big question: PPC or LSAs – which will grow your Phenix City practice faster? The honest answer is that it depends on your situation, but we can make some informed conclusions:

1.If you need immediate lead flow and broad exposure:

PPC advertising is your go-to. You can launch quickly, target a wide array of keywords (covering all services you offer and surrounding areas), and start appearing in searches right away.

PPC is great for generating awareness in addition to direct leads – even if someone doesn't click your ad, they see your practice name.

It casts a wide net. Just be prepared to monitor and tweak your campaigns so that your budget goes into the most effective keywords.

Many practices see a burst of inquiries in the first few weeks of a well-run PPC campaign, especially if they haven't advertised before (because you're suddenly visible to a whole online audience that was missing you).

2.If you want high-probability leads with efficient spending

Local Service Ads might grow your practice faster in terms of actual clients gained per dollar. Once your LSA is active, every contact you pay for is a potential customer on the line.

Many businesses find that a $100 spend on LSAs (maybe 2–3 leads) yields more real new customers than that same $100 might yield via PPC clicks.

LSAs also favor businesses that respond fast – if you answer every call and wow the caller, you'll convert a high percentage and also improve your LSA ranking over time.

For categories like dental, HVAC, legal, etc., LSAs can produce a steady, predictable stream of new client inquiries, which is fantastic for planning growth.

3.The ideal scenario

use both PPC and LSAs in tandem. They are not mutually exclusive enemies; in fact, together they ensure you dominate both the very top of the page (LSA section) and the traditional ad slots.

By running both, you capture the impulse callers through LSAs and the researchers/shoppers through PPC.

In our experience, businesses that leverage both channels see the fastest and most sustainable growth. You might, for example, get 10 calls from LSAs and another 5 from PPC in a month that you would have otherwise missed.

That could mean 15 new clients instead of just 5-10 if only one channel was used. The key is to track results from each channel – measure how many leads and patients each delivers and at what cost – then you can adjust budgets to prioritize the higher-performing channel for your needs.

4.Consider your specific practice

A brand new practice with no reviews might start with PPC for quick wins while simultaneously building up reviews to unlock LSA potential.

An established practice with a great reputation might go straight into LSAs to capitalize on that trust factor, and use PPC mainly to supplement for additional services or competitive terms.

Also, think about your service range: if you offer niche services people search for (“Invisalign Phenix City”), PPC lets you target those keywords directly, whereas LSAs will generically list you for “Orthodontics” if it's on your service list but won't highlight that niche in ad copy.

In summary, Local Service Ads can deliver faster direct patient growth once active, thanks to top placement and high-intent leads, but PPC advertising gets you in the game immediately and casts a wider net.

The fastest growth trajectory for a Phenix City practice often comes from smartly combining both – grabbing every opportunity to turn an online searcher into your next appointment.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Both PPC and Local Service Ads offer powerful ways to boost your visibility and bring in new clients quickly. Rather than an either/or, consider how each could fit into your overall growth strategy.

If managed wisely, paid search ads (PPC) and Local Service Ads can together become a one-two punch that fills your schedule with new patients faster than any other marketing method.

However, success with these channels requires expertise – from choosing the right keywords and bids in PPC to optimizing your Google Business Profile for LSAs.

That's where partnering with the right marketing services can make all the difference. With over 25 years in marketing, we've helped businesses like yours navigate Google's advertising ecosystem for maximum ROI.

Our team offers full-service dental marketing services, including professional SEO services to improve your organic reach, and hands-on PPC services to manage your ad campaigns efficiently.

Source - PPC vs Local Service Ads: Phenix City Dental Marketing