The nature of advertising and marketing a healthcare provider is often a parameter that many are unsure about, primarily due to the nature of the cases and situations this industry handles. However, this aspect shouldn’t limit the possibilities that healthcare professionals can leverage by engaging in advertising and marketing their clinic or hospital using pay-per-click advertising.
This advertising strategy allows healthcare providers to increase their online visibility, make it easier to contact, and enhance their discoverability online. Compared to traditional methods, PPC advertising allows your healthcare services to instantly reach their target audience and have them moving towards taking action.
But what makes PPC ads so effective for healthcare providers when it comes to reaching their target audience? And what are some ways to create effective advertising campaigns using PPC ads? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is Healthcare PPC Advertising
Healthcare PPC involves creating and running advertising campaigns for healthcare-related businesses. PPC ads are a form of online ads that are highly effective in attracting a target audience looking for solutions to their medical problems.
Due to the nature of these ads, PPC advertisement campaigns are highly regulated and must follow strict guidelines. This aspect often makes it challenging for them to navigate and create effective ads.
Why PPC Matters in Healthcare Marketing
Healthcare is an industry that impacts people on a deep level, impacting how they live. Due to this, several considerations must be made when marketing your healthcare practice to potential patients.
PPC campaigns allow healthcare providers to curate campaigns that inform, direct, and offer a solution to the health conditions someone could be suffering from.
The following are the key reasons that make PPC a vital component in healthcare marketing:
Patient Acquisition
PPC ads allow healthcare providers to reach their target audience by using critical data points like demographics, locations, and even search behaviors. I
In fact, tools like Google Ads allow healthcare PPC campaigns to target specific keywords often used by their target audience to search for medical services or products, medical conditions, and available healthcare options they will need.
By doing so, you can ensure your healthcare organization shows in search results, allowing your patients to connect with you for consultation or even treatment.
In some cases, your patients could also be looking for a second opinion, making it vital to optimize your PPC campaigns with keywords for conditions where a second opinion is often opted for.
Increased Brand Visibility
Your potential patients are looking for the best available healthcare service for them. By tactfully using PPC campaigns, your healthcare organization can put itself in front of potential patients who are actively searching for solutions to their health concerns.
In most healthcare PPC strategies, healthcare providers combine search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC advertising to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns.
As your potential patients are exposed to your ad campaigns consistently, they are more likely to trust your brand when it comes to making a decision.
Measurable Return on Investment
When compared to organic efforts like search engine optimization (SEO), where bulk data sets need to be analyzed to understand the effectiveness of your efforts, PPC campaigns yield more direct as well as measurable results.
By identifying the source of the measurable ROI, you can direct more of your budget to maximize your campaign’s potential from that source and ensure more people looking for medical treatment and solutions find you.
With the healthcare sector rapidly expanding online, PPC campaigns will help ensure you attract your target audience and solve their concerns.
Reach Specific Demography
Not everyone is actively looking for healthcare services. By showing your ads to such an unrelated and uninterested audience, you will only be exhausting your ad budget while getting no leads.
In the case of PPC ads, you can spend time understanding what your target audience is looking for, their interests, and their problems, as well as identifying what your competitors are doing to attract their potential patients.
By knowing your customers on a deeper level, you can guarantee campaigns that generate leads as they reach your target demographics easily.
Most PPC campaigns are centered around catering to specific demographics. All that needs to be done is identify these demographics for your healthcare practice and reach out to them with your ad campaigns.
Delivery of Relevant Health Information
Medical PPC ads are highly regulated and monitored, given the extent of impact they have on people’s lives. Due to this, it is crucial that all your PPC ads have the right information and are only promising offers, discounts, or accurate information.
For instance, as a healthcare clinic, you can consider running PPC campaigns that answer common questions about certain health conditions, procedures, and treatments.
You can also consider running ads that highlight the treatment payment options/insurance accepted, making it easier for your potential patients to make a decision and get in touch with your healthcare clinic for a consultation or to avail treatment options.
Top PPC Advertising Platforms for Healthcare Providers
Healthcare PPC ads are expansive in reach, and sometimes, running these campaigns can be costly. To ensure you are running successful PPC campaigns, choosing the right PPC platforms is important. Following are some popular PPC platforms worth considering:
Google Ads
Google Ads allows healthcare providers to run PPC campaigns to target people potentially looking for medical services. The PPC platform allows incredible control over budget and feasibility to measure the results that your PPC campaigns are generating. Google Ads is often an effective digital marketing tool that allows healthcare providers to run ad campaigns to reach their target demographic.
Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
If you are looking for an advertising platform that is not overly competitive, Bing Ads can be the ideal platform for your campaigns. Bing Ads also allow interaction with only a higher-income audience, making it possible for people willing to bear out-of-pocket expenses to click on your ads. However, the low competition on the Microsoft advertising platform also calls for stricter budget allocations and constantly monitoring the ROI the ad campaigns generate for you.
Facebook Ads
Most medical PPC experts prefer Facebook ads for their ease of campaign setup and ability to target customers based on their interests, demography, and behaviors. This makes it significantly easier for your ad campaigns to reach the target audience and nurture them throughout their patient journey cycle. Besides, as Facebook has a pool of existing audiences that are already actively engaging on the platform, using it to run ads can yield a higher ROI.
LinkedIn Ads
If you are looking to reach out to healthcare professionals or decision-makers, then LinkedIn ads will be immensely beneficial for you. With strong features like Sponsored InMail ads and powerful audience segmentation, you will be able to reach your target audience. However, compared to Facebook and Google ads, the scope of getting leads from the platform is comparatively less, given it is a platform meant for professional conduct and exchanges.
Most Effective Types of PPC Ads for Healthcare Providers
There are various types of PPC digital advertising formats that marketers can use. Depending on your digital marketing strategy, you can consider the following formats:
- Search ads: These are paid ads visible at the top of Google or Bing searches. These ads are highly visible, as they show up whenever your potential customers are doing a search by using specific and relevant keywords. Search ads usually have higher conversion rates, making them a top option for many advertisers.
- Display ads: These are ads that are part of any display network, making them highly visible to your potential customers. The ad format is ideal for healthcare PPC strategies as it involves using creative and engaging graphics to capture attention and increase brand awareness.
- Video ads: Video ads are highly engaging and allow healthcare businesses to explain complex medical practices or procedures in a simple and easy-to-understand format. These ads can be shown on YouTube and social media networks, increasing its reach.
- Responsive search ads: These ad formats include adding multiple headlines and descriptions to the ad copy, which Google then picks and shows the most effective combination to your target customers.
- Retargeting ads: With the retargeting mechanism, your ads can be seen by people who have already visited your healthcare service website, increasing the chances of them contacting you for further communication.
- Social media ads: Social media is guaranteed to add another dimension to your digital marketing campaigns as it allows for hyper-targeting your potential customers based on their interests, demography, and behavior. The direct and easy interaction options further make it possible for your customers to take action, such as dropping a direct message, sharing your posts, or commenting to get more information. You can consider using images, videos, carousels, and story ads for your healthcare campaigns on social media.
How to Create a Successful Healthcare PPC Campaign
Creating a successful healthcare PPC campaign involves extensive planning while ensuring your ideas are aligned with the medical regulations and guidelines.
Here are some effective tips you can start using to create successful healthcare PPC campaigns:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is a crucial step in creating impactful healthcare PPC campaigns. These keywords provide insights into what your target customers are searching for and help you make your ads more relevant to them.
These keywords are also terms or phrases that healthcare professionals use to find information about what they need. You should also consider including negative keywords in your strategy so your ads are not seen by an uninterested audience.
Make sure to:
- Use only relevant keywords
- Identify the search intent for every keyword
- Use long-tail keywords
- Conduct competitor analysis to determine the accuracy of your data
- Constantly monitor how your keywords are performing.
Creating Ads
Creating impactful ads is crucial to ensure your target customers click whenever they come across your ads.
Make sure to:
- Use impactful titles that instantly grab attention.
- Add clear and direct descriptions offering a practical solution.
- A concise call-to-action button
- If using graphics, make sure they are visually appealing and align with the context of the ad set.
Targeting and Segmentation
Not everyone will be your target audience, and running an ad campaign without audience segmentation can exhaust your ad budget.
Here’s how to do it right:
- Identify the demography you will be targeting and create ads to appease them.
- Target your customers based on their location.
- Use historical or data from competitive analysis to understand your target audience’s interests and behavior patterns.
Budgeting
Budget plays a critical role in the reach, impact and effectiveness of your ad campaigns. A high budget allows you to diversify where you are advertising.
Here’s how to make the most of your budget:
- Set a daily budget for spending across all your chosen platforms.
- Adjust your budget for ad sets and platforms based on the performance.
- Opt for strategic bidding practice to get the most out of your investments.
- Constantly analyze performance to determine where you are getting maximum ROI from.
5 Effective PPC Tips for Healthcare Success
Here’s how you can make your healthcare PPC campaigns a success:
Carry Out Detailed Keyword Research
Keywords are critical components of your PPC campaigns; get them right by:
- Consider using multiple tools to create a library of keywords you can use for your ad campaigns. Focus more on search volume while not solely adhering to using keywords with high search volume.
- Instead of focusing solely on short-tail keywords, consider focusing on more local searches and including long-tail and location-specific keywords.
- Analyze search intent to ensure your ad copies and the actions you are trying to achieve match.
- Keeping an eye on trends is also highly recommended to ensure your ads remain relevant and up-to-date.
- Consider creating different groups for different services and ensure you are using dedicated keywords for those groups when creating an ad campaign.
- Conduct regular keyword audits to ensure the keywords you are using are relevant and are in sync with the results you want to achieve.
Create Attractive and Informative Ads
To make your potential customers click on your ads and learn more about the range of services your healthcare practice has to offer, consider creating ads that are informative and don’t leave your customers wondering what they are supposed to do next.
For instance,
- Use a direct and clear title
- Add benefits and features of your services clearly in the description
- Use strong and action-oriented CTAs to ensure your customers know what they need to do.
- Include additional information like site links, phone numbers and addresses where your healthcare services can be reached.
- Use only high-quality images and videos for all your ad formats.
Optimize Landing Pages
Make sure the landing pages you are using for a dedicated ad are working properly and have all the information that your target audience will need. Including simple CTAs and contact forms are encouraged to ensure your target audience knows how to get in touch with you.
Segment Your Audience Precisely
Audience segmentation is important to safeguard against overspending on ads and ensure that your campaigns are reaching the right audience. Several parameters can be taken into account when segmenting your audience.
For instance, you can do it based on where your target audience is located, their specific interests, and what user behavior they display online. Based on this information, you can segment your audience. Consider including certain keywords in your strategy that make it easier for these advertisers to see you.
Monitor and Adjust Constantly
Monitoring your ad campaigns is crucial to ensure they are driving the results you expect them to while also giving you more control of your budget. Several tools, including Google Analytics, can be considered for this purpose.
How to Measure the Performance of Healthcare PPC Campaigns
Here are the key performance indicators you must track to determine the performance of your healthcare PPC campaigns:
Click-through Rate
It refers to the number of people who clicked on your ads when they were exposed to it. A higher CTR indicates the success of the campaign.
Conversion Rate
The metric indicates the percentage of people who took the action you wanted them to take, such as booking an appointment or sharing contact information to learn more about the advertised service.
Cost-per-acquisition
The average cost is spent on acquiring a new customer through a PPC campaign. This metric is a reflection of how effective your budget spend has been.
Return on Investment
ROI, or return on investment, shows the efficiency of the budget you had created for your ad campaign. To calculate this, all you need to do is subtract the initial cost of the campaign from the profits generated.
Quality Score
It is a metric often used by Google Ads to determine the relevance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. A higher score ensures your ads are visible at the top of the search engine results.
Cost-per-click
Also known as CPC, it indicates the amount paid each time a user clicks on your ads. Monitoring your CPC is critical to ensure better results at less cost.
Bounce Rate
It indicates the number of people who left the landing page without interacting. A higher bounce rate indicates that your ad campaign is not effective enough.
Examples of Effective PPC Campaigns in Healthcare
Conclusion
The healthcare sector can certainly benefit from using pay-per-click advertising, as it allows them to position themselves where their target audience is guaranteed to find them. However, with a plethora of regulations and guidelines involved, it can become challenging to create and run effective and consistent PPC ad campaigns.
While keyword research and competitor analysis can help create a framework, regular monitoring and optimization of your ad sets will be the key to ensuring your ads are impactful without exceeding the dedicated monthly budget.