When to comes to running a medical practice, there is one issue that all medical practitioners struggle to find. How do I get more patients coming to my private practice?
Many doctors are accustomed to the old way of advertising which is commercials and billboards. However, with things being more digital and old marketing strategies are expensive, many medical professionals have looked at other solutions to market their business. One solution that many private practice owners have used is Google Ads for doctors.
In this guide, we will go over Google Ads, one of the most popular digital marketing strategies used by businesses, and how to start using this marketing strategy to promote your services or products.
Why Google Ads For Doctors?
Before we jump ahead and talk about how to start using Google Ads for doctors, we should talk about why your practice should use this digital marketing strategy and how it can be beneficial.
Google Ads, formally known as Google Adwords, is a technique that falls under search engine marketing and one of the many pay-per-click options that businesses can choose. With Google Ads, this allows a business to advertise on Google’s search results, Google display network (certain websites), mobile apps, and on YouTube by bidding a specific amount.
By utilizing Google Adwords for doctors, clinics are able to advertise in various places that have high-quality leads that other advertisements can not reach. For example, by using Google search ads, doctors can get their websites seen by people who are searching for their respective medical services like chiropractors or dentists. This increases the likelihood of getting clicks and can translate into more potential leads.
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Starting your Google Ads Campaign For Your Practice
Google Ads for medical practices can be a great digital marketing strategy to start implementing because of how much the tactic can increase the number of potential patients. But, this leads us to the next question. How do you start your first Google Ads campaign?
In the next section, we will go over the process of setting up your first campaign and help you start advertising your local clinic and expertise.
Choosing Your Campaign Goal
After creating and signing into your Google Ads account, you will go to the left side of your screen and see a section called Campaigns and then you will see a section where you can create a new campaign.
Once you click on this, you will be asked to choose your campaign goal (the main thing you want to achieve in your Google Ads campaign). You have the options to choose these goals:
- Sales
- Leads
- Website traffic
- Product and brand consideration
- Brand awareness and reach
- App promotion
- Local store visits and promotions
- Or you have an option to create a campaign without a goal
Depending on your business needs, you will choose the campaign goal that best fits you. Because you are a local business that provides different medical services depending on the type of doctor you are, choosing leads, local store visits, or website traffic may be the goals you may be considering.
Select Your Campaign Type
After choosing your goal, you will choose the campaign type. This is where you determine where you want your ads to appear. Here are the different types of campaigns you can choose from and where (and how) they will appear:
- Search: This will be seen on Google search results, Google search partners, and more
- Display: Your ads will display in Google’s search results and sites part of the Google Display Network (GDN)
- Shopping: Your advertisements will display your products on Google
- Video: Also known as Youtube Ads, you can display video ads on Youtube
- Smart: This option allows you to have automated ads that will show up on places like Google and Google Maps (Map Ads)
- Discovery: This allows you to advertise on Youtube, Gmail, Discover, and other areas
Typically, it’s recommended to use Search ads when starting off and trying other types based on needs. If you want to know more about the different types, here is a guild about the different campaign types.
Setting Location and Language
Once you set up your campaign type, it’s time to set your location and language, Because most doctors own local practices, it is highly recommended to utilize this section to get the most out of your Google Ads.
By setting a location, you can choose to target people in and around your area and exclude specific areas where your business is unable to provide services. For language, it depends on the area and the specific demographics you want to target.
For example, if you also want to target the Hispanic community in America, you will choose both English and Spanish as your targeted language.
Determining Your Budget and Bidding
The next section is the budget and bidding section. This is where you can set your daily budget and what you will be bidding strategy you want to prioritize.
It’s important to note that you will not pay more than your daily budget x the average number of days in a month. This is to factor in that there will be days where you spend less and days when you will spend more.
This section can be tricky because there is no right budget to set and it can vary depending on the practice and other various factors. However, if you are starting off with Google Ads for doctors, it is best to set a low budget, so you can get more information on what works. Eventually, you can start increasing your budget.
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Utilize Ad Extensions
The next section you will see when creating your campaign is the ad extension section. In this section, you will have the option to use different extensions that will help with your Google advertising by increasing your quality score (we will talk about this in a later section) and increase clickthrough rate (the change people click on your ad).
Here are the most common ad extensions and what they do:
Sitelink extensions
The first extension is a sitelink extension. This extension allows you to put hyperlinks on your Google ad that will link them to a specific page. This great for many reasons, the most significant is that it increases engagement by increasing click-through rates and conversion rate.
Managing sitelink extensions is easy because Google’s system automatically chooses the most relevant and best-performing hyperlinks to put on your search ad.
Callout extensions
The next extension is the callout extension. With this extension, you can add short snippets of text that highlight important information about your practice. Doctors can share promotions, special services, free consultations, and other attributes that are attractive to patients.
Call extensions
The third extension that is great to use for your local clinic is a call extension. Like the name, this allows users to be able to call your business from the search ad. Using this feature is convenient for most users and it can bring high-quality leads to your practice.
Note: If you are going to implement this feature, it’s also good to consider if your clinic has the capabilities to handle more calls.
Finding Your Keyword With Keyword Research
After setting up all of those things, the next step will ask you to put on the keyword(s) you want your ad to be shown when someone searches for said keyword(s). But, before we put in your keyword(s), let’s first go over how to find the right keyword(s) to target using keyword research.
Google Keyword Planner
When it comes to finding the right keywords, there are different tools you can use to find the keyword that works best for your practice. However, the best tool to finding the best keyword for your Google ads campaign is Google Keyword Planner.
With this tool, you can see valuable information like search volume and the cost per click. This can help you determine which keywords will get you the best results and how much it will cost to bid for them. In addition, you can specifically find information based on location. Utilizing this helps you correctly gauge the competition in your respective business location.
Trying trying to find the best keywords? Our Google Ads experts can help you!
Keyword types
After finding your keyword, there are different ways to input them into Google Ads. By using specific modifiers, you can narrow or broaden the keywords to match your campaign goals. Here are the modifiers you can use:
Broad match
Broad match is the “broadest” option when inputting your keyword. This option causes your ads to show on every keyword search that includes the keyword, related searches, and any variations like misspellings and similar keywords.
Google Ads will default to this option and allow doctors to have the widest reach when running their ads.
Broad match modifier
Similar to broad match, broad match modifier has a wide range but slightly more concentrated. You can use this keyword type if you still want to have a wider target but want to narrow it down to a specific theme or concept.
By adding a “+” in front of a keyword, Google ads will prompt your ads to only appear if a user searches the keyword or a close variation.
Phrase Match
The next type is phrase match. This type of keyword is great if you want your ads to only show in a specific keyword phrase. By using quotation marks, you can make it so that your ads will prompt only for the keyword or a close variation of the keywords that are within the quotation marks.
Exact Match
Another keyword type is exact match. This causes your ad(s) to only be prompted when it is a very specific keyword. Using this narrows down users to only those who are most likely to turn into leads.
By placing brackets around your keyword, only close variations of your keyword, like misspellings, plurals, and synonyms will trigger your Google Ads.
Negative
The last type you can use is negative keywords. This excludes certain keywords from triggering your ads. Having this helps when your clinic does not want to do or is unable to do a specific service or have a specific product.
Creating Your First Ad For Your Clinic
Once you have your keyword set, it’s time to create your search ad. In this ad, there will be different parts that you can work with and that can influence how effective your campaign will be.
Here are the parts that you will have to work with:
- Url
- Title (or headlines that can have up to 30 characters each)
- Description (You have two that can have up to 90 characters each)
- Ad extensions
Set A Landing Page
After creating your ad copy that will be seen on Google, you need to include a landing page (the place where people will go to when they click on your ad. This is important for various reasons.
The first is that there are specific pages that are more conversion-friendly and it would be preferable to include a landing page that will help get people booking appointments or asking about your products.
The second is that it impacts your quality score which we will go over in more detail in a future section. However, you can assume that with a more relevant landing page, the better performance your Google Ads campaign will have overall.
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Optimizing Your Google Ads
Once you have all of that, you can start running your ads and after a few weeks, you will start seeing the results of Google Ads for doctors in your medical clinic. However, it doesn’t mean that you are finished with Google Ads.
Like many other digital marketing strategies, it’s key to keep optimizing your strategies. In your case, it’s to keep optimizing your Google ads campaigns. This is because it will result in better leads and at a lower cost.
On your Google Ads account, there is a way to see your optimization score. These give different recommendations that can help improve your advertising. By taking these recommendations, you can potentially improve your current campaign.
In addition to this, there will be more opportunities as you increase your budget. You can increase your bids, change ads, add more ad groups for different services, improving your landing page, and many more. In the end, Google ads is a continuous process of optimizing, so you get better results and beat out other clinics that are using Google Adwords.
Quality Score
Now that we know that optimizing your ads is essential, it’s time to learn how it is measured. Google ads use a measurement called quality score. This measurement impacts your Ad rank (how high your ad will rank on Google’s search results) and can lead to lower ad prices.
By improving your quality score, you can spend less money on your ads but also get better results by being the first thing that people see in their search results.
In the example above, the first Google Ad will get more clicks compared to the second click because it is the first result that people see. This is due to the ad’s ad rank which is affected by the quality score.
So, what influences your ads’ quality score? There are three things that impact quality score and they are:
- Expected Clickthrough Rate (CTR): This the estimate of how likely searchers are going to click on your ad. You can improve your expected CTR by rewording your ad copy and adding content that people want to click.
- Ad Relevance: This factors in the relevancy of your ad. You can improve this factor by adding negative keywords to reduce the likelihood of ads being shown on unrelated searchers and even targeting a specific location especially since your services are local. In addition, you can increase your ad relevance by adding search terms to your ad copy.
- Landing Page: The last factor is your landing page. By increasing the landing page experience, you can increase your quality score. So, creating a landing page that is mobile-friendly, fast, trustworthy, and relevant to your audience can contribute to the landing page experience.
Conclusion
Google Ads for doctors can be a great addition to your practice’s marketing strategy. By correctly follow best practices and continually optimizing your Google Adword campaign, you will start seeing results and increase the number of potential patients.
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