Many people concerned with cancer feel scared, stressed, and worried about their symptoms. Some struggle with how to approach treatments and which cancer care would be best for them.
With Google Ads for Oncologists, you can take advantage of online advertising to reach more potential patients for your medical practice and showcase the key benefits of receiving treatment from your medical practice, allowing your business to further grow and help those who need your services.
Google Ads for Oncologists
1. Why Google Ads for Oncologists?
As we mentioned earlier, using Google ads as your marketing strategy will allow you to reach and target more potential patients through an increase in website traffic for your medical practice. This online advertising strategy will also help bring brand awareness to your business in the digital landscape, maximizing your ROI (Return On Investment) with different bidding strategies, and earning more conversions.
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2. Creating Google Ads for Oncologists
If this is your first time creating a Google Ads campaign, follow this step-by-step guide. First, go to Ads Google and click on “Start now”.
You will then need to sign in to Google Ads. If you don’t have an account already, sign up with your email.
Once you are signed in to your Google Ads account, you will be redirected to your Google Ads account dashboard. Click on “+ New Campaign” to get started.
3. Campaign Settings
3.1 Campaign Objective
When creating your Google ads campaign, you will need to set up your campaign settings. For this guide example, we will be selecting “create a campaign without a goal’s guidance” as our campaign objective. This will allow us to set up our ad without limiting the campaign to hit specific target goals.
3.2 Campaign Type
For this campaign example, select “Search“. This is the most recommended campaign type for those who will be creating a Google ads campaign for the first time due to its functionality, allowing your ad to show up to people’s searches who are actively searching for your products or services.
3.3 Campaign Name
You can skip the next section, and move on to typing your campaign name. For this example, we will name this campaign “Google Ads for Oncologists”.
3.4 Bidding Settings
For our bidding setting, we want to focus on “Clicks”, which means you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You can also decide to set a maximum cost-per-click bid amount limit to have more control over your ad spending.
For our Google Ads for Oncologists, we will not set a maximum cost-per-click bid limit, since we can utilize different bidding strategies to maximize the performance of this ad.
3.5 Network Settings
The network campaign settings help your ad reach the right people. For this setting, we don’t want to use either search network or display network settings.
This is because although including Google search partners increases the likelihood of your ad reaching more people from Google’s partner sites, these may not directly be high-quality leads and conversions. With the Google display network, unless we use and rely on high-quality images for our Google ads campaign, it’s better to leave it unchecked.
3.6 Location and Language Settings
The next setting for our Google ads for Oncologists campaign is the location and language settings. Select “Enter another location” and then type in your country, city, region, or postcode. This location should be within the area where you operate your medical practice.
You want to make sure that “Presence or interest: people in, regularly in or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations” is selected. This assures you that your ad will only show up in locations where people are likely able to travel from, to get to your medical practice.
Depending on your chosen target area, it’s important to consider a bidding strategy based on how far you want your ad to show up from your location. The further the location is from your actual business, the lower you want the bid to be on your Google ads campaign.
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For your language settings, simply choose the language in which your business operates. If you can also offer services in a different language and want to target a community that speaks that language, for example, Spanish, go ahead and type it in.
3.7 Audience Segments
Because this example is a Google ad for oncologists that can offer cancer services for all ages, you don’t have to worry too much about the audience segments.
If your medical practice only offers pediatric oncology services or geriatric oncology services, then you can target specific age demographics in this setting. When using this setting for audience segments, make sure the “Observation” is selected, so that only specific demographics are targetted for your Google ads, and you can adjust your bid based on these segments.
4. Ad Groups
4.1 Ad Groups Structure
To further understand how Google Ads works, your Google Ads Account Structure is organized into 4 layers by Google with each having a specific purpose.
- Your Google Ads Account will contain your email, password, and your business and payment information.
- The campaign is where you set up your budget and settings. Keep in mind that you can only have one ad type per campaign, but you can have multiple ad groups within a campaign.
- Ad Groups act as a container for your keywords, which are grouped under one theme.
- Keywords are the key terms that will be grouped under one theme per ad group, and they are the terms that will trigger your ad to show up on people’s search result pages.
When creating your ad group for Google Ads for oncologists, you want to rename your ad group and then enter a URL from your research that is in relation to your niche or industry. You can also enter products or services you want your ad to focus on advertising, then click on “Get keyword suggestions”.
4.2 Keywords
In this example, we’ve named our ad group “Oncologist Services“, and used a competitor’s website to get our keyword suggestions. When you get your keywords, you want to organize or categorize them into specific keyword match types.
5. Keyword Match Types
Keyword match types in your Google ads campaign are essential because this is how they tell Google which keywords it should aggressively or restrictively use to match your ad to user searches.
Broad Match is the default match type that will reach a wide range of audiences. Your ad will appear when a user types in any keywords from your ad group, and this can be in any order, including misspellings and even words that relate to your keyword.
Phrase Match is the match type that will allow your ad to show on searches that involve using a keyword within a phrase and close variations of that phrase.
Exact Match is the most specific and restrictive match type. This is when a user searches for the exact key terms from your ad, or close variations of that key term.
To be able to categorize your chosen keywords into keyword match types, there are plenty of free available keyword tools that can do this for you. Once you have your keywords into their respective match types, copy them then paste them to your Google ad group.
Depending on how your local competitors are bidding for keywords, some keywords will be more valuable than others due to how competitive they are, and if they are high-intent keywords or low-intent keywords.
You will want to consider these factors when implementing your keyword bidding strategy, so if people are overpaying for high-intent keywords, target lower-intent keywords, and vice versa. Having a keyword bidding strategy and knowing when to adjust this will help you avoid losses whilst your Google ads campaign is active.
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6. Ad Assets
Ad Assets are additional pieces of information that people will get to see and read from your Google ads campaign. This can also give people more reasons to choose your business over your competitors.
6.1 Final URL and Display Path
In this next section before adding ad assets, the Final URL, should be your medical practice’s website, and in the Display path, you want to focus on specific services you want to advertise. For this example, we typed “oncologist services” as our display path.
6.2 Headlines
Let’s start with adding some of the most essential features of ad assets to our Google ads for oncologists campaign. You can have as many as 15 headlines and these don’t have additional costs. For our Google ads for oncologist campaign, we will use five headlines. If you’re struggling with what to type in your headlines, you can click on “More ideas” and Google will provide you with top keywords from their data as headline suggestions.
You can also choose to pin specific headlines in your Google ads campaign. For example, we pinned the “oncology services” headline in position 1, so it will always show up in that position in your ad. If you don’t want to pin any headlines, you can leave them as they are, and Google will randomly show your headlines in different pin positions based on a user’s search query.
6.3 Descriptions
You can have up to 4 descriptions in your Google ads, so you want to make sure you input information that is going to grab that user’s attention, and you can do this by including key benefits your medical practice can offer, such as “offering state-of-the-art cancer care” as an example.
6.4 Sitelinks
Sitelinks help your ad to appear bigger on Google’s search results, and they involve including additional links to your ad, that can take the user to specific land pages and encourage conversion. With sitelinks, you can easily update them by changing the link text and URL without having to make new ads, and you can also set up the conversion tracking feature on your Google ads dashboard.
To create sitelinks for your Google ad campaign, skip the business name and logos section, then click on “+ Sitelinks”.
Sitelinks for Oncologists
When creating each sitelink, make sure you use key terms that will encourage your audience to click on your ad. Add key information in “descriptions lines 1 and 2” and the final URL should be the landing page for that specific product or service.
Here is an example of a sitelink created for our Google ads for oncologists campaign, with the sitelink text being “cancer surgeries”, therefore instantly giving the user an idea of what they can expect when they click on that specific sitelink.
When you’re done creating all four sitelinks for your campaign, google ads will preview these sitelinks for you. Make sure you tick each sitelink to appear on your ad.
6.5 Types of Ad Assets
Other types of ad assets that you can include in your Google ads to increase your click-throught-rate are the following.
- Location assets are beneficial to include when you want people to know the location of your business.
- Call assets allow people to contact your business through calls or text messages for any queries or to book appointments.
- Callout assets such as “24/7 customer support” encourage people to convert on your website.
- Structured snippet assets can be information such as listed items or products and services that people may find valuable.
- Price assets allow people to directly browse products or services from your ad, that already showcase prices.
- App assets are for those who have an app and want to encourage people to download it.
- Lead form assets are advantageous to include if your target goal is to encourage people to submit information in relation to a service you offer.
7. Manual CPC
The next setting is the Manual CPC or budget section. For your average daily budget, Google will recommend an amount based on the information it has from your Google ads campaign. This recommendation will usually provide you with your campaign optimization score on the right side of the screen, and a mini breakdown of expected weekly clicks, weekly cost, and the average CPC or cost-per-click.
You can always decide to choose your manual CPC based on Google’s recommendation, but this will depend on your actual budget.
7.1 Custom Manual CPC
If the recommended amount is not within your starting budget, you can always select the custom budget option, and input a starting daily budget for this campaign. When your Google ads campaign is up and running, you can always adjust your budget and gradually increase it based on measurable data and insights you can get from your Google ads account.
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Before publishing your campaign, google will give you a preview of your Google ad settings to review. When you are happy with all the details, click “Publish campaign” and you are done!
How to pause an active Google Ad Campaign
During the time your campaign is active and running, you may want to adjust or apply changes. To do this, it’s important to first pause your campaign, so you want to access your Google ads dashboard first, then select your campaign and change it from “Enabled” to “Paused“.
You also want to make sure your ad group is also “paused”, so apply the exact same change as your campaign settings.
8. Keyword Planner
One of the key features you can use for your Google ads campaign to maximize its performance is the Keyword Planner. Access this feature on your dashboard by clicking “Tools” first, then selecting “Discover New Keywords” under the keyword planner tab.
Enter products or services in relation to your business. In this example, we used “oncologist services” and “oncologist treatments”. Then click on “Get results”.
On your screen, Google will show you new keywords you can add to your campaign or ad group, with information regarding average monthly searches, and lowest and highest bids. On the right side of your screen, you will also see keywords that are already in your account.
9. Negative Keywords
One way to truly optimize your Google ads campaign is by using negative keywords. It is essential that you know how to utilize this feature on Google ads because negative keywords help exclude your ad from being triggered by keywords or phrases in relation to your business that will not give you website traffic, quality leads, or conversions.
Using negative keywords ensures that you don’t use up your allocated budget for these negative match types, and assures you your CPCs or clicks won’t go to waste.
Before using negative keywords on Google ads, use free tools such as Negative Keyword Pro to get keyword suggestions that show up in relation to your business, but are irrelevant to your campaign and are unlikely to bring you new potential patients.
When you have your negative keywords ready, go to your Google ads dashboard and click on “+ Negative keywords” under the Search keywords tab.
In this setting, you can choose to either include your negative keywords in your campaign or ad group.
Copy and paste your negative keywords to the Google ads text box. If the negative keyword tool you used didn’t already provide you with formatted negative keywords, go ahead and format them into broad match, phrase match, and exact match types, then click “Save“.
Your negative keywords are now added to your Google Ads for Oncologists campaign. You can always review these and add more or remove a few using your Google ads dashboard.
10. What is a landing page?
The main purpose of a landing page should be to communicate one clear message (which should be the service it’s offering on the page) and one dominant Call-To-Action button that is visible throughout the page whether the user scrolls up or scrolls down.
A landing page should also be a standalone page where users or visitors “land” when they click on your ad (particularly sitelinks) and encourage them to take action, such as booking an appointment or purchasing a product or service.
10.1 Key Elements
A good landing page uses a combination of key elements that encourage users or visitors to become high-quality leads and conversions. The key elements you need to make a good and effective landing page are the following:
- Headline
- Image or video
- Testimonials
- Unique Selling Proposition
- Key benefits
- Short Forms
- Call-To-Action buttons
Now that we know what a landing page should consist of, let’s have a look at a good example of a landing page for oncologists.
Landing Page Example:
At the beginning of this landing page, you can see a large, high-quality hero shot being used that is relevant to their headline, using its main keyword. There are also CTA buttons present such as “appointments” and a phone number visitors can contact them through.
As we scroll down the landing page, it provides information highlighting its unique selling proposition of being the “best cancer center in the USA”, and uses subheadings and supporting copy to address the users’ fears and solutions. On the right side of the landing page, a short form is available for the user to fill in with information, encouraging conversion.
It also effectively uses social proof in video format from different cancer cases and a written in-depth testimonial for those who decide not to watch the social proof videos.
Key benefits and Unique Selling Proposition elements are used along with trust indicators and more CTA buttons.
Throughout the landing page, there are plenty of opportunities for the user to convert through call-to-action buttons, submitting online queries with the short form available, and a phone number that users can contact for calls or text messages.
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11. Conclusion
Now you know how to create a Google Ads campaign and understand how each step contributes to the main purpose of helping your medical clinic in online digital marketing. Not only will Google Ads for Oncologists help bring you more patients and increase website traffic, but you will also be able to reach the right people, and even reach potential patients that you couldn’t before using Google ads for your medical practice.
Google Ads is the top digital marketing platform you need for your business, and having the right team to optimize and manage your campaign will certainly help you get more clicks and leads, increasing your revenue and experiencing a higher ROI!
Book a free consultation session with our team of experts if you need assistance managing your Google Ads campaign.
