Utilizing Google Ads for primary care physicians is quite advantageous. It is one of the most efficient ways to increase patient volume for doctors by giving you a strong online presence and high conversions. This post will help you understand Google Ads and how they work while guiding you on how to set up a campaign to increase medical practice patient acquisition and improve engagement for your practice.
1. What is Google Ads?
Let’s now talk about Google Ads! It is an advertising platform that businesses use to create ads and show them online to attract potential customers, more like a virtual billboard. You would see these ads labeled “Sponsored” or “Ads” on top of the results pages when you search on Google.
2. Benefits of Google Ads for Primary Care Physicians
Strong Online Presence
Primary Care Physicians or Family Doctors can utilize Google Ads to show up at the top of Google search result pages. Putting their medical services right in front of prospective patients when they are searching for your services.
Targeted Medical Advertising
Geo-targeting patients for doctors increases the chances of conversion or patient acquisition. Using Google Ads for geo-targeting patients, keywords, and areas that are relevant to your services guarantees that your ads are seen by prospective patients who are actively looking for primary care or doctors in your area.
Patient Engagement
Using Google Ads is another way to increase patient outreach for physicians. They can utilize Google Ads for medical practice promotion as well as telemedicine promotion as family doctors can promote patient events or provide health information and recommendations. Doctors have a better chance of gaining their patients’ trust and establishing themselves as recognized experts in their fields.
Cost Effective Advertising
With Google Ads, you have the flexibility to set and modify your budget according to your daily and monthly spending preferences. The best part is that it’s a cost-effective way to connect with potential customers online since you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Would you like to explore the benefits that Google Ads can bring to your medical practice?
3. How does Google Ads work?
Here’s a quick rundown of how it works:
- You create ads containing keywords related to your products and services.
- You then bid for these keywords in Google Ads to ensure your ads appear on Google Search result pages.
- When a potential customer searches for a keyword your ad and other ads are targeting that keyword. Google will start an auction.
- Google will determine the position of the ads based on the Ad Rank and not just by the highest bid amount.
- The ads with the highest Ad Rank ratings will appear on top of the Google Search result pages.
- The potential customers will most likely click on the ads shown in front of them, leading to increased chances of conversion and eventually boosting profits for the business.
Ad Rank
As mentioned before, Google considers the Ad Rank to decide which ads to display instead of just relying on the highest bids from the advertisers. This can be advantageous for small business owners who are running Google Ads. To simplify, Ad Rank is defined or calculated by this formula:
AD RANK = Quality Score x Maximum Bid
Quality Score
Google provides a Quality Score rating ranging from 1 to 10. To obtain your ad’s Quality Score, the following factors are added together by Google.
User Experience + Relevance to Keyword + Expected Click Through Rates (CTR) = QUALITY SCORE
User Experience
How useful and relevant your company’s website’s Landing Page will be to the people who click on your ad.
So what is a Landing Page you ask, it is a webpage to which a person is directed when they click a link. The goal of a landing page is to entice visitors to take action and convert them into leads. Here’s an example of a landing page from Joy Medical.
Relevance to keyword
How important your ad is in relation to the query’s goal or objective?
Expected Click-Through Rates
This is based on your past performance in comparison to competitors, and how likely your ad is to be clicked if shown.
Maximum Bid
This is the bid amount you set for your ad that you are willing to pay per click.
Here’s a complete visual guide on “How does Google Ads Work” to help you understand better.
2. Step 1 Planning and Research for Google Ads for Doctors
When starting a medical practice or business, it is crucial to have a well-thought-out business plan. The same applies when launching Google Ads for Doctors – conducting thorough research is essential. I suggest taking note of this information to make it easier for you to create a campaign later.
1. What are your products and services for your primary care business? This can help you in selecting relevant keywords to use for your campaign.
2. Location. Would you like to focus on a certain area or location?
3. What is the goal and objective of your Google Ad campaign? For now, let’s focus on getting in front of high customers in Google searches.
4. Determine your daily and monthly budget. It is recommended to start with a daily budget of 10 USD. However, if you want more clicks to gather data and optimize your ad faster, you can choose to allocate a higher budget.
5. Understand the concept of Ad Rank and Quality Score. Having a clear understanding of the factors that affect Ad Rank and Quality Score can greatly help in creating a winning campaign strategy.
6. Research and make a list of keywords and competitor websites related to your product or services. Doing this will enhance your ad targeting, increase relevance, gain valuable insights from competitors, identify distinct selling points for your business, and boost your chances of reaching potential customers. You may also use keyword search tools and type in primary care physician near me, primary care, and so on to check which ones have a high volume of searches.
7. Know the average cost per click (CPC) in your industry. It’s important to know the average cost per click (CPC) to determine the necessary budget for your ad campaign. The primary care services will fall under the physicians and surgeons industry. Here’s a great reference for “How much does Google Ads Cost in 2023″.
8. Determine your start and end dates for your ad. How long would you like to run your ad?
9. Determine your ad running schedule. Would you prefer your campaign ads to be available 24/7 or during your business hours of operation?
10. Identify your ad’s interest/target audience and intention. Knowing your ad’s interest and target audience, as well as your intention allows you to strategize and create highly relevant ads for the people you want to reach. By doing so, you can separate your ads into different groups with unique targets and objectives, all within a single campaign in Google Ads. For example, you might want to create an ad for individuals looking for a primary care physician in or near your location and another ad for people looking for an internal medicine doctor or other services you offer.
Need help to start with Google Ads?
3. Step 2 Creating a Google Ads Account and Setting up a Campaign
Creating a Google Ads Account
Now that we’ve got all the information needed and understood the important details. Let’s start creating your Google Ads account!
Go to Google Ads Website and Click Start. You can either create another Google Account or use your existing Google account.
Click Switch to Expert Mode. You would like to click this to keep in full control of your campaign.
On Choose Your Objective Page, Click Create a Campaign without Google’s guidance.
On Select A Campaign Type Page, Click Search because our focus in this campaign is on getting in front of high customers in Google searches for your business.
Skip Select the results you want to do with this campaign and Click Continue.
Setting Up a Campaign – Google Ads for Medical Practices
There are 4 stages in creating a Google Ads campaign: Select Campaign Settings, Set up Ad Groups, Create Ads, and Billing.
Select Campaign Settings
Change your campaign name by clicking on the Campaign Name box and entering your preferred name for your campaign.
Under the Networks box, uncheck Include Google Display Network under Display Network. Depending on whether you would like to have your ad run in Google Search or include Google search partners, you may leave Include Google Search Partners on Search Network checked or unchecked.
Click Show More settings. Under the Start and End Dates box, enter Start and End Dates.
Skip Campaign URL actions and Dynamic Search Ad Settings. Under the Ad Schedule box, enter your planned ad run schedule.
Under the Location box, enter your planned and target location.
For location options under Target, Unclick Presence or Interest and click Presence. You would want to target people who are in your location.
Under the Language box, choose your preferred language for the ad. Of course, you would like to choose the language of your target customers.
Under the Budget box, enter the amount for your daily budget for the campaign.
Under Bidding box, Skip this for now as you will change this to Manual CPC in the Settings once the campaign is created. This allows you to set up and specify the maximum cost per click that you’re ready to spend, giving us a lot more options for optimizing our ads later on.
Under Ad rotation, click Do not optimize. This will send equal traffic to whatever ads you’re running, and it will allow you to look at the data and choose which ones to end and continue. Click Save and Continue.
Set Up Ad Groups
I have mentioned earlier regarding understanding your ad targets and intentions for your primary care business, this is where we will apply them. This part is where you can separate your ads into different groups with unique targets and objectives.
Under Ad Group Name, you can enter your preferred name for your first ad group.
Under the Keywords box, enter keywords or web pages you have researched and click Get keyword suggestions. Google will automatically provide keywords, you may add more of your preferred keywords.
Keyword Match Types
The are 3 types of keyword match types in Google Ads you can use for your ads. These are Broad, Phrase and Exact.
When your ads appear in search results for queries related to the meaning of your keywords but do not always contain the exact terms, this is known as a Broad Keyword Match.
For searches that appear in your ads for queries that contain the same or more specific forms of your keyword is called Phrase Keyword Match.
And for searches that will only appear in queries that contain the same exact meaning or intent as your term is Exact Keyword Match.
To give you an idea, check the image from WordStream below
Click Learn More (in blue font) to understand more about the Keyword Match types. And then, edit the keywords inside the box according to your preferred match types; for example, keyword = Broad, “keyword” = Phrase, and [keyword] = Exact. You may use a keyword match type tool to make it easier than editing word by word.
Click Save and continue, or you may add more ad groups by clicking New Ad Group to your campaign.
Creating Ad Text for Google Ads for Primary Care Physicians
Under Find URL, enter your webpage.
Under Display Path, you may choose and enter words relating to your product or service for your ad.
Under Headlines, enter keywords. You may click View Ideas (in blue font) to get suggestions and check the preview of the ad just on the right side. You may also change the position of the headline boxes according to your preference by clicking on the pin icon when you hover over the headline boxes.
Under Descriptions, enter descriptions for your primary care business. You may click View Ideas (in blue font) to get suggestions. You may also change the position of the description according to your preference just by clicking on the pin icon when you hover over the description boxes.
Skip Business Name and Logos for now. You may also skip Asset Types and add them once you are done creating your account and ad campaign. This will depend on your campaign goals and objectives to increase ad visibility and engagement.
Click Save and Continue.
When you’ve finished filling out all of the required information, your preview ad will look something like this.
Set Up Billing
Under Confirm payment, enter your Billing country and time zone details.
Under Create Payments Profile, enter your name, choose whether this will be an individual account that is under your name or an organization under your private practice as a primary care physician, and add in your credit card information.
Click Submit
Congratulations you’re done with your first Google Ads campaign!
Isn’t it simple to create a Google Ads account and launch a campaign when you have all of the essential information, understand ideas, and know exactly what you want from campaign? But wait there’s more, we are not finished yet. We still need to make a few changes so that you may fully customize your campaign.
4. Step 3 Manual CPC and Ad Assets / Extensions
Switch Bidding Strategy to Manual CPC (Cost per click)
Why switch to Manual CPC?
Manual CPC bidding allows you to set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ads. The level of flexibility allows you to set separate bids for each keyword, ad group, or campaign, which is important if you know the worth of different keywords or want to prioritize specific keywords over others.
To change your Bidding Strategy to Manual CPC.
Click on Settings
Click Campaign Settings and click on the name of your campaign.
Click Bidding.
Click on Change Bid Strategy
Select Bid Strategy Directly
Click Drop down box
Choose and Click Manual CPC from the drop-down menu
Click Save.
Updating Manual CPC Amount
Click Ad Groups then click on the Default Max CPC column, and enter the amount depending on your identified average cost per click.
While manual CPC bidding gives you more control, it also needs continuous monitoring and management to guarantee your bids stay competitive and cost-effective.
Need help in setting up Google Ads and managing it?
What are Ad Assets and How do you add them to your campaign?
Assets are content pieces that make up your ad with useful business information—giving people more reasons to choose your business. Assets include the headlines, descriptions, links to specific parts of your website, call buttons, location information, and more that come together to make up the eventual ad format that is shown to a user as defined by Google Ads.
This is also where you place the link to your business landing page, which is critical because this is where a part of your Quality Score, as previously explained, is calculated or measured.
Click on Ads and Assets, then click on Assets
Click on the plus sign to create/add an asset,
Depending on your strategy, you may choose which assets will be of advantage in helping you increase ad visibility and engagement for your ads.
Yay! You’re finally done! Utilizing Google Ads for Primary Care Physicians will help you build your patient base, create significant leads, and get awareness within your target demographic. To gain the best results, you must create appealing ads, use relevant keywords, and continuously evaluate and optimize your campaigns.
If you want us to run Google ads for your business, schedule a free strategy session with us. YoYoFuMedia has successfully helped over 1,000 clients grow their medical practice through Google Ads, which you can learn more about on YoYoFuMedia’s page.
5. Medical Content: Important Advertising Restrictions
As a healthcare provider advertising through Google Ads, you need to follow Google’s advertising regulations. This is because there is healthcare-related content you can and cannot advertise, and there is also content you can advertise only when certified with Google.
Medical Content You Cannot Advertise:
- Specific prescription drug terms, sales & active ingredients
- Specific healthcare-related services like abortion & birth control
- Unapproved substances
- Experimental medical treatment
- Cell therapies
- Clinical trial recruitment
- Healthcare-related services
Certification requirements will vary per country, so Google-certified advertisers can only target and advertise in approved countries.
To promote specific services as a primary healthcare physician that require certification, ensure that you follow Google’s healthcare and medical policy. Failure to do so will risk your Google ads for primary care physicians being disapproved or suspended.
