It is discouraging when you find that your top competitors are featured in Google search results, but your medical practice is not. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing strategy is the foremost method to build stronger online visibility for healthcare services. But as simple as this sounds, it can be a bit complex. This blog shares our top tips for how to form a PPC advertising strategy so that you get more for your digital marketing investment.
The Need for a PPC Marketing Strategy
PPC marketing thrives on a multifaceted strategy, weaving together advanced techniques across diverse platforms, detailed campaign planning, and the seamless integration of the latest technological advancements in digital advertising. Smart strategies also put controls in place to make sure targeting is precise so that you don’t waste money on clicks from those unlikely to use your services.
The landscape of digital marketing is always changing with so many factors demanding attention, especially performance tracking and managing the budget. By taking the time to build a structure for your paid search strategy, you simplify your digital marketing efforts. These eight tips will help guide you in establishing your PPC marketing strategy.
1: Developing a Multi-Platform Advertising Strategy
Multi-platform advertising is a powerful PPC marketing strategy in today’s digital landscape. It helps you reach patients online and cover more ground. Google Ads targets those seeking services, while social media builds brand awareness. This dual approach broadens your reach, establishes touchpoints, and increases conversion chances. As a side benefit, insights from one platform can inform strategies on another for a robust PPC marketing campaign. For example, audience data from Facebook can help you refine your audience targeting on Google.
2: Campaign Structuring and Management
Directing how to set up a pay-per-click campaign would not be complete without in-depth planning: keyword themes, match types, and audience segmentation. For example, keyword match type is a feature that determines how closely a user’s search aligns with the chosen keywords the ad is targeting. By structuring your campaigns based on these factors, you can maximize online reach for your medical practice.
3: Ad Optimization and Extensions
Ad extensions can be used to provide more information and enhance click-through rates by providing additional compelling details that can boost user engagement. For instance, adding sitelinks can guide users to specific pages on your site such as office hours or specific services, while location information can help users find your physical locations more easily. Call options can encourage direct communication, offering an immediate connection point for potential customers.
For optimizing PPC ads for healthcare, all campaigns must focus on relevant keywords and ad copy that speaks directly to the specific healthcare services being offered. This ensures the ads are shown to users who are most likely to follow through with obtaining medical care. Ad extension and optimization techniques combined can lead to a more engaging ad, potentially leading to higher click-through and conversion rates.
4: Mobile Optimization in PPC
More than ever, consumers use their mobile devices to take care of tasks online. At least half of patients will use a mobile device to find care options online. For this reason, a mobile-friendly landing page should be connected to every medical practice ad so that patients have a seamless conversion experience, such as being directed to complete a new patient appointment request form.
5: Advanced Audience Targeting Strategies
PPC marketing strategy is enhanced with a deeper understanding of your audience targeting. One such technique is a “lookalike” audience where you repurpose data from existing customers or website visitors to find people with similar characteristics, behaviors, or interests.
6: Budgeting and Cost Management
Setting realistic advertising budgets and specific campaign objectives will better steer your PPC efforts. Looking to industry benchmarks for PPC spending in healthcare provides a valuable perspective for your budgeting decisions. Ultimately, your budget will be based on how much you can accomplish with what you can afford to allocate, and healthcare marketing experts can help you find that balance.
7: Crafting Effective Ad Copy
The power of ad copy is significant when it comes to influencing potential patients to engage with your medical practice’s digital marketing campaigns. Advertisers understand that they have only a few precious seconds to capture a consumer’s attention, so, the copy must be both clear and compelling, enticing patients to choose your ad over others.
Writing benefit-rich ad copy with strong calls-to-action (CTAs) is known to be effective in helping patients select a provider. Also, aligning your ad copy with your landing page content is a formula that significantly improves conversion rates. It truly does matter what you write in your ads, and it may take a few rounds of adjustments to get the message just right.
8: Continuous Improvement Through Testing
Digital marketing is an investment, and tracking performance data will confirm if your strategies are paying off. Multiple KPIs are monitored such as how many people saw your ad, how many clicked on the ad (click-through rate or CTR), how many completed the appointment request forms, and how many became new patients.
When the numbers are not what you expected, you can look into what changes need to be made for better performance. A/B testing is one technique digital marketers use to test out which approach gets more consumer engagement. The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing, but when you adapt your strategies according to what the data is saying, you stay the course in protecting your investment.
Summary: 8 Tips for Creating a Medical PPC Marketing Strategy
Paid search is a straightforward approach to coping with an increasingly competitive healthcare market, but the mechanisms that make it work are not so simple. For a medical PPC marketing strategy to be effective, it must be well-structured, properly planned, and adaptable when challenges arise. Eight basic tips for forming a PPC plan are:
- Taking a multi-platform approach if your budget allows and if it aligns with your business goals. Many medical practices can benefit by investing in more than one channel such as Google Ads and Meta Ads.
- Doing plenty of “homework” to know you have chosen the best keywords and match types,
and finalizing your audience segmentation. This step is complex, nuanced, and laborious, so many medical practices call upon healthcare marketing experts to lay this groundwork for them.
- Leveraging ad optimizations and extensions. When it is difficult to capture the attention of your target audience, trying out optimizations and extensions can be of great help.
- Think mobile. While computers are the preferred device for building landing pages, you must keep in mind that at least half of your audience will be viewing this page from a mobile device. If clicking your ad leads to a mobile page that patients struggle with, you lose any patients your ads managed to attract.
- Consider advanced targeting strategies. Finding opportunities to build out your audience reach can boost your performance.
- Control costs. Running a PPC campaign without budget constraints is like forgetting to close a dam where the charges incurred can drain out your entire marketing budget or worse. PPC campaigns need a set budget that prevents overspending and encourages efficiency.
- Write ad copy that works. With digital advertising, visibility is only half the battle. The next step is to present the most enticing ad your potential patient sees. Use ad copy that speaks to their immediate needs and look for ways to improve ad messaging that isn’t getting the intended response.
- Insist on results. Digital marketing is an investment that can easily incur a great loss when not monitored for performance. When you catch concerning patterns early, you can correct course to protect your investment. Also, be prepared to adjust for shifts in digital advertising trends, as ad platforms and consumer behavior are never static.
Simplify PPC Campaign Management with the Help of Experts in Healthcare Digital Marketing
You may have delegated some of your online outreach tasks to your in-house staff, such as managing social media accounts, but the how-to of PPC advertising is one area of digital marketing that requires extensive experience to run smoothly. Our team of healthcare marketing includes seasoned experts who will craft a PPC marketing strategy designed to help you meet your medical practice business goals.
iHealthSpot works with budgets of all sizes, maintaining a sharp focus on getting the most value for your advertising dollars. Contact us today to begin exploring opportunities to match your competitors in online visibility and win patients with a winning digital strategy.
