Medical practices, like other businesses, want to grow and attract new patients consistently. One of the best marketing tools in today’s digital world for growing your business is Google Ads. Ranking your practice at the top of the Google search result pages for specific phrases and words used by your patients effectively promotes your medical brand. This is exactly what Google ads do.
A well-optimized ad campaign helps you target your practice to those actively searching for healthcare services like yours. Thus, you can reach more potential patients in a short time. Google Ads are a cost-effective way to generate high-quality leads for your medical practice.
Why Should Doctors Use Google Ads?
Google Ads offers several benefits to doctors and healthcare practices.
1. Get Your Practice Noticed
Landing in one of the first 3 or 4 positions on Google’s search result pages is vital to get more clicks and traffic from potential customers. However, healthcare practices, especially new ones, struggle to gain a top spot. Google Ads allows you to bypass organic search rankings, putting you first in line.
2. Make Informed Marketing Decisions
Google gives you detailed information on every aspect of your ads. From the patient’s search query to filling out your contact form, you can track everything. Thus, it helps you gain a nuanced view of your patient’s behavior so you can make better marketing decisions. Moreover, you can be hyper-specific while targeting. This lets you put your ads in front of highly converting leads or people who are looking for medical assistance on Google.
3. Stay Agile with Flexible, Real-Time Marketing
With Google Ads, you no longer need to spend vast amounts of your time planning and adjusting your marketing activities. You make modifications in real time whenever you need them. It allows you to track your campaign at all times so you can pinpoint areas of improvement and make necessary adjustments quickly.
4. Maximize Your ROI with Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Google Ads run on a pay-per-click model. This means you don’t have to pay for the ads appearing in the search results. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. It’s highly beneficial for businesses from a budget viewpoint.
Another benefit is you can adjust your budget according to your needs. To begin with, set a budget you are comfortable with. When you start seeing results, you can increase it according to your needs.
What are the Disadvantages of Google Ads for Doctors?
1. Ad Spend
As mentioned earlier, you are charged every time someone clicks on your ad. The pay-per-click can be as little as $1 or as much as $100. It mainly depends on the competitiveness of your keyword. So, if you’re not careful when choosing the correct search terms, you may end up paying more than you would earn from Google Ads.
2. Working with Those Who Have Google’s Interest in Mind
It’s important to get expert guidance on Google Ads. However, if you choose someone with Google’s interest in mind rather than yours, you will probably waste your marketing budget on clicks that don’t give desirable results. This is because your campaigns will be structured in a way that gets your ads more clicks from people who may or may not be seeking your services. Though your ads will have higher click-through rates, they won’t yield your actual conversions.
3. Short-Term Results
When it comes to PPC, you get results till the time you pay for your campaign. Once the money stops, your ads will also stop. This is in contrast to organic search engine optimization (SEO), which yields long-lasting results.
4. Majority of Searchers Click on Organic Results
Of all the search results, those ranking organically on the top gain the maximum number of clicks. In other words, the first preference of searchers is websites that are ranking just below sponsored ads. So, allocating more budget to Google Ads than SEO is unlikely to give you enough visibility.
5. Losing Money from a Badly Set up Campaign
Properly setting up your PPC campaign is crucial to drive results. Here are two examples of poorly set-up campaigns.
- Ads are set up to run for 24 hours. Yet, when they get a click, there’s no one to follow up. It means no one to answer the phone calls or respond to the searcher’s inquiry. It wastes the effort spent in creating the ad and getting the click.
- Campaigns target the wrong location. Displaying your ad to people in a completely different location does nothing other than waste your time and effort.
Is Google Ads for Doctors Worth Your Time and Effort?
Whether Google Ads are or aren’t worth your ad spend depends on several factors, such as:
- How optimized your campaign is. It means how relevant your ads are to your target audience.
- The size of your target patient pool is another crucial factor. If you practice in a smaller city, you can expect a smaller number of people to click on your ads, leading to fewer conversions. Being aware of this can help you strategize your campaign effectively.
- The amount of money you put into the campaign. The more you spend, the higher your chances of acquiring more patients.
- Your medical specialty. Certain practices, such as orthopedists, get more per surgery than a primary care doctor.
The short answer to whether Google Ads are worth it or not depends on how they are set up. Properly set up and executed campaigns give doctors a good return on their investment.
How Does Google Ads Work?
Knowing how Google Ads works is important for advertisers in making educational decisions regarding their campaigns. Here’s an overview of the mechanism behind the working of Google Ads.
Keyword Bidding
Advertisers create ads targeting a specific group of keywords. For example, a pain care center will target a group of keywords like ‘pain doctors’ and ‘pain management.’ Then, they will define the highest amount they can pay if someone clicks on their ad.
Patient Query
Now, a patient types in their query on Google. Someone experiencing pain may type the keyword chosen by advertisers, such as ‘pain doctors’ or something relevant like ‘pain clinic.’
Keyword Matching
Google will match the keywords of the patients with those of the advertisers. This is the keyword-matching process where the search engine’s algorithms work to determine if any advertiser is bidding on a keyword relevant to the patient’s query. So, if someone types ‘pain clinic,’ Google will match it to a relevant keyword like ‘pain doctors’ that an advertiser has bid on.
Ad Auction
At any point, many advertisers will bid on one or more keywords relevant to the patient’s query. So, Google chooses one keyword per every advertiser’s account to enter the ad auction. This also includes the ad posted by that advertiser.
However, a single ad auction can have millions of ads, given that many advertisers exist. All of them cannot be accommodated into the first few search results. So, Google uses the quality score assigned to each ad to display the most relevant and high-quality ads to the searcher.
Read Also:- How To Add Keywords To Google Ads?
Quality Score: The Key to Improving Your Google Ad’s Performance
Quality Score is a rating on a scale of 1-10 that Google assigns to an ad. It’s based on three factors. The first is ad relevance, which means how closely your keyword matches your ad’s message. Second is the expected CTR, which estimates the rate at which those searching for your target keywords will click on your ad. It is measured as ‘Above average,’ ‘Average,’ or ‘Below average.’ The user’s landing page experience is the final criteria for assigning a quality score. It shows how useful and relevant your landing page is to the user once they click on your ad and visit it.
To improve your ad’s quality score, you must pay attention to your landing pages, ad copy, and keyword groups. All of these must be fully relevant to your ad campaign. A great strategy is to create small groups of relevant keywords. Then, target ad campaigns for these keywords to landing pages that are optimized for them. Paying attention to your ad’s relevance and the experience it will give to someone who clicks on it is the best way to improve your quality score.
Read Also: – How to Improve Conversion Rate in Google Ads?
How to Create Successful Google Ads Campaigns for Doctors?
There are several things to consider to create and run a profitable Google Ads campaign. Here are some helpful tips.
- Know your target patients: You can only create relevant ads if you know who your target patients are. So, take time to understand the demographic group who can benefit from your services and find out their pain points and needs.
- Use relevant keywords in your ads: Choosing keywords or search terms relevant to your target patients is critical to getting more clicks. You don’t want your PPC budget going down the drain by putting your ads in front of the wrong people.
- Add negative keywords: Negative keywords are queries for which you don’t want your ad to be displayed. For example, if you are an eye doctor, you might want to make your ad appear for the ‘primary care doctor’ query. However, you’ll not want to make it appear for a query like ‘primary care doctor vacancies.’ Adding negative keywords enhances the relevancy of your ad.
- Create ad groups: Creating ad groups lets you organize your ads by target group or topic. Thus, you can better manage and monitor your ad’s performance.
- Create appealing ad copies: Your ad copies should showcase your medical services, expertise, special deals, and discounts. Ensure that the heading and description of your ad is highly engaging and informative.
- Optimize landing pages: A slow-loading and irrelevant landing page can destroy your PPC efforts. Ensure that your landing pages match the promise made by your ads and give a top-notch user experience.
- Add a compelling call to action: Every ad should have a strong call to action. They trigger the searcher to take action, which they aren’t likely to do on their own.
- Track and optimize your campaign: Use the Google Ads dashboard to track your ad’s performance. Monitoring campaigns is crucial to get the desired results. A good tip is to use conversion tracking. This lets you know the number of people taking a specific action, such as scheduling an appointment. This is important to measure the ad’s success.
How Much Should Doctors Spend on Google Ads?
Google Ads offers quick returns. So, medical practices are tempted to allocate huge budgets. However, if you are just starting, it’s best to begin with a more manageable and smaller budget. It will help you understand how this platform works and your audience’s behavior. You will also learn the keywords that best work for you. As you gain more insights, you can scale up your budget.
Generally, healthcare practices are recommended to invest a minimum of 3 to 5 thousand dollars per campaign. This, of course, varies depending on your specific local area and competition. For example, if you live in a smaller city, you can get away with allocating less budget. But if you live in a larger city with more population, there will be more search terms to target. You might want to spend more on your PPC campaigns.
Read Also:- How Much Do Google Ads Cost In 2024?
Industry Statistics for Google Ads for Doctors
Whether you just began your PPC campaign or have been running ads for some time, it’s important to know the average performance metrics in your industry. Knowing them will help you determine whether your performance is on par with others’ or needs improvement. After all, if others are getting more patients with their ads and you aren’t, it indicates you may be missing out on some crucial detail. Here’s a detailed list of health and medical industry performance metrics.
| Average Click Through Rate (CTR) | Average Cost Per Click (CPC) | Average Conversion Rate (CVR) | Average Cost Per Action (CPA) |
| 3.27% (Search) | $2.62 (Search) | 3.36% (Search) | $78.09 (Search) |
| 0.59% (GDN) | $0.63 (GDN) | 0.82% (GDN) | $72.58 (GDN) |
Book New Patients with Google Ads Campaign
Google Ads is a powerful tool that can make you more visible to your target patients. People everywhere are increasingly turning to online searches to discover healthcare services. Google Ads allows you to reach potential customers precisely when they are more interested in your services.
At Website Pandas, our Google Ads specialists leverage their expert knowledge and customized strategies to help medical practices enhance their ROI from Google Ads. Whether you want to increase patient footfall, promote a specialized service, or enhance brand awareness, we create tailored strategies that align with your goals and drive success. Book your free consultation today.
