Google Ads for healthcare providers: as you probably know, Google Ads can be tremendously effective at growing a healthcare practice.
Honestly, you’re getting in front of patients right in the moment when they’re looking for exactly what it is that you do.
But with Google Ads, it’s really easy to burn piles of money if you don’t get your campaign right.
In this video, I’m going to share with you 12 tips that are going to help you avoid burning mountains of cash as you’re trying to get Google Ads right for your medical practice.
If you’d like to meet with us to discuss PPC management for your healthcare practice, please reach out.
Tip 1: Test Smart Campaigns, Performance Max, and Responsive Search Ads
You want to test Smart Campaigns, Performance Max, and Responsive Search Ads.
Google offers these three different types of campaigns, and the truth is we never know before we start them which is going to do the best.
We’ve taken the same exact campaign that we ran for a plastic surgeon in California and ran it for someone in Virginia, only to find that the Performance Max campaign was the one that drove all the leads, while in California, the Responsive Search Ad was actually the best performing one.
The only way you’re going to know is if you’re running all three in tandem and you’re collecting your own data.
Tip 2: Use Audience Targeting
Make sure you’re using audience targeting.
This is becoming less of an issue, but I’ve seen over the years lots of Google Ads campaigns that are not leveraging any sort of audience information with their bidding.
Google is paying attention to what people are doing as they’re navigating the web, as logged into Gmail accounts, and they collect information about their interests, what kind of websites they’re visiting, what they’re looking at, if they’re parents, where they were.
As you observe these different demographics and these different audience segments, you’ll start to see that some of them are going to convert at a higher rate than others.
You should exclude the ones that are unprofitable and, frankly, bid more on the ones that are.
Tip 3: Bid on Demographics
Bid on demographics as well.
Inexplicably, I very rarely see bid adjustments based on age ranges.
There are going to be very few areas of healthcare where you’re serving absolutely everybody and everybody’s of equal value.
I recently visited the ophthalmologist, and I think that the next oldest person in that waiting room was about 25 years older than I am.
They should be excluding basically everyone under 35.
Tip 4: Use City or ZIP Code Targeting
Don’t set your geo-targeting as a radius; geo-target by city or, frankly, even by ZIP code.
This is going to give you more information about who’s converting and who’s not.
There are going to be neighborhoods where your leads are just more expensive.
Stop wasting money there.
Tip 5: Watch Your Search Terms Report
Maybe the most important of all of them: watch your search terms report.
Google does provide a report of the actual keywords that people searched before they clicked on your ad, and as you go through this, you’re going to see a lot of them that you don’t want to pay for.
You can add these as negative keywords, which will prevent your ads from showing for these searches in the future.
Tip 6: Set Ad Schedule in 3-Hour Blocks
Set your ad schedule in 3-hour blocks.
Instead of running these from 9 to 5, you can set them in three-hour blocks, which is going to afterwards allow you to add adjustments based on the times of day and the days of the week when your campaign performs best and performs worse, which will help you avoid burning cash.
Tip 7: Use Call Tracking
You should use some sort of call tracking, such as CallRail, to start.
It’s going to help you know what keywords are actually resulting in phone calls from patients that actually book, versus just generating a phone call.
It’ll also provide a recording of the call so that you can get an idea of how your front desk is operating.
It’ll also help you to tie back some of the bad leads that you’re getting to keywords you’re bidding on in your account.
We’ve done this a ton of times where we found that we were bidding on a keyword that looked like it was generating leads, but they were actually terrible leads, and we needed to pause those keywords.
Tip 8: Install CleanTalk
Install CleanTalk.
This is the best anti-spam plug-in that I’ve come across up until now.
It’s incredibly inexpensive, and in addition to cutting down annoying spam, it’s also going to avoid sending conversion data back to Google Ads, telling them that this is what your ideal customer profile looks like, and this is who’s converting from your ads, which is only going to result in more of your ads being delivered to bots, resulting in more spam.
Tip 9: Test Landing Pages vs. Website
Test sending your Google Ads traffic to landing pages versus your website.
One inevitably will outperform the other, and if it turns out that your landing pages end up outperforming your actual website, it might mean that your website needs some work, because if your paid traffic is not converting on your website, what makes you think that your organic traffic is going to convert on your website?
Tip 10: Maximize Your Ad Score
Work on maximizing your ad score, the quality score of each one of the keywords that you’re bidding on.
The ad score of your Responsive Search Ads is all going to drive the cost of your click.
Try to get those numbers as high as you possibly can.
Tip 11: Focus on Mobile Ads
Focus your ads on mobile.
Now, with Performance Max, Google’s going to deliver your ads to anybody that they want to deliver to, but with your Responsive Search Ads, you do have more control, and you’ll find that usually your mobile traffic is going to convert better than your desktop traffic.
The reason for this is that most of the bots out there are on desktop, and people that are on their cell phones are going to be more likely to convert after they’ve clicked on your ads on mobile.
They’re going to have that tap-to-dial or, if you’re really smart, tap-to-book appointments.
Tip 12: Review Google’s Healthcare Advertising Policies
Possibly the most important of all of these: give a thorough review of Google’s healthcare advertising policies.
It’s very easy to get an account banned.
There’s a three-strike policy.
It can be very frustrating to get an account set up in the first place for many areas of healthcare.
You don’t want to spin your wheels in the mud unnecessarily, so reviewing those policies ahead of time will save you a lot of headaches.
