If you run a local medical practice, you may have heard of or even considered paid search advertising in marketing your medical and healthcare services. In today’s post, we’re here to share some valuable paid search tips for doctors and healthcare specialists and how you can apply them to your practice.

Pay-per-click (PPC ads), Google ads, Bing ads, search engine marketing, sponsored business listings, search engine advertising – paid search marketing comes in various names.

As a local healthcare provider and business owner, you want to ensure that your ad budget doesn’t go to waste.

Planning for paid search advertising may seem overwhelming, but you don’t have to worry.

Search engine marketing experts recommend effective paid search tips and a PPC campaign tailored to the needs of your practice.

4 Benefits of Following Effective Paid Search Tips

The healthcare landscape is highly competitive. A large percentage of consumers tend to go online to search for medical and healthcare-related services.

There are 70,000 medical-related searches in Google every minute – and that includes patients looking for local healthcare providers.

As such, it’s vital for medical practices and healthcare specialists to show up for relevant search engine queries.

There are various ways to increase your medical website’s visibility online.

Search engine optimization, the most notable one, is the process of improving your ranking in search results through organic traffic.

On the other hand, search engine marketing utilizes paid search tips and strategies to display your healthcare website in relevant search queries.

Both approaches are essential components of a solid digital marketing strategy. However, paid search campaigns have their own unique set of benefits that we’ll discuss further.

It’s Cost-Effective

When done correctly, paid search advertising has the potential to be one of the most cost-effective and revenue-generating strategies to drive growth for your medical practice.

PPC works just like it sounds. You only pay when a user clicks your ad. You can also set your ad budget to ensure you’re only spending what you want. No minimum spending requirement means that this advertising strategy works for any type of business, big or small.

Follow these paid search tips if you are a smaller medical practice with a minimal advertising budget. This type of advertising could be an excellent option for your practice.

Potential new patients are seeking out information online relevant to your services. If they click on your ad, there tends to be a higher potential for engagement.

As always, each practice has different needs. A search engine marketing firm will discuss valuable paid search tips with you, so you know all your options and decide what meets your needs.

It’s Highly Targeted

Whether you want to generate high-quality leads, introduce a new specialized medical procedure or equipment, or expand your patient volume, you can set your paid search campaign to meet your specific medical practice goals.

Your search engine marketing campaign manager will determine the right keywords relevant to your medical specialty. The next step is bidding on these keywords.

Paid search experts recommend an initial 10-20 relevant keywords. You can then monitor how each of these performs before adjusting or changing anything.

There are also different ad-targeting specifications you can set you can initiate a highly targeted campaign. You can granularly target location, age, device, day of the week, time of the day, webpage visits, etc.

It’s Flexible

As we mentioned above, paid search advertising can be a highly targeted campaign. Another great advantage of this online advertising approach is its high customizability for optimization.

Every component of your ads can be set to your granular standards – from the keywords, landing pages, ad extensions, etc.

Based on the data your campaign manager will gather, you can make adjustments to your campaigns based on what works and what doesn’t.

For instance, one keyword is costlier than the others. However, users who initially interact with that keyword don’t generate a high engagement on your website.

You can stop this keyword and not use it in your campaign. You can then focus on other keywords that bring more traffic to your website yet are less expensive.

These paid search tips can also be applied to different components of the ads, such as landing pages, copy, etc.

It Offers Measurable Results

One of the best things about creating digital marketing campaigns is the availability of data to support your marketing efforts.

Google paid search ads are no exception to this. You can monitor and analyze every campaign, keyword, and parameter within the Google ads platform.

What Makes Up a PPC Campaign?

One of the most valuable paid search tips is to know what makes up any PPC campaign.

Keywords

Keywords dictate the direction in which a paid search campaign needs to go.

These are the essential phrases your potential new patients are typing in Google when looking for your medical specialty.

The way your potential patients search for your medical services will give you valuable insight into their buyer’s journey.

With this new information, you can adjust your digital marketing campaign to accommodate likely new patients’ needs.

Ads

When you are looking for a product or service in Google, you will see text-based ads on the results page. These ads also show up on Google Maps and other keyword-driven online environments.

Marketing Campaign and Structure

One of the most essential paid search tips you also need to know is campaigns and ad groups. These are the settings and tracking parameters you can customize to specify your ad targeting criteria, such as budgets, demographics, etc.

Bids

PPC or pay-per-click is relatively self-explanatory. It works just like it sounds. You only spend your ad budget when a user clicks your ad.

You can also set a maximum figure for every relevant keyword. This ensures that you don’t pay more than necessary for each click.

Should I Do Paid Search for My Medical Practice?

PPC advertising is vital in gaining more traffic to your medical website. It generates more potential new patients, eventually growing your patient volume.

When you partner with an experienced and certified PPC expert, you can outrank your competition and acquire more patients.