2021 PPC Best Practices

You have a beautiful website, but you’ve discovered that the adage “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply when it comes to patients finding your website instead of the competition. It’s up to you to place your services in their direct line of vision, and one of the best ways to do this is with pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

PPC is a form of paid digital marketing that places your practice right at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), above the organic search results, immediately enhancing your online visibility and driving more qualified patients to your practice. Correctly managed, a successful PPC advertising campaign will quickly increase lead generation for your practice and yield an excellent return on your investment.

What are best practices for a successful PPC campaign?

Check out these 5 tips for improving your PPC campaign performance:

#1 – Drive Performance with Quality Content

You’ve heard it before. Content is king and it’s critical that your ad copy, landing pages, and keywords tell a cohesive and engaging story that demonstrates credibility and professionalism, all while prompting patients to click and learn more.

Start by crafting a clear and compelling value proposition, such as “New Patient Exams Starting at $XXX.” This message quickly conveys the benefit and value of selecting your practice and will result in engagement that is more intentional.

We recommend clients incorporate content that directly instills trust in the quality of their services and the positive experience patients will have with your practice. Patient testimonials and personal endorsements of your expertise are great for this purpose.  Additional trust indicators to include are doctor’s biographies and applicable memberships, affiliations, and certifications with credentialing bodies.

By crafting quality ad content that speaks to your credibility and value, your PPC campaigns will successfully drive more new patients to your practice.

#2 – Target with Intent

When potential patients go to Google and search “cracked tooth in Miami,” Google will pull up ads that have those keywords. Those that don’t will not show up in the query.

It’s important to understand that PPC advertising functions through an auction where you bid on keywords and phrases that will get your ad in front of your target audience, your ideal patients, so keyword selection is crucial to your campaign’s success in achieving more clicks and higher conversion rates.

The first step is to conduct thorough keyword research and search query mining to cultivate a list of key terms and phrases that your patients are likely to employ when searching for your practice. Broad and single-word terms are typically highly competitive and expensive, so instead we recommend the use of long-tail keywords, which are specific, detailed search queries typically comprising a specific four to six-word phrase highly relevant to your practice and the services you offer. The above “cracked tooth in Miami” is a great long-tail keyword example.

Equally as important, is compiling a list of negative keywords, which will help prevent your ad from landing in front of those who you already know are not interested in your services. By including these negative keywords in your ad campaigns, you will reduce your wasted spend and target only the most relevant potential patients. Some common negative keywords to consider include jobs, school, education, x-ray machine, Medicaid/Medicare, grant programs, salary figures, etc.

#3 – Monitor & Refine Campaign Performance Daily

PPC advertising takes continual management to perform at peak efficiency and the key to maximizing your spend, is to fine-tune your bidding strategies to target and align with your end goals.

Typically, we recommend a manual bidding strategy meant to optimize your campaign’s cost per click (CPC), keeping the cost as low as possible to achieve the maximum number of clicks. PBHS also commonly employs Enhanced CPC, which adds a level of automation to the bidding strategy and allows Google to automatically decrease or increase the bid for a given keyword based on the likelihood that the click will lead to a patient conversion. When utilized properly, both your click-through-rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CVR) will increase.

Another bidding strategy that can be utilized successfully is to optimize for your target cost per acquisition (CPA), which is geared towards maximizing conversions on your website and landing pages. This strategy will preferentially spend your allotted daily budget by automatically adjusting the CPC bid to capture the highest number of conversions and allows you to control the maximum and minimum you’ll pay.

Yet another strategy, and traditionally only a good short-term solution, is to optimize your bidding strategy to maximize clicks. This will drive as many clicks as possible and is great for driving more volume to your website for brand awareness and is best when you already have a high conversion rate. Our PPC campaign experts at PBHS are primed and ready to help you design a bidding strategy that ensures a tangible return on investment for your practice.

#4:  Stand Out with New Features

Not all PPC ads are created equal. Utilizing all the new features and ad extension options is a great way to stand out and to improve your PPC campaign performance. Promotion extensions, shown directly below your ad in bold, allow patients to easily spot a great deal at-a-glance and are highly effective in generating new leads for your practice. Another great option is the use of lead form extensions, which we commonly utilize for new appointment requests allowing your practice to collect leads directly from your paid ads. Seize the opportunity to use flashy, new features to make your paid ads stand out and work more effectively for you.

#5:  Enhance Your Online Power

As a review, SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic search results and rankings. In contrast, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising drives patients to your website and landing pages through keyword bidding. These strategies work in concert to connect your practice to the widest possible online audience, both organically and directly.

SEO and PPC work in synergy to increase your overall search engine presence, relevance and authority and when combined allow you to dominate the search engine results page. Searchers who see your ad are more likely to also click on your organic search results and Google uses traffic and site interaction data from your PPC campaigns as part of its ranking algorithms. In addition, both strategies provide data on keyword usage and effectiveness enabling your practice to make smarter, more strategic digital marketing decisions.

Are you looking for help?

We can help you improve your PPC campaigns by increasing your website’s visibility, targeting your ideal patients, testing new keywords, and guiding you in making smart decisions that align with your digital marketing strategies and goals. To implement PPC best practices with the help of one of our experts at PBHS, contact us today.

 

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