To drive practice growth in today’s competitive market, healthcare practices need to reach more prospective patients online. However, competition for showing up on the first page of Google is fierce – especially for medical and dental groups. Google Ads, also known as paid search, pay per click, or PPC advertising, provides doctors with an effective and efficient way to be seen on Google, often before organic results. With Google Ads, you get immediate visibility while your organic SEO builds. This strategy delivers real, instant, and measurable growth for healthcare practices. Let’s learn how running a PPC campaign can help drive immediate visibility in search and more patient leads to your practice.
Your practice moves to the top of Google search results, immediately.
With Google Ads, ads generally appear above organic search results — giving your practice an opportunity to be seen by more prospective patients. This benefits those practices who are:
- Looking for a quick way to be seen online. PPC advertising offers a chance of showing up on the first page of Google for desired searches, especially on mobile devices
- Just establishing their online presence. It’s immediate placement while your organic SEO is building. SEO takes time to improve your organic search results. While that’s happening, a Google Ads campaign can help to fill the gap.
- In highly competitive markets with large established competitors. It allows you to compete for brand-related and highly competitive search queries.
Target the exact patients you want to see more of.
With Google Ads, you have the ability to target specific keyword searches, in a specific geographic area during a specific timeframe. What this means is that you can control:
- Who sees your ad, including gender, age, and locality (within a radius of your practice)
- When your ad shows
- That your ad fits the profile of who you’re trying to reach
You can also target more transactional searches using keywords such as “best urologist near me” or “urgent care near me”. This type of search query is generally from someone who is actively looking (showing intent) to book an appointment and not from someone who is searching on symptoms or to learn more about a condition. While both queries may help to drive traffic to your site, a transactional search is more likely to result in a conversion.
Paid ads complement and strengthen your practice’s digital marketing strategies.
PPC ads should complement your organic search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Over time as your organic SEO improves your practice’s visibility online, paid search can temporarily fill the void with immediate results.
In fact, some groups chose to maintain their ad campaign(s) even after they’ve established strong organic results. By doing so, your practice can occupy more online real estate to drive more clicks from organic and paid search results. This is especially true for mobile search results where ads take up so much real estate.
In some specialties, competition for new patients can be fierce. If you’re a new practice, it can be difficult to compete with well-established providers who have a solid reputation. When designed and managed properly, paid ads can help level the playing field, allowing your practice to compete. You can bid on specific keywords, including your competitor’s name, to give your practice an opportunity to get in front of prospective patients looking for a new provider.
Get hyper-localized results with Google Maps advertising
There’s no doubt that at some point you’ve used Google Maps to help locate a business and its address. With so many people using Google Maps, as a location-based medical or dental practice, harnessing the power of Google Maps is an excellent way to increase your online visibility. So why advertise on Google Maps? Map ads make your practice stand out against your competition. If someone is using Google Maps for directions, your practice’s promoted pin icon that will grab their attention. Google Map ads prompt users to take action. Since most users are seeing your ads while searching from their mobile phone, they have a unique opportunity to click to directly call right from the ad.
Ensure a successful ad campaign for your medical or dental practice
Navigating the rules surrounding digital advertising for healthcare services is challenging. There are a lot of variables to consider including quality scores, geo-targeting, extensions and proper optimization. Let the experts at Practis help. Contact us today.
