Many of us already heard about Pay-Per-Click or PPC, though some people still might not know what exactly that is and how it works. In simple words, PPC is an online marketing model that allows advertisers to place an ad online paying a commission only when the ad is clicked. Essentially, PPC is a way to buy visits to your site, rather than trying to earn visits organically.
Pay-Per-Click is a very popular digital marketing tool actively used by businesses from different industries, and the medical sector is not an exception. For instance, some Internet users might be actively searching for keywords related to healthcare professionals when they want to book an appointment or when they are looking for some medical services. And if you use PPC ads, you may miss a lot of prospective patients. While in contrast, if you use it, you will have more patients and higher sales.
Why should a healthcare professional use PPC? What are the benefits?
1. You only need to pay for an action – when an Internet user clicks on your ad. Taking into consideration that the average cost per click in Google Ads is between $1 and $2, PPC advertising may considerably reduce your overall marketing costs.
2. PPC is a very handy tool that allows you to track click-through rate, ad position, and the number of leads and measure your return on investment right away. That way you can plan your marketing expenses ahead, optimize costs per click and make ad-hoc adjustments to the digital marketing campaigns.
3.You can tailor your PPC ads to a targeted segment of customers, for example, patients in a certain age group or patients within a specific geographical area, or patients who are looking for specific services. Hence, you can ensure that you focus on the right patients’ niche driving relevant traffic to your medical practice’s website.
4. The better and more specific your digital ad is, the better your ad rank is. Google AdWords always rewards the good performance of the ads, their relevance, and high click rate by charging less fee per click. Therefore, it is very beneficial to create a highly curated ad, as it will help not only to lower costs but also to increase your brand’s online visibility and attract more targeted patients to your website.
5. PPC can significantly increase your profits. According to Google’s economic impact, for every $1 spent on Google ads, a business will get $8 in profit, which means that your ROI is 700%. Of course, to make profits from PPC ads you need to do deep research and select relevant keywords that will drive traffic to your ad, otherwise, you may even end up losing money.
How does the sales funnel work with PPC for healthcare professionals?
First, an Internet user (potential patient) searches for keywords. E.g. medical practice in El Paso, the best healthcare professional in Texas, high-quality medical services, etc. Then Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.) display a search results page with paid adverts placed at the top of the page (The most relevant ads will appear first). After that prospective patients usually click on the ad and/or check reviews about the doctor resulting in booking an appointment with the professional´s clinic. As you can see, tailored PPC ad noticeably fosters the sales process.
It’s also important to take into consideration that there are different Pay-Per-Click advertising strategies for doctors. These are the most popular ones:
- Google AdWords for healthcare professionals Websites. This platform is one of the best digital marketing tools for businesses that allows placing PPC ads in Google search. It helps the medical practice to grow an online presence, increase visibility and build an online reputation.
- Display advertising for healthcare professionals. Display Advertising includes all the ads that you see online. It’s a useful tool that allows you to get your message out to customers across different Internet platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), engage with them, deliver relevance and impact your bottom line.
- Bing Ads for hospitals. Bing Ads are search ads on the Microsoft Advertising PPC platform. It is similar to Google Ads with some different features and lower costs. Bing is a less popular search engine with lower traffic, however, there’re still a lot of untapped opportunities to increase the number of patients by using Bing Ads.
- Yahoo Gemini Ads for healthcare professionals. Another inexpensive platform for PPC ads with an 11% share of mobile search traffics. Even though it has much less traffic than Google, Yahoo Gemini has some appealing features – it allows a wide scope of geotargeting not only based on geographical location, gender, or age but also based on the interests of the target audience.
So, don’t think what is better – Google Ads, Bing Ads, or Yahoo, instead use all of them to increase reach out to potential patients across different platforms.
It is very challenging to create and optimize Pay-Per-Click campaigns that will generate fast tangible results for your medical practice. And if you want to have a successful PPC campaign, you need to hire a digital marketing professional with strong expertise bringing you real value and return on investment.
