Google Ads for Healthcare: Boost Patient Engagement

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Are you ready to increase the number of patients who visit your healthcare services? Then, consider trying Google ads for healthcare!

Google ads capture almost 180 million impressions every month. Moreover, an advertisement on Google has a click-through rate of almost 8%. Incorporating Google ads in your healthcare marketing campaign will largely boost your practice’s online reach. This is especially considering that approximately 65% of consumers admit to choosing the services and products that are displayed as a Google ad.

While a successful Google ads campaign can effectively promote your medical services and reach a larger audience, it’s not free from challenges. These need to be overcome to enhance the potential of your healthcare ads.

This article will discuss the benefits of Google ads for healthcare and the steps needed for healthcare companies to successfully leverage them. Keep reading to know how you can make the most of Google display ads.

What are Google Ads for Healthcare?

Google ads for healthcare are paid ads that enable medical services to promote their products to their target audience. They are generally used to enhance website traffic, increase brand awareness, and support the sale of services and products.

Why are Google Ads Important for Healthcare Providers?

In addition to the above, successful Google ads campaigns offer other specific benefits to healthcare services. These include the following:

1. Targeted Advertising

Advertisements on Google enable healthcare businesses to create ads that target users searching for specific medical services. This will control costs and only attract consumers who are genuinely interested in your products and services.

2. Cost-Effective

Google ads also enable healthcare providers to control the budget of their digital marketing strategy. This ensures effective budgeting and reduces any unnecessary costs in the promotion of services and products.

3. Measurable Outcomes

Google ads also provide comprehensive data on the performance of your healthcare ad campaigns. This information can help you optimize your healthcare advertisements and ensure that your brand goals and objectives have been achieved.

Steps for Creating a Successful Google Ads Campaign

This section will explore the key guidelines that are needed to create a successful ad campaign. These steps work collectively to assist you in creating and managing campaigns that fulfill your key advertising goals.

Here’s a short blueprint to help you start creating Google ads for healthcare.

1. Define your Objective

All Google ads campaigns begin with the selection of a goal. You need to decide on this goal based on the main outcome that you want your campaign to fulfill for success. These outcomes can be based on whether you want to generate leads, sales, brand awareness, or website traffic. For example, if the goal of your campaign is to enhance website traffic, it would be preferable to select “Maximize Clicks”. This will direct your budget towards getting target users to click on your advertisements.

Here are some examples of bidding strategies for different objectives of successful ad campaigns:

Sales: Think of a bidding strategy that is based on assets and clicks that appear to prospective customers when they browse apps and videos partnered with Google.
Brand Awareness: Consider bid strategies to capture the attention of consumers and result in more views for your advertisements.

2. Choose a Campaign Type

Once you select a goal, Google will recommend several types of campaigns to achieve it. The type of campaign you choose will influence the nature of your ads and how they will appear to your potential patients. For example, a Demand Gen or Video campaign will show video advertisements on YouTube while a Display type campaign will show image commercials on websites.

Here are a few more examples of the type of campaign you can when it comes to Google ads for healthcare:

Search: This campaign will show in search results and include text ads.
Local: These Google ads appear on local websites and Google ads. They can include both text and image ads.

3. Set a Budget

The next step is to create an average daily budget that controls the amount of money you are spending on your ad bidding. This can be changed at any time.

While Google offers lots of tools and steps to allocate a budget, here are some basic steps to keep in mind:

Goals and Objectives: Decide on the goals and objectives of your campaign. For example, these could be increased traffic or improved brand awareness.
Implement Market Research: Research the needs of your target audience as well as the advertising strategies used by your competitors.
Budget Range: Think of how much you would want to spend on your Google ads campaign based on your existing resources and goals. For example, a budget of $10/day multiplied by the number of days in a month will be your average advertisement budget.
Tools and Resources: You can further rely on certain metrics offered by Google to help you decide on a budget. For example, Google’s Performance Planner optimizes your budget across your current advertisement campaigns. Alternatively, cost-per-click metrics can help you know the highest price you are willing to pay for getting clicks on your ad.

4. Choose your Bidding

Once a campaign goal has been selected, Google will recommend a bidding focus while choosing a bid type. For example, this could be “conversions” as per your campaign goal.

A bidding focus will make sure that your Google ads for healthcare are created to achieve their specific goals. Alternatively, if you do not want to select the bidding focus chosen by Google, you can select a Smart Bidding Strategy.

Smart Bidding strategies are a set of automated bidding techniques that rely on Google AI for optimizing conversion value or conversions. These tools help establish accurate bids for each auction to drive enhanced conversions cost-effectively and in alignment with your campaign goals. For example, these could be “Maximize Conversions”, “Maximize Conversion Value” and “Target Cost Per Acquisition”.

5. Create Ad Groups

For every campaign, you will need to group collections of similar ads together based on the same target audience. Here’s how you can achieve this step:

It’s important to include at least three advertisements for every group.
Remember to distribute your keywords into more than one advertisement group.

For example, an ad that focuses on online pharmacy, prescription drugs, and over-the-counter drugs can be grouped under “prescription drug services”. This ad group will specifically advertise prescription drugs.

6. Conduct Keyword Research

It is extremely crucial to conduct thorough research to identify relevant keywords for your Google ads. You must identify your target patient market before you select keywords relevant to their common search queries. Healthcare professionals can employ tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to identify relevant keywords related to their niche. They can research their target audience’s requirements and select keywords accordingly. Additionally, they must choose keywords based on their search intent and the medical services they offer.

Medical professionals must select long-tail keywords with less competition and those that are easy to rank. They must use high-intent keywords like ‘best medical professional near me’ or ‘affordable healthcare services in town’. Their keywords must reach a wide range of searches and the practitioners can even restrict the ads to specific queries for high relevance. They can target cities and specific regions to reach nearby patients. They can target age, gender, income level, medical history, and healthcare preferences to search for keywords.

7. Create an Ad Copy

Your Google ads for healthcare will be incomplete without a creative and compelling ad copy. Here’s how you can achieve this step:

Consider Keywords: Add keywords that are relevant to your practice. For example, these could be “pediatric services” or “emergency childcare services” if your practice caters to children.
Prepare a Convincing Copy: Create ads that relate directly to what your target audience wants to buy. For example, your ad should highlight the benefits of fitness services if your customers prefer exercise or physiotherapy for their health concerns.
Keep it Concise and Specific: Remember to use phrases that cater specifically to your keywords. For example, “best childcare services in New York”.
Include CTA: Ensure that your ads reflect a strong call to action. For example, add phrases like “Call Now” or “Book an Appointment Today”.
Align Ads to Your Landing Pages: Ensure that the content of your ads is aligned to the headlines.
Optimization: Use Google Analytics like Performance Planner to measure and optimize the success of your ad campaigns.

8. Add Assets to Your Ads

For certain advertisement campaigns, you would need to include additional data. For example, these would include adding links to your website or contact details to your Performance and Video campaigns.

Such assets give your patients additional reasons to select your business and increase the click-through rates by a significant extent. You can follow these best practices when setting up your assets:

Add every asset that is relevant to your healthcare practice. Google will only show them if they are estimated to enhance the performance of your ad.
Include at least 4 or more types of assets. For example, these include images, callouts, links, and one more extra asset.
If relevant, include assets at greater account levels. For example, at the campaign or account level.
Read-only assets are not counted or displayed but are still included in the campaign.

9. Optimize the Landing Page

You must ensure that your landing page highly aligns with your ad copy and the search intent of the potential patients. They need to incorporate a clear message in their landing page to deliver a user-friendly experience for the patients. The healthcare experts must ensure that the message or the promise on the landing page is similar to what they have mentioned in their ad copy. The landing page must include a clear call to action that encourages the patients to take actions like scheduling an appointment. Follow these below-mentioned tips to optimize your landing page.

You must use keywords that perfectly align with the medical care services you offer and your target audience’s search intent.
You must conduct detailed research to understand the pain points of your target patient market and their medical requirements.
The landing page must be mobile-responsive as more patients tend to search for a reliable medical care provider on mobile.
Healthcare experts must optimize the images and codes on the landing page to improve its loading speed. They must ensure that the users can seamlessly navigate the landing page and find the essential information they seek.
They can add high-quality visual elements to the page to enhance its user experience.

10. Select Your Targeting

This step helps to establish how broad or narrow the reach of your ad will be. Targeting your ads will enable you to reach potential patients who are conducting relevant search queries about your services and products.

There are several ways how you can target your ads. Using a combination of targeting methods will enable you to reach all kinds of selected content and therefore, a wider audience. Here’s how you can combine your targeting methods:

Placement: Your ads should target websites that come up on the Display Network visited by your patients. This kind of targeting will enable Google to only target sites frequented by target consumers when looking for website placements.
Content Keywords: Select keywords that are relevant to the service and products of your business and also the search terms used by consumers. These can be tailored to meet specific customer needs. For example, you can change the keywords based on seasonal needs while promoting flu vaccination services.
Topics: Consider targeting one to multiple ad pages on specific topics simultaneously. This will enable your ad to reach a broader audience based on websites on the Display Network.

11. Set up Conversions

Tracking the conversions of your ads will enable you to monitor the kind of actions patients are taking when visiting your website. This will greatly enhance the process of measuring the performance of your ad targeting and overall Google ad campaign.

You can use Google’s conversion tracking tool to monitor the following types of actions:

Website Activities: Any sign-ups or purchases that customers have implemented on your website.
Phone Calls: Any calls that customers have made from the contact number given in your website and advertisement.
In-App Actions: Any installations or purchases that patients have taken in your healthcare app.
Import: Any patient activity that began online but ended offline. For example, this could be a patient filling out an online form and then signing that form in your medical practice.
Local Actions: Actions or interactions that patients have engaged in within a particular brand of your medical practice.

Strategies to Improve Your Google Ads for Healthcare

To further create successful and high-performing Google ads for healthcare services, it is essential to implement the following tips and tricks:

1. Understand your Target Audience

It is first important to understand your target patients and their needs before creating any Google ads. This comprises knowing about their healthcare concerns and the kinds of services they are looking for. For example, this could be pediatric services or weight loss services.

2. Add Relevant Keywords

Remember to include keywords that are relevant to your practice. This will ensure that your Google ads reach the right audience. Google Keyword Planner is an excellent tool that you can use to learn the kinds of keywords that are relevant to your locality and region.

3. Create Relevant Ads

Ensure that your ads are informative and engaging enough to attract your potential patients. Keep the language concise and clear and include information that highlights the benefits of your services and products.

4. Develop Appropriate Landing Pages

Your landing pages should include a robust call to action that instructs users on how they can contact your service. For example, this could be about promoting them to follow your practice on social media or booking an appointment to avail discounts.

5. Optimize and Monitor Your Campaign

You also need to track the performance of your ads regularly. This will let you know whether your Google ads for healthcare are achieving the preferred results. The Google Ads dashboard can help you track such performances.

How Can You Optimize Your Google Ads After They Are Live?

Most healthcare professionals are aware of the optimization strategies of Google ads which they must implement before their ads go live. However, there is not a very clear idea of how can they optimize the Google ads after they are live. Here we will explain how you can make the necessary adjustments after your healthcare Google ads go live. You can monitor the performance of your ads and even improve the ad copy. Additionally, you can adjust the bids based on the performance insights and refine the keywords to deliver the best experience for the patients.

Medical care experts can monitor key metrics like ad clicks, impressions, and click-through rates (CTR) once their ads are live. They can even track the return on ad spend to understand how well their ads are working.
They can assess the data to identify trends and patterns in their Google ad campaign. This practice can help them identify which keywords or ad formats have performed the best for their practice. They can set up alerts to track significant changes in their ad performance so that they can swiftly resolve the issues.
Medical experts can add negative keywords to remove irrelevant searches and drive more organic traffic to the ads. They can expand their research to identify new keyword opportunities for their ad campaign.
You can even experiment with different keywords and ad formats to find the suitable one for your practice.
Another crucial step you can take once your ads go live is the right adjustment of bids and budget. You can continuously track your bidding strategies and adjust them if necessary. Additionally, you can optimize your ad campaign specifically for conversions. We suggest you explore Google Ads’ smart bidding strategies to automate your bidding and improve their performance. A healthcare professional can track their ad performance and adjust their bids accordingly.
You can consider retargeting those users who have interacted with your healthcare website or ad previously.

4 Google Ad Restrictions Faced by Healthcare Industry

It’s common to experience healthcare ad restrictions when working with Google ads. However, these challenges depend on the nature of the Google ad guidelines and also the nature of your landing pages. Here are some of the challenges and restrictions to look out for when it comes to working with Google ads for healthcare.

1. Restrictions on Service and Product Promotions

A common challenge is to experience restrictions when promoting your healthcare products and services. In case you are promoting any clinical trial recruitment or pharmaceuticals, it is important to verify the kinds of restrictions placed by Google advertising policies to prevent their banning.

To overcome this challenge, complete Google’s certification process. This will show that you have abided by their policies and that you have all the relevant information and paperwork to run such ads.

2. Restrictions on Sensitive Health Problems

It has become common for people to research sensitive health conditions such as mental health or reproductive problems. Practices that are providing services on these conditions must be extra careful to prevent any restrictions from Google on their paid marketing campaigns.

To prevent any challenges, it’s important to review and modify the message of your healthcare ad campaign and align it to Google’s rules on sensitive health conditions. You should also remove sensitive or explicit terms to prevent violation of healthcare ad guidelines.

3. No Ad Retargeting

Remarketing is when you promote targeted ads to patients who have engaged previously with your website but left it midway. The purpose is to reconnect with potential patients who are interested in your services.

Hospitals and healthcare organizations cannot use retargeting due to concerns raised by Google on patient privacy. The solution is to leverage Google’s targeting tools so that your healthcare ads reach the correct audience. You can resume or pause your ads for retargeting purposes.

4. Carefully Use Negative Keywords

Avoid using any keywords that are inaccurate or deceptive. In the healthcare industry, it is the responsibility of every practice to ensure that they post factually accurate content on their ads and websites.

Using negative keywords can directly violate the ad policies of Google. The only solution is to remove them or at the most, replace them with alternative, more compliant words.

Conclusion

Google ads for healthcare can be a useful way for medical practitioners to expand their practice and attract new patients. However, to reap its benefits to the fullest potential, it is important to carefully understand and apply the tools and guidelines offered by Google.

Despite its benefits, one has to keep several factors in mind to prevent their healthcare ads from being restricted by Google. Therefore, it’s always advisable to work with the right healthcare PPC agency to create targeted ads that are aligned with your brand’s vision and target audience.

Additional Resources:

Google Ads for Healthcare: A Step-by-Step Guide