Google AdWords can help medical marketers take their digital ad campaigns to the next level and boost patient recruitment for particular service lines.
Hospitals and healthcare providers looking to expand particular service lines are turning to digital marketing to attract new patients. 77% of people looking for health information begin their journey with a search engine, meaning that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for recruitment.
No matter which services your hospital is hoping to grow, paid advertising on search and social media is a key component of a successful marketing strategy. From generating traffic to measuring results, here’s how your practice can use Google Adwords to reduce costs and reach your patient acquisition goals.
Use Long Tail Keywords to Target Patients
Medical marketers can use keywords to attract people looking for specific types of treatments. The more precise you are with your keyword selection, the more likely you are to engage patients who are ready to take action.
Short, more general phrases like “torn ACL” can generate a lot of online traffic, but they tend to have lower conversion rates – not to mention high costs-per-click (CPCs). Long tail keywords that include details and a location, such as “ACL reconstruction surgery Seattle,” are more likely to result in appointments.
Refine Your Audience
It’s important to target the right demographics for patients in each keyword group. Your hospital can use Google Display Network (GDN) to develop custom intent audiences made up of people interested in a particular treatment. These audiences are built using data from your website, YouTube channel, and previous ad campaigns. Marketers can use GDN to create their own custom audiences, or allow Google to generate them instead.
Another useful strategy is to filter out patients who don’t fit your target audience. This method will help you reduce costs by focusing on customers who are more likely to be interested in or qualify for your services.
According to Google, using negative keywords will “prevent your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.” This means your ad won’t be shown to anyone searching for that particular term. For example, if your practice doesn’t accept patients with Medicaid, then you could use Medicaid as a negative keyword and your content won’t appear to users whose search contains that word.
Optimize Your Ad Spend
As you run AdWords campaigns, you’ll want to check on them regularly to determine which ones are working and which ones need to be reevaluated. Pay attention to click through rates (CTRs) for both old and new campaigns to find out which ads are performing well.
For those ads that are not meeting expectations, it may be necessary to pull spending or make additional adjustments such as building a customized landing page. You may also want to use Google AdWords Editor to check for duplicate keywords, which could increase your cost per click (CPC) or negatively impact your Google quality score.
Ultimately, what matters for healthcare providers is how many appointments these ads are generating. By analyzing digital media insights and ROI reports, your hospital can focus on building campaigns that drive the most revenue for your chosen service lines.
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