Just like any other business, healthcare providers are faced with the challenge of bringing in new patients in order to support their practice. These patients are able to choose from a wide variety of physicians and specialists, which is why it is so important for you to stand out from the crowd and grab their attention.
The Beauty of Google Ads
Paid advertising is an excellent way to accomplish exactly that and stand out from your competitors. With Google Ads (formerly referred to as Google AdWords), you can target patients searching for a number of keywords or key phrases that relate to services offered by your practice.
Anyone can create a Google Ads campaign and throw enough money at it to make their ads appear to users, but there are many important factors that healthcare providers should be fully aware of in order to make their ad campaign a success.
Strict Privacy Laws
A patient’s health information should always remain confidential. It’s the law. As a result, Google is also very sensitive to potential breaches of a patient’s health information.
Google will often disapprove ads that do not comply with their standards, including ads that use specific wording like “drugs” or “birth control”. This can make it a bit difficult to create ad copy that does not violate any of Google’s policies.
No Remarketing Ads Allowed
Many businesses utilize a type of ad campaign known as a remarketing campaign. These are ads that are specifically shown to users who have interacted with the business in someway online, usually by visiting their website.
Have you ever been shopping for clothes only to log in to Facebook a couple of days later and see clothes from that exact same company featured in your news feed? That is a remarketing ad.
Remarketing ads are often very effective in keeping the business at the forefront of the user’s attention, even as they are no longer outwardly searching for products or services offered by that particular company. Since these kinds of campaigns require data to be collected about the consumer, Google does not allow them to be used by healthcare professionals in order to avoid the violation of any HIPAA laws.
What CAN Healthcare Ads Do?
While it may seem that the cards are stacked against healthcare providers when it comes to online advertising, there are still a lot of ways in which advertisers can reach patients searching for healthcare providers and services. Best practices for Google Ads related to healthcare include:
- A robust list of keywords and phrases. These will be the core of your ad campaign, and it is imperative that they are as relevant as possible to your practice and the patients that you wish to target. The more relevant the ad, the better the rankings, and the higher the likelihood of a conversion.
- Short and effective ad copy. Google Ads are not very lengthy, so you need to be able to get your point across quickly and efficiently. Once again, relevance is key to this process.
- Constant adjustment and improvement. An advertiser would never start a campaign and let it run endlessly without ever attempting to reduce waste and improve results. As your campaign matures, your database will expand. This gives you a great source of knowledge on consumer behaviors, like which ads are working well and which aren’t.
Organic is Still Necessary
Even the biggest advertising budgets cannot make up for poor organic rankings. These organic results are absolutely free, which means that you can attract new patients without ever spending a penny on a Google Ads campaign.
Ideally, healthcare professionals should focus their efforts on both paid and organic rankings. These tactics will help to greatly improve the online visibility of your practice to potential patients, which may ultimately lead them to reach out and schedule an appointment.
For more information on how your practice can benefit from an Ad campaign, or to learn more about Practis’ offerings, contact our team today!