Excellent PPC Campaign Design for Physicians: Steps and Tips

Finding new patients is often a frustrating process for small private medical practices. Patients also struggle to sift through online search results to find suitable care providers. A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign solves these problems and benefits all involved.

The next time you want to use PPC for doctors as part of your strategy, follow the helpful tips in this article. It discusses the following points:

• The benefits of PPC for doctors as a marketing strategy
• Five simple steps to strengthen your paid ad campaigns

There is much to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

If you want to learn how Digital Authority Partners can increase your PPC effectiveness, watch this video!

PPC for Physicians: Defining PPC and How It Benefits You

PPC is a digital marketing strategy that uses paid ads to attract and drive traffic to a business,  website, or other online profile. You pay only when the viewer clicks on your ad, so you can set strict spending limits and maximize your budget. PPC gives marketers better control over their campaigns.

Each part of an ad campaign is easy to customize to suit every physician’s marketing needs. For instance, keywords are central to PPC tactics because they enable precision targeting of a market segment. Both target and negative keywords narrow possible audiences.

Meanwhile, PPC ads and platforms come in various types and forms to provide options that best match a target market’s online behavior. With the right ad on the right platform, you have a solid strategy that combines accuracy, flexibility, and efficiency in a convenient and simple way.

Five Steps in Building a Reliable PPC Campaign for Your Practice

Although PPC is mostly user-friendly thanks to simplified ad marketing platforms, the danger of costly mistakes still exists at every turn. Marketers must know how to address critical issues and serious flaws when formulating effective PPC for doctors and their practices.

Here are five steps to follow in assembling an effective PPC campaign for your medical practice:

     1. Find What Drives Your Audience

Patients use distinctive search terms related to the health issues they want to address. For example, “back pain” and “lower back pain” can signal different problems. 

They may also specify the type of solution they seek, such as “back pain medicine” or “doctor for back pain.” Knowing what your patients want helps you tailor your PPC strategy to their needs. It gives you clues on how to make ads to get traffic.

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think like them. Imagine situations that might lead people to need your treatments, like the scenarios shown in direct-to-consumer TV commercials for medications. Surveying select groups is another good way to deepen your understanding.

     2. Use Specific Long-Tail Keywords

Specific and long-tail keywords work better with PPC for doctors because they capture patients' intent more fully. Specific keywords get fewer clicks than general ones, but a higher proportion of the people who click will be a good match to your practice. This lets you spend your budget more effectively.

To get more specific, use adjectives (e.g., intense headache) and qualifiers in keywords (e.g., lower or upper back pain). Geotargeting is also important for attracting clicks. Your target market will search for solutions in their immediate area before considering other options. 

Depending on the specialty, it may pay off to specify the neighborhood rather than the city. “Tule Springs doctor” may be better than “Las Vegas doctor” because the former is more specific, but a plastic surgeon may draw from a wider area. You must balance long, short, specific, and general to successfully connect with your target market with PPC.

     3. Blend PPC and Local SEO Well

Running a PPC campaign does not automatically guarantee success or make other digital marketing strategies obsolete. It is a matter of blending PPC and other methods to avoid conflict. For instance, watch out for keyword cannibalization, which is when multiple pages on your website in effect compete with each other for search traffic. 

No single digital marketing strategy delivers complete success on its own, nor is there such a thing as a flawless plan. That is why PPC and local SEO are ideal partners for doctors. Using both allows you to cover more ground and rank for more keywords more effectively than alone.

PPC and local SEO complement each other well because you can expand your online presence with business profiles. SEO also influences graphing pages, which are critical to PPC strategies; these pages show in searches independent of active ads.

     4. Create and Test Your Ad

Appeal is a critical factor in the success of a PPC campaign because if your ads fail to draw any attention, they will route zero users to your landing pages. Know what your audience responds to most, and utilize that when creating ads. In other words, find your angle.

Again, this parallels TV commercials, which typically show relatable everyday scenarios to hook viewers. However, to avoid getting in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission, refrain from dramatizing your paid ads or making unrealistic claims to boost sales. 

A good rule of thumb with PPC ads is to test them to pick out the most effective parts and assemble the best possible iteration. Getting outside opinions on your ads is another smart way to evaluate the effectiveness of your ad marketing strategy. 

     5. Diversify Content and Platforms

PPC is flexible because it utilizes various mediums to deliver content to your target audience. Apart from search ads and banners on websites, paid ads also take the form of videos or surveys that provide additional engagement methods to draw people’s attention.

For example, YouTube ads are among the most cost-effective ways to do PPC, thanks to the low cost of running ads on such a massive platform. This also follows a growing trend in the healthcare industry of using social media posts, especially short videos, to advertise your medical practice.

TikTok and Instagram are other popular platforms for video ads that work incredibly well for healthcare content. Many physicians and specialists use it to share educational content that highlights their services with a wide audience. Choosing different platforms strengthens your PPC.

Summing Up

PPC is an effective and worthwhile investment for many small businesses, including private healthcare practices. PPC for doctors is unique in that it is subject to additional rules that marketers must consider. Despite that, strong strategies are possible.

For instance, using diverse, specific, and geo-targeted keywords helps narrow the potential audience of your ads. SEO also pairs well with PPC to increase your digital marketing strategy’s potency and reach more people.

Need help creating an excellent PPC campaign for your private practice? Contact Digital Authority Partners to learn how we can help.