PPC Hospital: Best Practices To Bring More Site Traffic

How can hospitals and medical care facilities compete with other businesses offering the same services and facilities? The answer is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, using PPC hospital strategies. With such strategies, hospitals can easily reach people actively looking for services like the ones they offer.

This guide will help you create better PPC campaigns using the three best practices:

• Conducting keyword research
• Creating great landing pages
• Improving the presence of your mobile ad

PPC plus a great healthcare website design can increase traffic to your web pages and ultimately increase conversions. If you're ready to learn about PPC, then let's go!

What Is Hospital PPC?

Hospital PPC is advertising strategically placed in front of potential clients. But instead of paying for ad placement, you only pay when your audience clicks on your ad. From this standpoint, it may sound straightforward and cost-effective, but PPC is one of the more complex digital marketing segments.

      Working With a Hospital PPC Expert

Given PPC's complexities, hospitals or their marketers often partner with an agency to help run successful campaigns. With experts applying a well-formulated PPC strategy, even a small county hospital can compete with huge medical centers.

Ranking in searches for popular phrases like "ICU in San Diego" is challenging for local hospitals competing with giants. But with PPC strategies designed by experts, these hospitals’ ads get displayed in the search results and get a chance to improve traffic.

3 Best PPC Strategies To Increase Site Traffic

Marketers worldwide value search ads. Digital ad spending worldwide has reached $521 billion USD in 2021 and is projected to reach $876 billion USD in 2026. Marketers use PPC to boost online brand recognition, lead generation, and site traffic. Below are some strategies to try.

     1. Conduct In-Depth PPC Keyword Research

In both medical SEO and PPC, keywords are vital. They help search engines understand your content. Build your keyword list using search terms that can trigger your PPC hospital ads.

One of the many factors to consider when doing keyword research is your patients' knowledge and experience of the medical industry. Use simpler terms for lay people to understand your ads. Meanwhile, use technical terms for ads targeting doctors and other medical professionals.

Use the following keyword research strategies to find the best keywords for your hospital PPC campaigns.

• Define your potential patients. Given your services and facilities, develop your target audience. For example, a children's hospital may target those looking for emergency pediatric care and pediatric diagnostic and laboratory procedures.
• Find out what your patients need. Brainstorm with your medical team and discuss common patient health questions. Use these questions to create relevant keywords.
• Conduct keyword analysis using Google search. Type common hospital-related keywords on Google search and note phrases that the search engine suggests.
• Visit Google's related searches. This is a list at the bottom of the search page where you can also get great ideas for your keywords.
• Use Google Trends to check for keyword popularity. Trends also offer insight into the best keywords for every season, which is essential in the medical field. For example, the fall and winter seasons are when flu cases peak. Ads focusing on flu symptoms and treatments will be more engaging to customers.

     2. Develop Great Landing Pages

When people use your keywords in their searches, your hospital ad may appear along with two other ads on top of search engine results pages (SERPs). If people are interested, they will click on your ad and then land on the linked web page, which should be relevant to your ad.

Your ad about your new imaging department should lead users to your imaging and diagnostic page when they click it. But how do you keep them engaged long enough to check out everything on your landing page? Creating unique and high-value landing pages is the key. Follow these tips:

• Make it relevant and avoid inconsistencies. What you promised in your title and description should be reflected in your landing page content.
• Note your unique selling point. What makes your offer better than your competition? This could be new equipment, faster turnaround times for results, or a discount for qualified patients.
• Promote your services and facilities in action. Use photos, tutorial videos, animated videos, carousel photos, or infographics, like videos of how CT-scan imaging is performed or pictures of your new hospital receiving area.
• Use a simple landing page design. Create easy-to-read copy, direct headlines, minimalist page design, clear call-to-action (CTA) language, all with high readability.
• Place a strong CTA. These drive action by telling your visitors what to do next. Instead of just placing "Download," you use "Get your free ebook copy" or "Book a free consultation now."

     3. Improve Your Mobile Ads Presence

Today people use their smartphones to find information. As of August 2022, around 59% of online traffic is from mobile phones. So, don't overlook your hospital's presence on mobile.

Patients appreciate the convenience of medical searches on mobile devices. If they require a medical operation or are considering an elective procedure, they can use their phones to find hospitals and clinics. They may use mobile tools to book appointments, seek information, or contact professionals.

A mobile-friendly hospital website can make practically every piece of information a person needs to make a sound health decision easily accessible. With PPC, you can have all of these front and center for patients that need them the most. Here are a few techniques to make your PPC ads mobile-friendly.

• Note your mobile stats. Find out how your PPC ads work for mobile and desktop by segmenting devices through Google Ads. More clicks but no conversions could mean your landing pages are not optimized to work for online devices.
• Create mobile-preferred PPC ads. This is for mobile-focused ads but will also appear on desktops and laptops.
• Match with mobile-friendly landing pages. Improve loading times, use one CTA, and adapt innovative navigation options to improve your mobile landing pages.

3 Common Hospital PPC Issues

Because of high competition, medical industry keywords are expensive to rank. Having a large PPC budget is one of hospital marketers' daily challenges. Below are common problems affecting PPC ad campaigns.

     1. Using Patient's Sensitive Information

Don’t! Hospital ads, websites, blogs, emails, and social media should never use sensitive patient information. Ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This federal law protects patient health information (PHI) from being shared and used without the patient's knowledge.

HIPAA-compliant hospitals have privacy and security policies, regularly conduct self-audits and risk assessments on compliance, and conduct staff training on patient data security online and offline. Protect your patients’ data – and advertise that fact!

     2. Understand Language Restrictions

The medical industry has language restrictions. Check with your state regulators to ensure you’re on the right side of the law on this. Select the correct words for your PPC ads and landing pages. Note that some terms like "drugs" or "prescriptions" may trigger red flags and lead to disapproval from Google.

     3. Avoid Remarketing

Remarketing is about re-engaging your potential customers that have demonstrated an interest in your medical services and facilities. However, websites offering some healthcare products and services are prohibited from being remarketed or advertised. Take note of these rules and follow them accordingly.

Summing Up

To create effective PPC hospital campaigns, use best medical practice and hospital marketing practices, such as conducting keyword research, creating excellent landing pages, and improving the presence of your mobile ad. Winning PPC campaigns will increase traffic to your website and foot traffic to your hospital or medical center.

Create impressive PPC campaigns for your hospital or medical clinic with Digital Authority Partners. Call us to find out more.