Simple Steps to Effectively Manage PPC for Hospitals

Hospitals need an effective way to promote their services and facilities. With an excellent online presence, hospitals, clinics, and medical centers can highlight their expertise and provide the best health information to their patients. One way to promote online presence is through PPC for hospitals.

This guide will touch on the simple steps to manage hospital PPC, such as:

1. Building your campaign
2. Identifying your goals
3. Launching your campaign
4. Collecting data and optimization
5. Checking results and monitoring your KPIs

Improve PPC management to boost your site traffic and conversions with these steps. 

Let’s go!

5 Steps To Manage PPC for Hospitals 

Pay-per-click (PPC) is no longer an option for healthcare businesses – it’s a necessity. Paid search is a digital marketing strategy that hospitals should add to their marketing arsenal. Its market value could reach $260 billion in 2022 from $225 billion in 2021. More marketers now know the importance of paid search ads.

PPC marketing strategies are powerful. It has become an integral part of digital marketing for many hospitals because it improves traffic and collects valuable leads. But PPC is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. The only way to succeed is to manage and enhance your campaigns.

And whether you’re using Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Facebook ads, or Bing Ads, managing your PPC should include the five steps below.

     1. Build Your PPC Campaign

When PPC for hospitals fails, it’s generally because of a lack of planning or poor planning. Correctly setting up your PPC ads involves account and ads setup. Here is a checklist under each component.

        Setting Up Your Account

In this first step, you must sign up and create a Google Ads account. Then choose relevant hospital-related keywords to bid on and optimize your settings. Take note of the following items:

• PPC ad suggestions. If you want to skip Google Ads ad suggestions because you believe your account settings are suitable for your campaign, turn off auto-apply in your account settings. Doing so can help you gain more control over your ads.
• Campaign or ad group structure. Mapping out your campaign or ad group structure defines your goals and develops clear ad boundaries. Formulate hyper-focused ads to engage your customers better.
• Conversion tracking. Regularly and accurately track your conversions through your Google Ads account. This will help you better optimize your ads for overall success.
• Content exclusions. Opt out of showing ads to certain websites, videos, or mobile app categories. You don't want your ads showing on websites unrelated to your business or values.

        Setting Up Your Ad

Now you’re ready to create your PPC ad. Your hospital needs a unique ad for every service page for easy monitoring and management. Consider the following: 

• Ad copy. The goal of your hospital PPC ad copy is to show prospective patients that your service or product is the answer to their problems. This copy should contain your relevant search terms and must have a compelling call-to-action (CTA).
• Ad extensions. This additional information allows your ad to stand out and better attract your audience. Hospitals will benefit from ad extensions like phone, address, site links, structured snippets, and affiliate extensions.
• Data protection contracts. Abide by data protection contracts such as Google Ads Data Processing Terms and other local data protection laws.
• Display campaigns or display ads. They appear at the top, side, or middle of the web content of various websites. Display campaigns reach a larger audience and are hyper-focused on capturing users on websites that are part of Google's Display Network.
• Landing pages. Ads must lead to a landing page with matching offers, content, and information. If your ad is about your new medical wing, users who click on it should land on a page that describes this wing. 
• Privacy policy. Draft your privacy policy. Remember to add policies on remarketing if you plan to run remarketing ads.

     2. Identify Your Goals

The goals of PPC for hospitals could be raising awareness of services, getting more leads, or promoting a new wellness program. At the onset, align your PPC goals with your overall hospital goals.

Track results and progress by setting your paid ad goals, measuring performance, and improving campaigns. Use the following as a guide to set your goals: 

• Identify your hospital or business needs. Note what you want to achieve with PPC. Is it awareness, leads, sign-ups, or others?
• Point out your short and long-term goals. Set your goals according to your desired campaign timeframes. Your short-term goals are your basis for a broader scope, while long-term goals are what your campaigns must achieve.
• Create results-oriented goals. Make sure your goals are clear, time-bound, and results-driven.

     3. Launch Your Campaign

Your ads are set; your bids are ready. Now you can launch your campaign. Start with your Google Ads account as soon as you're ready. You’ll see the outcome of running ads much sooner than you will with SEO optimization.

Though you’ll start getting results right away, it generally takes three months for an ad to gain real traction, regardless of the platform you use. This is no surprise since new ads have no history. They need time to gain traction. But once data is available, you can immediately use it to improve your campaigns.

Google, Facebook, Bing, or YouTube verify ad quality, which affects your ads' performance in an ad auction. It also impacts how often your users see your ads. 

Initially, these platforms give you a quality score or rating based on estimates of your click-through rate (CTR), your ad's relevance, and your landing page's relevance. The score becomes more accurate as your ads generate more impressions and clicks. 

The score helps you improve your ad campaigns to perform better in auctions. 

     4. Collect Data and Optimize

Paid search advertising is one of the best ways to market online because machines learn from it, and it provides lots of data. You could set it up based on how you think your customers will engage. Pick keywords you think will hit your target customers or select campaigns requiring a larger budget.

As your ads go live and data pours in, use the available information to create a more accurate picture of your market. Optimize your campaigns accordingly to help search engines understand your ads better. Here are some tips to start with. 

• Focus on ad spending. Look at areas of your campaign where you might be wasting money. See if your ads are receiving engagement and optimize these so you can spend your money wisely.
• Check your quality score. Google awards ads a quality score to determine their ranking. You can find your quality score in your Google Ads account.
• Monitor your ad's impression share. Your impression share is about how often an ad is shown. If you're getting low impressions, your potential reach is more significant than what you achieve.

     5. Check Results and Monitor Your KPIs

PPC produces faster results, so you'll have more new customers and sales in no time. Gather feedback on your campaigns to decide on any changes needed. Monitor the following PPC key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Ad impressions and impression share. If your ad was qualified to show in 50 searches but only appeared in 10, your impression share is 20%. It could also mean your competitors own 80%. Understanding your impression share helps determine how much you compete for a particular keyword.
• Clicks and CTR. The number of clicks your ad gets divided by the ad impression gives the click-through rate (CTR). This is the proportion of viewers who clicked on your ad. A low CTR means your ads need more work to attract customers. 
• Conversions and conversion rates. A conversion is when a person clicks your ad and follows through with what you want him to do, such as signing up for a newsletter or registering for a health seminar.
• Average cost per click (CPC). This metric tells you how much you have spent on an ad or campaign. It measures the amount you need to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per conversion or customer acquisition cost (CAC). It tells you how much you pay for every conversion and how much your campaign results will cost.

Summing Up

PPC hospital management starts with building your campaign. Create a solid PPC foundation by starting with your account, campaign, and ads. If your base is ready, you can start your campaign, collect data, and start to improve. Check and monitor KPIs to ensure your ads are producing the expected results.

With these simple steps, you'll have better, more focused PPC ads to help you achieve your goals. Do you want to know how PPC management can help your healthcare business? Contact Digital Authority Partners, and let's get started.