7 Ways to Laser Focus Your PPC Hospital Ads

Hospitals don’t always have a great image in our post-pandemic world. People associate them with being sick, hurt, and scared. However, people can’t avoid healthcare issues, so a hospital trip is inevitable. Besides, no place can help better than a hospital.

If you’re planning on running pay-per-click or PPC hospital ads or if you already are but aren’t getting the desired results, maybe it’s time for a change.

In this guide, we’ll discuss seven actions you can take to improve your ads:

• Learn where and how competitors do PPC
• Review your PPC campaign progress
• Understand your patients’ search intent
• Make effective and engaging landing pages
• Use location targeting to find leads
• Remember to use responsive ad designs
• Make dynamic ads using ad extensions

There’s a lot to cover, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

1. Learn Where and How Competitors Do PPC

The first step to fine tuning your strategy is reviewing your competition. Your goal is not to copy ideas but simply to follow the trail of their success.

Use the following prompts to guide your research:

• What kinds of ads are they employing, and how are they employing them? Just as some types of content work better for healthcare, different ads have varying levels of effectiveness. Check successful ones used by other hospitals and see if you can use them.
• Where are other hospitals publishing their ads? A good campaign may boil down to knowing precisely where your target market is active. Are other hospitals exclusively using search ads on Google? Are their ads also showing up on social media?
• Did you adjust the location settings for your ads? Location targeting is a powerful PPC technique. Other hospitals in your city are probably using it in their campaigns. If you’re not using it, you’re missing out on massive returns (more on this later).

Your goal here is to draw inspiration, not be an imitation. Be authentic to your brand regardless of what you learn from this exercise.

2. Review Your PPC Campaign’s Quality

Reviewing the competition isn’t the only way to improve your ad’s quality. If you don’t see the results you want, conduct an audit. It will help point you to your strategy’s weakest link.

In fact, even promising campaigns can benefit from a regular review. One way to do this, or even just supplement your quality assessment, is A/B testing.

What is A/B testing? It’s essentially comparing two slightly modified versions of the same ad.

Here’s a short list of aspects that you can alter and test with this method:

• Headline
• Call-to-action (CTA)
• CTA placement
• Image
• Sales copy
• Color
• Form

Adding A/B testing to your PPC marketing strategy is a sure way to increase leads, so make room for it in your strategy as much as possible.

3. Understand Your Patients’ Search Intent

Search intent refers to the ‘why’ of an online query. As in, why is this person looking for a hospital? Once you understand your patients’ search intent, you become better equipped to serve their needs.

How do you learn more about search intent? Check which search words patients used to trigger your ad's keywords. Unfortunately, your only clues come from this interaction with your ad. Fortunately, the data you gather from this exchange can tell you what you need to know.

For example:

• Are they looking for healthcare information?
• Do they need details on an upcoming medical procedure?
• Are they searching for the nearest hospital?

This is why proper keyword research is invaluable. Leads are more likely to convert when your business matches their needs. Remember, it all starts with a Google search.

4. Make Effective and Engaging Landing Pages

When a person clicks on your ad, on any ad you publish, it should take them to a landing page. Ideally, this landing page is relevant and specific to the ad they clicked.

The following shows the proper way to connect ads and landing pages:

• An advertisement for a ‘hospital in Buffalo, Wyoming’ should lead to a landing for a hospital in Buffalo, Wyoming, and not Buffalo, New York.
• Clicking on ads for ‘pre-employment medical exam’ should take the patient to a page listing all of the hospital's medical tests, not a page for surgery.
• Ads for ‘pediatric clinic’ should lead to a family doctor’s website rather than a dialysis center’s homepage.

More than linking to the right page (your landing page), best PPC practices say that you must have a strong CTA. What this means is that your call must be both concise and precise.

Instead of ‘book now’ or ‘schedule an appointment with our hospital today,’ use ‘book a free appointment’ or ‘schedule an appointment today.’

Get straight to the point, but more importantly, make sure that patients get exactly what you offer.

5. Use Location Targeting To Find Leads

Location targeting is a powerful PPC tool, if not the most powerful one available. The local market is rich with leads that you shouldn’t leave untapped. For hospitals, this means their immediate vicinity, typically a town or city, and adjacent locales.

While this seems very small, keep in mind that they are a captive market. If your hospital has many branch locations, it would be reasonable to target an entire region or state instead. This is so long as the covered areas are still within a reasonable distance of your building.

Remember to set the correct location when planning or running PPC hospital ads. Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on local opportunities.

6. Remember To Use Responsive Ad Designs

Over half of all internet traffic is from mobile devices now. Applying a standard size to your ad will make it ineffective for half of the internet users. After all, how and why will someone interact with your ad if they can’t see it?

The solution to this problem is using responsive ads. It more or less means that your ads’ dimensions shift to best fit the user’s screen. Ensuring that your PPC automatically adjusts itself for maximum readability goes a long way toward successful conversions.

7. Make Dynamic Ads Using Ad Extensions

If one ad provides a good return on investment, what about several good ads? That’s the key strength of dynamic ads. This method relies on a catalog of ads matching the searcher in the best possible way.

Platforms such as Google and Facebook already have responsive and dynamic ad features. All that advertisers have to do is assemble their ad elements and let technology do the rest.

Finally, the last and most important thing to do when creating PPC hospital ads is to be HIPAA-compliant. HIPAA is a complex law, so try to stick to it as best as you can. Ensure that:

• Your website has security features, such as anti-malware, anti-virus, and a firewall.
• Any data collected through your ads or used in ads are kept safe and confidential.
• No protected health information is part of ads that feature patients.
• You have written consent before inviting patients to give testimonials for your ads.
• Certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT) is part of your system.

Create a HIPAA security checklist and follow through on it.

Summing Up

Managing PPC takes patience and practice. It’s not only you and your ads that are at play, after all. You’re competing with tens, if not hundreds, of similar establishments. Your target market is also another variable that should be understood and analyzed.

Fortunately, every PPC problem has a solution. This article is full of them; seven, in fact. Build your skills gradually, and you’ll be profiting from PPC in no time.

Need help? Contact Digital Authority Partners and work with PPC hospital experts who can get your campaign back on track.