Healthcare Google Ads: How To Setup An Effective Campaign

Healthcare businesses using Google Ads are able to target people and businesses actively searching for their care services on Google and its partner websites.

Whether you are targeting people that are looking for a care service for a loved one, or carers that are looking for a job, Google Ads provides you with the best tools to achieve your goals.

Getting started is easy and the first thing you need is to create an account at ads.google.com and then follow the guidelines below to setup your campaign.

 

Campaign objective

As a healthcare agency looking to run some Google Ads campaigns, it’s important to pick the right objective in campaign settings. Most care agencies benefit from using the ‘Leads’ objective because it focuses on helping you get as many enquiries and leads for people looking for care services.

The campaign objective you select determines the features that are available to you like the bid strategy, campaign type and ad types.

 

Campaign type

Next, you will choose the campaign type that’s most relevant to your healthcare business. The ‘Leads’ objective presents you with at least five campaign types to choose from.

The most relevant for a healthcare business is a Google Ads Search campaign because it allows you to target people who are actively searching for care services.

Other campaign types like Display and Display Remarketing you can launch later when you want to target people on specific websites or to retarget people that have been on your website before.

 

Budget

Budget setting is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in your campaign. The budget you set determines how much traffic you get and how many enquiries and leads that you receive.

As a healthcare agency, your Google Ads budget should be at least $500 or £300 for the first month. And as you get more traffic and improve the search targeting by blocking irrelevant searches, you can continue to increase it and thereby increase clicks and conversions.

 

Bidding

A Search campaign provides more bidding options than other campaign types. And as a healthcare agency setting up a Google Ads campaign, you can choose between automated and manual bidding strategies and change strategy as often as you like, to meet your goals.

I recommend the Maximise Clicks bid strategy because that allows you to get as much traffic as possible for your budget, from people looking for a care agency.

Later, you can switch to another bidding option like Manual CPC with enhanced cost per click, if you want to control your ad group and keyword bids. Or you can use a Smart bidding strategy like Maximise Conversions and set a target cost per acquisition.

 

Keywords

Bidding on healthcare related keywords in Google Ads can be quite expensive with a high average cost per click for some keywords. So, it’s important that you start with some good keyword research to find long tail keywords that are less expensive and have high conversion rates.

The match types you use too are important, especially when you are just starting with a new campaign. Google Ads has four match types: Negative match, exact match, phrase match and broad match – ranked from most restrictive to least restrictive.

It’s best to start with more restrictive match types and then add others later. So, add phrase and exact match keywords to target and also negative match to block searches that are not relevant. And later when you have optimised your campaign well and want to get more traffic, you can add broad match.

This is an example of a keyword in phrase and exact match type:

“healthcare agency near me” – Phrase match type
[healthcare agency near me] – Exact match type

 

Text ads

Different people search for healthcare services including family and friends. So, the text ads that you write should factor this in, as you’ve done on your website.

There are different ad types in a Search campaign but the most relevant is the Responsive search ad. This provides you with a lot more text space to promote your care business.

With a Responsive search ad you get up to 15 headlines and four description lines to include as many benefits and features that are important to your business.

Try to use as much of the text space as possible, because this gives the AI & machine learning system enough data to show the right combinations at auction time based on context.

 

Ad schedule

You can run your Search campaign at anytime and on the most relevant days and hours for your business. Running ads 24/7 is a good place to start, to see what are the best times for your ads.

Because people are searching for care services at all times including weekends and evenings, it’s common to find that the average cost per click does not vary much, even in quieter periods.

Just make sure you check your segment reports at the campaign level to see which are your best days and hours. If you find great disparities, you can then remove any times that are not doing well and focus on the best only, to save your budget.

 

Where your ads appear

As a healthcare agency running Google Ads, it’s important to know where your ads appear. Knowing this helps you to see which are the best and worst networks for your care business.

The places your ads can appear in include Google, the Search partner network and the Display network. All Search ads appear on the Google search engine. The Search partners include hundreds of sites with search tools and search engines that also include Google properties like YouTube and Maps Search.

The Display network includes millions of websites and apps where your ads are eligible to appear. Because this is a Search campaign, your ads will only appear on Display websites if you have any remaining budget from the campaign.

 

Get in Touch

Get in touch with me below to find out how a healthcare campaign in Google Ads can help your business increase enquiries, leads and business.