Doctor Ads for Your Practice
Doctor ads come in a variety of forms but a more recent form is with Google Pay Per Click. Once an ad is placed with Google, it only shows up when someone types a specific word or phrase. You get to control which phrase triggers your ad. So if someone types "Houston plastic surgeon" in the search box, you can have your ad show up. You pay money to Google only when someone clicks on your ad hence the name Pay Per Click. Once they click on your ad they are then directed to a web page of your choosing called a landing page. Ideally you would create a page specifically for that ad so if you had an ad for "botox Houston" then someone clicking on that ad would be taken to a page all about Botox and not your generic homepage.
How Can I Manage PPC with my doctor ads?
PPC campaign management with doctor ads involves creating a campaign based on specific keywords you need to target and then setting a proper bid amount you are willing to pay for every click. A pay per click campaign is managed with afour-fold method:
- Search for right keywords: Therer are many free tools online that can help you pick keywords. You start with an idea of what people might type in a search box and the tool gives you suggestions of other words.
- Management of PPC bids: The amount you pay per click is on an auction so that the price is not fixed. The better your ads perform the lower your cost per click.
- Making Ad copy: You need attention grabbing headlines since you are competing for space. You also need to answer the question that web searchers have: "What's in it for me ?"
- PPC ROI Tracking and Analysis: You may be excited about the ad you wrote but you need to track its results so you know what to change.
How does PPC compare with organic or natural listings ?
The downside of PPC ads is that once you stop paying Google, the traffic to your website from those ads stops as well. When you optimize your website to rank for the same keyword, you slowly but surely rank higher and higher until you reach the first page of Google. This is considered "free" traffic but it does cost you time. You can pay someone to optimize your site for several keywords and still get the traffic that the PPC ads brought you. It's just a matter of which one brings more targeted traffic at a better price point.
Roughly 25% of all searches visit websites by clicking on a paid advertisement such as PPC and the other 75% reach websites by clicking on the natural or organic results. So you do have to decide how much of your budget to allocate to a PPC campaign and how much to shift to building a steady stream of traffic from organic results.
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Services in the Digital Age" for a more broad overview of online marketing.