The 4 Most Common Paid Search Mistakes in Healthcare and How to Avoid Them

If you’re a healthcare marketer, it’s essential to know the most common paid search mistakes and how to avoid them. Paid search can be a great way to reach new patients and grow your practice. A healthcare advertising agency can help you create an effective campaign and ensure that the ads you run are successful. Factors like experience, cost, and services should be considered to choose the right agency.

Read more: How to Choose a Healthcare Advertising Agency.

PPC or pay-per-click campaigns involve bidding for keywords and phrases on search engines like Google and Bing. When someone searches using one of those terms, your ad appears in the search results. PPC campaigns can be highly effective if they are done correctly. However, healthcare marketers must correct a few common mistakes that can lead to lower conversion rates or wasted budgets. These include:

1. Not Having a Clear Goal Or Objective

Medical practices and other healthcare organizations should have a plan before launching paid search campaigns. This will help you define success and identify how your campaign can help you achieve it. With a clear goal, you can track your campaigns’ progress or make necessary adjustments. Some goals include increasing website traffic, improving brand awareness, or generating more quality leads.

2. Ignoring Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are essential to your paid search campaigns and can help you save money by avoiding irrelevant searches. Including negative keywords in your campaigns will ensure that your ads won’t appear when someone searches for something irrelevant to your services or products. For example, if you’re running a campaign on “acupuncture” and include “free acupuncture” in your list of negative keywords, your ad won’t appear when someone searches for free acupuncture. This will help save you money because it eliminates wasted clicks from people who would never convert.

3. Not Testing Different Ad Copy and Creative Options

Healthcare pay-per-click marketing is highly competitive, so it’s essential to stay ahead by testing different ad copy and creative options. A/B testing can be an extremely effective way to determine which variations are most likely to be successful in improving click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI. In addition to ensuring your creative appeals to the broadest audience possible, you should test different headlines and calls to action for maximum results. Additionally, make sure your ads are relevant to each keyword phrase or search query by using some keywords in your ad copy. Doing this helps ensure your ads have a higher chance of being clicked on and provide more value than generic ads.

4. Not Optimizing Bids for Maximum Performance

Bidding involves more than just setting a specific amount for each keyword. It’s important to remember that bids should be optimized based on performance and adjusted as needed. This means considering the clicks, impressions, cost per click (CPC), quality score, and more for each keyword you are bidding on.

Monitoring your campaigns regularly is vital to ensure you get the most out of your ads. It would help if you also considered bid modifiers, which allow you to adjust bids by factors such as time of day, device type, and geographic location.

Call Sequence Health for the best healthcare advertising services. Our team of experienced experts can help you accurately target and reach your desired audience, resulting in an effective paid search campaign.