Marketing in the healthcare sector isn’t the same as other industries; the complicated terminology alone puts a whole different spin on things.
If paid search is currently part of your medical marketing strategy, there are a few tips that you can implement to improve your results.
Common PPC Challenges Experienced by Medical Marketers
While the healthcare sector does experience many of the same PPC challenges as other sectors, there are a few challenges that are unique to this industry:
- Sensitive information & copy restrictions. With so many laws and policies in place in the medical sector, marketers do need to be extra careful. Not being able to use certain words such as drugs or prescriptions is also proving to be quite a challenge.
- Remarketing restrictions. This is by far one of the biggest challenges in the medical marketing sector today. Google’s recent policy changes now prevent medical marketers from using remarketing tactics.
- According to a study by Google, only 1 in 20 searches are health related, which makes healthcare PPC a very competitive space.
Paid Search Tips for Medical Marketers
Top Australian medical marketing specialists, Azuri Group, shared the following PPC tips:
- position and impression share matters. It’s incredibly important to keep an eye on these two metrics since display advertising opportunities are restricted and remarketing is not an option. Google does update their algorithms on a regular basis too so take the time to review these metrics regularly in order to optimise your campaigns and gain as much exposure in the SERPS as possible.
- Know your audience. Medical and healthcare professionals generally have audiences that are made up of several different buyer personas and if you truly want to see a ROI from your PPC campaigns, it’s important to understand your customers inside and out. A deeper understanding of your customers means that you will be using the most relevant keywords and ad text.
- Put mobile first. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C healthcare brand, most consumers not only browse but make purchase decisions from their mobile devices. In fact, according to Google, over 50% of all healthcare administrators use their smartphones while making a decision to convert. Providing users with an exceptional mobile experience will go a long way in increasing your PPC conversion rates. From making mobile bid adjustments to creating mobile-focused ads, mobile devices should be a key consideration in all your paid search campaigns.
- Make it easy for customers to contact you. Making sure that your contact details are readily available is critical for both B2B and B2C medical advertisers. It’s important to setup call extensions, sitelink extensions and location extensions for all paid search campaigns and to make your contact details available on every landing page.
- Give customers as much information as possible. Unlike other sectors that use minimal amounts of copy on their landing pages, healthcare landing pages should provide as much information as possible if you want to see higher conversion rates. That being said, it’s still important to strike the right balance between copy, images, headers and bullet-points and to run A/B tests.
- Quality videos make a difference. Videos are making a major impact online. After surveying 700 healthcare administrators, Google found that every customer admitted to watching videos to see product demonstrations. If possible, make use of high-quality videos on your landing pages to make a bigger impact.