7 Most Common Paid Search Mistakes in Healthcare and How to Avoid Them
Paid search is one of the most popular and powerful tools for healthcare marketers across the globe. Paid search or PPC (pay-per-click) is of great importance for healthcare brands. Why? It will help you to reach out to patients and communities by instantly bringing up your website to the top of the search results.
With the right implementation of PPC, you can scale up your business to the next level. But that said, the pay-off for PPC are falling short for so many. Most of the healthcare brands are facing almost similar PPC challenges. We have seen brands wasting their investments and not getting the kind of response they expected from the PPC advertisement. Before moving forward, it is important to understand the difference between a paid search and display advertising.
What is the Difference Between Paid Search and Display Advertising?
The PPC tactics majorly include two pillars: search and display advertising. The display advertising is more a passive, top-of-the-mind approach, while a search is more intent-based. The former allows you to place advertisements for your target audience so that they can recall your brand when they are planning to use a service or more. However, a paid search helps you to target your audience at the right by coming on top of the search results when they search for the relevant topic or keyword.
So the question here is: why don’t just use paid search to reach out to your audience? The answer is not the simple as you would think. You need to understand that the buyer’s journey to your site is more complex than a single search. To get the maximum results, you need to use them synergistically. Now that you are clear about both terms, let’s take a closer look at the common PPC mistakes that healthcare brands are making currently.
7 Common PPC Mistakes Healthcare Brands Make
- Not Using the Right Keyword: Whether be it Google or any other search engine for that matter, the objective of it is to show the most relevant information to its users. This is the main reason why it is constantly making changes to make the whole experience fluid and dynamic for both advertisers and the end consumers. As a result, what was established, let’s say, 6 months ago will be different today. So, if your agency is not on top of these changes and is not setting up campaigns accordingly, then all the efforts will go wasted. The whole approach of set it and forget it doesn’t work for paid search campaigns. This means that you need to be constantly monitoring the situation to get the maximum results from your paid search campaigns. Furthermore, the ongoing keyword optimization is also critical to do because there is 15-20 per cent of new searches that takes place daily. You need to constantly refine, build a robust list to be on top of things, especially for paid searches.
- Lack of Ad Extensions: Ad extensions also play an important role in the paid search campaigns. These extensions help you to provide in-the-moment contact information within the ad including phone number, address, and site links. They also help you to improve your ad rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Lack of Well Constructed Ad Copy: Ad copy can is one area where it is overlooked over time. As a result, testing the ads sometimes gets missed. We have seen that sometimes when the ad copy is poorly constructed, it gets lesser traction. As a thumb of rule, one should always make sure to make compelling ad copy and test it regularly. This will make a significant impact on your conversion volume.
- Ignoring Negative Keywords: Ignoring negative keywords is also one of the common mistakes that healthcare brands make. These types of keywords not affect your brand, but also hamper the paid search campaigns. So, it is wise to have a robust list of negative lists and one should update it at a regular interval of time. This will prove to be your line of defense against irrelevant searches about your brands.
- Not Bidding on Your Brand: It is a constant battle to dominate the page in search results, so bidding on your brand becomes more crucial. By not bidding on your brand, you will lose dominance over the page, which is not a good sign for your business. Bidding also helps your brand to control the messaging, call out upcoming events, specials, etc.
- Not Testing the Right Bidding Strategies: The most challenging step when it comes to paid search is figuring out what is your main objective. Do you want it to show up first on the page? Or do you want more conversion, conversion volume? Or do you want maximum clicks? Depending on what you choose, getting the bidding strategy right is of utter importance. One should always test, refine, and test again to get it all right. At Healthcare Marketech, we work to match our client’s business objective with specialised bidding options, nimble test strategies, and more.
- Not Taking Account of Geography, Ad Schedule Trends, and Device: It is important to keep a tab on geography, device, and frequency and adjust your bid accordingly. As start to see trends or correlations, you will be in a better position to pull back or double down on the bidding processor. The key here is to have an agile team that should be capable of making dynamic adjustments to your digital spend.
The Bottom Line
If your loved one had some health concern, you will not pick up any random name from the directory and go for the treatment. The same goes with paid search programme that specialises in healthcare marketing. It’s sad to say but most people are unaware that there are many ways through which you can optimise and maximise your business. This is where Healthcare Marketech comes into play. Our digital team of experts is only focused on helping our clients with a customised plan of action for paid search campaigns.
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