1. Track conversions and phone calls. The beauty of paid search is you don’t have to spend marketing dollars blindly. Conversion tracking allows you to see which campaigns, keywords and ads are generating form submissions.
Call extensions and call tracking on your landing pages will allow you to see how many calls are being generated from each pay-per-click campaign (and in some instances, each keyword). Using both conversion tracking and call tracking will allow you to maximize your budget per campaign and keyword.
2. Tell the user what to do, then make it easy to do. Have a clear and consistent call-to-action between both the ad copy and landing page. If you want the user to download a guide, mention it in the ad and make sure getting that guide is the main (and easy to complete) call-to-action on the landing page.
Many health systems send PPC traffic to landing pages that only have a small call-to-action button to request an appointment. Do not make it hard for a prospective patient to book an appointment!
3. Stop using your regular website pages for PPC traffic. Sending PPC traffic to any regular pages on your main website negatively impacts conversion rate and makes tracking the performance of your campaigns more difficult. Here are three ways you should cater to these visitors:
- Customize — Health systems see more form completions (such as appointment requests or guide downloads) and phone calls with custom-built landing pages that have clear calls-to-action and forms located directly on the page.
- Cut down the noise — On landing pages, eliminate any navigation, ‘escape hatches,’ and content that is irrelevant to PPC service-line campaigns. Otherwise, users get lost and do not end up converting.
- Keep forms as short as possible or at least condense them to appear less intimidating.
For example, compare the images below. The first is a traditional health system website homepage (Henry Ford Health System’s pictured); the second is an example of a health system’s PPC landing page (pictured here, one from Cleveland Clinic).
4. Provide valuable content in exchange for a user’s information. We realize the end goal is to drive incremental patients; however, sometimes prospective patients need more information before making the decision to schedule an appointment. Develop unique pieces of content prospective patients would find informative and valuable:
- Activities
- Guides
- Quizzes
- Seminars
Require users to submit information in order to receive this premium content. Then use that information and future behavior to nurture prospective patients into actual patients through email marketing and marketing automation.
5. Use ad extensions to increase ‘real estate’ in search engine results pages. Ad extensions are ‘enhancements’ to your ad that help increase click-through rate and in turn, generate more conversions and calls to your health system. Health systems that do not use ad extensions are at a disadvantage compared to competitors. Common examples include:
- Sitelinks
- Call extensions
- Location extensions
- Review extensions
Pictured below is an example of a health systems Google SERP advertisement using a variety of ad extensions:
If you’re currently investing in paid search as a way to generate patients, change the game with the five tips above and acquire more patients for your health system.
Joe Castro is the director of online advertising at Fathom, a digital marketing agency. He has over six years of experience in digital marketing with a concentration in PPC/paid search and display advertising. He primarily works with healthcare clients, but his experience spans across all verticals
