What is PPC?
PPC, which stands for Pay-Per-Click, is a form of advertising where you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. If you’re doing it right, the fee will be inconsequential since your accrued revenue will greatly outweigh the cost. In theory, 10 clicks costing $5 each might result in one patient booking a $1000 procedure. In this article, we will be focusing specifically on Google Adwords, which are the ads that are placed above organic search results on Google.com.
The advertisement looks almost exactly like an organic search result, except for the small “Ad” in the corner; this makes it more likely for users to click on one.
Should I Use PPC?
The short answer is: YES!
The long answer is: if you’re not getting the results you want from organic SEO, then PPC is a great way to get more traffic on your site. You can also get more targeted traffic than with organic search. Let’s say you’re an ENT doctor, and you want more patients for balloon sinuplasty. With PPC, you can target people specifically searching for balloon sinuplasty doctors. Or, maybe you have multiple locations and you want your practice to show up for patients in each location. PPC allows you to target patients in specific locations, down to individual zip codes. If you want to refine your target audience even further, you can even specify your target patient’s age, gender, parental status, and household income.
Advantages of PPC
- Local Targeting: You can target multiple highly specific areas, which is great if you have multiple practice locations. You can focus on a city or state level, or individual zip codes if you want to be even more precise.
- Varied Ads: You can alter advertisement to cater to each specific location; this way, you don’t have to write “Dermatologist in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and Manhattan” in your title.
- No-Cost Setup: You only pay if someone clicks! There’s no cost to set up or display the ad. You’re essentially guaranteed results, as long as your website is properly optimized.
- Keyword Targeting: You can set it up so that ads only show up when someone searches a specific keyword. This allows you to target keywords that reflect the user’s intent to make an appointment.
- Fast results: With organic SEO, it may take some time to build your rankings for targeted keywords. With PPC, you can see results immediately, as long as you pay enough to show up on the first page.
Disadvantages of PPC
- Minimum Budget: There are few disadvantages to PPC. However, one is that you may not see as good of a result with a smaller budget. Let’s say your budget is $500, which gets you 20 clicks. These clicks result in 3 conversions—let’s pretend that your revenue from these conversions is $1500. If you double your budget to $1000, we can assume you’ll get double the amount of conversions (6), resulting in a $3000 revenue. In the first scenario, your overall earnings would be $1000, and in the second scenario, your overall earnings would be $2000. As you can see, a larger budget would make you much more profitable in the same amount of time.
Examples of PPC Success
Below are examples of some of our clients who have had success with PPC. For more information on each metric, see the footnote.
Large Budget
Medium Budget
Small Budget
Keep in mind that you can’t just look at your number of clicks or cost per click. It’s important to compare how much it costs you per conversion (or patient appointment, in our case) to how much a conversion will earn you – for example, a balloon sinuplasty may earn you $3000-$7000, whereas an IVF cycle can earn you anywhere from $10,000-$15,000. At MyAdvice, we can help you estimate your profits from PPC.
PPC Metrics:
- Budget: This is the maximum amount you’re willing to pay per day. If your budget is $50 and clicks cost on average $5, you’ll get up to 10 clicks per day.
- Cost: This is the total you’ve paid so far.
- Clicks or Interactions: This is how many times people have clicked on your ad.
- CTR or Interaction Rate: This is the click-through rate, or, the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it.
- Converted Clicks or Conversions: This is the total number of conversions you’ve received. This could be a phone call, an appointment form submission, or something else you’ve specified.
- Cost / Converted Click: This is the cost per conversion, which is found by dividing the total amount you’ve paid by how many conversions you’ve received. In our opinion, this is the most important metric. If you know how much you earned from the conversion, you can find out your ROI (return on investment).
If you’re interested in getting started with PPC or growing your practice through organic search, contact us today. MyAdvice is a full-service digital marketing agency, focused exclusively on connecting health care providers with prospective patients in their communities. Let us fill your waiting room with patients!
