Google can send you very qualified prospects if you pay them a small fee to do it. They call it Google Adwords, but I call it the greatest marketing idea of the decade. Where else do you only pay if someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website? That’s right. You only pay google if someone actually goes to your website.
Chiropractic Marketing on Google: How to Get Started
To setup a campaign, go to www.adwords.google.com. When asked between a starter and standard edition, choose standard. After choosing your language, you will be asked to choose how you will target customers by location. This is very important. Be sure to choose the “customized” selection. This allows you to select a radius around your practice that your ads will show up on. This ensures someone from 500 miles away isn’t clicking your ad and running up your bill with Google. You can decide how far to go from your practice, but I recommend 15-30 mile radius depending on if you practice in the city or a small town.
You’ll then be asked to setup your first ad. You only get 25-35 characters for four lines of text, two of which are your headline and website address. Here’s the proven formula for your ads:
• First line should contain your keyword in a headline type phrase
• Second line should be a benefit you offer, for example “Get Rid Of Migraines”
• Line three should describe a feature offer, like “Without Drugs Or Surgery”
• Line four is your URL, with each word capitalized and using a keyword in your landing page address if possible
The next step is choosing your keywords. These are the words that your ad will show for when people type them into the search engine. For now just choose the keyword “chiropractor yourtown” (replace yourtown with your actually town you practice in, like “chiropractor Dallas, TX). We’ll cover more on keywords later.
Choose your daily budget. Be sure to set a daily budget that you are comfortable with, like $10-20 per day for now. Once your daily budget is reached, your ad stops running. If set to low, your ad might stop running in the most important part of the day.
In the last step, you will be asked to set your maximum cost-per-click. This is the most you will bid on your keywords. This will apply to all the keywords you chose earlier. I can’t tell you exactly what to bid on your keywords, as it will be different depending on where you practice and the keywords you choose. But I will show you how to determine what you should bid and how to get lower bids
Now your campaign is ready to go.
What keywords should you use?
Start with the keywords “chiropractic” and “chiropractor” for now. Keyword selection is so important, we’ll be going into detail about it in next week’s lesson.
Keyword Matching
One thing about keywords that may interest you is the different types of matching you can use with Adwords. The three types of keyword matching are broad, phrase and exact. You should also use negative matching to exclude those search terms that don’t apply to your Adwords campaign. Here is how Google describes their keyword matching…
• Broader matching options tend to give you more impressions but accrue higher costs. Therefore, include other matching options (like phrase- or exact-match) along with broad-matched keywords in an ad group.
• Broad-matched keywords should be at least two-word phrases (gourmet coffee or organic coffee beans).
• Narrower matching options tend to give you fewer clicks and lower your costs. It’s still important to use descriptive words for these matching options.
• Negative keywords work well in most cases when you know a term doesn’t apply to your business. (”free”, “medications”,etc.)
To use broad matching, you simply enter in the term by itself. Let’s use the word chiropractic for example. Here’s how the broad, phrase and exact match would work for the search term chiropractic
Broad match = chiropractic (any search typing which includes chiropractic will show your ad, including searches like chiropractic marketing, chiropractic tables, etc)
Phrase Match = “chiropractic Dallas, TX” (Enter this with quotes around it into your Adwords account. Any search that includes this phrase exactly will show your ad, including for example “chiropractic Dallas, TX clinics”, “advanced chiropractic Dallas, TX”, etc
Exact Match = [chiropractic Dallas, TX] (This match is entered into your Adwords account with brackets around it. This means for your ad to show up, someone will have to type this phrase in exactly like you input it, so your ad will only show for the search chiropractic Dallas, TX.)
Which of the above match types should you use? All of them have their place. If you have a lot of competition for Adwords bid prices in your area, then the phrase and exact matches will allow you to beat out your competition and you will pay less for bids on keywords.
Negative keywords = a word with a negative sign in the front of it, like “–tables”, without the quotes. When combined with the above broad and phrase match this will prevent your ad showing when someone types in “chiropractic tables”.
Here’s a list of important negative keywords to use in your account for the keywords chiropractic.
-tables
-table
-marketing
-college
-websites
-seminars
-colleges
-schools
-seminar
-fraud
Do you see what those above have in common? They would be search terms that chiropractors themselves would be searching for, not patients. If you did not have these negative keywords in your account, your ad would pop up when a chiropractor searched for “chiropractic tables” in your area, and he might click your ad to see what you are up to. This wastes your money (since you are charged per click) and reveals your marketing to the guy down the street. Be sure to watch this week’s video to get more clarity on negative keywords.
Google’s Quality Score
When you mouse over the spyglass icon next to your keywords in your Adwords account, you will notice a quality score. Google has three levels of quality score — Ok, Poor and Great. The better your quality score is, the less you will pay per click. The worse your quality score, the more you will pay for keyword bid prices. Have a low quality score for too long, combined with a low CTR and you will be “slapped” by Google with ridiculously high bid prices (like 10X your current bid prices).
Google won’t tell you exactly how to improve your score, but they do reveal a few keys to help you. The score is based on your keyword relevance, your landing page relevance, and your landing page load time. Therefore, here is a checklist you can use to raise your quality score, thereby lowering your bid prices.
– Make sure your keyword is in your ad headline
– Use ad groups in your account (explained below)
– Use your keyword in your headline on your landing page
-Make sure your landing page or main website loads fast
– Use items on your landing page that makes the visitor stay longer (video, audio, etc)
– Make sure your landing page has a privacy policy link on it
– Put a link on your landing page that links to another website with a lot of content (your blog!)
How To Use Ad Groups
Ad groups are different groupings of keywords in your account. Ad groups are primarily setup for two reasons. First they allow you to use different ads to target different keywords. Also, they allow you to get a better quality score for your keywords.
Using the above “Top 10” keywords, you should group the “back pain” keywords together in an ad group. Then put the terms “chiropractic” and “chiropractor” in a separate ad group.
This concept is much easier to explain on the video, where I’ll show you how easy it is to create and manage ad groups in your campaign.
Other PPC Search Engines
Once you have mastered using Google Adwords for your practice marketing, you should branch out into Yahoo and MSN. To setup your accounts there, you should visit the following websites…
https://adcenter.microsoft.com/
These PPC search engines are not as advanced Google, therefore it’s important to note a few differences in the campaign setup. For Yahoo and MSN, I do not recommend using ad groups or keyword matching. Because traffic is so much smaller it’s not worth wasting your time with these settings. Just start with 1-2 ads, and throw all your keywords into one ad group. Since quality score isn’t as important here, and bid prices are lower, this won’t hurt you at all.
(The above article is part of a ChiroMarketing Academy lesson. To see the 25 minute training video, where you can look over my shoulder see exactly how I set it up, and sign up at www.chiromarketingacademy.com.)