How Independent Practices Can Leverage Google’s Growing Mobile Ad Formats

By JOHN SUNG KIM

Google’s stock price recently jumped by nearly 15% in a single day based on results that showed its intensive push into mobile ads is starting to generate meaningful revenues. This is important for doctors as recent stats from the company show that the majority of searches are now conducted on mobile devices, a medium that Google previously displayed very little paid advertising on.

The mobile ad format represents a new opportunity for some specialties, and a potential threat to those that ignore these growing trends as more independent practices begin investing in online advertising and Google Adwords (a pay per click advertising platform that accounts for the bulk of Google’s revenues).

In this example of a Google mobile search for dentists in the San Francisco area, there are a number of local practices competing for advertising space. The mobile ad format is obviously different than desktop-based ads because the real estate for eyeballs is so much smaller on a smartphone. Here, we can see that the ads take up nearly the entire screen on a regular sized iPhone 5.

Notice that Google has a link to the local listing on Google Maps, as well as an easy way for the patient to ‘Tap-to-Call’ a practice. For the dental specialty, due to the sheer volume of practices competing for such a small dimension ad format, the price per click can be quite high.

In the San Francisco market (a highly competitive locale) the price per click can be as high as $14 per click! So it’s not uncommon to have a marketing cost of over $300 for a single new patient to book an appointment online. Throw in a 25% no show rate of new patients from the Internet and those costs can escalate even higher.

However, it should be noted that despite the high costs, the competition from independent practices to advertise on Google and Google Mobile are high because the doctors are seeing significant return on investment (ROI).

To start advertising in Google Mobile, you can get a free $75 Adwords credit for doctors just by signing up and spending your first $25. Some best practices to consider include:

• Understand which keywords you want to show up for. Broad keywords like “dentist” will deplete your $75 in mere minutes. “Delta Dental Dentist San Francisco Downtown” is a far better keyword that will cost less per click and offer much higher ROI.

• One of the most common mistakes that first time doctors advertising on Google make is to not define the radius in which their ads will show. Remembering that most practices compete within a 15 mile radius of their practice’s address, be sure to define the geographic boundaries with which you want your ads to display. For example, you don’t want mobile ads showing up on the phones of patients who are in New Jersey when your practice is in Brooklyn!

• There are plenty of ad management firms that can potentially handle your advertising dollars far better than a “newbie” (likely you). Just make sure they are certified by Google, as the company has given this certification to over 5,000 agencies that have passed their rigorous tests for Adwords management capabilities. You can search for any of the partners that can manage your medical practice Adwords campaigns

So while there are still significant opportunities in local markets for independent practices to advertise on Google and Google Mobile (most metro areas and suburbs are nowhere near as competitive as San Francisco or New York City) the low hanging fruit opportunities (free advertising) exist within specialty practices where competition is not nearly as high yet.

Let’s look at an example of a search for a specialty where there is little competition in terms of paid ads. In this example it is a search for gastroenterology.

Note how the primary call-to-action to call the practice is still present, but these listings are the top three results in the desktop search results ported over to the mobile format. Again, since these listings are free, any Gastroenterologist or medical specialty practice can create or claim their Google local business listing.

Some best practices for creating your free listing include:

• Local listings with reviews have the best ROI. While you may not want to explicitly ask your patients for reviews on Google, there are marketing automation software products that can integrate seamlessly with your EHR or practice management calendar and send patients notifications or reminders to review you on your Google Business listing.

Upload plenty of pictures of your office, yourself, and your staff. The popular house rental site AirBnB discovered very early in their development of listings that rental homes with more pictures received better engagement from website visitors.

As Google experiments with, and invests more into, mobile ad formats, there are ample opportunities for paid and free listings for independent medical practices.