Veterinarian PPC Agency

What is PPC Ads Management for Veterinary Clinics?

Veterinarian PPC management consists of creating and optimizing paid advertisement campaigns for veterinary clinics. Despite that simple explanation, let's explore it further.

To provide premium PPC management, a PPC advertising firm for veterinarians should get to know you and your goals. You can use this information to determine the next steps, since paid ads for a local veterinary clinic differs from paid advertising for an ecommerce-focused veterinary clinic.

For example, local veterinary clinics are often only interested in contact form submissions or phone calls. This can be accomplished through PPC advertising that boosts traffic to an optimized landing page or sales funnel. We recommend Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those pages/funnels don't exist or need to be reworked.

In contrast, ecommerce-focused veterinary clinics are most likely to be interested in online sales. This can be accomplished through paid ads that drives traffic to an optimized product page or category page. Google Shopping Campaigns might even make sense to include for some online businesses. Our sales funnels have also helped us to sell subscriptions, products, and services.

To optimize and scale veterinarian paid ads campaigns, it's important to understand what metrics will be used. For some veterinary clinics, that means looking to platforms like Google Analytics. However, there are other options out there too, like Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

To be successful with paid advertising, your veterinary clinic should utilize multiple advertising strategies and marketing tools. For example, the best veterinary clinic paid advertising packages will include strategies to:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social channels, and third parties.
• Make your veterinary clinic more profitable by acquiring qualified leads or selling online.
• Better understand ad attribution through the integration of third-party attribution software.
• Provide social proof with case studies, white papers, video testimonials, etc.
• Engage users in story creation, email collection, and user generated content.
• Test the effectiveness of different ad creatives across different media and ad placements.

Tips for Managing PPC for Veterinarians

Our team of paid advertising professionals is knowledgeable in the latest PPC trends for veterinarians and other industries.

Here are some of our best tips to follow for keyword research, audience research, landing page / sales funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, and ad creation.

1.) Keyword Research Tips

Keyword research for veterinarians is mostly used for Google Ads and Bing Ads search network campaigns. After all, search ads only show up based on what your veterinary clinic targets on Google or Bing.

For example, a person looking for a veterinary clinic nearby might search "local veterinarian" on a search engine. It wouldn't be necessary to conduct extensive keyword research to target that exact phrase.

However, what if the exact match keyword isn't generating enough search volume and the veterinary clinic needs to expand their advertising reach? The solution would require keyword research.

Typically, the paid advertising manager will discuss with the veterinary clinic about what types of products / services to target more often. A broader keyword targeting plan than exact matches might also be necessary.

Suppose the PPC manager discovers that there is high traffic volume for "nearby veterinary clinics" or even "veterinarian services." The first phrase is targeting a type of business or organization in the area. In the second phrase, a service is being targeted, which might result in a more lucrative conversion opportunity.

You can also benefit from keyword research when building out negative keyword lists. Negative keywords are used to stop your paid advertising from showing in search queries that you know won't bring in pet owners.

For example, an individual searching for "free services from veterinary clinics" or "when to advertise to veterinarians" is unlikely to convert. They might see your paid advertising if you use broad keyword targeting without any negative keywords like "free" or "advertise".

As you can see, no matter how obvious your keyword research needs might be at the start of building out your campaign, they become more complicated as you begin to scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend.

2.) Audience Research Tips

Audience research is often mentioned as part of scaling social ads on Facebook and Instagram for veterinarian paid advertising campaigns. However, Bing Ads and Google Ads also allow audience targeting.

We'll review some audience research and targeting history within Facebook Ads.

Veterinary clinic paid ads managers used Facebook's custom audiences extensively in the past. After all, one of the most attractive features of the Facebook Ads platform was the data it collected on its users, which veterinarians lined up to exploit.

As time went on, data privacy and machine learning both had an impact on custom audiences.

In the iOS 14.5 update, Apple included a pop-up message that allowed users to opt out of tracking for personalized ads. As a result, Facebook had difficulty tracking mobile device behavior. In fact, it even affected the accuracy of ad attribution reporting.

Following that, machine learning algorithms greatly reduced the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences for most advertising firms for veterinarians. With such sophisticated algorithms, it's often more harmful to choose your own interests compared to letting Facebook figure it out for you.

Although many veterinary clinic PPC advertising companies still rely on custom audiences, the trend is shifting toward broad targeting. Don't take our word for it though. If you've been involved in the creation of Facebook ads, you've probably noticed the removal of interest-based targeting options here and there. Maybe you've even seen changes to how "Advantage Detailed Targeting" is recommended during the setup process.

Interested in another take on audience targeting? Social Media Examiner's blog article does a good job of explaining recent changes.

This isn't to say audience research and targeting is going away. There will always be targeting options that can be manipulated within veterinarian ad campaigns to squeeze a little extra performance.

3.) Landing Page Creation & Optimization Tips

An important factor in the success of your veterinary clinic paid ads campaign is the landing page.

When we take on the management of a paid advertising campaign for veterinarians, we start by looking over the landing pages to see if they follow best practices. In this review, we consider the following factors and more:

• Do you have a headline that emphasizes benefits?
• Is there an image above the fold?
• Does the content engage the reader?
• Do you have a lead form I can use right away?
• Are the call to actions easily noticeable?
• Does the page load quickly?
• Is social proof present?
• Can I load the page on a mobile device?

There are so many factors that come into the design and development of a quality landing page. Here is a great blog article about what makes a results-driven landing page.

Make sure your landing page follows best practices before you spend money on PPC advertising! Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your sales pitch.

4.) Conversion Funnel Tips

As an alternative to a landing page, you might want to consider building out one or more sales funnels. We rely heavily on sales funnels for lead generation, email audience building, and even online purchases.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from your local area. While managing their internet advertising we built multiple sales funnels within Click Funnels. Here are some of the funnels we made:

• We used squeeze pages to help capture email addresses while building awareness for the program.
• We used lead magnets to provide people with healthy eating tips, fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peaks in exchange for an email address.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your veterinary clinic isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

5.) Conversion Optimization Tips

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 product or service on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 people who visit your website you sell 1 product or service.
3. You have a $1.00 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person who visits your website you spend $1.00.
4. To sell 1 product or service, you need 100 clicks from paid ads, which would cost you $100. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 1x, meaning for every dollar spent in paid advertising you get one dollar in return.

For most veterinary clinics, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable. Sadly, we often see this type of ROAS when jumping into new client accounts.

To improve the situation, you hire a PPC advertising firm to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your website you now sell 2 products. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might be profitable now selling that product or service, if your margins are good.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your paid advertising.

6.) Ad Creation Tips

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account, but it also applies to Google Display Ads.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads for veterinarians, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You should develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need to build out attractive ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a great ad, it will eventually become stale. You should change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people nearby.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You should understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You should understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

Pricing for Veterinary Clinic PPC Management

If you want us to dedicate more time to your campaigns, the price of our paid ads management services will be adjusted accordingly. Below is the starting cost for our PPC ads management packages, but we are happy to have a conversation about adjusting the budget if your ad spend or service requirements exceed our initial estimate.

Types of Paid Ads for Veterinary Clinics

For veterinary clinics, there are many ways to run paid ads. The following are some of the most common paid advertisements options for veterinarians.

1.) Local Ads

If you have a veterinary clinic, you can run localized ads on almost any advertising platform. Depending on the nature of your local veterinary clinic, you may find better success in one platform versus another. It is important to try out every available option to see which works best for your needs. Now let's discuss some local advertising options.

Google is going to offer two options.

The first is to run traditional Google Ads, potentially using their newer campaign type of Performance Max. With this ad campaign type, the Google algorithm can find the best combination of headlines, images, videos, and service locations to bring you customers. Performance Max campaigns are used frequently by accounting, legal, dental, and medical professionals. Even nearby stores use this campaign type.

Google's second option for qualifying businesses is their Local Service Ads. Using Local Service Ads, you get charged a flat fee for each lead the platform generates. Home service contractors, such as plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers, frequently use Google Local Service Ads.

You can also use Facebook Ads to target people in your local area. This is a little more straightforward, since it just involves setting up a campaign that has ad sets with geographic restrictions. Local Facebook Ads are often used by veterinary clinics of all types.

2.) Social Media Ads

Pretty much any online ad you see on a social network site is going to qualify as a social ad.

It's important to keep the ad creatives fresh when running social ads. The performance of your campaign will gradually decline if you do not rotate your ad creatives every couple of weeks. A weekly change in ad creative is often recommended for higher-spend ad campaigns.

One of the best things about social media ads is that you can target audiences who aren't yet aware of your product or service. It's quite the opposite when you run search engine ads since you only get to show them when someone searches for what your veterinary clinic offers.

That benefit can also be a curse though, since conversion rates are often lower when people aren't closer in the revenue funnel of making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Advertising

You'll want to invest in search engine advertising if you know people are searching online for the products you offer.

Some people refer to this as veterinarian Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. This is just a different way of explaining search ads, which are advertisements placed on the search results page of a search engine above the SEO placements.

You might consider copying your Google Ads campaigns over to the Bing Ads platform if you've had success with Google Ads. In an October 2022 study from StatCounter, Bing was the primary search engine used by approximately 3.57% of online users.

4.) Display Ads

Many different message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (even nearby news stations), gossip sites, and more run display advertisements.

Bing Ads and Google Ads both offer these.

To get started with display ads, you just need a set of ad creatives in different image sizes. It also helps to have a general idea of your target audience, but both ad platforms have their own algorithms that help you produce results from your ad spend.

5.) Retargeting Ads

Your veterinary clinic website, landing page, or sales funnel won't convert everyone on the first visit.

It is almost always recommended to set up retargeting ads to help bring people back to your site after they've had time to think through different options.

Almost any ad platform can be used for retargeting ads.

6.) Shopping Ads

It was Google Shopping Campaigns that popularized this form of search advertising.

If you want to promote your veterinary clinic through Google Shopping, you'll need an ecommerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), and a Google Merchant Center account.

With these tools, you can provide Google Ads with an accurate list of all your product data, including title, SKU, image, price, and availability. From there, they will be able to find the right types of search queries to display your products at the top of the search results page.

7.) Video Ads

Social networking websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram allow you to advertise with video.

Using YouTube Ads is as simple as setting up a video ad campaign in Google Ads.

To run video ads in Facebook or Instagram, you'll need a working Facebook Ads account.

The conversion potential of video ads is excellent on both platforms. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, look to implement them into your paid advertising campaigns.