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Tips for Success: Health & Wellness Service Providers

Make the most of AdWords with customized tips designed to help you boost site traffic, grow your customer base, and improve return on investment for your healthcare service.


In this tips section we'll cover:


Account structure: Let your website be your guide

An organized account structure is key to running targeted campaigns and reaching the right audience. When setting up your account, your menu of services or sitemap can be a great guide for structuring your AdWords account. Using your website as a blueprint, you'll have an easier time making changes, choosing specific keywords, monitoring your success, ensuring that all your services are covered, and allocating your budget effectively.

For example, if you offer skin care services, try setting up campaigns for different types of treatments, such as facial care, body care, and hair care. Next, set up one ad group for each procedure, such as facial peels, acne peels, and microdermabrasion. This will allow you to create specific, more relevant ad text that can attract more qualified clicks.

Ad groups: Keep them tightly themed

Once you've determined your campaigns and ad groups, it's time to think about your keyword lists. With AdWords search campaigns, the general rule of thumb is to group keywords based on the same service in the same ad group. This allows you to tailor your ads to the keywords that trigger them, increasing the likelihood that users will see their search query in your ad title or text.

Returning to our skin care example, let's take a look at how we might structure the "Laser Treatment" campaign. Try breaking this into several ad groups with highly specific themes, such as procedure (laser treatment) and particular customer need (freckle reduction):

Location targeting: Reach your core audience

Do you offer services in one or more distinct regions? If so, use regional targeting to make sure that only potential customers in your area – however big or small – will see your ad. At the campaign level, you can target regions of any size, from a 20-mile radius to the entire world.

Targeting options that work well for health service providers may include:

  • Specific cities, states, regions, or territories
  • A specific mileage radius around your service location

Creating regionally targeted campaigns can save you time, since you won't have to include region-specific terms in your keyword lists. Why? The targeted region is automatically tagged onto each of your keywords, leaving you free to enter shorter, more general terms. For example, instead of using the keyword day spa Los Angeles when targeting the Los Angeles area, you can simply use day spa. We'll show your ad to users located in Los Angeles and those who include Los Angeles in their search query. To learn how to create a regionally targeted campaign, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Keywords: Build strong keyword lists

Expand on your core keywords by adding relevant synonyms and plural terms. For example, instead of just using treatment, expand your keyword lists to include help, therapy, healing, procedure and care. To find effective keywords to drive more traffic to your site, use the Keyword Tool. With this tool, you can get new variations based on keywords you enter into the tool, or get keyword ideas based on your website content. The Keyword Tool also shows search volume trends and advertiser competition levels for those keywords, as well as ideas for negative keywords.

When looking for new keywords, place yourself in your potential customers' shoes – what terms might they search for? Don't be afraid to try less obvious keywords – you can always pause or delete a keyword at any time.

Negative keywords: Curb unqualified traffic

To curb unqualified clicks and improve your return on investment, use negative keywords. Your ad won't appear when a user's search query contains one of your negative keywords. Using negative keywords can help lower your advertising costs and ensure more relevant clicks for your business. You can apply them at either the campaign or ad group level.

If there are services or procedures you don't provide, consider including those as negative keywords – such as wax, waxing, and hair removal for a spa that does not offer hair removal services. You might also consider including side effect, risk, and danger as negative keywords, to exclude traffic from users searching for risk and side effect information.

You can also find ideas for negative keywords by running a Search Query Performance report in your account. This report shows the exact terms people are searching for when they click on your ads, including any variations of your keywords. Scan the report for any irrelevant terms, then add them as negative keywords.

Watch this video to learn more about using negative keywords to improve your account's performance.

Ad appeal: Write effective ad text

Some ads are more effective than others, and often it can come down to style. Think about your own online experiences. What kind of ads give you the confidence to explore a new site? Try the following to boost your ad's appeal:

  • Use clear and explicit language to describe your services
  • Include your keywords in your ad text or title – they will appear in bold type when queried
  • Capitalize the first letter of each word
  • Avoid excessive punctuation and incoherent abbreviations
  • Intercapitalize the Display URL (AdWordsExample.com rather than adwordsexample.com)

Also, include a call-to-action, a motivating phrase that tells potential customers what action you wish them to take once they reach your site. For example, "Order today," "Buy online now," or "Book an appointment" can all work as effective calls-to-action. Phrases that highlight special deals or sales, such as "Ask about our special" or "Call now for a discount," can be especially helpful in capturing user attention. Avoid generic phrases, such as "Click here," that could apply to any ad, regardless of content.

Google's content network: Go beyond search

A great way to expand your reach while still promoting your services to a targeted audience is with Google's content network, an extensive network of high-quality news pages, industry-specific websites, and blogs. It's a cost-effective way to show your ads on a wide variety of healthcare pages, from smaller niche blogs to larger health databases. By placing your ads on both search and content pages, you'll reach potential customers at all points of the buying cycle, from creating awareness of your services to closing the cycle with a conversion. And with the range of available ad formats – text, image, Flash, and video – you can appeal to potential customers in a unique and eye-catching way.

Placement targeting: Handpick websites for your ads

A placement-targeted campaign allows you to handpick your audience by selecting specific sites in Google's content network to display your ads. Try showing your ads in places related to a particular problem or need for which you provide a solution. For example, if you provide physical therapy, you might place your ads on websites related to pain relief, chronic back and neck pain, and sports injuries. If you offer personal training services, for instance, you might want to place your ads next to exercise tips and nutrition advice. And, websites with positive reviews and discussion on health-related procedures and treatments are also great venues for promoting your services. You might show your ads on health-related sites like these content partners:




Learn more about the content network, find additional partner sites, and read about advertisers' success on the content network website.

Placement Performance report: See where your ads are showing

Use the Placement Performance report to learn where your contextually targeted ads are showing on Google's content network, and get site-by-site performance data, such as clicks, impressions, cost, and conversions, for all your ads running on the content network. Using the Report Center in your AdWords account, run a Placement Performance report to learn which individual sites generate the most conversions. You can then target these top-performing sites in a placement-targeted campaign.

Your landing page: Deliver on your ad's promise

Studies show that visitors decide whether to leave a website within seconds, so it's important that your landing page delivers on your ad's promise. Send your visitors right to the source: the page featuring the service listed in your ad. For example, if you provide vision correction services and your ad text references laser eye surgery, be sure to link your ad to a landing page dedicated to this particular procedure. This page should clearly explain the benefits of the service and provide a clear way for visitors to contact you – either through an online request form or by phone.

Track performance: Google Analytics and conversion tracking

Your website is crucial to driving business, so chances are the following questions have kept you up at night:


  • Where are my visitors from, and how did they reach my site?

  • What do people do while on my site? Where do they spend the most time?

  • How can I generate more conversions from my landing page?

  • Which of my AdWords keywords and ad texts are most effective?

  • How does my site compare to others in my industry?
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Don't just guess! Find answers with Google's free tools, designed to help you gain customer insight and achieve a higher ROI. To measure your AdWords campaigns' effectiveness, use conversion tracking to learn which of your keywords and ad variations lead to online sales. Also, try Google Analytics, a powerful tool that integrates with AdWords and tells you everything you want to know about how visitors find and interact with your site. With a variety of useful data delivered in a number of formats, Analytics helps you focus your marketing resources, improve site navigation, and increase ROI. You can easily visualize and track the performance of all of your online advertising initiatives, including search campaigns, emails, and banner ads.

You can even use the Analytics benchmarking service to compare your metrics to those of other websites related to health and wellness. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site and identify areas for improvement. Some of the available categories include:

  • Medical Facilities & Services
  • Health Conditions
  • Fitness
  • Beauty & Personal Care
  • Mental Health
  • Vision Care
  • Dental Care
  • Weight Loss

Remember that online advertising can also drive offline business. Keep track of offline responses by setting up a unique phone number that visitors see when they click on your AdWords ads, or by providing special coupons online for clients or patients to use on their first visit to your office.

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