Chiropractors Step By Step Guide for Adwords, PPC and other Paid Ads

At TeleEMC, our mission is to support chiropractors in growing and building their business. While our remote EMC determination services are the core of our business, we know that there is still so much more to creating a profitable chiro practice than EMC determinations alone, which is why we continue to create informational guides to help your business succeed.

You can find more information about all of the different ways to market a business by reviewing our ultimate guide to chiropractor marketing and navigating to the sections that interest you most. But In this guide, we’re talking about the one type of marketing that many chiropractors use to generate immediate business: online advertising – easily the single most important tool to be aware of if you have a chiropractic practice, whether or not you choose to use it.

Why Online Advertising?

There are so many ways to market a business. One of the most popular is search engine optimization, which we discussed in this guide here, which is used to help your business show up high in search engines when a user performs a search, giving you potentially free leads and patients.

Search engine optimization is profitable. But it is also slow. It take anywhere from months to years depending on how competitive your local area is before you start generating a large number of leads using these search engine tactics.

Online advertising, on the other hand, can get you patients now. The moment you put your advertisements online, you have the potential to capture every possible person that is interested in your services, because you do not need to wait for your efforts to take effect. Thanks to the speed of the internet, any advertisement you make is immediately online, ready to generate you leads.

Image ads and sponsored ads can be valuable, but typically NOT for chiropractors (with one exception, which we will go over later). They are better used for companies that are trying to sell a product, or service industries that have a bit more of a broad reach.

> Image ads and sponsored ads are for getting people interested in your product or service.

> Search ads are for getting people that are ALREADY interested to choose you.

99% of the time, chiropractors are interested in the latter, where they can pay for ads that will show up for those that are already seeking some type of treatment. Those are called “PPC ads,” and they are available on platforms that include Google Adwords, Bing Ads, and Yahoo Ads which helps them show up in Google, Bing, and Yahoo search engines, respectively.

(Note: There are also ads one can buy via social media websites. These are very different from other forms of online advertising, so we have covered this in our social media guide instead)

PPC ads, short for “pay-per-click ads,” are a form of web based advertising that focuses on clicks, rather than views. The idea is the advertiser only pays when a customer clicks on the ad. There are generally no costs to set up a PPC ad campaign, and an ad that is seen but not clicked on incurs no costs either.

As with most other forms of online advertising, a pay-per-click ad will ideally bring a potential customer to your website where they will then take a desired action, such as call your practice to set up an appointment or give you their email address for a mailing list. 

Every click on these ads is another visitor that could turn into a patient, and if no one clicks on your ad, you are not responsible for any costs.

This is different from other forms of online advertising, where companies might pay for:

• Impressions – Many websites have companies pay for “impressions,” which are how often an ad loads on a webpage. With those types of ads, a company may pay for, say, 50,000 impressions, and no matter how many or how few clicks they receive, once that 50,000 is up, the ad is removed.
• Time – Other websites have businesses pay for time. For example, the website may have an ad space available on the right hand sidebar, and charge $X for one month. Then companies can receive the ads space no matter how many clicks are received.

It’s easy to see why PPC ads have an advantage over ads based on time and impressions. While those methods of doing advertising can, in theory, be very profitable if there are a lot of clicks and leads, PPC ads ensure that you know exactly what you’re paying for.

There are fewer guesses with PPC ads, as each payment is linked directly to a visit from a hopefully-relevant search term.

Types of PPC Ads

To add a bit of confusion, there are also different types of PPC ads available, even within these search engine platforms. Typically, the three advertising options are as follows:

• Search Ads – The most common form of a PPC ad is a paid search ad. When someone searches for a keyword in a search engine like Google, you get a list of results. Search ads are the entries you see at the top of a search results page, often denoted as a “sponsored” or “ad” listing. They resemble an unpaid listing, but are almost always one of the first ads people see. It is essentially the act of paying to be at the top of search results.
• Display Ads – Display ads are essentially a different form of image ad. Many websites open up a space for Google (using a different software platform, called Google AdSense) that lets Google decide what image or video ads to display on their website. When someone clicks, both Google and the website owner get a small amount of money. This is how some websites monetize. Display ads are typically significantly less expensive on a cost-per-click basis, since generating relevant leads is harder.
• Remarketing Ads – Retargeting, or as it’s known in Google as “Remarketing,” is another type of image ad that differs slightly from typical display ads. Instead of displaying to random people on random websites who might not otherwise be interested in a chiropractor, remarketing displays image ads to people that have already visited your website. This ensures that those individuals are, in fact, targeted leads.

Display ads are very useful… in other industries. Not really for chiropractors, who need people to already be searching for a chiropractor first. That is why they are not the focus of this guide.

As you get more interested in Adwords, you may be able to find an approach using display ads that works for you, but it is often a much harder task. Instead, we are focusing mostly on search ads, and will discuss how remarketing can be helpful as well.

So you’re hoping to use PPC to show up instantly in searches, using search ads. But how much is it going to cost?

The cost for each click uses a bidding system. To get ads in front of customers, advertisers place bids on keywords. The bid determines how much the advertiser is willing to pay if the ad is clicked on. If another chiropractor is willing to pay more, that chiropractor will often show up higher in search. In Google, there are usually three spots available at the top of search engine results, and two additional spots available at the bottom. You also give Google a budget that they can use up daily before they have to stop showing your ads.

Whenever users search for one of these keywords, it prompts an ad auction. This happens instantaneously in the background of search results, using the bid amount, ad quality, and a few other factors to determine which advertisers ads will appear.

TIP: You do NOT need to try to outbid all other chiros if you cannot afford it. While it is helpful to be #1 in search in order to get the most leads, remember that you only pay for each click, so even if you show up for fewer searches, you can still max out your daily budget and get qualified leads provided you still receive some clicks to your website. Clicks are more important than placement. Placement just helps ensure you get the most clicks if you have the budget for it.

Bidding costs can vary significantly. In Miami, a search for “Chiros Near Me” may be anywhere from $3.00 per click to $12.50 per click. In Haileah, even though it is right nearby, this cost is a little cheaper as there are fewer chiros competing for clicks. It depends on the location, the keyword, and the other bids.

Some businesses put quite a bit of money into their Adwords campaign, and always show up #1, no matter how many clicks they receive, because they have a high daily budget. But in other cases, companies may use up the entirety of their budget, and when they do, their ads are no longer shown and the next highest bidder takes their place

Setting Up and Getting Started

Search engine ads are typically connected to the search engines themselves. Today’s most popular PPC platforms, both in terms of advertising and end user numbers, are:

• Google Adwords – Google
• Bing Ads – Bing and DuckDuckGo.com
• Yahoo Ads – Yahoo

Depending on your marketing goals, you might invest in ad campaigns on multiple platforms. This can expand your impressions and potential for conversions, but can result in a steeper learning curve and higher costs as you perfect your campaigns. Bing Ads and Yahoo Ads are usually much less expensive, but also get fewer searches, so many chiros find it makes more sense to stick solely with Google Ads at first.

Setup for Google Ads can take a bit of time, though it does not require much tech knowledge. You can visit https://ads.google.com/home/ and click on “Start Now” to get started. They also have a specialist that can walk you through setup. You will need (or will need to create) a free Google account of some kind in order to use Google Adwords.

From there, you’ll answer step by step questions.You are already in the process of setting up your first “Campaign.”

It’s best to start with “Get More Website Sales” rather than “Get More Calls” because the assumption is that patients are going to want to research you more before they choose to call or contact, and it will make the next steps a bit easier to understand.

Answer each question with your business name and website address.There, you’ll already have a chance to write your first ad. Google will automatically fill in some spaces, but go ahead and give this some of your own flair to fill in the space. There’s a limited number of characters in each section.

Note: You only need one ad, but Google reduces the cost-per-click for Campaigns that have 3 or more ads, so you may want to consider adding more ads later.

You’ll then have the option to select some keyword themes. If the automatic ones seem relevant to you, you can move on. If not, see if any on the list are. You’ll then want to enter in your location.

Choose any city within driving distance to you, or an entire county if relevant. You can also direct ads to people within some radius of your location. Enter in your daily minimum budget, click “next,” review all the data, click “next” again, enter payment info, and you’re in!

When someone does a search in Google, the words they type in are called a “keyword.” Even if it is many words, it is still called a “keyword.” Someone searches for a keyword, like “chiropractor near me,” and Google uses a complex algorithm that determines what should show up first. But if you buy ads, you get to show up ahead of those results, giving you a way to bypass all the marketing work that those top websites did to show up naturally.   

PPC ads for search engines are text-based ads that are designed to show up for these types of searches. The ads can show up for “Exact Match” keywords, or, more commonly, “Broad Match” keywords. 

With an exact match keyword, you tell Google to show your ad for a specific term, like “Miami Chiropractor” and the ad will only show up for that term. 

With a “Broad Match” keyword, if a user searches for something similar (for example, “Miami Florida Chiropractor,” which is technically a different term), your ad will still show, despite being a different keyword. Google may also show your website for terms like “back pain doctor” because its algorithm is intelligent enough to know that chiropractors are also doctors for back pain.Of course, this carries risks. Broad match is still just an algorithm, and so you may show up for terms you did not want, like “chiropractor school Miami” despite you not being a school. If someone clicks, you still need to pay, even though they were the ones that had you show up for the wrong term. Nevertheless, broad match is much easier when you’re new to the Adwordsworld.

• Keywords – click on your ad group. This is where you can put ads for a specific group of keywords. You should have one ad group only at the moment, but you can add more at a later date. Click on “Add Keywords” and add anything you come up with, or use the keyword planner tool (https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/) to get suggestions. Keep in mind that more is not necessarily better, especially with broad match. Choose the most relevant keywords you can.
• Add Ads – Back in the Ad Group page, click on the pencil symbol at the top left of the ad group, above the word “Clicks.” Then click on “+New Ad.” There, you can design new ads for your ad group. Remember to add at least 3 new ads, if not more, that all use different language and strategies. Google lets you try multiple different headlines, descriptions, and more, and then switches them to see which one performs best.
• Add Bid Strategy – Back on the Ad Group page again, go back down to the keyword section and click on the term “Keywords.” There you can adjust your bid strategy – the amount you’re willing to pay per click. Google can help you here to determine an ideal bid amount, but you can edit them as you see fit – for example, you can adjust bids for certain keywords so that you’respending less on those and more on the ones that you want to prioritize.

This is all you need to do to have a beginning strategy for Google Ads, and works in some form for all PPC. Once you’ve entered in all of these details, you should be able to start running ads and begin getting clicks to visit your business from local patients

Intermediate PPC Tips

These ad platforms are easy to begin but difficult to master. There are those that spend there entire careers perfecting ad campaigns in order to get the highest conversion rate, utilizing some of the most advanced data-orient PPC ad tools that these platforms offer. Delving into those can be a significant undertaking, but may be worth it depending on the success of your ads. 

You can start on Google itself, using walkthroughs like this to learn more about how to master Adwords. It is a time consumingendeavor, but one that may be worth doing depending on how you want to build your business. 

You do not need to know how to use the most advanced Adwords techniques in order to be successful. But there are some intermediary tips that can support you in your efforts. Consider the following:

Negative Keywords

One of the most important, slightly more advanced techniques to improve the efficacy of your PPC campaign is to integrate negative keywords. These are terms that are irrelevant for your business, such as the word “School” in the “Chiropractor SchoolMiami” example we used above. Had you entered in the term “school,” that keyword would never have shown. 

But you probably do not know those negative keywords offhand. So how do you find them?

Link your Google Ads account with a Google Analytics account, found here: http://analytics.google.com/. This gives you data about the visitors of your website. This link tells you the process for linking the two together. 

Once it’s linked, you let your ad run. That may mean you’re losing some money on irrelevant clicks, but you’ll get some valuable data in the process. After a month or two, log into Google Analytics, navigate to “Acquisition,” then “Google Ads,” then “Search Queries.” There you’ll see the specific term everyone searched for. Make a list of each word that is irrelevant to your business. Then go back into Adwords, navigate back to your keyword list, and click on “Add Negative Keyword.” Then add each word individually. This will ensure that those searches never occur again, narrowing down the searches you show up for to those that are relevant. Negative keywords are your most important step when you use broad match keywords to help guarantee you’regetting more relevant searches.

Landing Pages

In the beginning, as you first make your ads, chances are you’re going to point to the home page of your website as your destination, like www.TeleEMC.com. But eventually, you’ll want to experiment with different “landing pages.” These are pages on your website that are written specifically for people that may be interested in that ad.

Most of the time, this is going to be existing pages on your site, although you can also create pages specifically for your ads if you’re feeling frisky. But an example might be an ad for back pain that shows up when someone searches for a keyword associated with back pain; where you have an ad that points to your homepage, and another ad with the same or different language that points to your back pain page (if you have one) and then see which one performs better. 

Landing page experimentation is a good way to improve conversions (people that call you or email you), which is the ultimate goal of any advertising.

Remarketing

Setting up a remarketing campaign can be a bit tricky. This article by Google will help walk you through it. Remarketing is the only type of display ad that makes quite a bit of sense for those in the chiropractic field. As a refresher, these are image ads that show on websites that a user visits, but only AFTER they have already visited your website. 

It is essentially the digital version of “hey, don’t forget me, are you sure you don’t want to call?” 

These ads help with branding. They’re inexpensive. They also help you get more from your clicks, because if a click costs $12 and the visitor does not become a patient, that’s $12 lost forever. But with remarketing, they see more of your ad for no additional cost, and if they do click (which has a high conversion rate), the cost is only a few dimes more.Setting up a remarketing campaign requires a new campaign in your Adwords account. If you find yourself having trouble with the Google walkthrough, contact one of their ad specialists who tend to do a good job walking people through the process.

What Are the Weaknesses of PPC Ads?

PPC ads are, for many businesses, their primary – if not exclusive – form of online marketing. The fact it bypasses the time and work that goes into search engine optimization, the way that people pay per click, and the fact that you can “set it and forget it” once it is drawing in leads means that once your campaign is profitable for you, you can just let it run and enjoy the extra revenue.

When you take the time to learn the techniques behind PPC ads and build a strategy, this advertising model can be successful for your business. But PPC advertising comes with several challenges, many of which make getting started difficult. These include:

• Can Be Expensive – As an example of the cost, a paid ad in Google Adwords with the keyword “back pain” can cost $10 at a minimum. It can take up to 100 clicks to secure your first patient, resulting in $1000 for one conversion. These costs can go down as you refine your strategy, but PPC advertising will always cost more than other methods like organic search with SEO.
• Often Requires Testing – Getting the right keywords and right bid amounts generally takes trial and error in the first months. You will need to carefully monitor your keywords to compare clicks versus conversions, replacing non performing keywords with more effective ones. You will also need to find a balance with bids high enough for your ad to appear, but not excessive enough to harm your budget.
• Operates at a Loss Initially – This initial testing often results in an expensive loss as you refine your campaign. Ads shown to the wrong target audience result in clicks but not conversions. You end up paying your bid price, but don’t get a new patient or any further interaction

• Fewer Clicks than Organic Search Results – Studies have shown that the top non-sponsored search results often receive more clicks than those that pay for the position, at 10% of web traffic verses over 50% for organic results use search engine optimization (SEO) for the same keywords used as the ad triggers. It is worth noting that paid search results still receive far more site traffic than search results further down the page or on later pages.
• Does Not Guarantee Follow Through – Unless you are also using remarketing, a click will bring someone to your website, costing you money. If you are not able to immediately convert that customer and they navigate away from your website, that money is essentially gone. Remarketing through Adwords and other platforms can help avoid this, but is still not a guaranteed strategy. Other marketing options like SEO and social media management can have longer term benefits even if an ad doesn’t get you a new patient, so the money is never truly “Wasted.” 
• Learning Curve – Another challenge with PPC advertising, especially the highly competitive Google Adwords, is that there is a learning curve involved for set up. The initial process can be complicated for beginners and an improper set up can lead to lost time and, potentially, lost money. Extensive research, taking a class in Adwords, or relying on a professional can help ensure you are using PPC advertising most effectively, but ultimately there is some complexity that some chiros prefer to avoid

PPC is a great advertising tool, but – as you try to determine where best to spend your marketing dollars – it is helpful to be aware of these potential drawbacks, so you can make sure that you’re investing your time and energy into the right place.

Pay Per Click Marketing for Chiros – High Cost, High Reward

There are so many different avenues you can take to help grow your practice and improve your revenue. Online ads are some of the fastest, and – after they are set up correctly – require very minimal upkeep to continue to get new leads via search. 

They have a big of a learning curve, can be expensive, and are not always quite as effective as other options, but they are easily the best available way to catapult up in search results, get more patients instantly, target the patients that need you most, and do so in a way that can eventually be automated so that you barely have to think about your advertising methods again. 

At TeleEMC, we want to help you improve your company’s profits. If you want to learn more about how our online EMC determinations help chiropractors in Florida grow their business and improve their profits, contact our sales team, today