Businesses in every industry can benefit immensely from paid digital advertising, particularly for plastic surgery practices. In fact, plastic surgeon pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is one of the easiest and most effective avenues for attracting new clients. That’s because PPC allows you to get in front of prospects when they’re actively looking for a plastic surgeon.

With hyper-targeted messaging, PPC will connect you with potential clients when they’re ready to take action. Remember, in the plastic surgery field, people tend to do heavy research before reacting. Potential clients are already conducting their research online, and with well-crafted PPC ads, you can be there when they need credible information or are ready to book a consultation.

PPC for plastic surgeons delivers near-immediate results and is relatively cost-effective in the short term since you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. It’s a great way to push traffic to your practice’s website. However, you must manage your PPC campaigns properly to get value for your advertising dollars.

Keep reading for PPC best practices that’ll take your plastic surgery practice to the next level.

Inside Contents

First – What’s PPC?

PPC is a digital advertising channel that allows advertisers (such as plastic surgery practices) to place ads on an ad platform like Google and pay only when their ad is clicked. PPC’s primary goal is to direct users who click on your ad to your application or website, so that the visitor can complete a desired action, like booking an appointment.

Google, Bing, and other major search engines are popular host platforms for PPC advertising. They let you display ads relevant to user intent when doing an online search. PPC ads can also be placed on social media, video sharing, and other popular platforms.

How Does PPC Work for Plastic Surgeons?

Ad services like Microsoft Ads and Google Ads use real-time online bidding where ad inventory is sold via an automated auction. This bidding system determines the relevance of keywords, but it can cause the pay-per-click cost of some competitive keywords to skyrocket. Of course, you’ll have to bid on keywords relevant to your plastic surgery practice or specialization at the auction.

For instance, a plastic surgeon that specializes in blepharoplasty in Chicago may bid $7.5 per click on the search term “blepharoplasty in Chicago.” Your ad is likely to appear higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) if you place a higher bid than most competitors.

The bid amount isn’t the only thing that decides the ad that appears in the top spot in SERPs. Other factors that play a role in determining your PPC ad placement include its quality score and whether you used ad extensions.

To participate in PPC auctions, you must set up accounts on paid digital advertising platforms like Microsoft Ads or Google Ads. You can create your ad campaigns and determine when and where you’d like them to appear.

Accounts are segmented into campaigns to make management and reporting easy, especially when it comes to different service types, locations, and other helpful categorizations. In turn, campaigns are further split into ad groups containing relevant ads and keywords.

Keyword research is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of setting up and running PPC ads. You can use keyword research tools or let a top-notch PPC marketing agency do all the heavy lifting for you.

PPC Best Practices for Plastic Surgeons

PPC has been around for some time, providing tried and true methods to get started and create a rewarding campaign. Check out the tips below.

(1) Create a buyer persona for your target audience

The first and most important part of running compelling PPC campaigns for your plastic surgery practice is to understand your target audience and what they want. Most PPC campaigns comprise three critical components: targeted keywords, ad messaging, and the landing page. You can’t define or execute any of these elements without in-depth knowledge of your target audience.

Clearly define your target audience for every PPC campaign for best results. Include their behavioral patterns, gender, geographical location, age, and income. Surveying current leads and clients can help paint a clear picture of your audience, but tools like Facebook Page Insights and Google Analytics can come in handy.

Beyond that, ask yourself the following questions:

What’s my typical client – Is a female or male, married or single, etc.?
What motivates my target audience?
What’s their primary reason for seeking plastic surgery?
What struggles are they facing when looking for plastic surgery?
What devices do they use to do health or lifestyle-related research?
Who do they consult before seeing a plastic surgeon?

You’ll likely come across multiple target audience personas from your market research. For example, what do 75% of people seeking rhinoplasty have in common? Who is the typical candidate for a tummy tuck?

Aggregate these identifying attributes, qualities, and traits. From here, you can craft your target audience personas, complete with their pain points, priorities, booking considerations, decision-making patterns, and basic demographic info. You might have to conduct in-depth interviews with a few patients or past clients to obtain these insights.

(2) Activate ad extensions

PPC platforms like Google Ads offer flexible and easy-to-use ad extensions. They help plastic surgery marketers provide users with more information before users click on the ad. For instance, if you run multiple practice offices, use the location extension to help users quickly find your nearest location.

There are plenty of other reasons to use ad extensions. According to Digital Authority Partners, Google Ads extensions can impact your Ad Rank, influencing the performance and placement of your ad. After all, ad extensions that display your specialty, telephone, and physical address can help your plastic surgery practice help and reach more potential clients.

(3) Run responsive PPC ads

You can run many types of PPC ads, each with its own set of advantages and drawbacks. Responsive ads give you a leg up over your competition, mainly if you advertise on the Google Ads platform.

Responsive ads help your plastic surgery practice find and use the best combination of imagery, description, and headline. And with them, your marketers can save time and grow their practice without compromising performance.

(4) Consider video ads

Many digital advertising platforms now offer video ads, with titans like Netflix slated to join soon. Video is a powerful and well-known channel for ad campaigns. In fact, more than two-thirds of marketers say video ads have helped them acquire more leads and close more sales.

It’s easy to integrate video into your PPC strategy. Start by accepting Google’s vertical and square video formats. With 90% of people preferring to watch videos on mobile platforms, it’s a no-brainer to incorporate vertical and square video into your PPC advertising for plastic surgeons.

Bumper video ads are another format that has recently entered pay-per-click advertising. It involves brief, often shorter than six-second, unskippable video ads. They work particularly well when combined with in-stream ads, which usually feature before, during, or right after the main video.

(5) Leverage location targeting

Another powerful PPC strategy that can deliver fantastic results for plastic surgery practices is location targeting. With this approach, your practice can pay attention to the locations you serve instead of the whole globe. This tactic will help your practice reach and target people who are actually searching for a plastic surgeon in your area — it can dramatically improve your PPC ROI (return on investment) and overall performance.

(6) Go Social

Google Ads and Microsoft Ads are the gold standards for the PPC advertising industry. But paid digital advertising isn’t limited to these platforms. Social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, and Meta, offer PPC ad opportunities for businesses across all industries, in addition to their sponsored or boosted posts.

Meta ads are giving Google Ads a run for its money, because advertisements can be displayed across the group’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Through access to considerable personal data, social media PPC provides a myriad of high-quality targeted ad choices. This allows plastic surgeons to reach a targeted category of potential clients, such as those within a specific age group, gender, income bracket, or line of work.

(7) Optimize your landing pages

Landing pages play a crucial role in PPC advertising, particularly for highly specialized businesses like plastic surgery practices. It’s where users are directed when they click on an ad. Landing pages must impress and deliver what your ad says. If they don’t, users will return to the SERPs, which won’t greatly help your practice.

Analyze your landing pages for various PPC ad campaigns. Do they live up to the hype of the ads? For instance, if you have an ad promoting liposuction, does the landing page provide additional information about it, such as the costs, what to expect, and more?

Conclusion

From running video ads to local ads, there are plenty of ways to take advantage of PPC to benefit your plastic surgery practice. Don’t forget to define your target audience and create buyer personas for them.