Let’s talk about Google Ads. If you are a clinic or studio owner the chances are that you will have heard of Google Ads. Whilst the thought of getting involved with PPC advertising can be daunting, when executed properly the rewards can be huge. Another thing to consider is that competitors in your local area are likely already using paid ads which means you are missing out on a chunk of potential new clients each time someone searches Google.

Following on from the effects of COVID-19, clients and patients have fallen out of their regular treatment or classes cycle. This means that there will be more clients up for grabs in your local area and we want to ensure you have the digital visibility to make them your clients. What’s more, TM3 Connect integrates with Google Tag Manager which allows you to track which of your campaigns are converting into paid clients for your clinic or studio – no more shooting in the dark.

Why should you make use of Google Ads for your clinic or studio?

Put yourself in the shoes of a potential client, their regular clinic or studio has been closed during lockdown and now they are shopping around. If you are looking for an appointment or fitness class in your local area then the first place you are going to turn to is Google. As a society we like to take the least steps possible to arrive at our end goal and with that said, consumers are more likely to press one of the first three search results they find. Looking at the image below, we can see that a simple Google search for ‘physiotherapy london’ or ‘pilates london’ returns paid ads at the top with organic listings a few scrolls down the screen.

So, what exactly are Google Ads, what does it do and how can you increase the visibility of your clinic or studio with it? Google Ads is Googles advertising platform that allows advertisers – in this case, your clinic or studio – to bid on certain keywords in order for their ads to appear higher in Googles search results. In short, Google ads allows you to pay money to have your website listed higher on their search results. Here’s where it can get a bit more complicated…

The actual position of your ad is determined by your ad rank (which consists of your maximum keyword bid x landing page quality score – don’t worry, we’ll come back to this). The highest ad rank gets the 1st ad position, next gets 2nd and so on.

Your actual CPC (Cost Per Click) will be determined by the ad rank of the next highest ad below you divided by your Quality Score. The only exception of this rule is when you are the only bidder or the lowest bid in the Google Ads auction; then you pay your maximum bid per click! AdWords bidding heavily penalises advertisers who bid with low quality scores. Conversely, those with high Quality Scores get higher ad ranks and lower CPC. Stick with us here, it’s not as complicated as it sounds!

It can be easy to get caught up in the specifics and abbreviations of CPC, CPA, CTR etc but there is a simple way to setup easy campaigns that should deliver results without being an expert. With that being said, you should put in the time to learn the ins-and-outs of Google Ads for optimum performance.

Keyword planning and research

Before you get started, it’s important to have a clear idea of who you are targeting, what the aim of your campaign is and what your ideal client looks like. There are several approaches you can take here:

• Buyer Ready: Driving online bookings for appointments or classes. This is perfect for those who are looking to book an appointment or class there and then.
  

• Brand Awareness: Driving awareness of your physical therapy, counselling or fitness business in your local area. Suitable for medium-long term growth.
  

• Trusted Source: Providing visitors with reliable information on specific topics and issues from blog articles.

An important thing to remember here is that the quality of your landing page content will dictate how successful your campaigns are. There is no point in creating a campaign aimed at ‘lower back pain’ keywords if you have no relevant pages on your website. You can also get quite creative here by running a campaign to push people to your blog under ‘trusted resource’ then having your Connect online bookings widget embedded on the blog page to convert some of the traffic.

Once you have an idea of what you want to do with your PPC traffic, you’ll need to build out a keyword bank applicable to your goals and ensure that they feature on the copy of your website page. Ideally you want to create an excel spreadsheet with different keywords for each campaign. Here are a few examples of keywords to use for each of these focus groups:

• Buyer Ready: ‘physiotherapy appointment london’, ‘pyschotherapy appointment london’ or ‘pilates classes london’
  

• Brand Awareness: ‘physio clinic near me’, ‘counselling practice london’ or ‘pilates studio near me’
  

• Trusted Source: ‘lower back pain’, ‘who to talk to about mental health’ or ‘what is a pilates class’.
  

Once you have collated your keywords put a relevant URL from your website against them in your spreadsheet. The URL is the landing page on your website that traffic will go to after searching for one of these terms, for buyer ready campaigns it should link to your online bookings in some way and for trusted resource to your blog on specific topics. Brand awareness campaigns sit somewhere in between these and can push to your homepage.

Setting up your first campaign

Now that you have done the planning, you’ll need to head over to Google Ads to get your campaign setup. This is where it can be easy to get lost as a newbie and when your money is at risk, we want to help you mitigate this risk as much as possible.

To help you get started we are delighted to say that we will be running live webinar to talk you through setting up Google Ads on Friday 28th August. This webinar is open to everyone and you can sign-up by clicking here. We would ask that you have completed your keywords spreadsheet ahead of this, so you have a foot in the door!

If you would like to know more about TM3 for clinics, studios and gyms, click here to get in touch with our sales team to arrange a demo today.