Google Ads for Veterinarians will help your business drive, new clients while increasing your revenue by more than 80%. A 2018 study from Business insider showed that Americans are spending more on pets than themselves.
It’s important that you get your business in front of the right audience.
Why You Should Run Google Ads For Veterinarians
When pet owners have an emergency or need to take their pet to a Vet, what do they do first? They go on Google typing in “Veterinary near me.” Then select only the top 3 results on the search page.
What Google Ads will do is help your page get to the top and be in front of these searchers, helping your business grow by increasing the number of clients seeing your page.
The benefit of using Google ads over other ad services like Facebook is the buyer intent. This is being able to have your ad target certain keywords where potential clients are in the buying process of a product or service, this is important as your conversion rate will be higher compared to using other services.
How Google Ads works is you will be only charged by pay-per-click, meaning that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Let’s say your ads is not getting clicks, then won’t get charged.
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Google Ads Campaign
When it comes to setting up your Ads, Google has a straightforward way of doing it.
Under your Google Ads account, you will have the campaign section. This is where you will select the goal of your campaigns whether you want searchers to find you in the search results or other options like display ads.
Next, you have an Ad group which is where you will have a list of keywords that follow a theme. For example, your ad group theme for a veterinary can be dog services but the keywords are exactly what kind of services people need for dogs.
The keywords you select will want to be what searchers are looking for that matches your services or even location, these can be specific words or phrases. If you are located in Los Angeles, California you can do “Veterinary Los Angeles.”
Quality score
Quality Score is a ranking that is given to your Ad from a 1-10 scale on how your ad matches with what searchers are looking for.
Aiming for a high-quality score will help you in some tremendously important ways such as the cost-per-click will be cheaper and your ad ranks higher on the search results page compared to competitors.
How your quality score is calculated:
The first factor will be the Ad relevance, this is looking for how well your ad is correlated to what searchers are looking for.
The second factor is the click-through rate, which can be calculated by taking the (Total clicks on an Ad) divided by the (total impressions) = Click Through Rate (CTR)
The third factor is your landing page quality and relevance. After a searcher clicks on your ad they will be guided to your landing page which will let Google know if they were able to find what they are looking for.
Quality score is something that can be checked in your Google Ads account. The score will be given next to a keyword, this way if you find that a keyword is underperforming you can take it out.
Setting Up Your Google Ads Account
Before we dive deeper into getting your account started. Make sure that you already have a Google Ads account created, If you already have a business Gmail that works also.
When starting your Ad, the first thing you will be asked is what is your main advertising goal. We will want to skip this and select switch to expert mode at the bottom of the page.
Switching to expert mode gives you more options and control over how your ads should be running.
The following page will ask about the goal of your campaign, here you will want to select “create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.”
Next, you will be given the option to select your campaign type. For the sake of this guide and recommendation also you will want to choose search. This will allow you to gain the most traffic and conversion rate.
Later on, if you decide to expand to other options for Google Ads, then you will have the ability to.
Right below the page, you will be asked about results, which you may skip also.
The next page will be about your campaign settings. First is your campaign name, something like “dog services” would work great here.
Under the campaign name, it will give you two options for networks. Deselecting Google Display Network is advised as running display ads typically costs more with little conversion rate.
Targeting and Audience
Under the Targeting and Audience section, you will have three settings you can adjust, the location, languages, and audiences.
As a local veterinary, you want to select “Enter another location” and enter the location of your vet. For advanced searches, you will be able to change the radius of how far your ads will target.
You don’t want to set your radius too far, sometimes people will find it far to commute to your vet, so this will be a waste of a click.
If you notice the majority of your clients speaking a different language, you can include their language so your ad targets them. Also if you have a staff that speaks another language this can be helpful to expand to other demographics.
Under audience this where you can set what kind of audience you want to see your campaign. Examples could be people who have pets because at some point they will need to go to a vet.
Budget and Bidding
When it comes to how much you want to spend on your Ads, this will be the section to set the amount.
The daily budget will be the amount spent each day. Here is a simple breakdown of how to figure out your daily budget.
(Monthly Budget) / (30 days) = Daily Budget
A recommended daily budget for vets to start off with is from $40-$60, this budget can vary between cities. Setting a low budget will be tough for Google Ads to collect data and let you know if the keywords you selected are effective.
Under bidding, you want to select a bid strategy directly and choose manual CPC (Cost-Per-Click). The reason for choosing manual CPC is that Google’s automated bidding strategies will bid higher when it’s not necessary, while manual CPC will give more control.
Here is a breakdown of Google’s automated bidding strategies:
Target Impression Share: Has the goal of getting the most amount of impressions as possible for your ad. This strategy can lead to a lower conversion rate as it’s more focusing on impressions rather than what these searchers are looking for.
Target ROAS: Selecting this strategy focuses on your conversion value from the target return on ad spend you set.
Target Cost-Per-Action (CPA): Tries to increase your conversion rate from the cost-per-action you set it at.
Maximize Clicks: Focuses on the number of clicks your ads receive from the daily budget you have it at.
Maximize Conversion Value: From the daily budget you have it at, this strategy tries to increase your conversion rate.
As we mentioned before, it’s better just go with manual CPC strategy as Google will spend when not it’s necessary since that translates into more revenue for Google. Also being able to save on money on Google Ads will mean a higher return on investment for your business.
Ad Extension
Utilizing Ad extensions is something that you don’t want to skip on and want to include in your ad campaigns.
Ad extensions are extra information or links that you can include in your ad when searchers see them on the result page. It dosen’t cost extra to use them, so it’s logical to just use them already.
They also will make your ad stand out compared to your competitors since it takes up more real estate (space) onto the search results page.
This is a list of the different Ad extensions you can use:
Callout Extension: List out the services you have at your veterinary.
Sitelink Extension: Under your landing page link, the site link extension will include other links that you added. This extension is great to improve your click-through rate as you can add in specific pages about your services such as vaccinations or about wellness.
Location Extension: The location of your veterinary, let searchers know exactly where you are located.
Call Extension: Includes the business phone number onto the ad, great for customers to call right as they see your ad if they have any questions.
Promotion Extension: In your ad you will have a “DEAL” section, highlighting any promotions going on. For example, you can have “one-time free checkups for new customers” here.
Remember to use as many extensions as possible as there are many benefits to using them but no harm.
Ad Group
After setting up your ad extensions, you will be directed to creating your ad groups. Remember ad groups are the themes of your keywords.
An example of an ad group would be pet vaccinations and for keywords, you can do “rabies clinic near me” or “distemper vaccine near me”
Ad groups don’t have to be about services but location works great too. Try to keep your ad groups relevant to your business as much as possible to help get a high-quality score.
Keyword Tools And Type of Keywords
How new clients will find your ad is by the keywords you select, so whatever you enter in the ad group and if searchers use those keywords your ad will show for it.
This is why it’s important to take the time and figure out what keywords best fit your business so you can achieve the best return on investment.
One tool that we recommend using for your keyword research is Google Keyword Planner, which will come already with your Google Ads account.
Here is an example of what Google Keyword Planner looks like when keyword researching.
For your local veterinary, you will want to change the location to your area right next to the search bar.
This will provide more of an accurate bidding cost for your keywords and competition range in your area. Keyword Planner will give you similar keyword ideas that are relevant to the one you were looking for.
Note, you aren’t just limited to keyword planner. There are other keyword research tools out there that you can use such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz. These ones are a little more advanced but can come at a cost.
Keyword Types
When entering keywords into your ad groups, you have the ability to pick different keywords matches. These matches can help your ad target a specific or more of a general audience.
Here’s a list of the keywords types.
Exact Match
The exact match type tends to have a higher cost-per-click but leads to a higher conversion rate. How exact match work is you will have [ ] around the keyword and your ad will only show up if searchers use them in the query.
Plurals or misspellings will still have the ad show up.
An example of the exact match: [Veterinary Los Angeles] then your ad will only show up for searchers typing Veterinary Los Angeles
Phrase Match
A phrase match is similar to an exact match but has a little flexibility to it. Around the keywords, you will put quotation marks around them “ “. Your ad will show up for searchers using the match but it can include extra words before or after your phrase.
Example of phrase match: “best Veterinary,” so your ad will show for “best veterinary near me” or “Best veterinary Los Angeles”
Broad Match
Broad match is almost the opposite of phrase and match type. This match will have your ad show to searchers that could be using irrelevant terms in their search query, resulting in your ad budget being wasted. Your ad will appear for terms that are variations of your keyword.
Example of the broad match: Keyword is Veterinary, your ad could show for veterinary programs or how to become a veterinary
Need Help With Keywords?
Creating Your First Ad for Veterinary
Once you are done with creating your ad group and doing keyword research, you will now be able to create your first ad!
Here is what the next page should look like.
Make sure that your final URL is your landing page instead of just your normal page.
Later on in the article, we will talk about how to create the best landing page.
Try to use as many headlines and characters as possible since the more you use the more space it will take up on the search results page.
Including any testimonials or awards will help make your ad more eye appealing both in the headlines and description, you are limited with characters so use them wisely.
How To Optimize Your Google Ad and Negative Keywords
After creating your ad you will want to check up on them and see if you need to make any adjustments or changes to ensure the best results and ROI.
The best way to do this is with the search term report in your Google Ads account. This tool will give you a report on what is giving you the best conversion rate, how many clicks you are getting with keywords, and the cost per click for them.
With this report, you will be able to make any changes like adding keywords to you’re negative keyword list.
Negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want your ads to show up for.
To add them, just head over to your campaign, and under Keywords, Negative Keywords will pop up.
With the plus sign, you will be able to add them in. This helps avoid any clicks that don’t drive any qualified clients.
The Landing Page
A landing page as we mentioned earlier is the final URL. Once a potential customer clicks on your ad they will be directed to the landing page.
It’s important that you include certain information on your landing page, to let them know what exactly you offer. This will help turn these potential customers into actual customers.
This is information that you should have on your landing page:
- The location of your business
- The name of your business
- A good phone number or email address
- Call to action button (CTA) this could be a book an appointment now button
- Images of the doctors
- Reviews or any testimonials from current clients.
Here is a great example of a landing page.
On their landing page, they include calls to action on the top and bottom of their page. Also, images of the doctors can help create a friendly image around your business.
Need help creating a landing page?