Case Study: Two Veterinary Hospitals Crushing Google Ads | PetDesk
As the veterinary industry increasingly invests in digital growth, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for veterinary hospitals is becoming a more valuable tool than it’s ever been. While pet parents are searching for veterinary help in their area, the local veterinary hospital must now compete with telemedicine and big-box retailers like Walmart and Chewy offering veterinary services from afar. Today, we’ll look at two veterinary businesses with entirely different business models that are both thriving with PetDesk Marketing—which clinics rely on for custom-made websites and in-depth veterinary digital marketing tools (like PPC advertising) that separates them from the competition.
PetDesk’s advertising team focuses on driving strong conversions by creating engaging ads and content that help you obtain a higher click-through rate (the number of people who clicked your ad or called you, divided by the number of people who saw your ad). We continually optimize ads to increase click-through rate because our goal is to get clicks, period. The average click-through rate on AdWords paid search ads is about 2%, and anything over 2% can be considered an above-average CTR.
Case 1: An emergency veterinary hospital spending thousands per month on PPC ads to own their market
The business: This hospital is the only emergency and specialty clinic of their kind within a 30 to 45 minute drive, but that still doesn’t guarantee business.
The details: This business is open overnight during the week and 24 hours on weekends. Our advertising team had to break the ads down into two sets—transactional keywords during business hours, and branded ads when they weren’t open.
The results: From January 1, 2021 to July 18, 2021, the business received 12,400 clicks, 126,000 impressions, 5,993 direct phone calls, and 6,576 conversions with a 9.84% click-through rate.
This hospital offers all types of animal care and overnight emergency care, so it’s essential to have different ad sets to separate the terms people are searching for at all hours of the day. The two ad sets are broken down into emergency keywords and vet near me keywords that run after hours. When people search for emergency help, with keywords like emergency vet or vet open now, we want to come up when the hospital is open. These are transactional keywords, and these users are looking for a service right now, at the moment. These ads are meant to lead to an immediate conversion, and the ads drive traffic with titles like, “Having a pet emergency? We’re open now for your pet!”
Since we can’t assume that someone searching in the middle of the night for an open veterinarian is going to specifically type pet emergency veterinarian, we strategically create ads for common keywords like veterinarian near me, animal hospital, or animal clinic that run in the middle of the night.
As you’ll see by the campaign screenshots, these ads have been phenomenal in keeping the cost per click low, the click-through rates high, and an increased number of conversions that lead to more growth for their business.
Case 2: A new hospital expanded its veterinary service offerings and came to PetDesk for PPC advertising
The business: This hospital is located on the east coast and has seen steady growth for years, and they are now expanding their hospital and adding more offerings and emergency services.
The details: This business has been running Google ads for a while but came to PetDesk for daily management, optimization, and more precise targeting (from concept to ads to landing pages) on their custom veterinary website.
The results: During their first month with PetDesk advertising, the clinic received 490 clicks, 148 phone calls, just $1.79 cost per click, 7.99% click-through rate, and 102 conversions.
This hospital has an incredible support staff that genuinely cares about growing the business. The front-house team understands customer service, marketing, and helping convert clicks and calls into new clients. When coming to PetDesk, they spoke about the need for personalization with their ads and doing an excellent job of making sure the ads and landing pages properly showcased how they feel about their clients. The business is located in a tight-knit community, and the website, ads, and creatives need to showcase that.
We’ve broken down their ad sets into four categories: emergency searches, puppy searches, kitten searches, and vet near me searches for people searching for a new veterinarian in the area. They are on the line between two states, so we’re targeting 20 miles around the clinic for specific veterinary keywords, and 30 miles for emergency searches. We see over 7% click-through rates in both cases, much higher than the Google average of 2%.
Three tips for outstanding veterinary PPC campaigns
Make sure your entire team is aware that you are running paid ads for the business. This is important because every phone call and website message should be treated as an opportunity to gain a new client and patient for your clinic. Long hold times or rushed support people won’t help you convert these paid leads into new clients.
The ads should be sending people to a page that is built for conversions. If you don’t have a custom veterinary website that works with every device, then someone who clicks your ad likely won’t convert. These pages should have your phone number, email, a way to make an appointment, your hours, and location, all easily located to make sure the user can reach out to you.
Google allows you to add negative keywords to your ads, and it’s imperative to stay on top of it. There is a good chance that you’re coming up for things like low cost veterinary care or free spay and neuter operations daily. Managing negative keywords means saving your budget from being spent on useless keywords.