197% Increase in Appointments with More Targeted PPC

Challenge

In the digital age, our experience with healthcare is rapidly changing. While traditional marketing has long been a part of finding the best healthcare providers,¹ search is now an essential piece of the healthcare industry’s marketing strategy.

According to data provided by Google, searches for hospitals and health clinics have been steadily increasing. In January 2016 alone, user queries in the health industry have reached an all-time high since 2004. Searching online for your health needs isn’t just a trend, but a logical progression in the approach to healthcare.

Einstein Healthcare Network, a private, non-profit organization, recognized this growing digital trend amongst their target audience. With an objective to provide compassionate, high-quality healthcare to the greater Philadelphia region, Einstein Healthcare responded by partnering with Seer Interactive to bring their marketing efforts into the digital world.

Seer’s main focus was to better understand Einstein Healthcare’s audience and their online path to choosing a healthcare provider. Together, we identified three factors that people considered while traveling from Point A (searching online) to Point B (choosing Einstein Healthcare):

1. Extensive Research. Regarding sensitive medical issues, it’s hard to expect folks to provide personal information (even a first and last name!) as easily as they would for a magazine subscription or an email sign-up. The journey to find the best options in healthcare involves a decent amount of research to ensure that their final choice is well-founded. According to a Google study, 48% of patients take over 2 weeks to research before booking an appointment.¹
   
   
2. Stiff Competition. 
   
   With two dozen other hospitals in the Philadelphia region, the highly competitive nature of hospitals in the area makes the decision-making process more difficult for those in need of care. Even if people have narrowed down their choices, what makes them choose one over the other? According to Google’s findings, 61% of patients visit two or more hospital websites before converting.¹
   
   
3. Trust. Although Einstein Healthcare had already utilized a marketing effort that emphasized their approach of thinking about people, rather than just patients, the digital landscape and medical field can be perceived as untrustworthy, cold or even overly clinical when a personal touch is needed. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, only about 23% of Americans have great confidence in the leaders of the medical professions.²
   

By better understanding our audience’s path in choosing a healthcare provider, Einstein Healthcare and Seer crafted a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy that was key to addressing these challenges.

Approach

PPC ads have the ability to support all parts of our audience’s journey to picking their healthcare provider. For example, we can bid on keywords that match to broader medical queries, at the top of the funnel, down to competitor names, in the research phase before converting. Utilizing PPC’s advertising ability in identifying the audience’s journey, Einstein Healthcare set an ambitious goal of improving their online appointment requests by 140% based on historical performance.

Seer sought to address our target audience’s top concerns:

• Can Einstein Healthcare help my specific needs?
• Why should I choose Einstein Healthcare over anyone else?
• Do I trust Einstein Healthcare?
  

and, in response, developed these three PPC tactics:

• Campaign Restructure
• Ad Copy Revitalization
• Improved Landing Page Experience

Execution

Campaign Restructure

"Can Einstein Healthcare help my specific needs?"

After establishing priority service lines with Einstein Healthcare, Seer evaluated keyword coverage to ensure we were addressing all of our audience’s needs. Our campaign restructure was focused on analyzing keyword intent to help understand our audience at every stage of the search journey. This provided the organizational roadmap for areas of PPC refinement or expansion, overall providing better control.

Ad Copy Revitalization

"Why should I choose Einstein over anyone else?"

After our campaign restructure, Seer took a close look at the ad copy language to see if it was speaking to our audience. General ad copy can get lost in the search engine results page (SERP), so we needed PPC copy that stood out and acted as a lighthouse to guide people to the right place. Our priority was to create ads that clearly addressed the searched healthcare term (such as “OB/GYN”) and employed a strong “Request Your Appointment Today” call-to-action.

Improved Landing Page Experience

“Do I trust Einstein Healthcare?”

The original landing page lead searchers to text-heavy, generalized information. Were we providing users with the content and next steps they were looking for? Did our landing page experience build trust? Einstein and Seer worked together to design streamlined landing pages specific to the searcher’s service line of choice. These new pages were clearer for our target audience; they provided the necessary information in a digestible manner and possessed a clear call to action that easily directed folks to submit a request for an appointment.

Results

SOURCES

1. "The Digital Journey to Wellness: Hospital Selection." Think with Google. N.p., Sept. 2012.
2. Blendon, Robert J., Sc.D, John M. Benson, M.A., and Joachim O. Hero, M.P.H. "Public Trust in Physicians - U.S. Medicine in International Perspective — NEJM." New England Journal of Medicine. New England Journal of Medicine, 23 Oct. 2014.