Paul Gough

Free Marketing Plan Road Map for Physical Therapy Clinic Owners
Looking for an appointment at my physiotherapy clinic? Please visit www.paulgoughphysio.com

This Might Be Why Your Google Ads Aren’t Working for Your PT Clinic

Google Ads Mistakes for PTSThroughout our time of managing paid search campaigns, with Google, You Tube, Bing and a sprinkle of Yahoo being the most prominent, our Private Practice Marketer agency hears time and again about clients struggling to run their own Paid Search Campaigns, with a big budget spent with limited success.

Paid search advertising offers a rapid and effective method of driving more visitors, leads, and customers onto your website and into your business world.

However, this is only true when you avoid the common and costly mistakes that many business owners make, leaving them convinced that Google Ads wouldn’t work for them and deliver a tangible ROI.

Why Can’t I Manage Paid Search Campaigns Myself?

Learning how to advertise on Google requires extensive training if you want your physical therapy clinic to appear at the top of Google search results..

Professionals in the area are certified with Google. Effectively learning how to run paid search ads properly is not something most business owners are going to have the time, knowledge or inclination to do.

By all means you can create a paid search account and set up a campaign that will be up and running very quickly. You may even be able to get top rankings for most, or all, of your targeted keywords locally or in your target areas, though usually at a wayward cost.

However, effective paid search ads campaign management comes down to one thing – ROI (Return on Investment). It is highly improbable, as a novice starting out in PPC (Pay Per Click), to have the understanding if your campaigns have been optimised correctly for your requirements.

This leads to wasting a lot of time and money and is very unlikely to produce the best results for your business.

Paid search management is a full-time job in itself.

Trying to keep your own paid search ads running without being properly trained or certified is a bit like owning a Ferrari:

You pay a price to have it designed, engineered, crafted and intricately put together by a team of highly-skilled professionals, so the finished product is a finely tuned machine that has top performance.

You wouldn’t buy the materials, design the components, build it yourself and provide the upkeep, mechanics, tuning and performance of the vehicle, because you don’t have the expertise for that, you leave it to the experts in that field.

You would be spending a lot of time, money and frustration on a car that certainly won’t look anything like you expected, won’t even start and don’t know how to maintain or fix it either! Your expertise lies in another field, your business, and is needed there.

As part of our Agency processes we offer a free Google Audit on business’ paid search campaigns.

The Most Common Mistakes We’re Finding During Our Google Audits

1: It’s Not ‘Set And Forget’

One thing that business owners get wrong is they think that paid search is ‘set and forget’. As Google and its competitors have done such a good job promoting themselves and the digital marketing tools available, it’s easy to think that Google is this all-aware, all-knowing entity that will magically sort your paid search ads and campaigns for you. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as pressing a few buttons and sending your ads on their way.

Google loves people who do this, because over time it makes them the most profit.

Business owners have not got time in their busy schedule to be tweaking AdWords settings EVERY DAY. Most owners should have other things to worry about – their business!

2: Targeting Wrong Customer Demographics And Locations (This is the most common mistake we see.)

For local practice owners, nothing will eat into your PPC budget more than appearing in locations or targeting customers that your company does not service (eg: certain age ranges or sexes). Defining your demographic area of service is paramount when creating paid search ads to avoid this oversight.

If you are a service business, chances are you are only targeting a certain radius from your premises and a certain demographic target or Perfect Patient. Nothing will waste your advertising dollar faster than having your ads generating clicks from outside of this.

An example of a local business appearing outside of their service area would be a search conducted for a “Physiotherapy for Back Pain” with Google’s search location not set as a local radius, or it’s set up with the local radius but other locations haven’t been excluded.

This is just as important as setting target radius.  They could potentially be generating clicks from all over the USA when they only service a local area.

3: Mismanagement of the keyword categories

There are three basic categories of keywords on Google Ads that every advertiser should be acquainted with: Broad Match, Phrase Match and Exact Match

Google Keywords Strategies

A common mistake advertisers make is not utilising these keyword types correctly. It would help if you experimented, enabling you to ascertain which type or combination of models will work best in your business.

With Broad Match, your ads display with a search of your keywords. Your ads will display regardless of the order of the keywords. For example, if your company is targeting ‘physiotherapy’, your ads will show up for a broad range of keyword searches including ‘physiotherapy near me’, ‘best physiotherapy clinic’, ‘physiotherapy cost’, ‘how does physiotherapy work’, etc.

You can expect a lot more traffic and clicks using broad match keywords; however, this can have unexpected results as well. For example, it may appear your campaign is set for all broad match search terms that contain ‘physiotherapist’ and or ‘back pain’. However, you will be seeing a lot of your budget being wasted by appearing in searches such as ‘Physiotherapist jobs’, ‘Physiotherapy wages’ or ‘back pain surgery’, etc.

When advertisers opt for Phrase Match keywords, ads will only appear when the search term includes your desired keyword search phrase. So if your business is targeting ‘Best Physiotherapist in Florida’, your ads will be displayed only when people search for that phrase. Your ads can also appear for other searches, such as ‘Where is the best Physiotherapist in Florida’ or ‘Best Physiotherapist in Florida near me’, etc.

Exact Match keywords are the most precise and tend to convert highest of the three categories.

It excludes all impressions other than the exact match. Using the keyword example above, unless people type in ‘Best Physiotherapist In Florida’ and nothing else, your ad will not show up.

Using exact match you will be sacrificing a lot of traffic. They won’t reach as many people as Broad Match and Phrase Match, but the advantage is that over time the conversion rate can be higher, and the cost can become more efficient (however, this assumes you know what you’re doing!)

An effective Google Ads campaign needs to be strategic. It needs to track and measure conversions, revenues and profits and be monitored on a daily basis.

4: Appearing for searches that aren’t relevant

Not all searches with your keywords in them may always be ideal. Unless you are very careful, your keywords can produce search engine results that are irrelevant to your products or services.

For example, if your business promotes Aquatic Therapy you don’t want to be appearing for searches like Aquatic Fish or Aquatic Plants.

Another example: Your company promotes and helps back/neck or leg pain relief. However, you are appearing for the very generic term of pain relief, which would most commonly be in reference to painkillers/medication. Perhaps, they have set up the campaign to appear for all searches containing the word ‘pain relief’. If that is true, you will be wasting a ton of money appearing for completely irrelevant searches like ‘pain relief medication’ or ‘best pain relief’.

5: Being found for negative keywords

Another frequent mistake clinic owners make is not considering negative keywords. This is especially important if you are undertaking broad match keyword campaigns. For instance, if your business promotes being a Physical Therapist; do you want your PT ad appearing for a search such as ‘Mental Health Therapist’ or ‘Psychotherapist’?

Not only is this search unlikely to produce high conversions, but it also has the potential to do considerable damage to your brand’s reputation.

Pay-Per-Click advertising done right is one of the most effective forms of marketing available. However, many small businesses attempt to manage their campaigns without the required skill sets and finish up very frustrated, spending a huge amount of money and their time (which equals money) and giving up believing that it doesn’t work for them.

PPM can help you maximise the profit potential for Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

We have thousands of hours of experience managing campaigns for many clients’ physical therapy practices. Why not leverage our experience and stop wasting your time and money in your Google ads account?


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