Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is one of the most valuable forms of digital marketing. As over 97% of consumers find local businesses by searching online, PPC advertising helps businesses to get their veterinary website at the very top of their target audiences’ searches, increase their brand awareness, and inspire new customers to register their pets at a new practice.

But what, exactly, is PPC, and what unique benefits does it offer as part of a veterinary PPC marketing campaign?

What is Pay Per Click (PPC)?

Pay Per Click marketing, or PPC for short, is one of the oldest forms of digital advertising on the internet, and its popularity has only strengthened as more and more people use search engines like Google and Bing throughout their day.

With this method of advertising, advertisers “bid” to advertise on a keyword – which will be discussed more below – and then pay a set amount per user who clicks on their advertisement.

How Does PPC Work?

When a user sets up a veterinary PPC marketing campaign, they’ll have to understand which keywords they want to “bid” on, or in other words, which keywords they want their ads to appear for.

Similar to bidding in a real-life auction, veterinary hospital marketers have to bid on a PPC keyword based on the highest amount they’re willing to pay per click- also known as Cost Per Click (CPC) – before their ad is run. While no money is handed over at this stage, it gives marketers an idea as to how much they’d be expected to spend per keyword.

However, what makes this different from real-life auctions is that advertisers can’t see what other people have bid for the same keywords, so it’s only through trial and error that they discover what certain search engine results positions are worth.

For platforms to accept your PPC bid, you not only have to be willing to pay the highest CPC, but your advertisement and account has to have a high quality score. This is usually calculated based on the content of your advertisement and previous Click-Through Rates (CTRs) on other ads.

Once a bid has been accepted, the veterinary PPC marketing campaign will begin, and the marketer will begin paying per click based on the price that they bid earlier.

However, this doesn’t mean that PPC costs per month are a mystery. Google Ads, which is the largest PPC platform on the internet, allows marketers to set a monthly budget for each ad that they run. Using this functionality, once that monthly budget has been reached per ad, the ad stops running.

Benefits of PPC for Veterinary Hospitals

Faster than Content Marketing

While content marketing is a great way to prove value to customers by providing free knowledge, and it’s fantastic to get a website featuring higher on search results, it’s a slow process that takes a lot of investment.

One of the most significant benefits of veterinary PPC marketing campaigns is that businesses can bypass that lengthy process by bidding on space on the first page of Google (or other search engines) for certain keywords. So, veterinary hospitals that don’t have the staff to spare to work on content can still get the same, if not better, benefits from PPC marketing.

Remarketing Options

PPC offers a lot in the way of remarketing campaigns. Remarketing advertises to a specific subset of an audience who have clicked on a veterinary hospital’s ads before or have already been to their website at least once. The main benefit of this is that these customers are more likely to convert because they already know of that veterinary hospital and are still searching for keywords related to that business.

PPC is Not Limited to Search

PPC is also available through most of the major social media platforms, making it a great way to target specific demographics instead of just what a user is searching for. When a veterinary PPC marketing campaign is set up in this way, they can specifically target people in local neighborhoods, people who own certain types of pets, or even people who own specific breeds.

Great Return on Investment (ROI)

It’s estimated that for every $1 spent on a veterinary PPC marketing campaign, advertisers are set to generate a revenue of $2. With a massive 200% ROI, there’s little wonder why PPC is so popular amongst digital advertisers. Combining this with PPC strategies such as remarketing, social media campaigns, and targeted keywords, veterinary hospitals can generate a great deal of revenue through using PPC.