Healthcare PPC Services. What’s Included and What to Ask For

Most practices see the Google Ads bill and assume someone is working on their account. The reality varies significantly. Some agencies run full-service engagements with weekly optimization, landing page management, and HIPAA-compliant tracking. Others set up a campaign once and let it run. This post breaks down what a complete healthcare PPC services engagement actually includes, so you know what to expect and what to ask for.

Kickoff and Audit Phase

Every solid healthcare PPC engagement starts with an audit of the current situation before touching budget. If you have an existing Google Ads account, the first step is reviewing it for structural problems: keywords that are too broad, no negative keyword list, low Quality Scores, and ads landing on your homepage instead of dedicated service pages.

The audit phase also includes competitive analysis. What are your direct competitors bidding on? What ad copy are they using? What does their landing page look like? This informs both strategy and messaging. It also establishes baseline metrics: your current cost per click, click-through rate, conversion rate, and cost per lead. Without a baseline, you cannot measure improvement.

Strategy and Campaign Architecture

Before any ads go live, the agency should design the full campaign architecture. This means deciding how many campaigns to run, how to organize ad groups within each campaign, which keywords to target, and how to structure negative keyword lists.

For healthcare, the standard architecture organizes campaigns by service line. A multi-specialty practice might have separate campaigns for primary care, orthopedics, and elective procedures. A dental practice might separate general dentistry, orthodontics, cosmetic procedures, and implants. Each campaign gets its own budget, allowing you to spend more on high-margin services and less on lower-margin ones.

Keyword research for healthcare requires understanding the difference between how patients search (plain language, symptom-based, location-based) and how providers describe services (clinical terminology). A good agency builds keyword lists that match actual patient search behavior, organized by intent level: appointment-ready keywords at the top, research-phase keywords filtered out or managed separately.

Ad Creation

Google uses Responsive Search Ads (RSA), which accept up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines. Google mixes and tests combinations automatically. The agency’s job is to write headlines and descriptions that cover the range of patient intents, highlight your key differentiators, and include strong calls to action.

For healthcare, strong ad copy typically includes the specific service, the location or “near me” cue, a trust signal (board-certified, accepting new patients, most insurance accepted), and a clear action (call to book, schedule online). Generic ad copy like “Best Doctor in the Area” performs poorly. Specific copy like “Board-Certified Orthopedic Surgeon. Accepting New Patients. Book Appointment Today.” works much better.

Ad extensions add information below the main ad text without extra cost per click. For healthcare, these include call extensions with a tracked phone number, location extensions linked to Google Business Profile, sitelink extensions to specific service pages, and callout extensions highlighting insurance acceptance, same-week appointments, or other trust signals.

Landing Page Strategy

This is where most healthcare PPC fails. Practices run ads to their homepage, which has navigation to dozens of pages, generic messaging, and no specific call to action. Patients who click a specific ad for “knee replacement surgeon” land on a homepage about the whole practice and leave.

Healthcare PPC ads should go to dedicated landing pages built for each service. A proper landing page includes a headline that matches the ad text, specific information about the service, patient testimonials, trust signals like provider credentials and board certifications, insurance accepted, a single clear call to action to book or call, and HIPAA-aware tracking with forms that do not pass health information in URLs and call tracking with a BAA.

Ask any agency you consider whether landing page creation and management is included in their scope. Some charge separately for landing pages. Get clarity before signing.

Conversion Tracking Setup

Without proper conversion tracking, you are spending money with no way to measure what is working. Healthcare conversion tracking requires two components: form submission tracking and phone call tracking.

Form submission tracking should fire a conversion event when the form confirmation page loads (the thank-you page), not when the form page is viewed. Tracking page views instead of completions inflates conversion numbers significantly.

Phone call tracking uses dynamic number insertion: the phone number on your website changes for visitors who came from Google Ads. When they call that number, it records as a conversion and the call is attributed to the specific keyword and ad that drove it. For healthcare, use a call tracking provider that signs a Business Associate Agreement, since call recordings may capture protected health information.

HIPAA-aware tracking means configuring your tag manager and analytics to avoid passing sensitive URL parameters, not using standard Meta Pixel for remarketing based on health conditions, and reviewing your tracking setup with your compliance team or legal counsel.

Ongoing Management

Campaign setup is a one-time project. Ongoing management is the work that actually drives performance improvement over time. A well-run healthcare PPC account receives weekly search term analysis, budget pacing checks, and anomaly detection. Each month it gets ad copy testing, landing page optimization, keyword expansion, budget reallocation between campaigns, and competitive monitoring.

Monthly Reporting

Every month you should receive a report covering: total spend, total impressions, total clicks, total conversions (forms plus calls), cost per lead, trends versus prior months, and commentary on what changed and why. The best reports also include specific recommendations for the next month.

If your agency sends you a dashboard with numbers but no explanation, push for more. Numbers without context do not help you make decisions about your marketing investment.

What Redefine Web Includes as Standard

At Redefine Web, our healthcare PPC scope includes audit, strategy, campaign build, landing page creation, HIPAA-compliant conversion tracking, call tracking setup, weekly management, and monthly reporting. Pain Cure Clinic saw 205% more appointments after we rebuilt their full patient acquisition strategy. Every client owns their Google Ads account and all assets we create on their behalf.

See the full details of how we run healthcare PPC management, or learn what to look for in a healthcare PPC agency. If you are starting from scratch, our guide to PPC for healthcare covers the foundations.