Google Ads for Surgeons: Costs, Campaigns and Real Results
Updated: 3 days ago
Google Ads for Surgeons
Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) are pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google that businesses use to advertise their products and services to consumers online, attract potential customers and gain new customers.
Surgeons use Google Ads to reach patients who are searching for a procedure right now, book consultations and fill the surgical calendar.
Why Surgical Practices Use Google Ads
There are a lot of important benefits surgical practices can get from Google Ads for surgeons. These benefits include:
Fill Seminars and Consultation Events
Google Ads for surgeons can fill patient seminars, open houses and free consultation events, and share useful recovery tips.
Using Google Ads, surgeons can help build credibility and establish themselves as thought leaders in their field. It’s an effective tool that surgeons can use to grow their practice and reach a wider audience.
Target Patients Searching for a Procedure
One of the benefits of Google Ads for surgeons is that it allows a practice to specifically target their ads to a specific population.
You can easily target your ads based on numerous criteria ranging from geographical location, search queries, and browsing behavior.
This means that for a surgical practice, you can present your brand directly to patients who are actively searching for the procedures you offer.
One Surgery Pays for Months of Clicks
Google Ads for surgeons are cost-effective because one procedure is worth so much. You get to set a budget your brand can afford and only pay when your target audience clicks on your ad.
This way you can control the practice advertising budget and ensure that the money is spent in the best way possible.
Google Ads for surgeons: the cost math | ||
Metric | Number | Source |
Cost per patient contact, plastic surgery | $10–$40 | |
Minimum payback on ad contact cost | 108x, every procedure | |
A click on "mommy makeover nyc" | About $60 | |
Mommy makeover case value, NYC | $25,000–$40,000 | |
Median click cost, Dallas plastic surgery searches | $2.17 | |
Appear Above Organic Results on Day One
Google ads provide immediate visibility other than the conventional marketing methods. You can create an effective marketing strategy and pay for top placement in Google’s search results, making your website more visible to patients who require your service.
The strength of using Google ads for surgeons lies in its ability to offer immediate visibility for your practice and target your ideal audience based on specific criteria.
See Which Procedures Bring Consultations
Google Ads for surgeons can provide you with real-time insights to make well-informed marketing decisions and achieve effective results.
The kind of data you get from the platform allows you to tweak your current marketing strategy to a much better strategy.
Surgeon Google Ads campaigns offer a strong return on investment (ROI) when you track booked consultations, not clicks.
How to Set Up Google Ads for a Surgical Practice
Google Ads are now commonly used by surgical practices. However, there’s a need to use the channel correctly because Google has strict rules for healthcare ads.
It’s important to understand and follow Google’s rules when you want to start Google Ads for surgeons. Outlined below is the best way to set up surgeon Google Ads.
Know Google's Health and Surgery Ad Policies
The first thing to start with after making a decision to start using Google Ads for surgeons is to understand the regulations guiding surgery advertising.
Google and local governing bodies all have their own specific regulations that you need to factor in when it comes to advertising online.
The specific Google policies that apply to surgeons:
Prohibited Content
There are things you can’t advertise at all on Google. Google has a huge list of unapproved substances that can’t be advertised using Google ads.
Editorial and Technical
The elements of your ads must meet certain requirements. All health-related advertising restrictions on Google ads apply to the ad copy and images used as well as the landing pages associated with those ads.
Legal Requirements
You’re also expected to comply with local laws and regulations, including acquiring necessary authorizations, licenses, and approvals for advertising your healthcare practice on Google ads.
Set One Goal: Booked Consultations
After understanding all the necessary regulations of surgeon Google Ads, you need to plan out your objectives clearly. You should know what you’re running the campaign for.
For most surgeons it should be booked consultations for one procedure at a time, not general awareness.
Having a clear objective before running your campaign helps with direction and makes the process of achieving good results actionable.
Set Up Your Google Ads Account
To launch your campaign, you actually need to set up a Google ad account. All you need to do is go to the Google Ad website and sign up with your practice’s Google account. If your surgical practice doesn’t have a Google account, you will need to create one.
It won’t take more than a couple of minutes to create the account. Once you have entered the necessary details, you will land on the page to create your first campaign. On this page, you can choose your budget, and target audience, set your bids, and write your ad copy.
Research the Procedure Keywords Patients Search
Keywords are the foundation of an effective campaign on Google ads. To conduct keyword research, you need a good knowledge of your industry and an understanding of how keyword research tools work.
Use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to identify what potential patients are searching for. Ensure you’re specific and instead of broad terms like “surgeon”, use “tummy tuck surgeon in [City Name]”.
Procedure keywords: what surgeons should bid on | |||
Search type | Example | Patient intent | Bid |
Ready to book | tummy tuck surgeon near me | Highest | Bid highest |
Cost | tummy tuck cost | High | Bid |
Your name | Dr. [name] reviews | Highest | Always bid |
Comparing | tummy tuck vs lipo | Medium | Bid low |
Research | what is a tummy tuck | Low | Leave to SEO |
Negative keywords every surgeon should add | |
Add as a negative | Why |
free, cheap, discount | Bargain hunters rarely book surgery |
jobs, salary, careers | People looking for work, not care |
school, residency, training | Students and doctors in training |
gone wrong, lawsuit | Not patients planning a procedure |
DIY, at home | Not looking for a surgeon |
Build Campaigns Around Procedures
Now that you’ve created your account and conducted keyword research, you can then set up your campaign.
On Google ads, you will see that you can begin setting up your campaign with a variety of goal-based options such as sales, leads, website traffic, product and brand consideration, brand awareness and reach, and app promotion; or you can choose to create a campaign without a goal’s guidance. You will also need to set your campaign’s daily budget.
Set the maximum bid you would be willing to pay per click, and insert the text of your first ad, and the payment information. Google helps you to estimate the coverage you can achieve with the initial budget.
Surgeon Google Ads campaign setup | |
Setting | What to choose |
Campaign type | Search, one campaign per procedure group |
Locations | Radius around each office, plus cities patients travel from |
Ad assets | Call, location, and sitelinks to cost and before-and-after pages |
Landing page | One per procedure, kept out of Google's index |
Conversion goal | Booked consultations and calls over 60 seconds |
Audiences | Google's in-market audiences only |
How Google Ads Pricing Works for Surgeons
Google Ads work for surgeons the same way they work for other industries. You create a campaign, place a bid, and give it time for results to roll in. Google Ads works on different pricing models. There is the cost-per-click (CPC) in which you only need to pay a certain price every time a user clicks on your ad.
The price per click changes often depending on factors such as how many other practices are currently targeting that keyword, search volume, expected reach, time of day or year, and more.
The other bidding options available in addition to the cost-per-click include Cost-per-mille (CPM) in which you pay per 1,000 ad impressions and Cost-per-engagement (CPE) in which you pay when your target audience performs a specific action on your ad.
The Four Pillars of a Surgeon Google Ads Campaign
Know Your Procedure Patient
One of the pillars of surgeon Google Ads is identifying and understanding your target audience.
Identifying and locating the right audience can be difficult because the data about them is often scattered among various sources but with an active search online, you will find your audience and learn what to use to attract their attention to your surgical practice.
A Procedure-by-Procedure Strategy
Another pillar of Google Ads for surgeons is creating an effective marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy provides you with a clear roadmap for marketing and ensures you spend your advertising budget wisely in order to achieve good ROI.
A Consistent Surgeon Brand
Building a consistent identity and voice helps to increase the trust of potential patients in your surgical practice. For surgeons to achieve their desired marketing goal, it’s important to gain trust and build credibility with consistent branding.
Building a brand that’s an embodiment of your practice helps unify the vision and mission of your practice and attracts more patients to your practice.
Call and Consultation Tracking
Analyzing the data obtained from previous campaigns is an integral part of surgeon Google Ads campaigns. It offers you accurate information that helps you make better and well-informed decisions in the near future.
Track calls and booked consultations, but keep patient health details out of Google Ads. HHS has guidance on tracking technologies for healthcare websites.
Campaign Fundamentals for Surgical Practices
The fundamentals of a Google Ads campaign for surgeons include:
Understand the available ad formats and the one you would love for your surgical campaign. You could opt for text, image or video ads.
Know the available Google ad placements. There are many websites within the Google search network. There are many places where your ads can be placed, ranging from Google search sites, to display networks and many others.
Creating your first ad is important to achieving a good result. Before creating the ad campaign, determine a campaign goal. It could be to drive sales, leads, website traffic, and others.
Surgeon Google Ads Results From Our Clients
Manhattan Plastic Surgery Practice: $2.5M+ From Google Ads
A Manhattan plastic surgery practice ran Google Ads and SEO on the same searches. Ads brought in $2.5M+, 71% of $3.5M+ in attributed revenue. A $60 click made sense because a mommy makeover there is a $25,000 to $40,000 case.
Google Ads results: Manhattan plastic surgery practice | |
Metric | Number |
Revenue from Google Ads | $2.5M+ |
Share of total attributed revenue | 71% |
Enquiries a month, flagship procedure | 30+ |
Revenue per enquiry | $9,722 |
Surgical cases booked from search | 100+ |
Why We Hid the Ad Landing Pages From Google
We kept the ad landing pages out of Google's index so they never competed with the organic procedure page. The ad converts the patient who is ready now. The organic page converts the patient who skips ads.
Google Ads vs SEO for surgeons | ||
Google Ads | SEO | |
Speed | Calls from day one | 60–120 days locally, 6–12 months for procedures |
Cost | Pay per click (about $60 in Manhattan) | Content and pages, no per-click fee |
When it stops | The day the budget stops | Keeps producing |
Best for | Patients ready to book now | Patients who skip ads |
Manhattan practice revenue | $2.5M+ | $1M+ |
When Google Ads Is the Wrong Move
Ads are not always the answer. For a Waco cardiologist, Google Ads cost $200+ a call, against about $6.50 a call from local SEO. Surgery's high case values are what make the click worth it.
5 Google Ads Challenges for Surgeons, and How to Handle Them
Required Wording in Health Ads
Surgical advertisers are required to include certain phrases in their advertisements. The solution is to go through the list of phrases on Google ads to know the exact phrases to include in your campaigns for good outcomes.
Claims You Can't Make in Ad Copy
Surgical practices are prohibited from using certain phrases when advertising on Google ads. These phrasing concerns apply to both the ad copy and the landing page copy.
Google can reject or take down advertisements it deems to be against its policies. Know these phrases and avoid them in your campaign.
Products You Can't Advertise
Another challenge for surgical practices is that certain products and services cannot be advertised. Google does not allow advertisements for CBD oil and a lot of other products.
It’s important to avoid violating these rules and stick to only services and products that you can promote using Google ads.
High Click Costs in Competitive Markets
The competition for surgery ads on Google became stiffer and much more competitive a decade ago. As the platform has become highly competitive, the sooner your brand dips its toes into advertising on Google, the better.
Limits on Remarketing for Surgery Ads
Google's personalized advertising policy treats invasive procedures, including cosmetic surgery, as sensitive health content. You can't build remarketing lists or upload patient lists to target surgery ads. Use Google's own in-market audiences instead.
Google Ads Management for Surgical Practices
With Google Ads for surgeons, it’s easy to waste your resources if you don’t know the intricacies and strategies to achieve success.
To be able to manage Google Ads, you need to have excellent knowledge of how it works. Hiring an agency specialising in Google ads management like Intellius Medical is best.
The agency manages your advertising campaigns and ensures you get good ROI of your advertising budget.
How to Write Google Ads That Book Surgical Consultations
Your ad should fulfil the needs of your target audience
Include creative ad messages
Include researched keywords.
Avoid generic language in your ads
Use specific call-to-actions (CTAs).
Use insight tools to monitor the strength of your ads and watch how users react to your ads.
Tips for Running Google Ads for a Surgical Practice
Create an effective Google ads strategy.
Set up conversion tracking on your website.
Implement smart bidding strategies, like Maximize conversions.
Spread your keywords into multiple ad groups.
Write ads that directly relate to the services your targeted audience seeks.
Google Ads for Surgeons: FAQs
Will I get regular Google Ads progress reports?
Yes, you get frequent Google ads progress reports.
Do you manage paid ads outside of Google?
Yes. We also run Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads that send patients to a booked appointment, not just a form.
Why does a surgeon's Google Ads campaign need ongoing optimization?
A surgeon's Google Ads campaign must be optimized to consistently target the right people at the right time.
What are the different types of Google Ads?
The different types of Google ads include Search, Display, Shopping, Video, Discovery, Local Services, and Smart ads
How much should a surgeon spend on Google Ads?
In our plastic surgery study, one patient contact on Google Ads costs $10 to $40. Practices in mid-size and large markets often spend $3,000 to $12,000 a month.
Can plastic surgeons use remarketing on Google Ads?
Not with their own visitor or patient lists. Google treats cosmetic surgery as sensitive health content, so use Google's in-market audiences instead.
Intellius Medical: Google Ads and SEO for Surgeons
Intellius Medical is a leading healthcare marketing agency that specializes in partnering with surgeons and medical practices to scale patient-generating marketing programs for their leading procedures.
We have been in the healthcare marketing industry for about a decade developing and managing specific marketing growth strategies for medical practices.
Book an appointment with Intellius Medical today to run surgeon Google Ads that give you good results within 90 days.
