Four tips for using Google AdWords to promote your practice or brand

This article is part of the Vegas Cosmetic Surgery and Aesthetic Dermatology Show Coverage.

Nearly everyone uses the Internet, and it’s a wealth of untapped potential patients for your practice. But online ads are worthless if you're marketing to the wrong audience.

Google AdWords are an easy, successful way to market you practice or brand online by targeting niche audiences, says Timour Haider, managing director for Aesthetic Brand Marketing Inc.

Google AdWords works by creating an ad and having it show up on search pages that include keywords that your potential audience may type into Google. You are only charged when your ad is clicked. By using the service, you're targeting people who are looking for words that relate to your business or brand.

"Google AdWords can be very effective if done correctly," Mr. Haider says. "For those of you who aren’t running a campaign, if you get a campaign going … it's high-quality traffic, and it works."

During the 2013 Vegas Cosmetic Surgery & Aesthetic Dermatology meeting on Friday, Haider discussed the four most critical metrics when running a Google AdWords campaign for your practice.

1.      Quality score: "Google is all about relevance in their organic search," he says. "It's a measure of how relevant your ad is, compared to the keywords you're bidding on and your landing page relevance."

2.      Click-thru rate: "If your ad is getting shown but not clicked on, it's probably not very relevant," Mr. Haider says. "If it's (click-thru rate) anything less than 1 percent, something's wrong and needs to be changed."

3.      Conversion rate: "If you're spending money on advertising and not tracking the success rate, you're wasting your money."

4.      Cost per conversion: "You need to know this number - how much money it takes to get one person to contact you. Once you know that number, its just math after that."

"(Using Google AdWords) is, in essence, you writing a small check to Google every month in exchange for them writing a larger check to you later that month," Mr. Haider says.

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