Written by Chad Stewart, Director of Search at Accelerated Digital Media, a performance marketing agency that specializes in compliant, scalable healthcare marketing.
Healthcare brands can’t approach marketing the same way, say, an eCommerce brand might. Health marketing is a highly-regulated space, and patients differ vastly from “consumers” in terms of how they learn about options and make decisions. Those dynamics place a greater emphasis on providing compassionate, informational content to prospective patients in the moments they are searching for it.
Whether you’re reaching patients organically or via paid search ads, turning impressions and engagement into conversions will always depend on the quality of your landing pages. Most healthcare advertisers will be building pages based on one of the following goals:
- Driving new appointments (whether in-person or online)
- Driving new purchases (sometimes requiring a prescription)
- Driving new clinical trial signups
To achieve any of those goals means you have successfully:
- Deployed health ads and landing pages that are compliant with Google Ads health policies
- Brought users from your target audience to your site
- Validated traffic by providing users with content relevant to their needs
- Made it both compelling and simple for them to take further steps
The most obvious problems for health advertisers will be failures at one or more of those checkpoints, any of which will prevent them from growing their patient base.
Outside of marketing metrics or profit and loss statements, it’s important to remember that there are real people’s lives potentially being impacted with each interaction. Through a lack of helpful, accurate, and up-to-date information, poor pages can diminish a health brand’s reputation while discouraging patients from seeking care that they may need.
Landing Page Language Must Closely Reflect Campaign Keywords
Landing pages must reflect the keywords that brought users to them for several reasons. Users need to know they’re in the right place and getting the information they expect. For paid search advertising, Google uses landing pages to assess the quality and relevance of your ad to ensure it appears.
For health brands, this is particularly important due to the variety and nuance of healthcare terminology. If you’re bidding on a keyword that a patient might use to describe a symptom, you should prominently feature that term on the landing page instead of defaulting to formal or clinical terminology.
Brands should regularly review search term reports to ensure their keywords, ad groups, and landing pages align closely with what searchers are looking for. Based on key themes or search intentions, advertisers might segment different keyword clusters into separate campaigns or ad groups, with each ad group having its own tailored landing page.
For example, an advertiser offering dermatology products might separate keywords related to “skin care products” from those related to “natural skin care treatments.” Because the searcher has a more specific intent with the “natural” query, the ad copy should clearly sets the expectation for what the searcher will find on the corresponding landing page.
Landing Page Copy Must be Compliant, Too
When deploying ad copy for paid search ads, health brands need to be sure they are staying within Google Ads’ guidelines. These boil down to: Avoiding unfounded claims, bad information, or result guarantees.
But those Google Ads policies also apply to landing pages, as per Google policy—and health landing pages are also subject to FDA and/or FTC regulations. For instance, if a dietary supplement company wants to make a direct claim about a specific product or ingredient, its efficacy, or even a general health statement, they can be subject to penalties from the FTC if the data is not supported by a reputable source.
Healthcare advertisers must remain mindful about the claims they make and language they use on their landing page, these pages should at least be able to serve as inspiration for the generation of ad copy you pair with them. In the limited space of a Google Search ad, it can be tricky or impossible to accurately explain or source medical information—but a landing page affords that ability. Rather than flaunting Google’s rules to try to make a defensible claim, an advertiser may suggest or introduce a point at a high-level in ad copy (in a Google-compliant way), and allow the landing page to provide a deeper level of detail.
What Effective Healthcare Landing Pages Tell Patients
Compliance and relevance are crucial, but the primary purpose of a landing page is to inform. Along with relevant product or service information, ensure users understand how they can become patients by including all key information.
Location-based Healthcare
For location-based healthcare businesses, such as clinics and hospitals, it’s important to clearly outline what to expect during the first visit. While traditional information like hours and location is obvious, additional details such as documents to bring, mask or temperature check requirements, limited waiting room capacity, or other relevant factors should be disclosed upfront online.
Telehealth/Teletherapy
Remote health businesses requiring an intake conversation should provide full details on when and how the conversation can be scheduled, its duration, information the prospective patient should have ready, and any technical requirements necessary for successful calls.
Online Pharmacies and Non-prescription Medical Products
For businesses offering prescriptions, any limiting factors such as age, contraindications, or where the pharmacy is authorized to operate should be clearly disclosed on the landing page.
For product-based businesses, the approach is similar to pharmaceutical sellers regarding upfront eligibility disclosure. However, since no prescription is required, there must be another verification process for purchasing products. These verification requirements should be disclosed on the landing page. For example, some states prohibit the sale of specific drugs like pseudoephedrine to anyone under 18. The landing page must clearly state all information a prospective customer must provide to complete the checkout process.
A/B Testing Your Landing Pages
At ADM, we’re obsessed with testing, and that applies to our clients’ landing pages just as much as it does our ads. We think it’s essential for healthcare advertisers to use their landing pages to learn what resonates best with their audiences. Effective tests might explore:
- Information Sufficiency: Test whether users have enough detail about the product/treatment and the appointment or checkout process.
- Service Structure: Experiment with messaging about ongoing versus one-time treatments, as well as subscription versus one-time purchases.
- Disqualifying Attributes: Clearly state eligibility criteria to manage user expectations and prevent frustration.
- Competitor Differentiation: Identify and test the most effective ways to highlight unique brand or provider benefits.
- Social Proof: Where appropriate, consider testing testimonials or reviews to see if they enhance trust.
- Order of Information: Find out whether conversion rates change depending on when different aspects of your health service are introduced first on the page.
Landing Pages are One Piece of the Health Marketing Puzzle
Creating effective landing pages in healthcare marketing is about more than just conversions—it’s about building trust, maintaining transparency, and equipping potential patients with the information they need to take the next step. By aligning language closely with search intent, ensuring compliance, and clearly presenting key details, health marketers can design pages that resonate with users and meet regulatory standards. Testing these elements allows you to fine-tune the experience, ultimately helping more patients connect with the services and care they need.
If you need help growing your healthcare business through digital marketing, consider reaching out to a healthcare marketing agency with experience navigating the industry’s many complexities.
