The Cost of PPC Advertising: Budgeting and Maximizing ROI for Home Care Leads
How to calculate your PPC budget for maximum ROI
Pay-per-click campaigns, usually called PPC campaigns, are one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your home health agency and add new, qualified leads to your sales funnel.
So, how much does PPC marketing cost? It ranges widely by industry, campaign size, marketing goals, and aggressiveness. The good news is, with PPC, you set your budget, so you can’t overspend.
How much does PPC cost for a home care agency?
The cost of a PPC ad campaign varies widely, but many home care agencies may spend anywhere from $500–$12,000 per month. It’s up to the advertiser, their budget, and their campaign goals. Small businesses might spend just a few hundred dollars every month and see great returns, while major brands can spend millions on PPC campaigns.
Of course, the more you spend, the more likely you are to win the placements you want. The good news about paid search campaigns is that you set the budget ceiling.
PPC campaign key terms
Here’s a brief glossary of words you’ll need to know as you budget for your home care marketing campaigns.
- CPC: That’s cost per click. It’s how much you pay each time a user clicks on your ad. You want a low CPC.
- ROI: Stands for return on investment. It’s the difference between what you spend and how much you make on a campaign. You want a high ROI.
- Conversion rate: The number of users who click your ad divided by the number of those users who become paying clients. Aim for a high conversion rate.
- CTR: This means click-through rate. It’s the number of clicks an ad gets divided by the number of times your ad is shown. You want a high CTR.
- Auction: On Google Ads, the auction is the process by which Google determines which ad wins the placement. Winners are determined by the amount you bid, the ad quality, ad assets, ad rank, and user context.
- Ad spend: This is the total amount of money you spend on PPC campaigns.
How much should I pay for PPC?
There’s no perfect monthly ad spend for a PPC campaign—the ideal budget will change depending on your marketing goals. We recommend spending at least $1,000 on your first ad campaign. From there, you can get a sense of whether you should be spending more or less to optimize your ROI. You may find that you’ve written great campaign messaging and can meet your goals for just $2,000 per month, or find that by inching up your bids, you can win much higher placements on the SERPs.
Which keywords you bid on determines a great deal of the cost of a PPC campaign. The more competitive your keywords are, the more you’ll have to spend to win those auctions. When running paid search in Google Ads, you’ll set daily and monthly budgets.
Here’s a glimpse at the price of some home care marketing keywords using Google’s Keyword Planner. Competition for some of these high-volume keywords is low, so your agency has a better chance of winning that auction.
Here are some of our favorites on that keyword list. If you want to land at the top of a SERP for home care, you might spend close to $10.00 each time it’s clicked—that’s pretty steep. But paid search marketing for home care is highly dependent on location, so your top bid may not need to be that high, especially if you don’t have a lot of competitors in your area.
| Keyword | Difficulty | Avg. monthly search volume | Low bid | High bid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| home care | low | 10,000–100,000 | $2.67 | $9.98 |
| senior home care | low | 10,000–100,000 | $3.15 | $11.16 |
| home health care | low | 10,000–100,000 | $2.52 | $8.78 |
| home health aide | medium | 10,000–100,000 | $2.42 | $8.58 |
| home care services | medium | 10,000–100,000 | $2.72 | $9.50 |
If your budget is $1,000 and you want to bid on the high end for home care, that’s about 100 clicks. Bump that up to $3,500 a month and you’ve got 350.
When starting your first PPC campaigns, we recommend picking 10–20 keywords. Over time, you may find that you need only 10 to get the best results. Or when budgets are tight, you choose the three or four with the highest ROI.
3 tips for setting a PPC budget
1. Don’t pick too many keywords
The more keywords you choose for your campaign, the more you’ll have to spend to make it worth your while. Spreading a low budget over lots of keywords means you’ll be able to bid very little for each, reducing your chances of winning.
2. Consider bidding on the competition’s keywords
There are branded keywords (like homeward healthcare baltimore) and then there are non-branded keywords (like home healthcare baltimore).
It’s often worth bidding on keywords that include your competitors’ names to scoop up some of their clients too. These are sometimes less expensive to win because there’s less competition.
You can also think of non-branded competitor keywords, like nursing homes baltimore or independent living facilities baltimore to scoop up potential clients who might not know they’re looking for home care—yet.
3. Monitor campaign progress
PPC campaigns are great because they’re automated and don’t require a lot of maintenance, but they do require monitoring in order to maximize ROI. Check to see which keywords are getting the highest CTR and knock out the ones that are underperforming so you can funnel budget to the ones that work.
Need a hand with home care PPC for your agency?
Home Care Marketings Pros' PPC experts can help you attract, engage, and convert clients and potential caregivers with our proven home care PPC strategies. Find out more by watching our walkthrough!
