How important is cost-per-click (CPC)?

Cost-per-click (CPC) matters to agencies: we use it to gauge competition, test bidding methods, compare to other accounts for benchmarks, and see how "pricey" a geographic market is. For providers (healthcare practice or med-spa), the critical metric to focus on is Cost-per-lead. If you are receiving leads that are coming in at a reasonable cost, and (importantly) converting into considerable treatment revenue, CPC really doesn't matter in the end.

What factors influence CPC?

1. Knowing your campaign type is important as this will be the biggest factor. Make sure to compare apples to apples. From most expensive to least expensive average CPC: Google Search Ads->Facebook/Instagram Feed Ads->Google Display and Gmail Ads->YouTube Ads
2. Quality Score: Without going into too much detail, having an acceptable quality score will lower your CPC, while having a poor quality score will increase it. Quality score consists of your Ad Quality, Landing Page Experience, and Ad Appeal
3. Competition: More advertisers = higher costs. That said, Google and Facebook even the playing field for everyone -- those even with a small budget can make a huge revenue impact for their practice by being clever and hyper-efficient.