Getting new business is essential to any dermatologist to have a constant flow of new customers coming to maintain your growth rate and get the revenue that you want. Getting discovered means utilizing marketing techniques and adapting them to fit your business needs. You also need to make sure that you are using digital marketing techniques to capture audiences where they spend most of their time: online.
One way that businesses can get discovered online is through advertising. Just like traditional advertising, it’s all about paying to get space in front of your key audience. But digital advertising works a little differently than renting a billboard or buying space in a newspaper. In order to be successful with digital advertising, you need to understand what type of ads you are running.
Paid search is a type of digital advertising that can be extremely effective and beneficial to dermatologists. In this article, we’ll help you understand what paid search advertising is, why it’s valuable, and offer some paid search best practices for dermatologists who can really benefit from this unique advertising channel.
What is Paid Search Advertising?
Paid search advertising is a type of PPC advertising, or pay-per-click advertising used on search engines. It uses a bidding strategy where you set a budget and the platform will target specific keywords for a price. You won’t go over your budget, but the more you pay, the higher the ranking of the keywords you can use. By paying for a slot for a specific keyword, your ad will appear at the top of search engine results pages, or SERPs.
When your ad appears at the top of a SERP for a specific term, you can target people in your area who are looking for help with the exact things you provide. Someone searching for “acne treatments”, for example, would be a great keyword to aim for. You can also avoid keywords, like “best skincare routine” so that you only pay for keywords that are relevant to your business.
While Google is the biggest search engine out there, paid search ads are available on every major search engine platform. Rather than just tying all of your efforts to Google, you should use all the channels available, such as Bing and Yahoo on top of Google. That helps you capture even more potential customers and spread about your ad dollars more effectively.
Paid search ads have several different components that are standard across the board, and a few options that can make them more unique. Each paid ad will contain:
- Headline: This is the main title that will appear in your ad, and should contain an offer or engaging message that encourages people to click on the ad.
- Display URL: The URL is always displayed as a blue link underneath the headline of the ad. Make sure that your URLs are descriptive and professional, so people trust them enough to click.
- Description Text: This section allows you to add more context to your headline and offer more details on what the offer is and why someone should be interested in clicking on the ad.
- Ad Extensions: While the above categories are the only necessary sections, you can include ad extensions like a phone number, links to pages on your site, or your business address to further enhance the ad.
Benefits of Paid Search Ads
Using paid search advertising can bring about major benefits to your dermatology clinic. Here are a few of the main reasons why paid search is such a cornerstone of digital advertising and the most commonly used type of digital ad:
More Visibility in Local Search Results
The first big benefit for dermatologists is that you get more visibility in local search results. Local search is important because your customers aren’t coming from states away. They live in your local area, so you can customize keywords to target them like “dermatologists near me” or “dermatologist in city name”.
More Traffic to Your Website
The next major benefit is that your website will get more traffic. When someone clicks on your ad, they will be directed to a landing page on your website that explains more about your offerings or what your ad is promoting. From there, people will explore the site and learn more about your business.
Higher Quality Leads
People use search engines to find information that is relevant to their needs. Someone who doesn’t have any type of skin issue or question probably isn’t Googling about acne or psoriasis. By using keywords that are relevant and timely, you can get the attention of people who are actively searching for what you provide.
Detailed Analytics
Another important thing that paid search advertising does is provide you with detailed analytics on how well your ads are doing, how much they cost, and even what can be improved. Rather than putting your name in a newspaper or billboard and hoping for the best, you can take immediate action to improve your campaigning efforts.
Paid Search Best Practices for Dermatologists
Now that you understand exactly what makes paid search advertising so important, let’s dive into the paid search best practices for dermatologists that can really help you boost your ad strategy and get the conversions and leads you need to be successful.
1. Use Targeted Keywords
Using the right keywords is essential to paid search advertising. Keyword research will help you find which keywords are important to your audience and are local to your area. By targeting these specific keywords and phrases, you can narrow your search audience down to only those who are relevant to your services and deliver a message that resonates with what they are searching for.
2. Customize Your Audience
In addition to narrowing your audience with keywords, you can also use custom audience demographics to create a specific audience group. You can narrow your audience to only capture your targets rather than everyone who lives around you. By using demographic information and matching that to your ideal customer, you can capture the right people. Common factors to use in customized targeting include:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Marital Status
- Income Level
- Occupation
- Behaviors
- Interests
3. Use Retargeting for Interested Visitors
Retargeting is an ads technique that uses the information captured when someone clicks on your ad but doesn’t take any other conversion actions. For example, if someone clicks your paid search ad and goes to your website to browse around but does not schedule an appointment, you can use their captured information to send out more ads to that person to keep your business in mind.
4. Design Your Landing Page
When someone clicks an ad, they end up on a landing page. This page is a page on a website that is designed to funnel traffic directly from that specific advertisement. Your landing page should be customized to fit with the message of the ad and offer any more information on relevant services or promotions that got someone to click in the first place. You can also include a form to capture information for further marketing.
5. Monitor Your Metrics
Paid search ad platforms will offer metrics and insights into the performance of your ads and how well they are working for your goals. Keeping an eye on these metrics will be key to your paid ads success. You need to check to see that performance is continuing across the campaign and monitor to see if there are any errors that can slow down success. Ads aren’t a set-and-forget method of marketing, so you will need to be vigilant for any opportunities to improve your efforts.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
At Surefire Local, we understand how difficult it is to run marketing campaigns and keep up with the rest of the tasks you have on your plate when running a dermatology business. That’s why we’ve created a marketing platform that helps you manage all of the important aspects of your marketing campaigns and initiatives from a single location. With Surefire Local, you can craft your paid search campaigns, implement them in different search channels, track the results, compare the metrics, and get insights for improvement all in the same place.
To learn more about Surefire Local and discover what makes it special for dermatologists who want to improve their marketing efforts, schedule a demo of the platform and learn how you can utilize Surefire Local in your business today.