Building an online presence that showcases the exceptional work you do and educates people on how to utilize your services is the foundation of attracting new patients as a plastic surgeon. Yet, you’re likely not the only plastic surgeon in town, and each one of them likely has an established online presence as well. When you can create an online presence that makes your practice more visible to just those people in your area, you’ll get more leads and create a more viable practice website. One way to do this is through geotargeting ads for plastic surgeons.
Quality matters when it comes to lead generation. You don’t necessarily want as many leads as possible when you’re not equipped to handle that many new customers and not everyone who comes across your practice online may meet your ideal customer thresholds.
What Is Geotargeting and How Does It Work?
Geotargeting is a way for you to let the search engines know which specific locations you wish to target with your ads. You can choose different geographic locations based on who your patients are. Geotargeting ads for plastic surgeons are more than just including the name of the city your practice is in. Since people will seek out plastic surgeons from a larger geographic area if they are proven professionals, you want to consider where your clients are coming from overall.
How does geotargeting work?
The premise is simple. Deliver content from your website and blog as well as through your ads to people within the specified geographical location you operate in. This allows you to advertise your plastic surgery practice to people who are most likely to turn to you within the local market.
For example, when using Google Ads as a component of your website marketing, you will focus on the specific locations that are viable to your practice. This could be one large metro area, or it could be a slew of cities. When you specify this information, your ads are then only presented to people from within that area.
Here’s an example. If you provide plastic surgery services in Columbus, Ohio, you may find that your customers are all within the metro area. Therefore, you’ll tell Google Ads that you only want your ad to show up in people who are looking for help in Columbus. That way, someone looking for help in Cincinnati, which is within a 90-mile radius, may see it, but those in Cleveland, which is much further away, are less likely to see that ad.
It may sound like a lot of work. Is this really something you should do?
Should You Use Geotargeting to Promote Your Practice?
Geotargeting ads for plastic surgeons simply make sense. The biggest reason to do so is that it helps to ensure you are getting in front of the people most likely to want and need your services rather than just those searching online for plastic surgery.
The other core benefit is that, beyond a doubt, geotargeting helps you make the most out of your marketing budget. When your ads are placed on Google, social media, or elsewhere, you want to be sure that every time someone clicks on your ad, it is a person that’s most likely to work with you. If this is a person that’s located across the country just focusing on getting information about plastic surgery, it’s less beneficial to you overall.
More so, there’s less competition. Consider how many other plastic surgeons are within your geographic area. Now, think about a two mile radius or even in the state. The key here is that the more competition there is to get in front of, the harder it is for your ads to work for you.
Geotargeting is often used in relation to ads, but it also plays a role in the content you create. Using key terms and a local focus in your content also helps your business to attract people directly to your plastic surgery practice local to you.
Super Simple Geotargeting Best Practices
Narrowing down your target area is a big deal. You don’t want to make costly mistakes in this process that could end up costing your practice leads. Here are some very important tools to consider when creating geotargeting for your practice.
#1: You have to know your target area
This is the most important step and the hardest for most plastic surgery practices. It’s essential to know where your business serves.
As a plastic surgery practice, your location is likely a bit bigger than just a single city. Yet, in some regions, it’s much larger than in others. For example, if you are a plastic surgeon in New York City, your target audience is likely within that city or close by suburbs. If you are in the middle of Montana, your target audience is much bigger because there are likely fewer people providing your services in the state.
Your first step, then, is to consider who you serve. What specific cities do you provide plastic surgery services to? Consider:
- Hospitals you work through
- Communities you go to throughout the area
- Where your physical office is
- Where satellite offices are
- All of the medical centers you have privileges at
- Suburbs within that area
- Metro areas surrounding your target cities
The goal here is to outline where your patients come from – be specific about this to ensure you include areas where they could come from too, such as if a doctor in a nearby hospital is likely to recommend your services, you want to be sure someone searching from that area is going to find you.
#2: Exclude some locations
The next step is to do the opposite of what you did in the first step. That is to exclude specific cities and areas that may not provide the support you need.
Perhaps you’ve heard of negative keywords. This is a strategy in which you inform the search engines of words that may be typed into searches close to your own but that are obviously not related to your business. The same applies here. You want to be sure any locations that are not going to yield leads to you are excluded from your efforts.
For example, perhaps you have surgical privileges at several medical facilities in the region, including some that are quite a distance from your physical location. You want to include those. But, if there’s a community nearby where you do not have surgical privileges where a hospital is located, you may want to tell Google not to send your ads to people within that region because they’re not likely to drive to your location for care.
It really takes understanding where your clients are to know if and when you should target others within those communities. Doing this work is worth it and is likely to result in better performance of your ads.
Here’s a tip to help with this process. Use Google Trends as a way to get some insight into keyword uses within your subregion. You’ll learn a great deal about where people are who are looking for the services you have to offer.
#3: Use local extensions and call extensions
There are a few other things to do to help boost your results. As you set up your ads, you’ll notice something within the program called local extensions and call extensions. You will want to enable them when you are setting up your ads.
When you do this, the people who are searching for plastic surgeons in your area are able to see the practice’s physical address. This way, they are able to recognize whether or not they are within close proximity to you (and therefore worth contacting you for care). It also helps reduce the number of clicks you get for people who are outside of your range of care.
The same applies to call extensions. Enable these when setting up your ads. This allows for a link to your direct phone or the phone number to be visible. This way, a person interested in your service can instantly call you. They don’t even need to go to your website to make the decision to contact you – they see everything they need right there on the ad and can take action immediately.
Request a Demo of Our Business Intelligence Marketing Software
The more information you have about your prospective patients and where they are coming from, the more likely you are to create ads that specifically target those people. Plastic surgery practices that employ this type of digital marketing tend to get better quality leads and more of them to their site.
Surefire Local can help you with our business intelligence marketing software. Our platform will provide you with specific insights into improving your marketing for better results. Not only does that mean your website is more visible in the search engines, but it ensures you’re paying for ads placed in front of the people who need your services the most. Schedule a demo today!