According to a recent study conducted by the experts at Forrester, about 71% of people begin their buying journey in the exact same way: through a search engine like Google.
Even if they know what type of product or service they’re looking for, they still turn to the Internet to answer important questions or solve problems before they buy. In many ways, it’s human nature. In terms of capturing that attention and getting as much traffic as possible for your medical spa, there are a few key options available to you.
The first is called search engine optimization, or SEO for short. Have you ever wondered why certain sites always seem to pop up at the top of the search results for particular queries? That’s because everything – from the helpful, relevant content they publish to the services pages and on their domain – is optimized for SEO. This method involves publishing updates regularly, targeting certain keywords, collecting backlinks, and more.
SEO is definitely important, and it should absolutely become a part of your larger marketing strategy. But there are other opportunities to capture as much local attention from search engines as possible: paid search advertising.
But what is paid search, and how can it help your med spa get the right message to the right people at exactly the right time? The answers to questions like those require you to keep a few key things in mind.
What is Paid Search Advertising?
At its core, paid search advertising is exactly what it sounds like: an opportunity for your med spa to pay for ad placements on search engine results pages, or SERPs. You’ll hear this referred to by a number of names, including pay-per-click or PPC. Here, your ad will display alongside the keywords you’ve targeted, and you’ll only pay when people actually click on it.
The paid search ads typically display towards the top of the search engine results pages on a site like Google. They are clearly identifiable as advertisements, but at the same time, they enjoy the same prominent placement that the top organic results do.
While Google is certainly the biggest name in search with an 85.53% market share as of 2023, that doesn’t mean this is the only place you need to focus your attention. There are still others out there. Bing comes in second place with an 8.19% market share. Yahoo is third with 2.43%. Others, like DuckDuckGo with 0.76%, fall farther behind, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid them entirely.
Although all paid search ads will vary slightly depending on the ad itself and the platform it is running on, there are a few main elements to familiarize yourself with. These include ones like:
- The headline. This is an opportunity to quickly capture someone’s attention while also including as many relevant keywords for your med spa as possible.
- The display URL. This is the website URL that will appear alongside your ad. It’s always a good idea to link to your homepage because this immediately gives someone a good idea of where they will land whenever they click on your ad.
- The description text. This is where you would describe your med spa in a general way, or use it as a chance to quickly outline any promotions that you’re running or new services that you’ve added.
- Ad extensions. This is another opportunity to include more detail about your media spa including service highlights, any other links that you think might be relevant, and even pricing information.
Keep in mind that a paid search ad is designed to be short, sweet, and to the point. You don’t have a lot of room to work with and most sites like Google give you strict character limits to work with. Because of that, just remember that “brevity is the soul of wit.” Meaning, the faster you can effectively communicate who you are and what you do, the better.
Benefits of Paid Search Ads
Once you begin to run your paid search campaign for your med spa you’ll notice that it brings with it a number of distinct benefits, all at the exact same time.
Perhaps the biggest is that it gives you more visibility not just in general searches, but in local search results in particular. These are the unique results that appear in someone’s precise geographic area. If people search for “med spa near me,” for example, they’ll get a different set of more relevant results that are based on their location than if they had just searched for “med spa.”
This is critical because local search is growing in prominence year after year, particularly on mobile devices. According to one recent study, a massive 98% of consumers used the Internet to find information about local businesses in particular in 2022. That same source indicated that 76% of people say that they “regularly” read things like online reviews and get the opinions of others when looking for local businesses.
Not only that but at this point, it is estimated that about 46% of all searches on Google are actually looking for local information. If someone is looking for a med spa in Cleveland, it doesn’t help them if Google returns only results for large, national businesses that don’t actually have locations in Ohio just because they have a stronger SEO strategy. Those people want to find results in their own backyard and that is what local search helps them do.
But maybe the most important statistic of all is that about 88% of all searchers who go looking for local businesses will either call or visit within just 24 hours. So it’s safe to say that getting more visibility in the local search results should always be a top priority, especially in a field as competitive as running a med spa.
Naturally, this higher visibility will almost always translate into more traffic for your website. Another study indicated that for every $1 the average business spends on a paid search opportunity like Google Ads, they tend to generate about $2 in revenue as a result. Higher visibility means increased traffic, which means a larger number of opportunities to turn those prospects into paying customers.
All of this coalesces into another one of the key benefits of paid search for specialty services like a med spa in particular: you don’t just get more leads, they’re also of a higher quality.
Remember that a lot of people will be looking for “med spa near me” or related searches. You don’t necessarily have to “warm them up” like you would someone who was coming in completely cold. These people know what they’re looking for and as soon as they’re able to confirm that you offer it, they’re ready to spend their money. At that point, all you have to do is be prepared to act on that in the most efficient way possible.
Finally, one of the long-term benefits of paid search advertising for a business like a med spa has to do with the detailed analytics you get as a result.
If you take out a print ad in the newspaper, for example, someone might see it and come into your med spa. You’ll never really know what your return on investment for your ad was, however, unless you start coming out and asking people.
With paid search, you have a wealth of data to draw from. Based on how much you’re paying for your pay-per-click campaign, for example, you know how many clicks you’re getting. You know how many of those people are converting into paid customers. You know what they’re searching for. You know approximately where they live. You know which search engine they were using. The list goes on and on.
All this is insight that you can use to not only reinforce the parts of your campaigns that are already working but also get rid of the parts that aren’t and improve upon them. It’s a perfect way to use data to get better over time that you simply do not have access to through other means.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
At Surefire Local, we understand how important paid search and other marketing tactics are for your med spa – which is why we want to do whatever we can to help. We offer business intelligence marketing software at a fraction of the cost of other tools or agencies. More than anything, we help level the playing field – if you can’t necessarily outspend your larger competitors, thanks to our innovative solutions you’ll be able to outperform them.
We do all this in the name of helping you manage the most important online marketing activities like paid search, SEO and others – all from one platform that acts as a “single source of truth” for your business.
So if you’d like to find out more information about the major benefits of paid search for your media spa, or if you have any additional questions you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – attend a Surefire Local marketing platform demonstration to see what we can do up close and personal.