SEM

The majority of businesses, especially online entrepreneurs, prefer SEO than PPC to help them drive website traffic. The reason for such preference stems from the preconception that since SEO is free and has been proven to improve search engine rankings, it can be easily maximized in your favor. 

However, as emphasized by Digital.gov in one of their more recent studies, the disadvantage of relying solely on SEO as your marketing initiative is that it will take more time before you can totally reap the benefits — driving more traffic into your website. The entire process of content writing, link building, optimization of the web page, and lastly, Google indexing takes more than one to two months before it will fully pay off.  

PPC and its instantaneous results

Pay-per-click or PPC, however, elicits an instantaneous result. Facebook, Google, and relevant ad platforms can give the right data and insights into various platforms and online advertisers. 

In the case of most businesses in the health care industry, the same principle follows. Though they belong in an entirely different field, the importance of a PPC campaign cannot be underscored. 

According to the Hileman Group, one in every twenty Google searched are related to health care. As a matter of fact, they mentioned that paid searchers are great initiatives to be able to get in touch and communicate with prospective clients and customers who are active in their respective health care screening and selection process. PPC is a well-proven digital marketing strategy that cuts across different industries. 

Below are some tips you can take note of when choosing the best PPC strategy for your business in the health care industry: 

Study and get to know your target market. 

The first thing you need to know before you decide which specific advertising or marketing strategy to use is to get to know your target market first. Know what they like, their online behavior, and their preferences. It is only after you get to truly know your audience that you can get to design a campaign and a campaign message that will matter and will be relevant to them. 

For instance, you are in the rehab business, know who do you want to sell your services to. Is it to the parents, the addicted individual, or both? After you get to know who these prospective clients of your business are can you package your service as the best rehab in the area? 

In narrowing your target market list, make sure to take note of the caregivers who usually search on behalf of the patient. You might need to appeal to their preferences as well. 

Take note of the searching phase.

Bear in mind that there are various phases that make up for the entire selection process of health care. These phases may include treatment, research, and prevention. 

Though most of the keywords in these searches are almost similar, alike searches yield drastically varied results: 

“Best rehab United States” versus “rehab in San Francisco”

Knowing this difference in yielded results, you must take note to reflect these differences in your ad groups and campaign structures so that online searchers can see the content of the final landing page and only relevant ads.

Negative keywords could be decisive in your total website performance.

In health care PPC and marketing, it’s easier to appear in searches for an erroneously related term or keyword. This is why it’s important if you start with a list of possible negative keywords and terms so that you won’t end up with a brand and image-damaging search results. 

Provide search-relevant content. 

Some online keyword searches call for immediate actions, like “urgent best rehab near me, “ others call for a start on their selection process (how to choose the best addiction rehab). In your PPC, make sure to include, as part of your call to action the actions or search results which reflects the customer’s selection phase. Also, make sure to also lead them to a landing page which is equally reflective of their choices at the selection phase. 

On top of that, it’s also a great idea to provide an opportunity to your site visitors to move forward with the processes if they are already ready. Add a phone number in all of your landing pages so that they can immediately schedule an appointment when they’re ready. Doing so would make your service more accessible and would also easily allow the site visitor to easily skip the phases and convert. 

Make your marketing strategy long-term.

Most health care related choices are made after some time and after some careful thought. It is seldom made quickly. As such, make it a part of your PPC to maintain an open communication line with your site visitors who weren’t converted into customers yet. The best tool to achieve this is by placing a marketing automation suite that can send out personalized messages and information at the perfect time. 

Which is more appropriate for your business – SEO or PPC?

In a study conducted by Wouter T. Kritzinger and Melius Weideman found in the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, it was emphasized that PPC and SEO are both crucial to your business. Then again, if you were to choose one, we say it’s better to start with PPC first to gather instantaneous results while you also build your business around SEO. 

SEO can greatly complement your PPC efforts later on. If you worry about not getting as much result as you can, check out the three best ways wherein PPC fills in for SEO in communicating with your business’ target market: 

1. PPC helps you improve your website’s visibility so that it’ll rank better in search engines.

If you manage to be on the first page of the search engine rankings by simply using organic keywords, then you did great. However, bear in mind that the next four pages of the search engine results are mostly products of PPC campaigns. The same goes for the other websites above and below you. 

The point here is why would you spend enormous effort and resources when your competitors ranked better than you by merely using PPC? To maximize results, you can complement your PPC campaigns with SEO. These strategies can help make your website the first site your target market sees when they do their searches. 

Aside from this, it’s equally important to show your advertisements while also using identified target keywords that you’re not yet exposing for organic keyword ranking. This strategy will make your SERP visibility improved while you’re also waiting for your SEO efforts to bear fruit. 

2. Make use of PPC ads to improve the flow of traffic driven into your site. 

In a recent study conducted by OCLC, they revealed that content is the main selling point of every SEO strategy. Most of the time, your website content is the main driver of links, traffic, and domain authority. Then again, to achieve this, people need to backlink, share, and read your content. 

Unlike SEO, PPC is way easier because you get to advertise your content and also let your clients read it faster. On top of that, PPC ads are way cheaper compared to SEO solely because bidding is only done on the keywords. In most SEO campaigns, the website owner bids on campaigns that are conversion-based. 

Finally, PPC ads allow you to choose the market whom you will be showing your ad or your content to. You can select your prospective audience by viewing the target market’s browsing activities via Google. You can also utilize social networking platforms to help you identify job titles and interests of your target market. 

3. Utilize your PPC campaign as a testing ground for your SEO campaign.

Since we mentioned earlier that SEO campaigns take time before you can fully reap the benefits, you can start with a PPC campaign to help you check if your target market will respond to your message and to your brand. Through this, you will be able to identify how to make content work better, how backlinks can generate more traffic, or how optimization can help you improve on your conversion rate.

With SEO, the health care industry is actually bound by stricter rules and more stringent regulations on the content. If your bank only on SEO and you cannot come up with content which is at par with the regulations, you will have a hard time starting your marketing campaigns. You might end up going back and forth with your content before you can generate a single sales conversion. 

With PPC, things are easier since you will only bid on the keyword. Though you also have to be careful not to go astray with the regulations, it’s easier to get it right since keywords are clearly lesser than an entire article. 

These are just guiding principles aimed to help you in launching your PPC campaign. You can form your own checklist from the major points we stated above and also add items from your own research. Good luck and we hope you convert better!

The Digital Marketing Guru
Author: The Digital Marketing Guru

The Digital Marketing Guru is a full-service digital marketing agency. We’ve been providing a wide range of services to clients of all industries since 2010. Our digital marketing services include consulting and management options for a variety of online marketing tactics including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) ads, copywriting conversion rate optimization (CRO), and more. We also offer expert web design and development services for both eCommerce and B2B companies. Don’t just partner with any digital marketing agency; work with a company you can trust.