Pay Per Click Advertising For Audiology

Get Your Ducks in a Row First

Pay Per Click advertising (Google Adwords primarily) is becoming more prevalent within the business of Audiology. It is an important facet of the digital marketing strategy of a Practice. It is an attractive medium for advertising, in particular since Google upgraded their ability to target prospects in a more definitive manner.

The ability to target a certain demographic, in a certain area who are searching for keywords pertaining to our industry is available. Not just available but the service almost offers a sniper approach as opposed to the shotgun approach that was once available. However, there are many things that you need to have in place before you use the service.

Analytics

You need to have google analytics in place on your site, you also need to set up Goals in relation to your campaign. Those goals are based on tracking what you want a viewer to do when they land on your site. That may involve two or three actions, perhaps land on the landing page, move to a download page and enter data on a form that is submitted. Or alternatively land on a page and download a coupon or voucher to be used later without data entry.

No matter what you want your viewer to do, you need to be able to track it. Because when you can track it you can measure it, when you can measure it you can calculate an ROI (return on investment). Knowing your ROI is imperative, but understanding the process and monitoring the pathway is invaluable for understanding where you might be going wrong. This is something that we are using in some experiments we are undertaking on some of the sites we manage. We have set a pathway that we hope leads to engagement and conversion, we track that pathway to see what people do and more importantly where they drop off.

Understanding that lets us know where we need to consider changes to a page layout or content. We can then make the changes and monitor what effect those changes have. It is a powerful tool for understanding what is happening with your site viewers and understanding how the copy and layout of your site affects engagement and conversion.

Advert Copy

So we are placing an advert and it is targeting a particular keyword search, the more definitive the keyword search the better for you. Don’t just lump a load of keywords in one campaign and do an advert. That is not the best use of either your time or your advertising spend. Pick a few targeted keywords and longtail keyword phrases. Make sure you geo target them well and then design some really good advert copy for the ad.

The usual rules apply, the copy must be relevant and sexy for the viewer. Its simple, think of the search phrase target and work from there. Always include an enticing call to action to ensure you get picked and they click through to your landing page.

Landing Page Optimisation and Advert Quality

Over a period of time google will score you as an advertiser, this is actually a great thing if you are good at it because it will place your adverts higher then the herd and lead to a lower cost for you. The rating of the quality is based on your ad-word copy, what you write on your adverts and how well it pertains to your landing page. Your landing page is the page that the prospect clicks through to on your advert. The content of the page is important, it is important for more than just Google though, it is also important for the prospect.

You need to keep this in mind when designing a campaign, the landing page needs to be relevant to both the advert and the search. I see it too many times that an advert isn’t quite relevant and the landing page is the home page of the site. This is neither a good use of the power of PPC or your advertising money. If I search for invisible hearing aids in Dublin, the advert I will click will be the one with the copy that pertains to that search. When I do click through, I don’t want to go to your fricking home page! I want to go to a page that pertains to INVISIBLE HEARING AIDS!!!!!!!

So the landing page needs to be relevant, it needs to deliver to the need of the searcher and by god it needs a screaming call to action. PICK ME, PICK ME! It could do with a few other things though, a clear value proposition and a strong element of social proof. We design these elements into our sites, you should think about what they are for you and how you will include them. You have to get this right, design of your landing pages is critical to success with a campaign.

You want them to take an action when they land, but you have to prove to them first that it is worthwhile to take that action. Have you thought what action you want them to take? It might not necessarily the right thing to do to go after an appointment booking immediately. Although it depends on the landing page offer. If I was setting up a landing page for a free trial for Lyric hearing aids, I would offer two CTAs (call to actions). I would offer a download more information and a book your appointment . I would stagger the CTAs though, the first would be Book Your Appointment on the landing page and the second for brochure download would be on the booking form page.

Repeat after me!

The landing page must pertain to the advert, the landing page must pertain to the advert, the landing page must pertain to the advert, now repeat until you are tired. This is advertising, you wouldn’t put an advert in a news paper with a screaming headline about invisible hearing aids and then include only copy about your Practice. Would you? No you would not, so why would you do it for your PPC campaigns?