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February 21, 2020 by

Medical Practice SEO, Online Marketing And Lead Generation

Case Study For Medical Practice Search Engine Optimization, YouTube Marketing, Pay Per Click, Facebook Ads, And Lead Generation

medical practice online marketing seo lead generation

This post will show the case study results of a multi-month campaign to help a medical practice (in this case a women’s health center in the Midwest United States) increase website traffic and phone calls.  The doctor wanted to target women, with a special emphasis on those seeking help with all things related to pregnancy.   This particular area of the country also faces a significant challenge with women in child-bearing ages who are currently using or struggling from the withdrawl symptoms of opioid and painkiller use before/during/after pregnancy.

The latter is important to know as it was part of the YouTube video ad campaign targeting.  The goals of course were to get more immediate phone calls; but the goals also were to improve search engine rankings and increase social awareness of the doctor’s multiple office locations within roughly 20-30 miles of each other.

 

SEO For The Medical Practice

Several services are performed at his center including OB/GYN services, mammograms, pregnancy care, and much more.  He also performs specialized women’s health surgical procedures.

The SEO efforts worked significantly well for the searches done in/for the towns where he had his various office locations.  Here are just some of the Google ranking results (“SERP’s”) for many of his desired keywords:

  • OB GYN CITY 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #3 in the organic results)
  • OB GYN CITY 2 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #3 in the organic results)
  • pregnancy care CITY 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)
  • pregnancy care CITY 2 (#2 in the Maps rankings and #2 in the organic results)
  • women’s health care CITY 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)
  • women’s health care CITY 2 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)

 

skeptical woman

If you are making decisions for a medical practice and seek guidance on how to gain exposure to your digital/online web properties which have your practice’s contact information (not just your website) then you likely want to know where situations were not as “rosy” or didn’t work out like expected.  That is a healthy (no pun intended!) way to approach any case study you encounter, like the one you see on this page.

So what went wrong?

There are 10 towns nearest to his 3 main office locations which have median household income (according to Census data) of $50,000 or more.  While his website mentioned those towns, he did not have unique pages set up for each of those desired towns – let alone those unique pages having unique content and optimized SEO tags specific to that town.  This hurt his SERP’s (especially in Google) for the same keywords mentioned above.

Here are the results for two of those nearby, higher-median-income towns:

  • OB GYN HIGH INCOME TOWN 1 (YouTube video ranks #4 and “Areas Served” page of website ranking #7 organic)
  • pregnancy care HIGH INCOME TOWN 1 (YouTube video ranks #2 and “Areas Served” page of website ranking #4 organic
  • women’s health care HIGH INCOME TOWN 1 (#1 in the Maps rankings and #1 in the organic results)
  • OB GYN HIGH INCOME TOWN 2 (no rankings anywhere on page 1 of SERP’s)
  • pregnancy care HIGH INCOME TOWN 2 (website’s “Areas Served” page ranking #10 in organic results – bottom of page 1)
  • women’s health care HIGH INCOME TOWN 2 (no rankings anywhere on page 1 of SERP’s)

 

TAKEAWAYS FOR SEO FOR THIS MEDICAL PRACTICE

There were several things which could have been done better to help him rank in the organic rankings in the SERP’s for the nearby towns.  These include, but are not limited to:

  • Build out high-income town-specific pages, each with unique content on them specific to that town.  Then optimize those new pages for relevant keywords and the town name
  • Create more video content, optimized specifically for that town, and embed it on the new town-specific page
  • Geo-tag stock photos (or photos he provided of his practice locations) and upload them onto the new specific town page
  • Double check with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for any errors or other issues preventing these new pages from getting indexed and crawled
  • Create custom Google My Maps with driving directions from the specific high-income town to nearby landmarks, including driving directions to his office locations and more
  • Get testimonials from patients in the specific town and embed on the new town-specific page
  • Possible schema markup for that particular town’s new page
  • Alt text with the specific town for any image embedded on that page
  • List of services for patients in that specific town such as pregnancy support groups, etc.

 

Had the above been done then he likely would have seen an increase in relevant website traffic from the towns he wanted.  Even if the town specific pages had a lower conversion rate than the rest of his website (hopefully not, but just staying conservative for this example) then he still would have noticed an increase in phone calls from the higher-income towns.  This is because the volume of relevant traffic visiting his website and/or videos (or medical/doctor directory listings) which would be ranking well would be so significant that even a lower-percentage conversion rate (calls or emails) would have generated new patient appointments.

We also could have added more outbound links on his new town pages which would have linked to his directory pages on Healthgrades.com, Zocdoc and other places with favorable reviews.

 

Google My Business (Maps) Results For This Medical Practice

This was very favorable for the 5+ mile radius around each of his office locations.  The statistics and metrics given to us for the Google My Business listings (sometimes mistakenly referred to as Maps results/analytics) for his three main office locations showed several favorable benefits over a 3-month period:

  • Nearly 900 phone calls coming to his two main phone numbers which he used (the same two phone numbers applied to each office location as he had a centralized phone service).  It is unknown how many spam/telemarketer calls came in, but even if it was 2/3 of the time (being vastly exaggerated for this example) this would mean he still received 300 phone calls (1/3 of the 900) from possibly legitimate patients.  Of course some would be for current and previous patients, but he still saw an increase in new patients as a result of his favorable Maps/My Business results in the “Snack Pack” (3-pack) of maps results showing for the local Google searches.
  • We didn’t see as dramatic a pickup in calls from Bing, but there was a steady flow of calls each month coming from Bing
  • We didn’t see many click-to-call metrics coming from Yelp, but this was because we didn’t emphasize Yelp that much during this project
  • He saw several hundred “clicks to website” (as defined inside the Google My Business analytics/metrics reporting) and several hundred clicks to get directions to his various office locations.
  • He received some reviews on his Google My Business/Maps locations.  While he received several favorable reviews on Facebook, not as many went to Google to leave positive reviews.  This is an area where he can improve upon in future months

 

Additionally, his two main office locations (of his 3 in total) showed a dramatic increase in the generic searches where his listing appeared, versus just “branded” (practice name) or individual name (such as his name of “Dr. XYZ”) queries.  This means his various business listings, especially for the two main offices, started to gain significant increases in awareness for searches/queries being done within a 10 mile radius of each location for phrases like:

  • “ultrasound near me”
  • “pregnancy doctor CITY 1”
  • “nearby mammogram facility”
  • etc.

google my business maps lead generation seo online marketing

So why did this happen?  What was done right?

Several things were done to help him improve:

  • Double-checking for correct category, business address, hours of operation, etc.
  • Adding all of the services, surgery types, and other benefits of his practice
  • Including links to his listings on Healthgrades.com and other medical professional directories
  • Geo-tagging the images and then choosing the correct category after uploading into the GMB listing
  • Same for raw video files (uploading the raw files, not just the YouTube videos)
  • Sharing content on the updates as “micro” posts (like a mini-blog) and value-added content
  • Doing link building and social sharing of the micro-website (a business.site URL) which automatically comes with all verified GMB listings
  • Intra-linking the Google-provided properties with other Google assets
  • Other advanced GMB tactics

 

WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

There were several additional things which could have been done to get him even more exposure, thus more prospective patients:

  • More geo-tagged photos and raw videos, especially for the advanced services and surgeries he offers
  • More quality citations, especially from local county-specific and medical-specific business directories which would permit the addition of his practice’s name, office address, phone number and website
  • Building out the high-income town-specific new pages and sharing them on the GMB updates
  • Taking the individual URL’s (links) for each post/update we made and sharing those links on high-authority web 2.0 properties like a Tumblr blog themed about women’s health.  This would have been even better had we claimed a previously-used high-SEO-authority Tumblr name for the blog and re-purposed it to be about women’s health!
  • Using even more of the GMB advanced tactics
  • More link building to the micro-website
  • More Google business reviews with the names of the towns and/or services provided in the text from the individual reviewers

 

YouTube SEO, Advertising And Other Marketing For Medical Practices

This was as close to a “home run” as we could get for the practice, especially for the limited budget we had regarding YouTube.  Like many doctors, he spent way too much on the videographer services (worrying about lighting and the staff worrying about makeup and wardrobe issues) rather than the big concern which was syndication and exposure to his video content. 

Earlier in this post you read that his YouTube videos ranked well in Google organic results (not just YouTube results) for desired local keywords.  The videos which ranked were just 30 second slide show videos with some stock music and just using stock photos and his logo!  While we tried to help him see the bigger picture, vanity and ego played a role here.  He only provided less than $100 for YouTube ads, but we maximized the exposure for what we were allocated; and had he spent less on videographer concerns – and more on getting his video content seen by the right audiences (e.g. women ages 18-24 looking up other pregnancy-related videos in YouTube within 10 miles of each office location) then his phone likely would have been ringing even more!

medical doctor youtube marketing seo ads paid views online video

 

Nonetheless, here are the results from the YouTube marketing he did:

  • Ranked #1 or #2 organic (in YouTube searches) for almost all of his desired keywords for the towns where he has office locations
  • Ranked #1 or #2 organic (in YouTube searches) for over 50% of his desired keywords for the 10 higher-income towns he wanted which were not the towns in which he has office locations
  • Has generated nearly 2500 views on his channel across all of his videos (slide show videos, him speaking on video, his staff speaking on video, and testimonial videos).  Virtually all views came from the counties where he wanted to attract new patients
  • The 2500 views does not even factor in the views of the raw video files in his Google My Business/Maps listings, nor does it factor in views of his videos when uploaded as raw video files on the Facebook pages for each of his office locations.  The number of “views” factoring those would be over another 1500 views.  The 2500 views is just restricted to views in YouTube either organically, as a paid ad/view in YouTube (targeting women 18-35 in his desired counties), and when the video ranked well in main Google searches.

 

WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

The big thing on which he “missed the boat” regarding YouTube is that he never did a thorough video of any kind (him speaking, animation character speaking, slide show video, etc.) talking about the very difficult topic of women dealing with opioid and painkiller problems before, during or right after pregnancy.  The reason why from a marketing standpoint (besides the desire to help these women and innocent babies who would be dealing with all forms of their mothers’ opioid problems) this was a missed opportunity was:

  • We could track that women ages 18-24 in his 4-5 desired counties were watching other YouTube videos on the topic of opioids & pregnancy
  • Many of those videos were on channels which permitted ads to run (typically a video ad before the main video started)
  • Those ad spot opportunities were very inexpensive, sometimes as low as 2-3 cents per “view” (where a “view”, in YouTube ad’s definition, is 25+ seconds of watch time when running as an ad)

 

This means that if he gave us just another $100 to spend, plus just one video speaking directly on the topics of maternity and opioid challenges, then the doctor may have been able to:

  • Get upward of 3000 views (25+ seconds or more of watch time per “view”) from women ages 18-24 in his desired geographic areas.  This would be calculated with a “view” costing him 3 cents, then he would have spent $1 to get 33 “views”.  A $100 ad spend then could have generated 3000+ “views”, possibly more.
  • We could have targeted specific keywords, entire YouTube channels, or even just specific videos which permitted ads to run in front of them like this one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbeVhMye9NQ

His video also could have been added to a new YouTube playlist on the topic, with his video at the #1 spot (plus a description including a link to his website and phone number), and several videos from authoritative news and medical YouTube channels confirming the issues regarding opioids and pregnant women.

That new multi-video playlist (with his video appearing first) then could have been:

  • Embedded on his website pages
  • Shared on the Google My Business updates/posts section
  • Shared on his Facebook pages
  • Received low-cost paid traffic via Google Display Network ads (an advanced technique here)
  • Included inside a press release about the topic
  • Sent to relevant prospective patients via email
  • Several other ways to show that his words in an opioid-specific video were then being backed up by authoritative other videos (like the PBS News Hour link mentioned earlier)

 

Nonetheless, his YouTube efforts produced solid results and still are ranking well to this day. 

ONE EXTRA BENEFIT TO YOUTUBE ADS

Unlike most other forms of online digital paid advertising, YouTube ads have an unexpected benefit!  That is if you have the videos properly optimized before running them as paid ads in YouTube, then once the ad spend stops… you still may gain long-term benefit.

What does this mean?

In essence, the “views” (25+ seconds or more of watch time when running as an ad in YouTube) coming from the desired geographic area — which match the keywords for which you are optimizing the video — basically help your video(s) rank better in YouTube and, ultimately, Google for desired keywords.  That is why his videos rank well in Google to this day for one of his nearby high-income town keywords.  The paid ads in YouTube came from that town to his slide show video and, once the paid ads/views stopped, the video had gained enough “watch time” and authority to be deemed “authoritative” enough by Google to still rank well for those relevant town-specific keywords.

This is one of the reasons why we fought hard to focus on YouTube ads as much as (if not more than) Facebook ads.  If the “homework” is done properly up front, then the amount spent on ads (views) could be less than Facebook ads… and you might get the long-term SEO rankings as an extra benefit!

 

Facebook Marketing And Ads

His Facebook marketing did okay, but his staff didn’t answer patient inquiries sent through Facebook either at all, or they were very slow to respond.  This hurt his Facebook efforts to gain a ton of new phone calls as women in his area’s younger demographic (18-24) just seem to refuse to pick up the phone and make a phone call to book an appointment.  Most chose to email or send a Facebook message.

Nonetheless, by sharing his videos and some helpful “social” content (like articles about what to do if you believe you are pregnant) and some Facebook ads, we were able to generate about 20-25 phone calls and inquiry appointments for him.

This wasn’t necessarily all that great, considering what could have been the case, but there was no active campaign to have his current and previous patients follow him on Facebook.  That would have been the “seed” to grow the universe to whom he then could share content, with the intent of some of those first-phase followers sharing his “value added” content with their friends and followers.  There were many missed opportunities, but at least the efforts generated new patients nonetheless.

 

 

Instagram, Yelp, Twitter, Tumblr And Nextdoor

instagram medical doctor marketing online lead generation social media

None of these were implemented due to time and budget limitations.  Still, each could have influenced many new prospective patients to call him for appointments as his practice offers a wide range of women’s health services for women of all ages.

Advanced software now can take the Instagram and Twitter and Tumblr platforms to new levels and each can benefit any medical practice across the country in customized ways.  Yes, these social and review platforms even can have search engine optimization (SEO) benefits despite their not being typically associated with SEO or SEM.

In this doctor’s case, Instagram would have been terrific as so many women between the ages of 18-24 use Instagram in his desired geographic areas.  Unfortunately, it is difficult for a third-party marketing service to “handle his Instagram” due to his state’s licensing agencies being stringent on content that is shared on social media.  The content would have had to have been managed primarily by someone on his staff, and there was no willingness to do so by someone with a marketing mindset in his offices.

To clarify, the “marketing mindset” refers to someone who understands that (while staying compliant with state laws and overall levels of appropriateness for the audience) the goal is to grow the practice’s patient numbers.  This would require the intelligent blending of any/all of the following:

  • Choosing the right hashtags to use for Instagram posts.  For example, at the time of this post (February 2020), the Instagram hashtag of #pregnancyannouncement has been used over 570,000 times (https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/pregnancyannouncement/).  Missing the boat on this hashtag and high-volume related hashtags (like #mothertobe and #amipregnant) could lose him valuable new patients from his area.  This wouldn’t even factor in using local hashtags!
  • Incentivizing previous patients to share/like the doctor’s Instagram posts.  This does not mean a monetary incentive, but more of a sense of community and feeling welcomed by the doctor and his staff
  • Choosing appropriate photos showing the overall good feeling his patients get when they arrive at his offices
  • Posts helping with the emotions women feel when they experience any wide number of challenges related to unfortunate health news
  • Attracting to the Instagram page the boyfriends, fiances and husbands in the geographic area to help them better understand women’s health so that they enhance their relationships and trust the doctor (and his team) to protect the health of the women they love
  • When (and when not!) to comment on a patient’s Instagram post, and what to post on behalf of the practice – both from a sense of being appropriate as well as state licensing/compliance agency requirements
  • Much more

 

RECAP

Thank you for reading this far regarding the case study.  There were some solid “wins”, some “losses” and a few missed opportunities.  This website name of “More Than SEO” was chosen for a reason, as you can see that much is required in today’s online marketing environment to grow a local business – especially a medical practice dealing with the high emotions and costs associated with one’s health.

In all, for the time expended and the ad budget given, we are happy with the results but know that so much more could have been achieved.  Either way, you now have a case study showing that medical practice online marketing and SEO is much more than just choosing the color and design of your practice’s website, throwing on the site a few images, and running a few Facebook ads!

We hope that you have a better understanding of your own business model now in order to grow your practice. 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS:  TRUST

trust hands

 

The biggest takeaway we want you to have is that marketing “trust” is now fragmented, even within the very same person you are trying to reach!

For example, if your practice was trying to reach women ages 18-24 in suburban America with a median household income of $50,000 or more then that woman has “fragmented” trust from a marketing perspective.  By this we mean she likely:

  • Doesn’t pick up the phone and call local businesses very often.  She will be more comfortable initiating contact via Facebook or Instagram or email.  Having her fill in complex contact forms on websites (while easier for you to manage) may not necessarily be in her best interest.
  • Spends time with friends online via Snapchat and/or Instagram
  • Won’t respond much (if at all) to local print advertising (e.g. local newspapers, flyers, and local print publications)
  • Might be on Facebook, but may not respond to ads
  • Will be watching videos of interest to her on YouTube
  • Will be making lots of “near me” queries in Google, perhaps via voice searches (e.g. “OB GYN near me” or similar searches)
  • May make home-related decisions on Houzz.com
  • May consult boards on Pinterest for several ideas, especially anything inclined toward static images
  • Will consult national websites for articles like those on Huffington Post or others
  • Uses apps like Poshmark and other apps to make decisions to buy/sell items locally
  • Will rely heavily on local reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. before making a business decision or a decision regarding her health
  • Will check the reviews not just of the practice but also the social media of the doctor himself/herself.  That is why doctors now have to be more disciplined in their personal lives than ever before
  • May not listen to any local news on the radio
  • Likely doesn’t know or care about your local chamber of commerce
  • Etc.

In previous decades local “trust” was restricted to word-of-mouth referrals, local newspapers, radio, community publications, chamber of commerce, phone book ads, local TV stations, and a few other “trusted” sources.  The internet and social media and apps blew the door wide open so there now are many changes in how someone making decisions for a medical practice (typically in/above the age of 40) differs from someone a generation younger (18-24). 

The big thing is to “get out of your own head” and how you make decisions; and, instead, get “inside the head” of the people you want to become new patients.  Learn how they think, what they trust, and how they make decisions online.  If you do that, stay humble with your marketing, and offer great service (thus generating a consistent flow of favorable patient reviews!), you should see an increase in your business in the coming months.

If you would like help for your medical practice or other medical-related business (ranging anywhere from compounding pharmacies to revenue cycle management to medical equipment) then contact us here:

CONTACT

 

 

 

Filed Under: internet marketing, lead generation, local marketing, medical, online marketing, pay per click, SEO, small towns Tagged With: , , ,
April 5, 2015 by

Case Study – Restaurant Grand Opening Marketing Online

In future blog posts I may add some case studies to determine what has or hasn’t worked when using online marketing to help generate new business.  A recent project is worth a short case study due to the fact that it simultaneously both worked and did not work as well as expected.

OVERVIEW:

A fast-casual and drive-through restaurant chain, with the majority of its locations and headquarters, is based in Northern California.  The company desired to expand and chose the Dallas Fort Worth region as its main expansion focal point.  This is due to the influx of people and businesses moving into the DFW Metroplex area which meet their primary demographic audience.

There is significant competition for the type of food that they serve.  With that understood, one of their differentiators is to have a grand opening where they give away free food and offer some light entertainment (music, bounce house for kids, etc.).

THE CLIENT’S BELIEFS

Their belief is that free food, like it does for high school and college kids, is enough of an enticement to get people to show up.  From there they believe that the word-of-mouth should take over and help boost day-by-day traffic to the restaurant in conjunction with basic social media and real-world marketing:  coupons, flyers, direct mail, etc.

They asked me to help promote the grand opening event with various online marketing elements:  SEO, paid ads, free listings, etc.  The end result was their best turnout ever for a grand opening, despite the weather being less-than-ideal during a cold Saturday afternoon in February in North Texas.

WHAT WORKED:

In terms of what worked to promote this restaurant’s grand opening, from the online marketing perspective, it boiled down to three elements:

  • Targeted Facebook paid ads
  • Online event calendar listings via the classified ads
  • Dallas Fort Worth-specific “things to do” calendars

The clear winner, of the three, was the Facebook paid ad method.  Although people surveyed at the event mentioned the above 3 virtually to the exclusion of other methods, the Facebook paid advertising method was the best far and away.

Instead of paying to have people “like” the Facebook page, or paying to have them leave Facebook and be taken to another website, we crafted a basic post to go on the Facebook page.  It answered the “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” questions; and it had a graphic of the free food which would be given away that day.

In order to overcome resistance, we emphasized that the person didn’t need to bring any coupon or have to show anything at the event.  All that was required was to show up and eat free food.

METRICS

We split test different ads to determine which would have the best “metrics”.  Unlike regular online ad metrics, paid ads in social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) have additional measurements of success which include:

  • “likes” of the post
  • shares of the post (the biggest one as it reaches people via a “tacit” endorsement)
  • post comments
  • clicks through to the website to get more information

Remember that the restaurant business, especially in a high-competition environment like Dallas Fort Worth, likely will draw people from no more than 5 miles and, likely, more like 1-3 miles.  In order to address this, we targeted the paid advertising to JUST the zip code where the restaurant’s location is.  This can be altered in your case if your location is near the line of two zip codes; but the restaurant in this study was in the middle of its zip code.

We then targeted the Facebook paid ad (promoting the SPECIFIC post on the Facebook business page) by this method:

  • zip code(s)
  • genders (we targeted both men and women)
  • language spoken (in this case, just English)
  • age range (we chose ages 30-40)
  • interests:  we chose interests based on those which would be “liked” or groups liked by parents with kids in the 30-40 age range.  These include local youth soccer, PTA, kids TV shows, etc
  • marital status:  we chose all, but your specific post could targeted those who are only “married”, “divorced”, “separated”, “single”, etc.
  • workplaces:  we did not narrow the list to those only working for specific companies, although you have that flexibility if you are running a Facebook ad promotion for those working for major employers in your area

END RESULT

The Facebook paid (promoted) post got shared/commented/liked over 700 times according to the paid ad stats provided by Facebook.  Based on predetermining percentages of those who took action, with those who showed up, the client and I figured that the efforts produced somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 250 people showing up as a result of the Facebook paid advertising.

The cost to have one person actually show up, based on the total ad spend, was around $0.80 (eighty cents).  The acquisition cost-per-new-customer was more successful than they imagined it would be.  In conjunction with their real world efforts, such as promotions at local schools and churches, the efforts led to a combined turnout better than they ever had at any grand opening in company history.

THINGS WHICH DIDN’T WORK

While the above is great, a case study wouldn’t be beneficial to you without understanding what didn’t work.  The following list doesn’t mean that these techniques are bad.  It just means that they didn’t work for this particular grand opening in February 2015 in the DFW market for the type of food being promoted.

  • Press release:  not enough distribution through social channels to reach the very-defined audience in one zip code.  The retail consumer’s ability to be accessed via basic online press releases (for just “free food”) is not newsworthy enough.
    • The press release DID WORK, however, in terms of ranking in the search engines for “XYZ food TOWN Texas” and “XYZ catering TOWN Texas”.  This gives merit to the press release strategy for getting new walk-in customers and catering orders months after the grand opening is completed
    • The press release has to be optimized for these phrases, however, so be sure that you know what you are doing
    • Link building to the press release helped the press release stay on top of the search engines.  Contact us if you need help with boosting your previous press releases for certain keywords in the search engines
  • Contacting the “things to do” people in Twitter for that town.  Even though this made good sense, it just didn’t work out as the people running those Twitter channels either didn’t care or weren’t given enough incentive to make repeat endorsements to their followers (which supposedly had hundreds from that town)
    • If your grand opening really has something newsworthy, like a famous band or pro athlete appearing, then these Twitter channel owners may help you; but otherwise their influence appears to be exaggerated
  • Using Twitter hashtags for the specific town
    • It just didn’t work for this case, despite 5 tweets all using the city’s most in-demand hashtag (supposedly)
  • YouTube videos from previous grand openings in nearby cities
    • Nobody seemed to care, as the view counts, despite being marketed to the new town just never increased markedly.  No comments/likes/etc. of the video from the previous city’s grand opening
    • This was weird as both the client and I thought that “social proof” (seeing other people having fun at a recent grand opening) would generate some anticipation of what was to take place at the upcoming grand opening.  It just didn’t work out that way
  • Relying on friends and employees to tweet, like, share the information.  Unless forced or paid to do so, the staff just “never got around” to promoting the grand opening’s “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” information to THEIR OWN friends and family
    • This can be deemed “sad”, but it confirms the stereotype of the “employee mindset” when they have no vested interest in generating one new person to appear
    • Corporate office is rethinking the incentives on certain days (not just grand openings) to give employees a financial incentive to market to those they know; but that process is still in its infancy
  • QR Codes:  this didn’t work because the staff barely gave out the material with the QR code to those who attended early in the afternoon to “check in” or leave a review on Facebook which would entice friends to attend the event later in the afternoon.  The few who handed out the material couldn’t convey why someone should scan the QR code
    • This ties in with the employee mindset mentioned above
    • It also shows a lack of understanding by corporate office, as they realized later the power that QR codes can have on generating positive reviews on sites like UrbanSpoon.com, Yelp, and other review websites

TAKEAWAYS FOR YOU

Thank you for reading this far.  I want you to have an honest look at what did and did not work in this particular case study.  Some of the methods COULD have worked, but they needed more time or refinement; and, in some cases, they needed to give their own people more incentive to promote the event.

As for your upcoming grand opening or other event that needs online marketing to help increase attendance there are some takeaways:

  • Give staff some sort of incentive to promote the event
  • Free works, but not in all online media
  • Some methods, which you expect to work, will fizzle (i.e. the YouTube video of the previous grand opening for a city 20 miles away)
  • Hyper-targeted paid ads, even though they are paid posts, likely will generate a very low cost to acquire a new customer (client).  This has to have lots of planning beforehand, however, in order to maximize your ad spend
  • Sometimes an effort can generate business in the long term, even though it lost out in the short term
    • The press release is the example in this case

I hope that all of this helps you better understand the role of online marketing when having a live grand opening for a local business.  If you need help with any aspect, especially the paid ads, then you are welcome to contact us for strategy and/or implementation assistance.

Filed Under: Event, grand opening, Local Business Revenues, pay per click Tagged With: ,
September 19, 2013 by

Dallas AdWords Consultant – What You Can Expect

If you represent a business in the Dallas Fort Worth area, or any major U.S. city, then you may have considered using online paid advertising to reach prospective customers or clients.  Many businesses like the choice of Google AdWords because it offers them flexibility in three ways:

  • advertising on the Google Search Network (Google search engine results pages)
  • advertising on the Google Display Network (showing up on relevant websites and blogs/forums which permit Google to run ads)
  • advertising within YouTube, including targeting specific phrases or even specific competitors

Regarding using the Google Search Network, which is the one most commonly used by businesses looking to reach out to those directly searching for their products and services, you may not be familiar with all of advanced options within your account.  While the natural tendency is to say “skip it”, neglecting these could cause two issues:

  • your ads do not get enough exposure due to issues like your ad’s “Quality Score” or other concerns
  • you may be paying more per click than you should be

If you are considering a consultant to help you with your online pay per click (PPC) strategy, especially if you use AdWords, then here are some of the topics which should be analyzed within your account:

* Reviewing account settings and coordination with other Google services such as Webmaster Tools, Analytics, YouTube (if so desired), etc.

* Campaign settings analysis which includes narrowing campaigns to one device, whether or not optimized for clicks, percentage of ad scheduling, ad rotation, combining display with search network, etc.

* Ad Group analysis which includes multiple ads for split testing, limiting keywords per ad group, etc.

* Keyword analysis which includes percentage of broad match vs. phrase/exact match, adding/editing negative keywords, Quality Score analysis, problem status keywords, etc.

* Ad management analysis which includes:  Disapproved Ads management, altering display URL if needed, campaigns having ads with ad extensions, punctuation on the headling (e.g. “?”), etc.

* Ad copy analysis which includes call to action, any scarcity/urgency/intrigue, keyword in the ad

If your business spends $5000 a month or more on the Google AdWords Search Network, then it is possible that your consultant can help you get more clicks for the same ad spend each month; or you may be able to get the same number of targeted clicks while trimming 5% or more from your monthly ad spend.  Sometimes the percentage savings can be even greater if your consultant discovers wasted money on clicks which are not relevant or are poorly performing due to the page where the prospects are being sent.

As a side benefit, enhancing your pages where paid traffic is being sent also has the potential to improve your SEO efforts in the other search engines.

If you spend a respectable amount each month in AdWords, and you would like assistance to enhance your ROI, then you are welcome to contact us with your questions.

 

 

Filed Under: AdWords, pay per click Tagged With: , , ,
August 20, 2013 by

Reaching The Entire DFW Market

Some business owners throughout the Dallas Fort Worth region truly can serve the entire DFW market and even additional markets.  Unlike smaller services which can serve a realistic radius of 5-10 miles (or an even smaller radius), these businesses have a different vision such as:

  • there is enough profit margin in the transaction to justify the time and expense to travel to a small town across the DFW Metroplex and conduct business
  • the business is so unique, or perceived to be so specialized, that prospective customers across the region want the product, service or other benefits associated with the particular business
  • the business can ship products and/or already has representatives near to the smaller towns in DFW

One question is which types of businesses can justify marketing to a wider radius than just the regular small 5-10 mile radius which is common with many local businesses?  Another question is how to reach the smaller towns without having to become a member of each local chamber of commerce or placing ads in every newspaper or print publication across the region?

Types Of Businesses Which Qualify

Here is just a short list of the types of businesses which can pursue larger-radius marketing at the DFW level or even state-wide:

  • Corporate relocation services
  • Specialty legal and financial services
  • Industrial products
  • Higher end home improvement services (e.g. interior design, remodeling, etc.)
  • Custom home builders
  • Surveyors
  • Higher end home repair services (sewer line installation, etc.)
  • Etc.

How To Reach All Of DFW And Beyond

The first thing you need to know is that there are over 200 towns and cities which comprise the DFW region.  This is not just Dallas, Collin, Denton or Tarrant Counties either.  The neighboring counties also are included as there can be highly-qualified prospects in the small towns throughout every DFW county.

To narrow down the options of how to reach these people, and do so in a budget-sensitive manner you have a few options:

  • TV ads — obviously you must be hyper-vigilant about your budget and any tracking you can generate here
  • Same with radio ads
  • Classified ads are a great way to get exposure.  Be sure to optimize your ads to include the towns and cities which you serve; and be sure to play nice by the terms of service and posting rules for the various online classified ads you intend to use
  • Direct mail targeting specific neighborhoods in specific zip codes.  A good mailing list broker, who can highly target your prospects across the region, would be a very wise investment here
  • Paid press release distribution can be beneficial, especially if you mention specific towns in your content
  • Pay Per Click (AdWords) is a smart way to start.  You can target each specific town, but you want to send the traffic to optimized (town-specific) landing pages on your website.  Also, be sure that there is some sort of benefit easily visible to the prospective customer and a “call to action” (e.g. “call today” or “download this coupon”)
    • Note that there are other pay-per-click services besides Google AdWords, Yahoo’s advertising, and Bing’s advertising services.  Please contact us for these alternative options where your competition may not be advertising
  • For business-to-business (B2B) advertising in the Dallas Fort Worth region you may consider targeted advertising within LinkedIn
  • You can do demographic-based targeted advertising, especially town by town, in Facebook.  Just note that:
    • depending on the devices your prospects use, you may not get complete exposure on Facebook to those using mobile devices
    • you likely will have a higher conversion rate if you send the traffic to a page you control within Facebook.  Most Facebook users don’t like to be led automatically off of Facebook at first, so consider sending the traffic to Facebook page you control regularly which has consistently-updated benefit-laden content (coupons, discounts, helpful tips, entertaining videos, etc.)
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  This is one of the trickier, but possibly soundest ways to get hyper-targeted prospects.  You can have created for you a multi-niche website (or a blog which resides alongside your website) which has town-specific optimized pages.  Ideally, the content on each of the 200+ towns is unique including article content, images, any embedded videos, etc.  Just so long as the combination of text/images/videos is unique you should be good, especially for phrases people type in which may have relatively low competition in the search engines.

The latter option (the blog/website with town-optimized pages) gives you additional benefit.  For example, here is a website which has town-optimized pages for varying business niches.  Here is one for a series of highly-related niches.  And here is a site with optimized pages for just one niche.

The benefits here are:

  • That you can control specific content for each town or city in which you want to market.  For example, if you want to give coupons in one town but not another you can do so
  • You have optimized pages to which you can send your pay per click (PPC) traffic such as traffic Google AdWords.  This increases the odds of gaining a higher “quality score” for your ads (assuming everything else is done right) and possibly saving money by reducing your per-click costs
  • The optimized page could rank well in the search engines for the times when the phrase is entered alongside the specific town (e.g. “your business Plano TX”)
  • You even go “deeper” than the specific towns.  For example, if you want to offer incentives to people in specific HOA’s or parts of a town then you can do so.

If you would help on any of these topics then you are welcome to contact us with your specific needs.  Thank you for your time and consideration to share this post.

Filed Under: AdWords, internet marketing, lead generation, local marketing, online marketing, pay per click, search engine marketing, SEO, small towns Tagged With: , , , , ,
August 12, 2013 by

Benefits Of A Dallas Fort Worth PPC AdWords Consultant

If you are looking to grow your business in the Dallas Fort Worth region, whether you are seeking new local or regional customers, there are several ways to get traffic to your website and other web properties.  Of course, you would like to have all of the traffic you can handle coming to you from no-cost sources.  These sources include:

  • ranking well in the search engines for high-traffic broad terms people enter (keywords) relevant to what you are selling
  • ranking well in the search engines for terms (keywords) which are indicative of someone wanting to do business with you right away
  • free press release sites
  • people promoting your services on local online forums which have high degrees of trust
  • people promoting (endorsing) you to their colleagues and friends on sites like LinkedIn
  • having your video “go viral” on YouTube
  • getting free media coverage from the websites of local TV, radio and newspapers across DFW
  • etc.

Unfortunately, you may not have the initial budget, luck or skill to consistently get that type of traffic to your website or other web properties (e.g. your Twitter and Facebook pages) where people can do business with your Dallas Fort Worth-based business.  You also may have a new website where you want to test how well the website’s aesthetics help to convert first-time visitors to call you, e-mail you, download a free e-book, or take some other “call to action”.

In these types of situations you may want to consider using some form paid advertising.  These can include paid press release online distribution services, demographic target ads on Facebook, and the more traditional pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.  The benefits to this last type of advertising can include the following (and more):

  • You can control how much you want to spend on a per-click, per-day or per campaign amount
  • You can choose whether you want to advertise on the search engine results pages and/or on relevant websites which either focus on Dallas Fort Worth topics or are being looked at by people with DFW I.P. addresses
  • You can determine if you want your ads to appear on mobile devices, laptop/desktop devices or all devices
  • You can control (to some degree) what time of day, and what days of the week, your ads will run
  • There are call tracking capabilities (in some regards) which can help you determine the effectiveness
  • You can run ads which have a maps “marker” indicating your place of business in the DFW region

Google has its pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-1000-impressions (CPM) ad network which every Dallas Fort Worth business owner can use.  This is called Google AdWords.  The AdWords system permits a business owner to:

  • include goal tracking and other conversion tracking
  • integration with Google Analytics
  • keyword-level tracking
  • targeting specific sites which have placed an “open billboard” for Google to place relevant ads
  • etc.

From the same login and password you even can promote your specific YouTube videos and do pay-per-view (PPV) marketing, which is the YouTube video equivalent of traditional pay per click advertising.  In that instance you can promote your video to rank in YouTube for when people make specific searches inside of YouTube; or you can pay to get placement on a specific video which you believe would attract a certain percentage of that video’s viewers to your business’ video.

As you can see, this type of advertising can be more extensive than you may have first considered.  One note to consider is that many DFW business owners are overpaying for clicks during their initial attempts at Google AdWords or other pay per click marketing.  There are several ways to either:

  • get the same number of targeted clicks for a lower per-click price
  • get more targeted clicks for the same monthly advertising spend

Hopefully you can understand the possible need for a pay per click (PPC) and AdWords consultant in Dallas Fort Worth to help local businesses make intelligent decisions.  Click the link to learn more about that type of service and what to ask when you seek assistance to help you get more from your advertising budget.

Filed Under: AdWords, pay per click, video marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,
July 15, 2010 by

Dallas PPC – When Is Pay Per Click Better Than SEO

A common question many Dallas area business owners have asked me is if it is better to follow a SEO strategy or a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy.  The answer depends on the actual keyword being chosen. Ideally, if your budget allows for both strategies then you should consider doing both.  If your budget, however, is constrained then here is an example to help you determine which is best for your specific situation.

At the time of this example, the Google Keyword Tool says that the following keywords have this data:

  • The keyword phrase “Nail salon Dallas” has 2900 searches per month, has some degree of seasonality (but nothing skewed or out of the ordinary), and has an average cost-per-click (CPC) $0.83 per click.  Note that the CPC is not a “fixed price”; but it is the best available data you will have to work with that is not from a paid keyword research data mining software program
  • The keyword phrase “Nail salons in Dallas” has 590 searches per month, and has a posted CPC of $0.05 per click.  This extremely-cheap pay-per-click cost may not be realistic, and an inexpensive CPC would require ideal optimization of the ad and landing page for the keyword.  Nonetheless, you can be conservative and assume that the keyword would cost, in reality, somewhere around $0.30 per click

One other assumption:  let’s assume that if you rank # 1 in the “organic” (left-hand side) keyword results (not including the Maps listings) for a one-month period, then you will receive  roughly 40% of the searches.

Here is the math for our example:

  • If you were to rank # 1 for “Nail salon Dallas” then you would receive 40% of the  2900 searches for the month.  This would translate to roughly 1160 visitors for the 30-day period.  To buy 1160 visitors (clicks), you would have to pay roughly $962.80 per month at an average of $0.83/click
  • If you were to buy all 590 clicks for “nail salons in Dallas” (which would take longer than thes one-month period) at $0.30 per click (our conservative adjusted CPC) it would cost you roughly $177
  • 590 clicks for “nail salon Dallas” would cost you on PPC, at $0.83 per click, roughly $489.70

Let’s assume that your SEO efforts will get you roughly 2 months (60 days) of ranking # 1 in the search engines for the keyword.  If the cost, in terms of time and cash outlay, are cheaper for SEO then it is advantageous to pursue a SEO strategy instead of a PPC strategy.  This assumes that you are willing to follow the rules for intelligent and optimization.

{AUTHOR NOTE}

Please note that the pay-per-click costs we are discussing is not the Google Content Network.  This post is about the traditional Google Search Network, Yahoo’s PPC network, and the Bing/MSN AdCenter network.

If you need any help designing a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy then please feel free to contact me at your convenience.

Filed Under: pay per click Tagged With: , , ,