Written by Anthony Piwarun
We decided to do an in-depth write-up on Search Engine Marketing for our readers. For those well-versed in search engine marketing, in the webinar, you’ll learn:
- Background on Why is SEM Important for Healthcare
- Description of the Convergence of Paid, Owned & Earned Media
- Tried and True SEM Strategies for Healthcare
The purpose of this post, however, is to educate fellow healthcare marketers on the benefits of search engine marketing from the ground up. There are so many acronyms in the digital world and I know for a fact from describing, “what I do” to family and friends that “SEO” and “PPC” are a mystery, but I digress. On to the content!
What is SEM?
For those who aren’t aware of the term “SEM”, we’ve decided to define the term due to it’s importance to the digital marketing mix. At a high-level, “SEM”, or, search engine marketing, is a digital strategy that involves driving traffic to a website through search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! organically or through paid advertisements.
As an example, let’s do a search on Google for “Wisconsin Heart Hospital”:
The green box illustrates paid listings, or, PPC advertisements, which typically are displayed on the top, bottom, and right-hand side of a search engine results page (SERP). Paid listings are just as the name implies – they are paid. The model for Google and Bing (which powers Yahoo! search) is on a pay-per-click basis meaning that you only pay when a potential patient clicks your ad. PPC advertising, while costing money compared to other mediums, is useful to getting relevant, qualified visitors to your site while in the process of optimizing for owned and earned media channels like organic and local. Additionally, it will get your healthcare system, hospital, or clinic instant visibility albeit for a cost.
In the blue box we see organic, or, natural listings for what Google and Bing deem as the most relevant, authoritative, and trustworthy sites based on your search query and location. There are thousands of ranking signals that make up the algorithm for search engines to display your site organically, so that’s where search engine optimization, or, SEO, comes into play. While ranking in the top ten listings on the first page organically is legitimately hard work, it pays off in the end of a low-risk, high-reward inbound marketing strategy that’s sustainable while yielding a high return on investment.
Finally, in the red box, we have local results. For the sake of argument, I’ve segmented organic and local results, despite each having similar ranking signals and tactics to improve visibility, as a way to show how each channel can build off each other’s efforts and integrate into your digital marketing strategy. To be highlighted in local search results (which are organic, i.e. ‘no-cost’), your healthcare system, hospital or clinic must have a Google Plus Local or Bing Local profile page to be displayed in results. If you thought optimizing your site organically as a healthcare organization was hard enough, think again – local optimization is much more time-consuming, yet, it yields a higher reward because search engines and users alike have shifted from searching for “[CITY NAME] hospitals” to just “hospitals”. Lucky for you, and us as search engine marketing experts for that matter, both Google and Bing have simplified their search results to be based on IP / location of the potential patient searching for the service.
Why is SEM Important?
Search engine marketing is a critical part of your digital marketing mix due to the popularity of search engines. Think of it this way… 85% of all internet browsing sessions begin on a search engine. Imagine how many of your prospective patients are looking up signs, symptoms, and treatments for an ailment? Whether you run paid ads, optimize organically, or increase visibility locally, search engines should be a staple in your digital marketing mix due to the quality of traffic driven to your site and the natural byproduct of leads in the form of appointment form requests or phone calls.
Tricks of the Trade
This wouldn’t be an informative how-to article without actionable tips, would it? At Perficient, we help our partners optimize websites organically, manage paid advertisements, and increase visibility through local digital marketing initiatives regardless of the vertical they’re in. From what we’ve seen in the healthcare space, we’ve compiled five tips to increase your visibility online:
- Attack each and every medium, be it organic, paid, or local
- Identify your business goals, objectives, and stay true to your digital marketing KPI’s, whether they are request an appointment form submissions, click-to-call conversions, or even view a physician bio
- Align your digital marketing strategies and build efficiencies through each medium to reduce duplicate effort and avoid overlap
- Deploy paid search advertisements to test the waters for future optimizations organically where it will take time and resources to see a return on investment
- Always keep your target audience in mind. This sounds like a no-brainer from a marketing perspective, but in the world of search, content and the quality of said content is king. Don’t chase search engine algorithms… develop content and assets that are beneficial to visitors to seamlessly guide them from point A to point B… the conversion.
Have you had any experience marketing to a healthcare-centric audience? If so, we’d love to hear what’s worked – and what hasn’t – in your digital marketing efforts.
