While digital marketing is hands down the fastest moving aspect of the marketing world, many business owners are slow to evolve in their marketing efforts, mainly because they’re still unsure how it works and whether it’s worth the money.

Ultimately, whether or not your digital marketing efforts are a success and yield a positive ROI (Return on Investment) boils down to these three simple questions:

1. Is your overall digital strategy correlated to your geographical location?
2. Is this strategy designed to optimize your digital presence?
3. How well does it aid you in maximizing and owning your digital real estate?

There are a lot of digital marketing acronyms and buzzwords that get thrown around these days—KPI (Key Performance Indicators), CTR (Click-Through Rate), CPC (Cost Per Click), CPA (Cost Per Action), and the list goes on. The one we’re going to focus on today—which is actually a type of advertising and not a performance indicator—is PPC (Pay Per Click).

You’ll hear this term used interchangeably with Google Ads, Search Engine Advertising, and other similar terms. To keep things simple, the overall goal of a PPC campaign is to meet consumers halfway in their search to find you.

I know what you’re thinking: what on earth does that mean?!

When you’re trying to find a product, you usually start with a Google search, right? Well, it’s no different for a potential hearing aid customer. In fact, 81 percent of consumers perform an online search prior to making a large purchase while 89 percent of consumers turn to Google for answers to healthcare questions. In the year 2020, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Perhaps more surprising…

That’s right—not only are potential patients not going to look past the first few practices that appear in search results, but they’re also unlikely to choose a practice that’s further than five miles. Showing up on page one on Google isn’t enough—your website needs to be in the top three results.

Ranking high on search engines is a combination of two things: staying on top of Google’s algorithm changes and a solid strategy to boost your listing both organically via SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and your site content and inorganically via PPC. While algorithms can be tricky, having good SEO and PPC is the trick to beating the odds and increasing your rankings. In addition, you should use location targeting in Google Adwords to bid for queries happening closer to your location. This is especially important if your practice has walk-in hours.

So, let’s say your website does come up in the top results when potential customers search for an audiologist in their area and your practice happens to be only two miles from their home.

Now what?

If you’re thinking your job is done, think again.

Once potential customers reach your website, it needs to convince them that you are the local provider they need and can trust. You can do this by following these ten tips for ensuring that your site content is mobile-friendly, engaging, informative, accurate, and easy to navigate. Online scheduling is another feature that can greatly help you increase customer engagement and drive positive ROI from your website and digital presence.

The strategy here must be comprehensive to accomplish the one-two punch. First, promote your site via PPC and organic SEO so it ranks highly in search results and drives users to your website. Once potential leads click on your site, it needs to have engaging content that’s relevant to what they are looking for and positive online reviews to help convince them to choose your practice. Finally, your site should be optimized to drive conversions, featuring click-to-call and click-to-email links as well as an online scheduler.

When you convert a lead into a sale during the appointment, well, then your digital strategy has come full circle and your marketing dollars have been well spent!

If you’re looking for help with your digital strategy and website, we have you covered! CQ Partners has partnered with Audiology Design and Healthy Hearing to create the Consult Digital Program—a comprehensive digital solution that includes everything we just discussed (and much more!) to drive your digital ROI.

Talk to Account Manager or reach out to our in-house marketing experts today to get started!