Growing your practice by relying solely on patient referrals may be a thing of the past (unless you count online reviews.) When it comes to expanding the reach of your dermatology practice, digital marketing is a game changer, offering a number of avenues to reach your diverse patient base. Moving with considerably more speed than traditional marketing and advertising, your digital ad strategies for dermatologists have the benefit of responding to a rapidly-changing market in real-time.
CUT THROUGH THE CLUTTER
Today’s online users are bombarded with images, ads, and posts all day long, so it is important that your strategy responds to a need among your patients to get them to click on your posts, visit your website, and ultimately, book their appointment.
Search Ads – Using the services provided by Google Ads, you can implement search advertising using specific keywords coupled with your Google My Business listing and physical location to increase your business exposure to those searching for services in your area. In addition to Search Ads, you can implement Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing that uses sponsored ads through both Google and social media sites to target your outreach and maximize your marketing dollars.
Display Ads – Using graphics, videos, or audio formats, Display Ads are most commonly seen as banner ads that increase brand awareness and recollection by running an ad on an affiliated webpage and directing patients to your website and social media platforms. Customizable with demographic or interest targeting, you can place ads within a group of sites that align with your chosen keywords to target specific patients along their skincare journey.
Social Advertising – Reaching audiences across a number of platforms, Social Advertising allows you to focus your outreach to groups of people based on their profile and likes instead of relying on search terms. Using boosted posts, page ads, and other tools provided by Facebook’s Ad Manager for both Facebook and Instagram allows you to scale your advertising campaign without being limited to a single ad type, while Google Ads allows you to cross-post among both Google and YouTube searches.
MEASURE YOUR MOVEMENT
With the ability to tweak your posting style, frequency, and audience, digital advertising provides a more spirited approach to marketing than monthly magazine ads, billboards, and other traditional media outlets. Showcasing your practice with advantages and disadvantages, this means you cannot rest on your laurels and must take an active approach in monitoring your online engagement and effectiveness of your strategy. Luckily, there are several Analytics and Insights tools built into the Ad Manager platforms for your sites.
Analyze – With social media and Google Analytics, you can determine which sites and posts are best reaching your intended audience. Providing an in-depth snapshot of your user engagement, it is easy to see which posts have landed with your viewers and which have missed the mark. Understanding the reach and effectiveness of your posts allows you to adapt your marketing strategy in real-time, rather than investing the time and effort on sites that are not reaching your potential and current patients.
Vary your approach – Aside from measuring engagement by varying post style and posting time, you can conduct real-time experiments with A/B style ads by creating similar posts with minimal differences. This allows you to determine which performs better and can use this knowledge to tweak your strategy for future posts.
Conversion Rates – It’s one thing to build your online presence, but your ultimate goal is to get patients through the doors of the clinic and into your treatment rooms. Measure the effectiveness of your Call-to-Action buttons across your social media sites, blog posts, website pages, and online advertisements to understand what’s really making them click.
