Marketing in a slow economy – tips to help your business grow
This is the first post in a series of tips for marketing in a down economy. There are any number of things you can do to market your practice, but suffice to say none of these will work as well individually as they will as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Our firm designs marketing strategies and the tools to market plastic surgeons practices effectively so we see these fundamentals in action everyday. Many doctors struggle to market themselves effectively. Because of that we want to make some simple marketing information available in an easy to understandable format. It’s not rocket science but it’s knowledge from the trenches that will help any plastic surgeon in these tough economic times.
This first post is somewhat reactionary in that I see a lot of clients wasting valuable marketing dollars on AdWords campaigns that cannot succeed. So in the coming weeks I will post additional marketing tips for plastic surgeons and will strive to pull all these tips into a lucid plan of action for anyone attempting to market their practice.
Google AdWords for Plastic Surgeons Part 1
I thought about calling this article ”where did my money go?” because of the many conversations I have had with people who have innocently launched a Google AdWords campaign on their own. There is a repetitive cycle of use that I see that is unfortunate and completely avoidable. It typically goes like this; a business owner will set up an account, bid a huge number of keywords based on how they would search, set their daily limits and create a single generic ad. They kick off their campaign, watch their account burn through their limit everyday and don’t see any increase in business. They come away from the experience convinced AdWords doesn’t work. If you’ve been through this scenario, your not alone.
Google has done a great job of making their online advertising system user friendly. Anyone who is interested in learning it and devotes a little bit of time to it can use the system in a matter of hours. However, AdWords at it’s basic level, is just a tool for marketing. If you don’t have a plan, and you don’t understand how it’s supposed to work, your AdWords campaign will fail. Just because I know how to use a hammer doesn’t mean I can build a house. You need a plan and a lot of other tools to get the job done.
Before you begin it is important to consider whether or not you should proceed. You really need to consider if you should devote the time and energy to learning and working an AdWords campaign yourself. It can benefit your business but the root question is should you take time away from doing your business to learn something that is not a part of your business? As you read this series of posts understand that all of these steps take time. That time will not be available to you to do the work that actually makes you money so it’s a balancing act. After you have an idea of what developing and managing a successful AdWords campaign entails, you should consider hiring a professional internet marketing firm. They can manage this process for you and they have the experience and resources to give you the desired outcome without draining all of your valuable time. So go in with your eyes wide open and consider the options before you proceed.
How Does AdWords Work?
AdWords is a powerful marketing tool that, at it’s basic level, allows you to bypass organic search results and buy the number one position when someone searches for your product or service. You bid on search phrases and are positioned based on the highest bidder. When someone clicks on your ad in the “pay per click” (PPC) section of a search engine results page (SERP) you pay based on what the next highest bidders number is. There are a number of other factors that come into play for exact positioning but essentially that is how the system is designed to work.
The advantage to this innovative approach to marketing are, instant results, tight geographic controls, and a wealth of data to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. You can target a specific geographic area, at a specific time of day, with very specific ads. This is an unprecedented level of control for advertising. Unfortunately this can lead people to believe that it’s a plug and play solution for their business. It can help but it requires a plan.
In the next installment of this series we will walk-through a campaign design and set-up.
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