You’ve been following your marketing plan, making use of all the marketing tactics you can find – from social media posts to improving your Google My Business page, boosting your SEO rankings to collecting email addresses.
And it’s working. Great!
But it could be working even better. You’ve seen the first results come in, and you want more. You want to improve your aesthetic marketing strategy, and you’re willing to invest a little money to get you there.
Those results though, they need to be quick. You don’t want to wait months for your website to rank at the top of Google, or spend half-a-year collecting assets for a content marketing campaign. You need something that can start bringing new clients through the door today.
There’s something that fits the bill. Paid search advertising. Do it right, and you’ll see instant results. But get it wrong, and you could lose money very quickly.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is paid search advertising?
Paid search advertising (or pay-per-click, or PPC) is a way of paying search engines to place adverts for your business on their results pages. But unlike a newspaper ad where you pay a set fee regardless of whether 1,000 people see it or none at all, you only pay when someone interacts with that ad.
You create an ad. The search engine shows it. Visitors click. You pay. Pay-per-click.
Now it’s a little more complicated than that. You choose which search queries your ads will appear on – whether it’s for individual treatments, or clinics in a certain location. You set a budget of how much you’re willing to pay for each click (higher bids appear higher up the page), and you can target certain demographics or areas.
You’ll find our full step by step guide to PPC here.
But it all boils down to when visitors click, you pay.
Where should you pay to place search adverts?
There are really only two options here. Google or Microsoft. Google Ads lets you place ads on the UK’s most popular search engine, along with other sites in its display network such as YouTube, Gmail and third party websites.
Microsoft Advertising lets you put your ads on Bing, and Microsoft’s display network.
You could do both, but if you want to test out PPC, it’s a better bet to use Google. 86.31% of us use Google as our main search engine. Fewer than 10% of us use Bing.
So how do you run a paid advertising campaign on Google?
Use our simple checklist to get started.
Download this checklist (click here and then right-click save)
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Going beyond PPC - other marketing advice for your clinic
A strong marketing strategy doesn’t rely on just one platform or one tactic. Getting your PPC right is important, but it’s not the only thing you should be doing. And it all starts with a strong marketing plan.
Download our marketing plan template, follow the prompts in each of the four sections, and get a clear, instant picture of exactly who your ideal target audience is, what makes you stand out, and how you can use that information to transform your marketing – whether that’s social media marketing, email promotions, or – yes – pay-per-click.
And if you’re looking for more aesthetic clinic marketing advice, our dedicated hub has everything you’ll need to help your clinic thrive.
