With thousands of home healthcare websites jostling for online supremacy, getting your brand the attention it deserves can be an uphill battle. What makes it even harder to manage is picking the right marketing strategies that can drive hordes of potential clients to your website.
A winning digital marketing plan involves various components, but ‘paid advertising’ is the most direct route to your bottom line.
Let’s put it this way: you can pray for clicks if you use a few SEO strategies and hope they get you to the top of the search engine results page (SERPs) – or you can pay for clicks and see results. That is where PPC or Pay-Per-Click marketing comes in.
There are primarily two ways you can run a PPC campaign for your home healthcare business:
- Paid Search
- Display Advertising
Paid search works by putting your brand’s name at the top of search results, while display advertisements are slightly passive but can still greatly boost your brand image. So, how do you know which strategy to focus on?Let’s begin by discussing the differences between the two.
The Differences between Paid Search and Display Advertising
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising lets you target specific keywords related to your home healthcare business and get your website in the top three or four results on the SERPs. There is only one thing that distinguishes your paid search ad from the organic listings i.e., the word-“ad”-off to one side that some users may not even notice.
The SERPs are much like the “low-hanging fruit.” For example, when people are actively searching for care services like “in home care in Florida” or “Florida caregivers”, you can easily reach them and possibly convert them into clients.
Display advertisements, on the other hand, are more passive. These are ads which show up at the top of a site (banner advertisements) or off to one side, the results of which may not have to necessarily do anything with the site your potential clients are browsing. They can view these ads while they are reading articles, blogs, or browsing any of their favorite sites. Typically, they are able to see the advertisement because it’s relevant to the content on the page or is based on their search behavior in the past.
Display Advertising in Healthcare Marketing
Display advertising helps in ensuring that people recall your brand whenever they need your service. Your potential clients might be browsing The Washington Post website, watching a video on YouTube, or searching symptoms of a disease on WebMD when they suddenly notice your image/video advertisement.
Display ads allow you to target users based on their behavior or the type of content they’re currently browsing. For example, they may be searching for an ideal care solution for their loved one and when they’re ready to find a senior care agency, they would recall your brand if you had already planted a seed.
Targeted PPC Advertising through Paid Search
Paid search is more intent-based, which puts the results on the top of SERPs.
You may think that most people tend to skip these ads. Well, yes,some people do skip the paid ads, but many others do not even realize that they are paid results. In fact, some users prefer paid advertisements when they’re ready to hire a care provideras it shows that you’re actively looking to serve seniors in need of care.
So, Which Paid Healthcare Marketing Strategy is Best for Your Business?
Which is better – Display advertising or paid search? Here is the thing: digital advertising is not just about display advertisements, search ads, and YouTube campaigns. You must use all of them together as a solid PPC strategy for your healthcare business.If you are already doing paid advertising, layer this strategy with image/video ads which cross different platforms. Search ads are an amazing way to reach out to those who are actively searching for the kind of services you offer, but display advertising brings online synergy between all your ads.