What is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising (also known as online advertising) refers to the promotion of products or services online. This promotion happens on search engines, social media platforms, websites, or by email.

Setting up a Successful Digital Advertising Campaign for your Dermatology Clinic

Before getting started with your first dermatology advertising campaign, it is important to take into consideration a few basics.

1. Define the Campaign Objective

Defining the campaign objective is critical to choose the right digital channel to advertise on, it helps you choose the right format, and it guides your creative strategy.

2. Define your Customer Personas

Knowing exactly who you’re trying to reach is a must when doing online advertising on the internet; this ensures you get the most benefit out of your advertising budget. It is important to define your customer personas and the job-to-be-done framework.

3. Use Geofencing to advertise locally

Since all dermatology clinics have a physical location, you can use “geofencing” to target mobile users in a specific zip code or neighborhood. This means users can only see your ads when they are close by.

4. Save Costs and Focus on Mobile Ads Only

Google is localizing results for mobile devices, because they are tied to a particular geographical area. Avoid advertising to someone who is not in your area, stick to mobile advertising only. Besides, if someone is searching for a dermatologist, it is extremely likely they are using their phone.

5. Let your Social Media Posts Lead your Ads

It is likely that you’re already making a few posts on social media every week. Some posts will generate more engagement with your followers; others won’t. Keep track of the ones that are liked, shared, and commented on the most. These types of content will make the best social ads.

6. Pay per Click

Paying for impressions is something big companies do as a branding exercise. For a dermatology clinic, you only want to pay for the people who click your ad, which means they are interested in doing business with you. The text in your ad should help users identify whether your service offering is for them or not. If you’re just beginning with digital advertising, start small.

7. Test your ads for performance-optimization

One of the main benefits of social ads is immediate feedback. You can leverage the effectiveness of a sponsored post in a very short time and follow up with advanced analytics reports.

Best practice says that is better to test a few ad versions with small audiences to determine what works best, this way, when you decide to go big, you can use the two best-performing ads in your campaign.

A/B testing is the practice of running two ads against each other to determine what works best and then refine your strategy. It should be an integral part of your advertising efforts.

8. Measure your Results

It is important to measure results against the campaign goals you have established in the beginning. This will let you know if you achieved them and will show you what worked and what didn’t so that you can improve in the future.

Best Digital Advertising Types for Dermatology Clinics

There are many different types of digital ads, but for the purpose of this article, we will focus on paid advertising types that are more likely to be successful for dermatology clinics.

• Social media advertising
• Re-targeting campaigns
• Google AdWords
• Miiskin
• Whatsapp
• Snapchat

1. Social Media Marketing and Social Media Advertising

Social Media Marketing uses social media networks —such as Facebook and Instagram— to promote services, engage with existing customers, and reach new ones¹.

Social Media Advertising uses social networks to deliver paid ads to your target audience. They are a fast and efficient way to reach potential customers, —or in this case, patients— so they are a must if you want to reach a new, highly-targeted audience.

Unfortunately, organic reach is much harder to achieve than it was before. Long gone are the days of going viral with a clever image or video, if you want to reach many potential patients for your dermatology clinic fast, you should invest in Social Media Ads.

Why Is Social Media so Powerful?

The power of Social Media Advertising relies on the unparalleled capacity that social media has in these three key areas: connection, interaction, and customer data.

Connection is defined as a “feeling of understanding” and ease of communication between two or more people². Social Media enables patients to “feel connected” with the brands they love, including their dermatology clinic. Organic and paid posts maintain your clinic top of mind, and inform patients about special offers and the latest treatments available. These platforms also allow patients to ask questions about your services in an informal way, without too much trouble.

Interaction: The dynamic nature of a Social Media interaction enables dermatology clinics to leverage eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth), which is defined as the dynamic information exchange process between potential, actual, or former consumers regarding a product, service, brand, or company, which is available everyone online³. As you know, eWOM is a valuable driver of consumer decisions.

Customer Data: A good Social Media Campaign delivers valuable insights and customer data, which is necessary to boost marketing outcomes.

2. Facebook and Instagram Retargeting Ads

Unlike typical banner ads, retargeting ads on Facebook and Instagram are only shown to people who have already visited your website or are a contact in your database (like a lead or customer).

Facebook and Instagram re-targeting (also known as remarketing) allow you to re-engage with the people who visited your website but didn’t complete the desired Call-to-action, in this case, Book an Appointment. 

It also allows you to upsell your services. For example, if a person books an appointment for a laser treatment, you can show them a Facebook or Instagram advert for fillers. 

You can also retarget people who have engaged with your social media ads or posts. 

To retarget website visitors on Facebook and Instagram, you need to install the Meta pixel on your website. This way, Facebook can keep track of the web pages each user visits and then retarget them with a follow-up campaign.

When you create customized audiences for your dermatology clinic on Facebook, use small audiences with less than 250,000 people as a general rule. Use your customer personas to develop highly targeted campaigns for your ideal customers.

3. Getting Started with Google AdWords

PPC Advertising (Pay Per Click), which includes Social Media and Google Ads, should only be a part of the overall Marketing Strategy for your Dermatology clinic. 

To maximize the return on investment in your PPC campaigns, you should integrate the SEO strategy for your dermatology clinic with your PPC strategy to reach a larger audience. 

According to Google Research, high organic search results in a site can improve the CTR (Click-Through-Rate) of the site’s PPC ads⁴.

For an advertising campaign to be successful, you also need to take into consideration website design and performance (website speed). Web design and performance have an immediate impact on your ads conversion and bounce rates. To ensure the correct performance of your website, take a look at these web design and web development guidelines  for dermatology websites.

How can your PPC Ads support the SEO Strategy of your Dermatology clinic?

Your PPC ads do not affect your organic rankings directly; however, they can help you in several ways.

a) Improve brand awareness

When the paid ads for your dermatology clinic appear at the top of the page, the searcher will see them, and although they may not click on them, they will view other search results.

Subconsciously, if they see that your clinic’s name is also ranking in the organic search results, they will be more familiar with your clinic. 

Now that they feel familiar with your brand, they will probably visit your website to see your service offering. Even if they leave, your PPC ad and your SEO-optimized article have given this new potential patient awareness of your clinic.

According to Google, search ads increase brand awareness by up to 80%⁵.

b) Boost traffic to your SEO-optimized content

You may use your PPC ads to give your already well-ranking and performing SEO-optimized content an extra lift and reach a larger audience. Website clicks could increase if two links are on the same Search engine result page. 

Having additional links in search engines boosts brand exposure and authority in the eyes of the searchers, raising clickthrough rates on paid and organic listings.

This is a clever method to get the most out of your PPC budget because it uses content you already know is performing effectively.

c) Help you test keywords to write new SEO-optimized content

PPC campaigns have an immediate effect, whereas SEO is a long-term strategy. If you have some keywords that have performed well on your PPC campaigns, you could produce SEO content that includes these keywords, so your clinic’s name is displayed in both the paid and the organic search results.

4 Things you should do after setting up your first Google Ads Campaign

a) Remove or replace ads that are not performing well

If some of your ads are not performing, try re-writing the copy. If they still don’t perform, remove them entirely as they are not relevant to you.

b) Refine your keywords

Some keywords may not be relevant for your business. If you identify that some keywords are too far off your chore business, refine your keyword list and use more specific, long-tail keywords instead.

c) Bid for the same keywords as your competitors and a few more

A keyword research tool such as SEMRush or Ahrefs can show you the keywords your competitors rank for. The PPC Auctions Insights Report also helps you to compare your performance with that of your competitors. Afterward, use the Search Query Reports to refine them and see which ones convert.

d) Identify your highest-performing keywords and ads

Identify the ad versions that generate more clicks and conversions. With this information, change the meta title and meta description of your content pieces to improve your clickthrough rate.

5. Whatsapp and Snapchat Advertising

In 2019, the number of Whatsapp users in the United States was 68 million and is projected to grow to 85.8 million by 2023⁶.

In 2020, the number of Snapchat users was 85 million, projected to increase to 90 million by the end of 2022⁷.

Using these two messenger apps represents a golden opportunity to improve the marketing strategy for your dermatology clinic and a bulletproof strategy to build a solid relationship with your patients.

4 Reasons Why you Should Create a Snapchat and Whatsapp Business Accounts

Snapchat and Whatsapp have dedicated business solutions with features that enable advertising and personalization.

For example, you can send personalized welcome, special offers, and birthday messages.

a) Establish a personal relationship with your patients

According to a Facebook survey, more than 50% of users preferred to send a message to a brand on messaging apps rather than calling them⁸.

b) Higher conversion rate

Sending text messages after a potential customer has established contact can increase the conversion rate by 112.6%.

c) Better sales

66% of mobile phone users feel more optimistic about purchasing from a company if it is active on messengers.

d) Lower cost of marketing

WhatsApp and Snapchat are still affordable marketing channels. All you need to do is install the apps and connect to the Internet.

Conclusion

There is no magic formula for digital advertising, every industry is different, and every market is unique. Start small and identify your wins and your mistakes. Apply your learnings to your next campaign, and you will improve over time.

Remember, you don’t need to do everything yourself. You can rely on digital agencies or freelancers to help you with these tasks.

References:
¹https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media-marketing-smm.asp
²https://wikidiff.com/connection/interaction
³https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10796-019-09924-y
⁴https://research.google/pubs/pub37731/
⁵https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/search/search-ads-drive-brand-awareness/
⁶https://www.statista.com/statistics/558290/number-of-whatsapp-users-usa/
⁷https://www.statista.com/statistics/558227/number-of-snapchat-users-usa/
⁸https://www.facebook.com/iq/insights-to-go/among-people-surveyed-across-4-markets-who-message-businesses-over-56-do-so-across-all-stagesthe-six-stages-include-making-a-general-inquiry-making-a-product-or-service-inquiry-making-a-purchase-making-a-reservation-seeking-support-for-a-product-or-service-and-sharing-feedback-on-a-product-or-service-of-their-consumer-journey?ref=fbiq_article_messaging_p2p

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