SEO, SERP, PPC, CTR – you see too many internet marketing acronyms these days. Healthcare SEM is another one you should know that will prove to be an effective online marketing effort.

You can leverage this process when marketing and advertising your medical practice.

Local doctors and healthcare providers reasonably feel a bit apprehensive when trying out new marketing strategies. This is especially true since the marketing and advertising budget tends to be regulated or limited.

Most local healthcare providers will focus their digital marketing efforts on medical and healthcare website design, SEO for doctors, and medical social media marketing. When done right, these strategies are proven to gain more online traffic, expand visibility, and build your clinic’s branding.

Because of the internet, the medical industry has gotten increasingly competitive.

Local clinics and healthcare providers must leverage various marketing strategies to reach their ideal market, convert prospects into new patients, and inspire current patients to be loyal ones.

In today’s post, we’ll take about the significant digital success and growth provided by healthcare SEM and SEO for doctors and healthcare professionals.

Search Engine Marketing for Doctors: A Beginner’s Guide

Search engine marketing is an effective way for local doctors and medical practices to reach their target market, attract new patients, boost ROI, and lower acquisition costs.

SEM is the process of enhancing the visibility of websites on online search results through paid search advertising and search engine optimization.

The most common variety of paid search advertising is Google PPC ads for doctors. However, Microsoft Bing ads and Yahoo ads may also be worth looking into.

SEM strategies for healthcare generally include the following steps. Each of these individual steps will be tailored based on the unique needs and goals of your business.

• Learning how and why your patients use search engines.
• Setting a healthcare PPC advertising budget.
• Setting clear business goals.
• Identifying your target market and prospective patients.
• Creating ad groups.
• Building landing pages for each campaign.
• Doing comprehensive keyword research.
• Measuring results.
• Making necessary adjustments to the healthcare SEM campaign.

Leveraging Healthcare SEM for Your Local Medical Practice

While the digital marketing world is constantly evolving, search engine marketing remains to be one of the foundations of any online advertising and marketing plan.

SEM for doctors and healthcare professionals is not always the first thing healthcare digital marketers put forward when introducing their strategies. However, any local business that wants visibility and awareness about their business can benefit from search engine marketing.

Here’s why your healthcare practice should utilize search engine marketing to its fullest potential.

97% of search engine searches are consumers looking for local businesses – including local healthcare providers. Half of this traffic comes from mobile internet users.

These important statistics point to one undeniable fact.

If you want your local medical practice to grow, you need to consider search engine marketing for doctors.

Medical Practice Marketing: Target Your Patient Niches

Your patients are the driving force behind your medical practice. A big part of medical practice marketing is targeting the right market.

A lot of healthcare practices would target patients too broadly. For example, “dermatology” or “dermatology services” are encompassing terms, especially in healthcare.

If you are a dermatologist only offering medical dermatology services and not cosmetic dermatology, you need to be specific in targeting your patient niche.

One of the good things about healthcare SEM is that you don’t have to revolve your marketing efforts around paid search ads. A vital component of it is search engine optimization.

Using SEO and SEM in healthcare marketing will help you target and attract your ideal patients – whenever they are searching for your medical services.

According to Google, about 40 percent of online searches will consist of a minimum of four words. This means that users don’t type one-word queries, especially when it comes to looking for products and services.

This gives businesses the chance to utilize long-tailed keywords. These are longer key phrases that patients type in search engines when they are closer to choosing and making an appointment with a local healthcare provider.

Strategic medical SEM gives local doctors and clinics to hone in on their target patient niche and service offerings.

An experienced search engine marketer for doctors will leverage this trend to source these patients and appeal directly to them.

Benefits of Healthcare SEM for Your Medical Practice

Search Engine Marketing for Doctors Is Cost-Effective

One of the many benefits of this type of marketing and advertising for doctors is that the price will depend on the results you get.

This allows you to maximize your medical advertising budget and adjust the strategy based on what works for your practice and align with your unique business goals.

On top of that, search engine marketing for doctors does not have a minimum investment.

Your search engine marketing agency will recommend a campaign strategy that allows you to optimize your healthcare advertising budget.

Healthcare SEM Results Are Measurable

SEM campaigns for clinics, doctors, and healthcare providers are designed to obtain measurable results. In digital marketing and advertising campaigns, quantifying and analyzing results is essential.

Professional search engine marketing agencies will never forego measuring, tracking, and analyzing SEM campaigns so they can make the necessary adjustments to the campaigns.

This also allows you to maximize your advertising budget to get your desired results.

How do you measure the progress and success of healthcare search engine marketing?

Google Analytics is a valuable tool for measuring and tracking the results of healthcare SEM campaigns. The available data is utilized to make analytical changes to the campaign to yield better results.

To actively and consistently measure the success of your healthcare SEM campaign will only increase its sustainability and profitability.

Connect With Your Target Market and Potential Patients Directly

Seasoned medical search engine optimization and marketing experts have the expertise and resources to identify, attract, and engage your target market and potential patients.

They use relevant keywords, the users’ geographic location, demographic benchmarks, and even the time of the day they are most active online looking for your healthcare services.

For a small and local business like your medical practice, showing your online ads to potential patients actively looking for your services is a great advantage.

You can connect with these prospects directly and introduce your brand. In this way, you don’t have to waste time and resources on audiences that don’t need your services at the moment.

Reconnect With Your Patients

Healthcare and medical search engine campaigns can be designed to reconnect with previous patients or previous website visitors who expressed interest in your services.

This process is called remarketing or retargeting. In many cases, some consumers need to see an ad multiple times before they make a decision to buy.

You can retarget and reconnect with these prospects with a new ad, landing page, healthcare website design, and medical content marketing that will inspire them to revisit your website to make an appointment.

Improve the Brand Awareness for Your Medical Practice

When a medical practice utilizes relevant keywords associated with its specialty, patients who are looking online for those same keywords will see related healthcare ads online.

This can be advantageous if your medical practice doesn’t have an established online presence yet.  

Healthcare SEM campaigns can improve brand awareness and visibility more than a standard SEO strategy. The latter is typically more focused on increasing your search engine rankings and gaining more organic traffic to your website – which can generate results after several months of consistent work.