Veterinary medicine has never been more competitive, and we’ve seen all types of pet businesses explode in the last year because of greater access to digital marketing. To ensure your veterinary practice is successful, you need to reach out to more ready and willing patients to book an appointment. At WhiskerCloud, we use targeted PPC advertising for veterinary hospitals to find bottom-of-the-funnel pet owners looking for a new veterinarian or a specific service you offer. Search engine optimization for veterinarians is a huge part of our business, but the truth is that SEO is a long game that takes time. Google Ads can make the phone ring almost instantly.
What is Google Adwords?
Did you know that Google paid advertising has various other names, such as paid search or cost-per-click? This marketing strategy is not only useful for human healthcare practices but veterinary medicine as well. These ads are almost always text-based and have the ability to place your practice at the very top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Not to mention, this will cut through any clutter on SERPs and allow you to be among other people spending money on ads.
Why should my veterinary business use Google Advertising?
There are many reasons to consider using Google Advertising for your veterinary business. Here are some key points:
- You can target customers who are ready to book an appointment today
- Get in front of your competition, whether they are ranked high organically or spending money on ads
- Ads are flexible and measurable and can be updated often by our team
- You only pay when someone clicks on your ad
If you want to increase brand awareness and reach more prospective patients, paid search might be the way to go. It’s important to explore all of your advertising options and figure out what will work best for your specific practice.
These are the reasons your veterinary business must utilize paid advertising:
You are guaranteed to be at the top of Google.
The average WhiskerCloud customer receives more than two-thirds of their traffic from organic search, and SEO is incredibly important, but this strategy does not stop local competitors or brands like VCA and Banfield from still beating you by paying to be at the top of the page.
Your veterinary advertisements will now appear on the top of organic search results, allowing your practice to be seen by and connect with more prospective patients through Google Ads. Results from Google Ads are nearly identical to natural, organic ones, but they are marked with the word “Ad” in a tiny box at the top left of the content.
You control who you are targeting by selecting the keywords, locations, and specific days and times the ads run.
Google Ad campaigns allow you to use “advanced targeting” so that your ads are only seen by those you want to reach. For instance, we may only want to be searching for people searching broadly for a veterinarian in an 8-mile radius around your clinic only during the hours you’re open. Pay-per-click advertising gives you more control over who will see your ads and when the ads will be visible so that we can be smart with your advertising budget.
Depending on your budget, we can set up a perfect strategy to drive leads to your business. If you have a lower budget in the $15-30/day, we can go after low-hanging fruit like “best veterinarian near me” or “veterinarian open now near me.” If you have more to spend, we can go after awareness searches such as “what shots does my new puppy need?” You can display an ad that says, “Got a new puppy? We have a wellness plan for you!”
Organic search and paid advertising campaigns for veterinary businesses are the perfect growth stack.
SEO for veterinary businesses is at the heart of what WhiskerCloud offers, and it’s imperative to us. As you may know, 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. People use their phones or computers to Google and type in what they’re looking for. If they need a veterinarian, will your business come up? If not, you could be missing out on lots of customers. SEO strategies also take time, and brand new websites can take months to show up on the first page of Google. However, coupling a strong SEO strategy with PPC advertising can help grow your veterinary business faster.
We have tools that can provide information on what keywords you’re ranking for and which keywords we need to focus on. Paid advertising can help bridge the gap and help you rank at the top immediately through paid ads.
If you use both strategies, your practice will dominate the search engine results page, which collectively drives higher click-through rates for paid and organic searches.
To grow your veterinary business, you must think like a big company.
The world’s largest and most profitable companies do not see advertising budget as an expense but as a catalyst for growth. The team at Semrush performed a study on the top 100 companies on the annual Fortune 500 list and found that their advertising budget was precisely what made them so profitable.
“Using our Advertising Research tool, we analyzed the monthly traffic costs of the top 100 companies on the annual Fortune 500 list to find how much they spent on paid search over the course of 2020. Their monthly traffic costs were calculated using average click-through rates and the positioning of the domain in the top 8 paid positions on Google Ads for keywords that we have in our database.
Our consistent data collection on the top 8 paid ads offers the closest look you can get at your competitors’ advertising. The Fortune 100 companies were found to be responsible for $3.05 billion of the nearly $60 billion that was spent on paid search in 2020.”
Companies like Banfield, VCA, and even your local competitor down the street will not stop spending money on advertising anytime soon. You must fight back before it starts to hurt your business.
WhiskerCloud has a full veterinary advertising team to help you grow!
The world’s largest brands spend their marketing budget on advertising for a reason – it works. On average, businesses make $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. Our new advertising model can help you find pet parents in your area and continue to target people who have visited your website but didn’t book an appointment. With our platform, you can effortlessly bring a constant stream of new clients to your business.
Are you interested in learning more? You can get started by emailing us at digital@whiskercloud.com or completing the form here.
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