As a digital marketing agency, we clearly value the depth and dimension a well-spent digital marketing budget can bring to a business. Digital marketing can span anywhere from social media, to your website, to Google search optimisation, and should be utilised to the best of your ability to maximise your brand exposure.
Every business, clinic, and practice should be investing in a healthy digital marketing budget. However, it’s important to note that all clinics are different, target different demographics, and accumulate traffic from different sources. Your business should target where your new clients are but should also aim to keep in communication with those already existing. Diversify your digital marketing but keep it relevant – don’t base your brand on social media when not everyone has an account on its many platforms. Here’s how to spend your digital marketing budget to yield the best results for your business.
Website
Your website is integral to your digital marketing success. Even word of mouth clients and those garnered by social media will check your website before enquiring. It is the first port of call for the majority of new clients, regardless of where they heard of you first, and so you should invest in your site’s creation, development, and upkeep. A disorganised and unprofessional looking or sounding site isn’t going to attract many enquiries, because it insinuates your professional investment and services aren’t to be trusted.
Your website will help form an idea of your brand and practice before your new client has even come to you, so you need to show value before they’ve encountered you directly or picked up the phone. Investing in your site means you can utilise a platform that allows you to display trust indicators like reviews and social media synergy, so your enquiry conversion rate can be as effective as it should be.
SEO
So you’ve got a brand new website, but where is the traffic? To make your investment in your site worthwhile, you need to make certain you are appearing in the Google search listings high enough to encourage traffic. At this point, you should be thinking about investing in search engine optimisation, or SEO. There are more than 100 billion Google searches a month, so if you’re not actively trying to climb the search rankings, nobody will know your clinic exists.
By pushing your business higher up the Google search rankings with targeted SEO campaigns and complimentary website content, the chances you will appear on people’s screens before your competitors increases. In short, higher rankings can encourage more website traffic, and higher website traffic means more chances of enquiries and conversions.
Social Media Marketing
Interestingly, a 2017 study found that 74% of shoppers make buying decisions based on social media, so whether you are selling your products or your services, social media may be a business platform suited to you. Your social media needs to be as well-maintained as your website is. However, with Facebook’s algorithm change, you may need to start scheduling your content at consistent times when your demographic or followers are active, so you may need to allow some time for research into this or even outsource it.
Content management systems like HootSuite can help you schedule, correlate data, and strategise your overall social media presence, though their professional and comprehensive packages aren’t free.
Also, this algorithm change means that you may want to consider paid Facebook advertising like boosted posts, ads, and campaigns. Ads that run on Facebook can also run via your Instagram page at no extra charge, so go big over two platforms for the maximum amount of reach on both. For smaller clinics and practices, social media marketing is a good place to invest some of your budget to establish a local brand awareness before you begin conquering the country.
Google Ads
Unlike SEO, which can take about 6 months for your clinic to reach the first page, Google ads are far more aggressive. They are an instant move to the very top of the page, which competitive industries like aesthetics and dentistry may find far preferable to the slow burn of SEO.
If you are a clinic or a practice trying to claw your way to the top of the rankings, you have probably noticed that the first four links are Google ads, followed by Google Maps listing the locations of other clinics. You have also probably realised that you need to scroll past this paid advertising to reach the organic listings achieved by strategic SEO.
Now, despite the fact that you could possibly be at the top of the organic listings after months of gruelling targeting and strategizing, you still have to scroll past paying competitors to get to your practice. Visibility is key, and sometimes investing in that visibility by using paid Google Ads is the best business decision for your clinic.
Email Marketing
Investing in email marketing software may be the right move for your business. A popular platform for email marketing, MailChimp, offers free accounts which may be perfect for small businesses with smaller and more blanket mailing lists. However, if you are a larger clinic and practice seeking to target different demographics with different email campaigns, you may need to invest in their more comprehensive packages. These allow you to monitor and strategise all aspects of your email marketing, as well as providing you with the corresponding data.
Investing in some of the more thorough, data managing, and client monitoring packages that allow greater volume of subscribers may be something your practice needs to properly utilise its email marketing. Email marketing, in a modern world, is particularly effective as most clients and consumers have their emails synced with the mobile phones, allowing real-time marketing opportunities to propagate. These different facets and technicalities of email marketing may seem daunting but they’re extremely effective, so whether you outsource it or invest in the software yourself, it is worth it.
Your digital marketing should both span multiple platforms but also selectively target those that are appropriate for you, so your budget will need to be carefully segmented. Possibly the most important place that most of us should be investing our digital marketing budget is our websites. What is integral to some is not as pressing to others, but a website and the corresponding optimisation is definitely what will get you noticed. We know that digital marketing might seem like a big pool with no visible bottom, but we promise that with our help it won’t be.
