Search Engine Marketing

As the Internet is now commanding an average of 10% of advertising budgets with a steady 25-35% growth year over year, paid advertisements (i.e. Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, Microsoft AdSense) continue to play a major role in how businesses are found on the Internet.  Paid ads, in conjunction with a solid natural search strategy, or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can create brand dominance and quickly move a company from being found on 10-20 key phrases to hundreds or thousands of key phrases in just moments.

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - is the defined as the process to increase the volume or quality of traffic (visitors) from search engines within the "organic" or "page results". This is not to be confused with "paid listings". See below for more information on paid listings.

Optimization of a website consists primarily of converting a website code and/or content to be specific to relative keywords that are chosen to locate a specific website. Research is performed to compose the most relevant and widely used search terms within that relevancy for a website.

Example using Google as a search engine:
(lasik in houston = www.BerkeleyEyeCenter.com #3 in the listing)

2) Sponsored Search Ads – a critical tactic for a company's Search Engine Marketing strategy.  Paid ads across major search engines can achieve a variety of goals for refractive practices:  

* Fast placement and results
Paid ads can be placed online quickly to start bringing more eyes to your brand name and more visitors to your web site -- above and beyond your normal daily web site activity.  Search engine optimization is necessary for long-term success though can often take 3-6 months to have a noticeable impact on web site traffic.

* Quick response
Need to react to market conditions, competitors, or even announce a monthly special?  Sponsored ads are a great place to do this and be seen immediately.

* Complement to natural search traffic
A solid search strategy will get you on the first page for major search terms that include your city name (i.e. city + lasik), but what about visitors that just type in 'lasik' alone?  Unless you have a paid listing, you could be missing a lot of traffic.  A paid ad strategy, combined with a natural search strategy will maximize your potential to be found online -- and get the patient one step closer to entering your practice.

* Great medium for testing messages
As part of the CRM holistic marketing plan, we may suggest testing a few messages online before you invest the dollars and time to implement it in mainstream media.  Even after just a few weeks, we can gather enough data to make decisions and move forward.

"Getting the most from your marketing dollars is what it's all about.  I have seen response rates as high as 20% with some of our clients using paid advertisements."

-- Jillyn Johnson, Sponsored Search Manager for CRM

©2009, CRM Marketing Group