Friday, February 05, 2010

It’s no secret by now that paid search advertising using Google, Yahoo, Bing and now Facebook is a serious marketing strategy. Over the course of developing various paid search campaigns and tracking results, our company has learned a few things that we wish to communicate to ophthalmology websites and medical practices. Would you prefer to use a landing page or a proxy website for your next paid search campaign? 

1. Landing Pages V. Proxy sites – Why do landing pages work better? 

After various reviews of customers, we have determined that landing pages do a better job at harnessing leads than a full proxy website. The main reason comes down to understanding your audience and knowing what messaging to use to create a conversion. On a complex medical website such as an ophthalmology website, there are various facets and services that the website must focus on for the overall comprehensive business model. In most of these cases, one or maybe more of a practice's elements will need additional marketing support. In many cases when a proxy site is used, we send traffic directly to a page that is not designed to convert a patient but designed to actually educate, like an encyclopedia. If a patient is seeking LASIK eye surgery, do you really think they care about glaucoma awareness month or learning about macular degeneration? Yet proxy sites have all of this NON-relevant right in front of the patient they are trying to attract. Landing pages, on the other hand, are more relevant and focused on the task at hand. Landing pages will also create offers and point visitors down a path for future personal engagement. Proxy sites may offer lots of education, but is the messaging set up for the task you are trying to convert on? In some cases the answer is "yes", but in most cases the answer is "NO".  

2. Starting a landing page that works! Does my landing page know my customer?  

Many medical professionals skip the research phase of developing landing pages or simply take the advice of a generic paid search company that proxy sites work well. Understanding the visitors that come to your website is actually critical to making an appropriate landing page. As a practice, you must understand the motivations, fears, dsires and overall concerns of your customers so that you can address these issues. From a practice perspective, you already know the answers to these questions but your paid search company might not. Once these issues are dealt with on your landing page, you'll be able to compile the top 3-4 elements for better conversion.

3. Making Call to action and offers that work!

One of the biggest reasons proxy sites do a poor job at conversion in elective medical areas is due to to lack of offers or calls to action. Most ophthalmology practices do not want to clutter their homepages with offers and sales strategies…they want to look like a viable medical institution. If you create a landing page that is specific to a particular area of ophthalmology, you will have a lot of room for calls to action, offers, and engaging activities. For better paid search conversions, use an offer, some call to action, self surveys and animation to engage the visitor.

4. Make a visually compelling design

In today’s competitive world of Internet marketing, sloppy designs do more harm to you than they are worth. Take the time to discuss how the design should look and hire a professional design to make the initial design concept. The design should be minimal, with clear messaging and logical spots for calls to action. Carefully selected images and great design can certainly have an impact on retaining the attention of the viewer. If you are selling elective medical procedures, avoid over the top sales approaches and cheesy callouts that blink with discounts. Be a medical professional with good taste and a clean design that addresses your customers.

5. Creating compelling messaging

Take the time to create a value proposition. The value proposition will work hand in hand with your messaging and create a theme that can be carried out through taglines and offers.

6. Do not ask too much of your visitors.

Landing pages should be minimal. The course of action should be easy to follow. Landing pages should not be crowded with too much information. Focus on the essentials at hand and do not have useless web graphics on the landing page for no reason. Only request information that is necessary to attract the user to complete the contact section.

7. Testimonials

As long as your state medical marketing laws will enable patient testimonial usage, your practice should have an active strategy for collecting and distributing this information. Never underestimate the power of a credible testimonial. Of course, these testimonials will need to concise. Social media and online review sites have basically told us that people care about what other people think. Not ALL people, but many people do care what others have to say. When developing testimonials, take the time to properly prepare a professional photographer or video session to make these “brand advocates” look nice. Most testimonials on websites today are simply horrible with too much text and bad photographs. 

Posted By Michael Dobkowski at 11:19 AM