This blog was written by Vanessa Pintea. Vanessa is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and a Sapele Marketing Ad Manager.
You’re Not Following the Rules
There are strict rules with severe repercussions surrounding marketing in the medical industry. The rules are in place for a reason, mostly to protect a vulnerable audience from manipulative marketing techniques. If you don’t follow the rules – your medical marketing campaigns won’t deliver a high return-on-investment because your ads may not even reach your audience. Although most Search Engines and Ad Platforms will notify you of infractions on your account, they’re under no obligation to help you correct the infractions nor will they go out of their way to notify you. If you don’t keep a close eye on it, you may not be aware that the performance of your marketing campaigns has been ‘limited’ or stopped altogether. Search Engines and Ad Platforms face severe punitive measures under federal law if the rules are not followed by the advertisers on their platforms. If you do try to ‘dodge’ the rules or don’t follow them out of ignorance your account will likely be suspended altogether.
You’re Not Considering Your Target Audience
People who need medical attention are generally in a vulnerable condition. Quite often I am asked by Medical Service Providers to audit their marketing campaigns as a means of discovering why they’re not converting. One of the most common errors I see is a lack of considering who the target audience really is and how they should be the approach for best results. Whether it’s a dentist, a doctor, a medical device supplier or a medical specialist – the tone and presentation of marketing ads in the medical industry must be quite tactfully designed. It’s not enough to research your target audience’s demographics and point your ads towards them. Rather, a careful process of studying their online behaviors and what phrasing they respond to without hesitation will help campaigns convert at a much higher rate.
The Wrong Person is Following Up with Leads
This ‘reason’ even surprised me. It’s something I discovered only after years of refining campaigns. I had reached a point with several specific campaigns where all other qualifying components of the campaigns were perfectly optimized and yet the lead-to-patient rate was still not delivering an ROI I was happy with. These campaigns were delivering a very high volume of leads – sometimes as many as 50 qualified leads per month were reaching out to an individual medical practice and yet, only a handful would convert. Reviewing the data, I could see that all 50 leads would leave detailed voice messages or write long form submissions outlining the specific help they needed from the medical practitioner so I knew the leads were qualified. So why weren’t they converting into patients? While the ROI on these campaigns was still positive it frustrated me to no end that less than 10% of leads who had expressed interest in service were converting.