Eating disorder treatment facilities play a crucial role in helping individuals suffering from anorexia, bulimia and other similar conditions overcome their challenges and start enjoying a healthier lifestyle.
Of course, spreading the word about the availability of these services is sometimes easier said than done. How do you get people to come through your doors for help if they never discover your business in the first place?
Thankfully, the rise of digital marketing has opened up a host of new opportunities to reach those in need of help and their loved ones. Without a doubt, one of the best ways to help individuals discover your services is through PPC (or pay per click advertising).
PPC campaigns help you get more out of your advertising budget by ensuring that you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ads. Better yet, advanced targeting guarantees the right placement for your ad content, allowing you to see rapid results from your marketing efforts.
But how can you be sure that you’re approaching your PPC campaign the right way? By adhering to the following best practices, you’ll be able to get more people to your eating disorder treatment facility so they can get the help they need.
1) Choose the Right Keywords
The starting point of any PPC campaign is keyword selection. In a nutshell, the keywords you decide to target will determine which online searches your ads show up in.
As such, you should select keywords that have a relatively high search volume, and that align with your company’s goals and services. For an eating disorder treatment facility, phrases such as “eating disorder help,” “treatment for eating disorders,” “anorexia” and other similar keywords are generally going to be the most relevant to your business.
However, you also can’t ignore the importance of negative keywords. Negative keywords help refine your PPC campaign by ensuring that your ads won’t show up in certain searches. For example, you probably aren’t going to want your content delivered to someone searching for “best restaurants near me.” Selecting negative keywords will keep your PPC budget from going to waste.
2) It’s All About Quality
Once you have your keywords in place, the next thing you need to focus on is creating high-quality ad content. In fact, Google and Bing place such high value on ad quality that Adwords even utilizes Quality Score rankings—a metric that that can increase or decrease your cost per click based on the perceived quality of your ad.
To improve your Quality Score, start by focusing on the ad content itself. Make sure that your copy is relevant to your target audience and your keywords. Include a clear call to action. While including your actual keywords in the copy isn’t necessarily a requirement, this can also help to improve your ad’s relevancy.
Ad content isn’t the only factor that will impact your Quality Score, however. The quality of your landing page will also play a role in determining this score. Make sure your landing page offers an engaging, user-friendly experience. Take steps to decrease load times and improve the content quality on the landing page itself. These actions will keep visitors on your site for a longer period of time, which search engines interpret as a sign that your ad content is relevant and useful. Your Quality Score will go up, and your costs will go down.
3) Location, Location, Location
There are many demographic tools you can use to ensure that your ad content is placed before the right people, but one of the most important targeting features for an eating disorder treatment facility is geolocation targeting.
With a brick and mortar location, your treatment facility probably isn’t going to try to reach individuals across the entire country. As such, you need to limit your ad placement so that your content is delivered to those who live within a reasonable distance of your facility—the people who would be most likely to come to your location to seek help.
With geolocation targeting, you can choose to target specific areas or set up a geographic radius around your location to better reach your relevant audience.
4) Ad Extensions
PPC ads can do much more than provide a link to a landing page. With a plethora of add-on features available, you can give your potential clients additional resources for reaching out and getting the help they need.
There are several ad extensions available to help you better connect with your target audience. Some of the most effective add-ons allow you to share additional links from within your website, display a map that highlights your location, or even list a phone number that people can click to call.
Each of these extensions provides another avenue for potential clients and their families to get needed information and get in contact with your team, dramatically improving your return on investment.
5) Testing
As important as the above factors may be, the lasting success of your PPC marketing efforts will ultimately come down to your commitment to A/B testing. Do certain keywords perform better than others? Does some ad copy seem to be more effective at generating clicks from people who need treatment for their eating disorder?
By performing split tests on your PPC ads, you can better determine which ads are delivering the results you need and which ones are not. Split testing can help you identify ineffective keywords, make changes to your ad copy or even determine when you need to use a different landing page.
As you use testing to discover which ads actually help you get more people to come to your facility, you’ll be able to make better use of your PPC budget and make the necessary adjustments to reach your target audience.
Conclusion
Now, this list of PPC tips is hardly conclusive. There are a lot of things you can do to get more out of your PPC budget and ensure that your campaigns are generating the clicks and conversions you so desperately hope for. But by starting with these essential tips, you can have confidence that you’re off on the right path and making the most of what Google has to offer.
So don’t wait! The sooner you begin implementing PPC into your eating disorder treatment facility’s digital marketing efforts, the sooner you’ll be able to help more of those in need.
