So a change, a change of pace in one respect, but more of a continuation of the previous lesson in the fact that we're still talking about digital marketing here. But the difference between Facebook and paper click with Google is one is what we call push marketing, er and one is what we call pool marketing. Now.
Push marketing is when you're going out to your potential customers, you're pushing your message out there and you're making them aware that you exist, er, what you do, the great service you provide for your, your patients, and then pool marketing is where you're pulling people to your business who are searching for what you actually do. And that's what I'm here to talk to you about today. But I'm gonna frame it in the context of overall good marketing practise online as well, because when we get into the nitty gritty of Google Ads, and Anthony knows this, I can get a very technical, so I've tried to keep it at a level where I give you enough detail to understand the mechanics, but make it relevant to all of you who, at the end of the day, you're experts in er dealing with your patients rather than clicking buttons on a computer.
So I hope you find it useful and I, I'll definitely stay around at the end for questions. So let's dive in. I want to say what you're going to learn on today's webinar from me.
So, firstly, it's how your new customers or potential new customers are finding vets in 2019. The marketing and digital marketing landscape is changing all the time, so it's good to have a refresh on the, the relevance of that. The key numbers for growing your practise, ultimately, I assume if you're watching this, you want to grow your business, and it's understanding how the numbers make that up.
And what I mean by the numbers I'm, I'm obviously gonna come on to, but ultimately you are running a business and you do need to make money, it does need to be profitable and sustainable. We're going to talk more specifically about what Google ads themselves actually are, and how you can use them. And I'm going to give you a general online marketing checklist that you can quickly go through to see if you're doing all the essential things to, to be found online.
So. We're going to start, just, just to, those those are my goals for today's session. In terms of what we're going to learn, you're going to be learning about why you need to do active lead generation as a whole, whether you use Facebook or or Google Ads or local magazine adverts, you still need to be getting that fresh new customer base coming to you.
Then specifically why Google Ads is a great way to predictively grow your practise, the different types of digital marketing available, and critically how to run a successful Google Ads campaign. I think you know that Google makes a lot of money, and we don't want to just hand our money over to them, er, without any just going into their coffers. We want it to work for us, and Google are very good at extracting money out of, of, of businesses.
And then, of course, learn how to measure and improve on your results. So, I wanted to set the scene of what I'm going to talk about. And I'm going to introduce myself now.
So, as Anthony's already said, I'm Chris Stott. I'm the client director at PPC Geeks. We're a specialist Google Ads, marketing agents agency, and, that's me on the left.
So quite a few years ago with my, my, my late dog Ziggy, who did get a haircut after that. Just before I, I dive in, I just want to make sure you know what pay per click is PPC because obviously it's in our company name. Anthony's already mentioned Pay per click and PPC.
It's a bit of a difficult position, for me to be, be in on this webinar, cause I don't know if you are currently doing Google Ads as a, as a veterinary practise, if it's something you've done in the past and you, you don't know if it's worked for you or if it's something. You've never heard of, so I'm trying to position it for all the possible audiences. So pay per click specifically is an advertising technique where you only pay for the, the traffic, the visitors to your website if they actually click on your advertisement.
And that's the same with with Facebook as well if they engage on your post, you'll see an ad on there. The beauty of that compared to traditional marketing, so before the internet and the good, the good old days of Yell and people, when people actually used to put adverts in local newspapers, there used to be this saying, I know that 50% of my marketing works, but I don't know which 50%. With digital advertising and digital marketing, you can track everything so you know it works.
This is why these models of pay per click exist. You as the business who is a customer of these pay per click platforms, you don't want to pay if people aren't clicking on your ads, so that's where PPC and pay per click comes from. So I just wanted to set that scene, and we'll, we'll dive in now to, to, to all the things I want to go through, and I hope you get as much as possible out of it.
So let's start with a question. What is lead generation? So I'm gonna take a step back from actually from PPC, the technical ins and outs, and just talk about what lead generation is and why that's so critical for any business, but especially for veterinary practises.
So, just in my terminology and common business and marketing terminology, we, we refer to it as lead generation, but diff I've found that different veterinary practises say it's new, new patients or new customers or new clients. Everyone has a slightly different way of talking about it. Of course you, you, your patients are the pets, but your customers are the pet's owners.
So, just, just to set the scene, lead generation is any new customer or potential new customer. Who will inquire and use your services, so that's can be, someone making an initial call or or email into your business, that's a new lead. That is someone who's raised their hand and said, I'm potentially interested in becoming a customer and as you know as a vet, that first, That first consultation might be 25, 50 pounds, but over the lifetime of a pet, the value of a new customer is, is, is thousands of pounds.
So any initial inquiry or email, even though they've not done business with you, that's a new lead to your business that has a value to it. Then, for, for the sake of, of veterinary practise, I'm actually classing booking a first appointment as a lead, cos, I know from my own experience as a pet owner that, people use vets once for a particular issue and then don't come back for whatever reason. So I'm classing those as leads, cos really if you only see someone once for a routine appointment, you're not, you're not making it from a business perspective, you're not making much profit out of that.
So it's how you can turn these initial inquiries, these initial one-off visits into long-term customers. And then there's people who are just passing by who, who might just pop in, ask for a leaflet, say I'm thinking of getting a new dog or my cat needs, a flea treatment. And again, they haven't handed over any cash yet, but they are potential customers and they are leads for your business.
And you need to be constantly generating leads to have a healthy and sustainable business. So the next question then becomes specifically about lead generation, and again this is leads not just from paper clip, this is from any source at this point. This is referrals, this is newspaper ads as well.
Why should you be doing lead generations and why do vets in particular need lead generation? Well, the, the fact of the matter is, if your business is not growing, it's dying. And that's because, over time you will naturally lose customers, it's, we call this the attrition rate or the churn rate, .
And in specifically in your market, someone might have a pet, that lives for 15 years and then they decide not to get another pet so that the lifespan of that customer comes to a natural end. People move away all the time, and this both brings you new customers but also loses existing loyal customers. People, you, people might have an issue with the treatment through it could be through, through, no, obviously no fault of your own, but they might choose to move to another practise.
So, although you might feel you're really busy in your practise and you've got a good natural rate of customers, if you're not constantly adding new customers into your business, then over time it's going to naturally decline for these reasons. And you definitely need a way to replace these customers. You also want to generate leads to complement the other marketing you do.
I would never, although obviously I run a company that does PPC marketing, you've just seen an excellent webinar on Facebook er marketing. I would never suggest you only do one marketing channel. It needs to be a broad mix and they all do complement each other.
So, . You, you need to make sure that you're doing all the lead generation possible within your ability to do that as well as run the business, to make sure you're crossing all those channels, making sure that people see you everywhere and know you are the go to vet in your area or your specialist. So that's, that just sort of sets the scene about what lead generation is and why you need it.
Why you need that constant influx of potential new customers into your business. And then what you do with those, and the rate that you do that comes down to what your marketing goals are, so. This, this is how, how do you want to ultimately grow your business?
Do you want to grow your business? Are you wanting to take on more partners into your practise to expand that way? Are you wanting to in, are you at the stage in your career where in 5, 10 years you're looking to, to sell and move on somewhere else?
Are you looking to bring juniors up through the ranks? All that kind of business strategy also. That informs your marketing strategy and and how much new business you need to get in combined with knowing your attrition rate, and the goals of just your marketing in general.
Maybe you personally want to be seen to be sponsoring local events, for example, that could be part of your marketing strategy, there's a goal around that. Or you personally want to be the number one rated vet on, on Google reviews, that could be part of your marketing strategy. So I always encourage people to take a step, it's all very well saying there's this new tool out there, you should be doing Facebook, you should be doing Twitter, you should be doing Google Ads, you should be sponsoring the local dog show.
But what are your goals, what do you really want? Yes, you know you need to grow the business, but take a, take that step back and first start with the why of of, of why you're doing all this. And also, the for all the advantages of the internet that you get these days and fast routes to market, getting your name out there, there are also other companies that have those advantages, either other practises that are at the similar sort of level and budget as you, but also the large companies, for example.
Vets for pets, which is growing and growing and has got a a dominant brand throughout the whole of the UK. They're able to, it's how you, how are you going to compete against them, how are you going to position yourself against them. And then there's also the what we call aggregators, which are sites that you, you, that provide leads to you as a veterinary practise for someone looking for emergency care, for example.
But is your goal to be beholden to those, to find out, you know, you either have to join up, you have to sell out to vets for pets or, or do you want to own your own road and make your marketing ecosystem work for you to generate as many goals as possible. So if there's, if there's one first action to take away is. Sit down, get, grab a coffee, sit down for 20 minutes and just write down what your, your business goals and your marketing goals are, which is a business owner, it's often one of those things that gets pushed to the back with all the other admin and day to day stuff.
But by knowing what what you're aiming for, you can better make decisions about where you want to go. Yeah, so, and I, I was just alluding to in, in the previous point about all these companies that are getting bigger and bigger in the market, which are, which are a threat to how you do business potentially because brand awareness on the internet is something that you can build very quickly if you've got plenty of money behind you as these companies do have. So knowing now, as you do, from what I just thought about that you, you know what lead generation is and you know you should always be generating leads, what are the best ways to attract new customers to your practise in 2019?
And, and it's ultimately about getting new clients. So let's talk about some of these. And you, you might have a strategy behind these already, you might, the first one is referrals.
So you might ask, you might offer a free consultation, to, to an existing customer if they refer a friend, refer a friend scheme as a tried and tested method. But that's, if you put a scheme like that in place, it's a conscious. Effort to try and get those referrals.
And referrals are an extremely good quality lead. Leads come in all different shapes and sizes sizes. Some people will just constantly ring you with questions but never actually give you money, whereas other people will have been recommended because their friend got a good treatment, and they're not going to shop around, they're gonna come straight to you.
So that's one way of generating leads. Another one, which is very common for vets is passing traffic. Of course, the vast majority of, of vets are in locations that have some kind of store frontage.
You do get ones who are out on industrial estates, and don't get that passing traffic, but often they're very much part of the community, so you want to make sure that your external appearance appearance is obvious, you get that passing traffic, people know that you're there. And it might also be people who are out of your area. So if you're, you operate in a town, but your catchment area has several local villages without any veterinary practises in those villages, but several towns around, then they're gonna have a choice which you may not have thought of of where they go, and then presenting them knowing that you're there is a, is a critical thing.
Then, offline advertising, the opposite to what we do here, but there is those local papers, the local magazines, the local events, getting your name out there. There's the expansion of your existing client base, so that's providing doing a good service, so if someone gets another pet, they're gonna bring that to you. That's some kind of a natural way of, of expanding your, your client base to get more, more business and, and be able to provide more and more services to your existing customers.
Or you could add specialisms, for example, our dog had to have special derma. I can never say it, dermatological tests, which our vet didn't offer, but we, so we went to another vet. However, if our vets had offered that, it would have been an extra service they could provide, which would have meant for me as a customer, I wouldn't have had to go elsewhere and it's more revenue for that vet.
One big advantage is quite a lot of vets have in certain areas is they have area exclusivity. A lot of people don't have much choice but to use a local vet. Now if you're in a major town or a major er city, there's gonna be a lot of choices, but if you're in.
In a a a village out somewhere that's not near a town, you're going to have that area of exclusivity at vantage. But we're talking about people's pets here, they're going to get the best possible service, and if you're not doing that, your area exclusivity will, will go. But, but naturally people are going to go to their local vet and people do search for their local vet.
And then of course there's digital marketing. And the aggravators that I've talked about. Now, that's quite overwhelming, all those possible ways of getting clients, and I'm sure you're doing the vast majority naturally anyway.
But when you take a step back, you have to think what's most effective for you, what are your marketing goals, and what do you have? Time to do. And, and the more and more of this education you get about the possible ways of growing your business, Facebook, Google Ads, all this stuff I've, I've just talked about, it can be overwhelming, so you need to prioritise and you need to use the best, most measurable methods to do that.
And I'm sure you've all heard of Google. Google is very much part of everyone's daily lives these days in the UK, and, and around the world. Google is the, the, unless you're in China, Google is the predominant way people do things on the internet.
It's not even thought of as a search engine, it's the jumping off point for most people. It's a launch pad. People.
Don't even go to Facebook.com. They might type into Google Facebook and then click the Facebook link.
So Google is central to how people do, do everything, so you want to be front and centre when those people who are looking for services that you provide are are out there searching for them. So broadly, when we're talking about Google, there's two marketing specifically for Google, so I'm gonna forget all the social media stuff now. We're starting to hone in on Google itself.
There's two main ways that people promote themselves in Google. One is pay per click, PPC, the, the paid advertising that I'm talking about. The other is SEO or search engine optimisation.
I'll, I'll get into now how these differ. I'm hoping you can see the screen. I, I, I try to squeeze quite a lot onto one screen because it's important to get, rather than me just separating them out into separate slides, it's important you get the context of how people see you potentially when they're searching.
If I type in vets near me, then I get 4 different types of result presented to me. Now bear in mind Google recently made their desktop results very similar to their mobile results. So in, in that respect it's a very clean design, so whether you're on a mobile or a desktop, you're gonna see something similar to this.
The point, the point here is that the. Google puts at the top that green bit, the paid advertisement. There, this is where Google makes 98% of their revenue.
They want people to pay to play, they want you to pay to be there. There are these other areas that you will be and can be listed in, but you're up against your competition there. So there's the maps, which I hope you've all got your map listing.
There's the local listing which shows reviews and the, and this is because Google only works because for its users, the person searching, they give the best possible results out there. So if you're, if we, if we go away from the veterinary market for now and it's someone looking for a pair of black Nike Air Jordan trainers, they will use Google because Google gives them the fastest route to finding the cheapest price on that. If Google didn't do that, people would stop using Google, they'd go more to Amazon or or whatever.
So, really it's, it's up to Google to give the best possible results here, and this is why they provide all this useful information. Now, at the bottom here, which is just at the bottom of the screen, and, and on your mobile phone, you might not even see this on first glance, is what we call an organic SEO listing. This is the natural results that Google decides for an individual searcher and this is the best result there for them.
And to, to get high up on the, on this page, bear in mind for this search, there was 740 million results. How do you get to those top slots? Well, ultimately, that's a lot of hard work and it takes time, whereas you can pay and you can be there at the top straight away.
And that is fundamentally what Google Ads are and how they're an advantage to you. Now, it's important to note that this hasn't happened yet, but I can assure you it's happening very soon. These maps and local listings.
That you will be on, depending on where you search and depending on how much competition you've got, these will soon become paid platforms. Google are rolling out, having to pay to appear here as well. So when that happens, you're going to be in a situation where potentially the only way you can get your business seen quickly and first time by people searching is to pay to be here.
So you want to be ahead of the game and know what you're doing here. So that's the difference between PPC and SEO. So let's talk now specifically about Google Ads itself.
We're finally getting to the thing, the reason I'm here after 20 minutes, but I wanted to set the scene of why you need leads and the different types of digital marketing and ways of getting more clients into your business. So where are you on your, this is another question for you really, where are you on your Google Ads journey? Are you currently using Google Ads?
If so, great, you probably know what a powerful platform it can be, though you might have some frustrations. And Google made it over 2000 changes to the way Google Ads works over the last couple of years. It's a lot to keep on top of.
You might have tried Google Ads before, but didn't feel that it worked for you or your business. This can come down to a number of factors which by the end of this webinar, I'm sure you'll work out things you that you might have missed. Or you may have never tried Google Ads before, for whatever reason.
So these are the different situations you could be in, so I'm gonna try and cross all these off in one hit. So let's start by making sure you really know what Google Ads are. Why vets need Google Ads in 2019, how Google Ads work specifically.
How do you know if Google Ads is working, and how do you get started with all the other things you've got to do? Why Google ads for that? Well, Google has this great tool, which is, is really interesting to search for various, just, just you could search about Roger Federer and see the peaks and troughs of people searching about his tennis matches over the years.
I've shown this graph because it shows you how the internet is growing, which I'm sure is quite obvious to all of you. What I've put in here is Liverpool Vet because Liverpool's where where Webinar vet is based. And it, since 2004, when these stats started being taken, you can see there has been a constant level of search.
Now, unfortunately, the scale on this graph, Google doesn't allow me to adjust, but I can assure you it is slanting upwards. More and more people are searching over time. But what's most interesting is since about 2014, more and more people are searching for for the term vet near me.
And this really coincides with the, the massive takeoff of mobile phones and how more and more that this is increasingly how people search. It also, since we've had all these mobile phones, people's attention spans have decreased significantly, and they want, and because the internet has got faster and faster, people want instant and quick results. They're not scrolling, they're clicking on the first thing.
And this more and more people searching for vet near me is, it coincides with all this. Trend in the market. And they just want quick answers, they want to get on it and get things done, which is, is very interesting when you actually, if you're, if you're geeky like me about the internet.
See, this, this really wasn't how people searched prior to 2014, but now they want quick results on their mobile phone, and they're gonna click on it and make a business decision to work with you or not. So, really, when, when we think about how Google ads are growing and growing and still growing, Facebook for on, on, on the flip side is actually declining in some markets because of all their recent scandals. Whereas Google constantly grows, their mobile platform gets bigger and bigger, .
Google Ads, there's no way around it, with, with having to pay to be at the top of the results, with the increases in searches, the way people search these days, it's just essential to be doing Google Ads for your business. So why is this good, a good thing, apart from obviously making Google money, why is this good for you? Well, the first thing is what we call commercial intent targeting.
And this is that back to what I said in the introduction about the difference between push and pull marketing. With push marketing, you're pushing your message out there. So you could push out a post .
You could push out a magazine advert or a post on Facebook to 100,000 people, but only a small percentage of those people are actually actively looking to use a veterinary practise in the next 3 to 6 months. Whereas when the people sit down or they're walking around on their phone and they type vets near me into their phone, it's very likely they are looking to. And this is from Google's own research.
They're looking to actually make a commercial decision to use that service within the next few days. So the beauty is it, people, your lead generation is more relevant if these are people coming to you cos they have a specific need here and now. Ultimately, people do business with people because they have a problem, the bus or the business has a solution and it's finding that relationship.
So with Google Ads, the people who are searching, if you target them correctly, have that commercial intent, they want to do business, they want to hand over their money and for you to solve their problem for them. Another great advantage of Google Ads is that it levels the playing field. What I mean by this is.
I've, I've shown you about vets, vets for now and Vets for pets. These are companies with a lot of money and advertising budget behind them. So when it comes to competing with them on organic posts, you know, they just, just having a strong website for thousands of pages, if you're a small practise, there's, you don't have the time or resources to do that.
However, you have the same rights to pay Google to be in those top ad slots and be seen by your potential customers. Yes. If there's lots of competition for that space, you might have to pay more, but it levels the playing field.
This is the beauty of the internet. You, you can play with the big boys, and girls, because you can just pay, you can pay to be there and appear at that top position. You don't have to wait, you've got a brand new practise, you can pay and be up there straight away, rather than having to wait 10 years for Google to trust your website enough to naturally show it at the top of the results.
And that's the issue er in a, in a nutshell, also with organic search or search engine optimisation. And that is, if you want to get that free traffic, that natural people just clicking on your website, just because it happens to exist in the internet, that takes time to Google out of those 770 million results that how, why should your site be the one that appears at the top, naturally, really, to, to, to play it, to, to, to get the advantages you're going to have to pay to be there. The other thing is that Google Ads allow you to set specific perimeters around whether your advert is seen.
So you can only show your adverts at certain times of the week or certain times of the day, for example. You, a bad thing to do would be to have a veterinary practise in Liverpool and set and just leave the default. To show your ad all over the UK.
You only want people within a 1520 mile range, for example. You might have several branches that you want to target specifically traffic around there. Again, with organic posts or or er sorry, so just natural search engine stuff, it's not that locally focused, whereas you can click a few buttons and say, Google.
If someone's searching for a vet in these postcodes, I want to be shown. So this allows you to very specifically target where people might be. And because you provide a local service, because you're not, you're not a webinar company that can have people watching from New Zealand, you, you need to physically see your clients.
It's very important to be able to target er those people down. And the beauty of the internet generally is that you can take bookings at all hours with an online booking system. More and more veterinary practises actually have online appointment systems, a lot are still traditional, that you have to phone up or people drop by for an appointment, but.
People have busy lives, people are working longer than ever in the UK apparently, and they might not be searching for, for the appointment for their, for their cats routine vaccinations until 9 or 10 at night, at which point they can't phone. So having an online system, tying your adverts through that makes it easier. There's less friction to people coming into your business and becoming a lead and hopefully a lifetime customer.
And also fundamentally, the kind of clients you want and the kind of patients you want are healthy, healthy animals who routine appointments, who keep up to date with their vaccinations and all their checks. But the sad reality is, and it's why you exist, there is. A lot of emergency treatment is needed.
If someone's panicking because their, their pet it needs emergency treatment, they want the fastest response possible. By positioning yourself front and centre to provide that service, you get the customers. So let's take a look at how some of this looks to, like you've got to put yourself in, in the, the shoes of one of your potential customers.
How do things look and specifically, how, how is good to target people and how it's bad to target people. Now on the left here, I have a generic term people might search. How do I become a vet?
I can't hear your responses, but I'll, I'll rhetorically ask the question. If someone searches, how do I become a vet, is that likely to be a relevant lead for your business? I'm hoping you're saying no, that's a very generic search term.
Whereas if someone types in Liverpool vets and they happen to live in Liverpool rather than be researching a webinar, . They are, they're very likely to, to actually need a vet in Liverpool in some time in the, in the, in the short term. So this starts to become down the nuances of how do you target people down even more specifically.
You want to make sure that you're only appearing for those searches that are the most relevant to people becoming leads for your business. What I mean by that is if you just target the term vet or vets generically, you're going to show up for all kinds of searches. So again, the beauty is with Google Ads, you can target based exactly on what's going to make you the money.
So that's kind of an overview of . Of, of Google ads at a high level on on what it is and and why you need it, but before I look delve into some of the specific technicalities of how to do it well, I'm going to talk to you about what kind of practises actually even need for this. So, Hopefully you've taken an action to sit down and write down your business and marketing goals.
Ultimately, if you want to grow your business, you, you absolutely need to be doing advertising and marketing in various forms. And, and for the reasons I've just outlined, Google Ads is a great way to do that. Now because it levels the playing field, it also means that your competition have a level playing field to play in as well.
By that I mean if you, there's 3 veterinary practises in in one town, all three of you can try and pay Google to be at that top slot. So, and if one of your competitors is doing it and you're not, they're always going to beat you in those searches. You want to make sure you're protecting your brand, and you're getting your brand out there locally and that you're staying relevant and appearing in searches alongside or above your competitors.
And you might be in a lucky situation where you are the number one provider in your town or area and you might not have as much competition. In which case there, you, you might have to compete with those aggregator sites, or the larger companies that offer it, operate national chains wherever your country is, or increasingly. There are likely to be more and more startups offering online consultations first, like they do in, in er human, human er treatment, medical treatment with online GPs.
So there's always going to be some new competitor there, and you really need to protect your brand and make sure you're out there. Now also, you might be a practise that has certain specialisms. This has a large advantage because you can cast your net wider.
If I go back to that example of the specialist, dermatological tests that my dog required, the, the, I, I don't know the ins and outs of it because I'm not a vet, but . There was only a few practises that could offer that in, in, in our, in our wider area. So I, yes, we got a referral, but it could be that this is some way you can position yourself to stand out in your market.
And again, by paying to appear for those terms, you're gonna be seen straight away if someone's looking for that. You also might have certain best sellers that you want to promote more and more. I see, I see more locally around here, I've noticed over the, the ownership of, of the lifetime of my dog, how practises have shifted from trying to get you in for those regular vaccines to actually signing you up to monthly programmes, which I assume help with keeping customers, but I'm, I'm hoping they'll also provide a better service, but also you're a business and there might be more profitability profit.
Profitable over time. So hopefully, by how you make your advertising appear online, you'll be able to promote your best sellers and get more revenue in and a better quality of client for your business. And ultimately, whether you do all these kind of marketing activities comes down to how much budget you have available and how much you're willing to invest in this.
You might have 3 branches, you might have 6 practises, you might just have 1 practise. Your marketing budget available, your goals are all going to be individual to you. We're just telling you the best tools available to do that.
So how do you do online advertising successfully? So ultimately, you can call me biassed. I mean, you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut, cos they're always gonna say yes, but pay per click advertising is the best form of targeted advertising out there.
It's for people who are looking specifically for what you sell, and you only pay if they click on your ad and see your business. It's not like a billboard where you pay and just hope that people driving past see it. You, you know exactly how many people have seen your content.
You can have what we call dynamic ads showcasing your business, and this is like I, I spoke about doing, showing your specialisms, showing your bestsellers, all that kind of thing. If you take out a magazine advert, it's a static bit of content, whereas with ads you can have various different positioning statements and an ad copy that you provide to people depending on what they're looking for. What I mean by that is if they're looking for a particular treatment for their dog or cat, or they want to.
They might put that into the search and therefore you can tailor that advert upfront to be more relevant to them. The more relevant the advert is to what the person is searching for, then the better results you're going to get out of it. Targeted advertising includes key something called keyword research.
Now, I'm going to look at this in a bit more detail in a minute, but keyword research is when, And you're looking at the keywords, the, the things that people type into Google that actually bring relevant traffic to your business. And again, this allows you to target down far more specifically. If you're doing a targeted advertising campaign and you're trying to get traffic to your website, whether it's through Facebook, even a magazine ad with it for a particular service, or of course, Google Ads, you want to be sending people to the right portions of your website.
You. You don't want to send a cat owner looking for a certain cat treatment to a page on your website, for example, that features a dog. It's not relevant.
They're gonna click away, you've already paid for that click to get them there. So you want to include in your strategy specialised landing pages. And it's all, you also want to include a budget.
The last thing you want to do is spend and spend and spend on Google Ads and just keep giving Google money. You can manage how much you can spend, you can say I, I want to spend 50 pounds a day because I know I'll get a certain amount of business or 10 pounds a day. You can limit that, you're in full control of how much you spend on this.
There's, you also can do something called retargeting. Now retargeting is, is those adverts that follow you round the internet, and now some people find those creepy, but ultimately, if people have come to your website and then gone away, they might forget about you. You've already paid to get them to your website.
So what you really want to do is keep reminding them that you're, you're there, this is part of the branding. Again, this by, by doing this in a digital arena, you can target people who already know about you and make them more likely to become customers of yours. It's another tool in your arsenal to stand out from your competition and be top of mind when people are looking for your services.
And ultimately when you're doing targeted advertising, you want to know what you're doing so you don't waste money. There are plenty of online courses and you've taken the wise decision to attend this webinar to learn a bit more about it. Now, I, what I, I'm not going to do today is, is click around too much in Google because the Google Ads tool is very complex.
Google does make it easy to set up your first campaign. You, you feel free to go ahead and try it yourself and set a minimum budget and see how you get on. The reason Google makes it easier is cos they, they want to make money out of you.
However, once you start getting into the technicalities of how to do it, well, it becomes incredibly complex. What Google does tell you is some interesting data about the kind of things people are searching for. In, in your market and how much traffic you're likely to get.
This is just a screen grab example of the keyword tool that tells you the kind of search volumes over time, where people are looking to use services. There is a slight uptick in searches in the summer. I'm sure there's some clinical reason for that, maybe hay fever, if, if dogs and cats get that.
And there's a slight uptick in January and people searching for veterinary terms. But we can see that for just for this Liverpool vet and related terms, there are, around 8 to 10,000 people searching just on these top few, few, phrases, in any given month, and that's your potential market for you. So successful online advertising requires that you have a good website.
There's no point paying to send for Google to send traffic to your website. If your website experience isn't good, and I've got some examples coming up for you of that. As I've just said, you want to have those targeted keywords, you want to make sure you're, you're you're picking the keywords within the Google Tool that are relevant to what you do.
You don't want someone looking how to become a vet, you do want someone who needs a vet treatment urgently. You want to be specific and relevant to what people are searching for. You want to make sure they are reassured that you are the right person to speak to.
The average Google search takes milliseconds and then the decision to click on an advert takes 1 or 2 seconds after that. You want to stand out as being the most specific and relevant to what people search for. And ultimately we're talking about business here and again I'm gonna come on to an example of this, but you want, you want to.
You want to sell to people to a certain extent, you don't want to come across as a, as a cheesy salesman, but you want to showcase why they should use you. You want to say, here's some great customer testimonials. This is what we do, be very specific.
Rather than just a generic we are a vet, just put some, some thought into making sure that the text you use in your adverts and the text you use in your magazine adverts. And text you use on your website actually sells you, says, look, we're great, we've got these awards, our vets are qualified in this way, sell yourself. You're, you're out there to, for people to come and spend their money with you.
Put your best foot forward. And it will, you, you wouldn't believe that when you look at it through that lens, how many sites don't showcase how good they actually are, sites that don't have custom testimony. Or, or say generic things like welcome to our veterinary practise, we've been in business for 15 years, but don't say, oh, actually one of our vets won an award, one of our vets is recognised that this specific, limb, limb treatment, all that kind of stuff.
You want to showcase your business, you do a great job, let people know about it and be proud of it, so that they know that you are the best company to come and work with. The the key ultimately though to cri to being successful, whether you spend too much money or make lots of money with your Google Ads and your online advertising is to make sure that you know what works and what doesn't. So that comes down to measuring.
You don't, you want to make sure if you're putting 1000, 2000 pounds a month into Google Ads, you want to know that you're getting a return on that. You don't want to just say, well, I think it works because we've had a few more, or I think it doesn't work because we've had a few more customers come through. What you want to know is what works and what doesn't.
The beauty of successful online ads is you can set that up. Set your budgets and stick to your budgets so that you know what you're doing. And ultimately, You, you might be getting slightly worried that I've mentioned twice there in the last minute about the costs of doing, doing Google Ads.
Well, ultimately, you have to spend money to make money and you need to know how much a new customer is worth to your business. Yes, that initial consultation might be worth £25.50 pounds.
But over the lifetime of that pet, how much is that customer potentially worth for you? If that could be, say, 3000 pounds over 5 years, as a, as a broad example, then in that case, it's worth paying a reasonable amount to get that customer in the first place, cos you're going to make profit over time. Even if that means that you are, you lose money on that first consultation.
Cos ultimately that first consultation is your chance to showcase how great you are and get people to sign up as a lifetime customer for your business. Now I, I said about people's intention spans and how . You need to, to be quick.
Not only do you need to be seen at the top of the searches when people are looking for you, but you need to follow up quickly. If someone leaves a message on your phone because they've clicked on a Google ad and called you, you've paid to get them to that point, and the fastest follow up wins, so you, it's not only about having the relevant. Google Ads set up and digital marketing itself, but it's having those backend processes with your, your reception or your back office to make sure that these people are followed up on quickly before your competitors do if they're requiring round and ensure that you are fast, responsive, polite and helpful and relevant, so that you get the most benefit from lead generation.
So we'll look at some of the common mistakes people make with ad words and websites now to help you understand how to do things well. Now this is an this is an example from America, just purely because I, I often find that America tends to be a bit more aggressive on the salesy marketing-y stuff, than, than the UK market, just as a general rule. But ultimately.
With that lack of attention span and the fact that people want quick answers, you need to make sure that you're giving them what they want and they want to get in touch with you. So this website calls out that you can get $25 off your first appointment, which is great because that's a compelling reason to get in touch and become a lead. This website is a horrible design, but the reason I show it is because it very much makes it clear what they do.
They're 24 hour vets. They have a quick way to click for emergencies, and they're calling out that they were voted the best emergency hospital. They're being proud of what they do.
And of course, because more and more people use mobile phones, you want to make sure that your website works well on a mobile phone. And you want to put the most relevant stuff on that first screen. So you can see on this example, it's request appointment and call up.
So making sure you, you, you're paying to get people to the point where they're on your website, you want to make sure that once they're there, that they get in touch and become a customer of your business. So where does Google ads fit in your overall digital marketing? Well.
I like, I, I want you to come away from this not thinking that Google Ads is the only thing you can do, although I, I definitely recommend it. But it's often difficult to know what you should be doing, er, as any business online, but for a local business like Veterinary practises, you want to make sure you're ticking off all these things and making sure that you are doing them to give yourself the best chance of being seen. So you want to make sure you've got your Google local listing, which I've got an example of, coming up.
All filled out properly, you want to make sure you've got a quality website that works on all devices like mobile phones, etc. You want to get reviews, reviews are more and more important, and do not be ashamed to ask for testimonials from your customers. You can be sure that if someone is unhappy, they're likely to leave.
A review. But reviews, even just 2 or 3 reviews may be more than your competition in a local area has, and it does make a difference about whether people get in touch with you. So I would encourage you to get reviews, as much as possible and be really be proud of those customer testimonials.
Just because this is another compelling reason for some cold, cold traffic, some cold person who's never heard of you before, comes to your website and says I need a treatment for my, for my rabbit. These have got great reviews. I'm going to get in touch with them.
If you can use an online booking system or you're thinking about doing it, I would definitely recommend it. Just purely for that example of people looking at all hours of the day these times to make appointments. They like to be able to not have to ring, wait on hold on a phone, then do the diary back and forth.
If they can use an online. System and say, right, there's 3 appointments next Thursday afternoon, I'll take one of those. It makes it less frictionless.
The barrier to becoming a customer is, is, is lower and it just makes the whole experience for the user a lot easier as more and more people are just doing everything from their mobile phone. And as millennials in 2019, become the larger demographic than baby boomers in America and probably in the UK as well, more and more people are doing things online, and fewer and fewer people are actually talking to each other on the phone. So that, so that may be, you just want to give your customers the best possible options of how to get in touch with you, especially if you're paying to get them to your website.
And do make a, a special offer to make you stand out. If you're, again, if you're paying for this traffic to get people to your site, then once they're there, give them a good reason to get in touch with you and go, yeah, this is the vets I'm gonna go with. Give them that voucher off their first treatment, or give them a, a, a free second checkup.
Whatever's a compelling offer that you can test and see what works, it makes you stand out from your competitors, and again, it makes people more likely to get in touch with you. And once you've paid to get someone as a, as a lead or a first time customer of your business, follow up with them, remind them that you're still there, non aggressively, but just try and encourage them to come back, spend more money with you, get more and more treatments from you, more and more good service, and then they become a lifetime customer who spends thousands potentially over the lifetime of the pet, they recommend you to their friends. So, Every customer is worth something to your business, and there's a story in McDonald's restaurants, which I'm sure you're familiar with, where if you've got a problem with your Big Mac and you take it back, they will just, they should just replace it free of charge.
They just, no, no sb no squabbling, they'll just go, here you go, here's another one. Thank you very much. The reason for that is over the, the average lifetime value of a McDonald's customer, believe it or not, is around $10,000 over their lifetime.
So the cost of a couple of, couple of pounds or dollars for that 11, burger that they didn't like being replaced, if you said, oh, that's gonna cost me money in the short term, that's a bad outlook. Ultimately, it's how much a customer is worth to you over their lifetime, that's the most important metric for growing a business. So I just want to come back to this local business listing, cos ultimately, this is something that's going to become a paid platform, but for now you just want to make sure that your local listing is as full as possible.
So this practise has has a couple of branches in Liverpool. They've got generally really good reviews, they've made sure they've got lots of reviews. They've filled out their opening hours and fill out that profile, make sure.
That you are showcasing your company as as predominantly as possible on Google, which is the, the main way that people search for these kind of services. And that ultimately, When you've done all that, you want to make sure you have measurable results again for any marketing type. It's the key to success.
Know how much each new cost per acquisition is. Acquisition means to acquire a customer, acquire a lead, a new inquiry for your business. How much does it cost you for every person who comes through that door or rings up.
With a new business potential, how much does it cost you, how much are they worth to your business? That is the key thing you need to take away of how to measure your marketing success, no matter what marketing platform you use. Try and track track everything or use a company that tracks everything to make sure you know what's working and what's not.
And when you track everything you get lots of information. You know, you had 1000 people hit your website this month or a certain magazine advert drove. Had a voucher on and it drove a certain amount of traffic.
Learn from that data, if something, if a magazine advert worked really well last year, it probably worked really well this year, do it again. But it's only by tracking that that you know what works. And from learning from that data, adapt and grow, you know, see what works, scrap what doesn't, and then you grow your business.
And what gets measured gets managed. Ultimately, not measuring your results and looking at your number is something that I would give you the cone of shame for, because I, I find there's no excuse for not knowing how to grow your business based on what works and what doesn't. In 2019 all the data is available to you.
So the main things I want you to take away today is that lead generation is essential for any business. And because of that, Google Ads is a great option for this because it's targeted, it's measurable, it gets fast results, er you can set it up quickly, how complicated it is to set up comes down to many factors. You want to know the numbers for success of what's going to work for your business in terms of how much each new business member is, how much new customer is and how much they're worth over time, and you want to do it right.
Now finally, you're probably wondering, well, where do I start? Well, you ultimately you have three options. You can try it yourself, learn by trial and error and spending money.
This lends itself better to Facebook because that's a tool many people are familiar with. Anyway, and also Facebook has that personal edge to it. So, you, you know how to do a good post versus a bad post based on that excellent training you just had.
You could do nothing, you could just keep, keep things as they are, you might be happy with your, your churn rate, your, your attrition of customers and your current marketing. That's fine if that works for you. Or you could use a specialist or train yourself with online courses to really take those from slow to fast results for growing your business.
So. I just want to thank you for watching, taking the time out of your Saturday early hours of the morning or afternoon to, to listen to me ramble on about something that's a, a very geeky subject to me, and I could have gone very technical, but I wanted to frame it in the context of overall growing, veterinary practises and how, Google Ads is a tool for you. I am happy, as Antony will tell you, I love helping companies do things online.
Whether we end up working together or not, I hate people wasting money on Google Ads if it's not working for them. So if you have any questions that I'm, I'm aware I've rambled, you can ask them now or. You feel free to email me at any time, Chris, C H R I S at Ps.co.uk and I'd be happy to either phone you, phone you or look at your website and your marketing and give you a free marketing analysis of how you stack up against your competition.
So thanks for watching and thank you, Anthony, for the opportunity.