The Top Digital Marketing Agencies: Their Strategy Secrets

By Stewart Gandolf, Chief Executive Officer

You’ve heard the acronyms floating around: SEO, PPC, CPC, SEM. You might even have a good handle on what some of these things entail. But how do you peace it all together into one cohesive strategy? What tried-and-true facts do the top digital marketing agencies use to help their clients succeed?

1. Digital advertising is a science

We’ve all seen Google ads. The first 1-4 results of your Google search often represent paid advertisements. The ads are brief and to the point—so why not set up your own Google ads and let them run their course? (In other words: set it & forget it.)

Because digital advertising is a science. As with the scientific method, advertising requires you to…

Conduct research and gather facts (on competitors, keywords, target demographics, etc.)
Form a hypothesis (about which bidding & keyword strategies will be most effective for your service or product)
Run an experiment
Analyze results & data
Refine, alter, & retest your hypothesis.

Skilled digital advertisers constantly experiment.

That’s why we recommend working with an agency for effective digital advertising. But if you do decide to go it alone, be sure to constantly test and adjust your keywords, ad content, landing page, and bidding strategy.

2. Your digital campaigns should work together towards a shared goal

If you adjust one part of your digital campaign, your best bet is to adjust them all. Let’s say you decide to promote a brand-new product you’re using in the office. You might then...

Add a page to your website about that service, using SEO keywords to rank in the search engines;
Write an informative blog or even a press release;
Send out a series of targeted emails;
Run an ad on Google, Bing, and Yahoo;
& Create a social media advertisement.

No single ad should exist in a vacuum. Everything should work together to meet a shared goal.

Moreover, that goal should align directly with your business goals. In the healthcare field, a typical goal is to find new patients (or higher paying cases). Would posting every day on social media help you reach those goals? Probably not.

So consider your business goals with every change you make to your digital strategy. For example, craft ads that target your most profitable service lines, and create landing pages to correspond.

3. Social media is more important than ever

Any top digital marketing agency would emphasize the importance of social media strategy. But the best ones would tell you that hiring someone to spend time posting organically on social media is often a waste of time.

For thought leaders and larger organizations where community outreach is important (like hospitals), this strategy may make financial sense.

But for most small businesses and private practices, organic social media should be delegated to whomever has the time. Social media advertising (paid ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) is how you can truly attract new patients, clients, or customers.

Organic social media posts only hit a small percentage of your followers (often family and friends of employees). But with paid social media, the possibilities are limitless.

4. A website is never truly finished

Finally, top digital marketing agencies know that a good website is never truly finished.

As infuriating as it can be, that’s true of our own website. We’d love to lay back and watch the numbers climb, but a website requires frequent posts, updates, redesigns, and optimization to keep up with the changing world of digital marketing.

Of course, you’ll need to update your website for SEO. You’ll also need to update content as you add new services or products.

But that’s not the only reason to update a website. Google updates its algorithm all the time. You might rank extremely well for your target keywords one week, and drop out of the top 20 the next. If you want to keep up, you have to optimize the back end of your website (meta descriptions, title tags, mobile optimization, etc.) as well as the content—and that takes time.

Work with a top digital marketing agency in healthcare

When you’re looking for an agency to help you put all the pieces together, look for the qualities you’re searching for in your own website marketing. The top digital marketing agencies follow their own advice.

If your goal is to reach more patients (or market to doctors), contact Healthcare Success. Our healthcare marketing agency can help you reach the right people at the right time with ethical marketing strategies that help you win more patients and change more lives.