Success with Web-Based Marketing
By
Daniel A. Bobrow, MBA (University of Chicago) & MBA (K.U.L. Belgium)

This is the second of three Issues devoted to success with web-based marketing

Each Issue addresses one of the three keys to success, namely:

•  Effective Design

•  Effective Marketing

And

•  Effective Follow Through With Website Visitors

In this Issue we tackle the second key to a successful website, namely, Attracting the visitor.

Before your website can encourage patients to visit your office, they first must find your website. For this to happen, you need to position yourself so that, when people and businesses in your community are searching for dental care, it's your website, or a page within your site, that they find.

Access Paths
A simple way to attract people to your website is to include your website address (URL) everywhere prospective patients will see or hear it: on stationery, business cards, external signage, your on-hold message and, of course, on all conventional marketing channels such as: direct mail, TV, radio, billboards, etc.

Another way to get your website noticed is via online search . Online search is sub-classified into free (also called organic) and paid (sometimes termed pay-per-click) search.

The goal of both forms of online search is to get your website ranked high on search engine listings when the web surfer looking for dental care enters words or phrases (called keywords and key phrases) that are a match for what your website offers.

Online search, while not new, is assuming an ever greater “local” character. It is also rapidly gaining in importance. Even analysts who work for the Yellow Pages reported in 2006 that individuals used the Internet 70% of the time vs. only 30% for the Yellow Pages when searching for a local service.* That percentage will only increase in favor of Internet Search.

*Targetemtm

Pay To Play?
A reasonable question to ask (and have answered) is: Should I employ a pay per click strategy and, if so, what should my investment be?

Anyone is permitted to manage a pay per click program. However, it can be a complicated and tedious process to build, maintain and update the list of terms that reference your site. More important, if managed by anyone other than an expert, it can be unnecessarily costly, especially when the wrong terms are selected and the price paid for the correct terms is too high.

When done by a professional, high quality patient leads are captured by purchasing ads with Google®, Yahoo®, MSN®, and perhaps other search engines. This lets you target people within the desired radius or other boundaries of your office who are searching for the dental services you offer. These are qualified prospective patients by virtue of the fact they have taken the time and effort to find you.

Your goal with a pay per click campaign is to maximize qualified site visits by directing local individuals and families searching for dental care right to your practice website

According to Tim Healy of TNT Dental:

“Search engines play favorites…When a potential patient searches for (say) 'general dentist' on Google, Yahoo, or another search engine, your site may show up so far down in the rankings that it will rarely, if ever, be seen. In the past, dental Websites were not confronted with the level of competition they now face. Fewer sites existed, and those sites were not professionally ‘optimized,' that is, marketed. In other words, just having a dental Website put you on a fairly level playing field. …many more dental Websites exist these days..(including) Dentists, dental products, dental specialists, dental insurance companies…Many have turned to professionals for SEO strategies." 

The bottom line on paid web advertising is that it can be a great way to quickly get your website noticed. Even if your site already ranks high for certain search words and terms, it can also help get you ranked more highly for additional terms and phrases of relevance. The only way to know is to try it. Fortunately, there should be no lengthy commitments and you should be able to increase or reduce your monthly outlay with a single phone call or email.

Web Marketing, Take II
The following is excerpted from an interview with Bradley Epstein, Campaign Manager at 1&1 Internet.

The term “Web 2.0” originated from observations about the set of web companies that not only survived, but thrived, in the wake of the “dot com” crash in the fall of 2001. At the core of these sites were simple yet compelling designs with well-chosen visuals, and interactive tools that let users interact and construct content in unique ways. In addition to creating useful sites, the principles behind 2.0 can be used to increase organic traffic to your site, retain visitors and convert those visitors to customers, hence Web 2.SEO.

Incorporating a well-structured Web 2.0 design into your site will improve search rankings through both improving the informational architecture of your site (cleaner, simpler code makes your site more easily indexed)…(it)…also improves the probability that high-quality sites will link to you. A simpler, more streamlined design will make your site easier to read for engines and users as well…Now, more than ever, you can please both “search bots” and visitors by keeping Web 2.SEO principles in mind when designing your site.

Getting visitors
With limited space on a site, especially ‘above the fold' (what a visitor sees without having to scroll down), you should aim to maximize the effectiveness of the visual communication: each graphical element should convey a message, and the textual content should be concise. The more logically organized your site is, the easier for both search bots and web visitors to find relevant information. Specifically:

• A simpler 2 or 3-column, central layout structure will convey a simpler, bolder message that communicates more clearly with your visitors. The central column is the ideal place for your key message, with highly targeted and compelling text.
• Use your top header section to clearly present your site and navigation options to draw in your visitors with a bold, opening statement on what they can find on your site.
• Keep your navigation simple: this will create a logical structure for your visitors, and translate well into a clean sitemap, which search engines can use to index your site.

Local, Local, Local
Search engines have recently begun to focus more of their attention on their local search directories. As noted earlier, Local Search is growing exponentially, and so is your need to be sure the search engines know the location of your practice, and the community to which it caters.

Whoever markets your website should be adding it to the local search engine directories. Our company had, until recently, used a list of local web directories we compiled over the past years to be sure our Clients' sites were listed locally. We have now discarded that list as we found a resource that is constantly updating its listing of local directories. Here it is:

http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm#localsearchenginesus

Google also recently announced its commitment to helping consumers locate and compare local services of all kinds. Here is an excerpt:

Find and compare local businesses

Many people come to Google.com to navigate the web, but are you aware that you can use it to navigate the real world as well? Over the past few months, we've been hard at work making it easier to find and compare local businesses and services right from the standard web results page. Here's what we've come up with:


From now on, you'll see this every time you search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact information and map locations for several choices at the top of the page, we also show ratings and provide one-click access to reviews on the search results page so that you can make more informed decisions about where you want to go.

What it means for you is, if you are not listed in their local business directory, you may not receive a prominent placement at the top of Google's search results. 

To test it out, type your city, state, and service in Google and you'll see the new, big map that they created and are emphasizing.  The businesses that are in this local list are the sudden recipients of a huge gift from Google - qualified and desirable traffic to their site.

A recent article in Clickz.com cited a keynote address by the Internet media and marketing, managing director for Piper Jaffrey who had some interesting points, among these that local search was second only to e-mail in importance on the web. He continued that satellite mapping will become an integral part of local search marketing.

Two Down, One To Go
While a good looking website and even high traffic are necessary, alone they still cannot guarantee success. The next key link in the success chain is what happens once the patient finds your website.

But that will need to wait until our Next issue

Sincerely,

AMERICAN DENTAL MARKETING COMPANY

Daniel A. (Danny) Bobrow, MBA

To learn more or to ask a question contact us

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http://www.americandentalco.com/newsletter.php