BUDGET: PPC OR SEO?

There are two key ways to drive traffic to your care home's website: Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Both have their role to play in your care home's marketing strategy. Siobhan Stirling, Managing Director of award-winning marketing and PR agency Sharp Minds Communications, guides you through the pros and cons of each and when should you use them to drive enquiries to your website?

What is PPC?

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a type of digital advertising model predominately used by search engines. Businesses bid on specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to their target audience. When a user types in one of these keywords or phrases, the search engine displays an ad from the highest bidder at the top of the search results or feed. You can recognise PPC ads from the small ad tag on each result, which we’ve highlighted in the screenshot.

·         See quick results: With Search Engine Optimization (SEO), organic traffic can take time to build up even with best strategy. If you need to increase your care home occupancy quickly, for example, running a PPC campaign is a great way to appear at the top of searches and ensure that people can find you.

·         Detailed targeting: PPC allows you to create efficient ads that are only shown to people that are interested in your service. You can create different filters to target potential residents or their relatives (it’s key to know which family member makes initial contact) and for staff recruitment. You can tailor your ads to key criteria – such as geographical location, demographic group, behaviour patterns, interests – to ensure they are seen by the right people.

·         Easy to measure: Using Google Ads in combination with Google Analytics is a powerful combination that allows you to get a comprehensive overview of your campaign performance. You’ll be able to track essential metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions as well as other key details such as the number of leads generated and the overall ROI. With this data you can evaluate campaign performance and tweak future iterations if needed. This makes it easy to understand how your campaigns are performing and what kind of results they can drive for your budget.

What are the downsides of PPC for your care home?

·         Cost: One of the main disadvantages of PPC is that it can be expensive. The cost of a campaign depends on various factors such as the targeted keywords, competition level and desired results. As the number of competitors in a market increases, so does the cost of keywords.

·         Expertise required: Setting up an efficient PPC campaign can be difficult for those new to the platform. Each ad can have an almost infinite number of targeting options that require existing knowledge and skill to maximise returns.

·         User scepticism: Digital advertisements have been a part of our lives for some time now, and many users have developed a certain level of cynicism towards them. It's true that not everyone experiences this feeling but there is a significant portion of the population that will simply skip or ignore an ad whenever they see one, with many making a very conscious decision only to click on organic, rather than paid, results.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising a website to achieve a higher ranking on search engine results pages. By using a combination of techniques including keyword research, content optimisation, fast load times and backlinks, businesses can help increase their visibility online and gain more organic traffic. Our five-step guide to reaching the top of Google is a good starting point.  

What are the pros of SEO for your care home?

·         Enhances reputation: Being top of organic search results is the most successful way to pick up web traffic as it suggests authenticity and credibility. As we touched upon in the PPC section, more sceptical users avoid the top paid ads in favour of the top organic results.

·        Low cost: Providing the content is optimised, SEO can be relatively inexpensive to implement for your care home website. Whether content is written by in-house team members or outsourced to marketing experts skilled at creating organic content that ticks SEO content, it can provide a financially viable option for any care home.

·         Long term results: As soon as your website achieves a high rank on Google, you can anticipate consistent traffic without any extra cost, as long as you continue to optimise it. A key feature of SEO is that it doesn't have an on and off switch like PPC. In PPC, your website's visibility on search results is directly linked to your budget. You can think of SEO as owning your traffic, while PPC is renting it. 

What are the drawbacks of SEO for your care home?

·         Not a quick win: SEO is a long-term strategy. In the real world, reputation and credibility can take a while to earn and build and you’ll have to understand it's a cumulative process that takes months.

·         Can't rest on your laurels: With less than 1% of users clicking on a search result past page one, other care homes in your area will also be looking to get to the top of Google. It's a bit like running a 100m race – you may have been the school champion, but if you ran against Usain Bolt you'd barely be out of the starting blocks by the time he was crossing the finishing line. The more aggressively your competitors are working on their website SEO, the more you are going to have to work on it to be a contender.

·         You need to know what you're doing: One of the best ways to boost your organic SEO is regular content, but volume alone won’t cut it. Content needs to be optimised for SEO so that the search engine crawlers read your content as being valuable and relevant for users looking for care homes.

SEO and PPC can be effective tools for your care home marketing strategy. However, with reputation being a key contributor to care home success, we would always recommend leading with SEO and using PPC as and when most needed.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how we support care homes with their content strategy, complete our contact form or give us a call on 01892 570863.

You can find more of our #SharpTips marketing insights on the Sharp Minds website.