Advertising goals
- Ensuring a constant flow of applications for a paid consultation at each of the four centers of the chain.
- Covering the events of the chain: lectures, seminars, Open Days, holiday promotions.
About the project
Avoiding the center name and blurring parts of the images are the client’s condition of the case publication.
There is more than one chain of centers under the same brand in Saint Petersburg. In order to avoid internal competition, we geo-targeted the area within 5 km of the 4 centers.
The brand, which has already been actively used for passive promotion of the center, plays an important role in building trust in the medical niche. But even despite the brand presence, getting a steady stream of customers only through word of mouth and free promotion methods is quite uncommon nowadays.
The target audience age is mostly 30+. People of this age have significantly fewer health problems. Therefore, leads from a younger age group are more expensive.
If medical services are not in demand right now, they may be needed later, and repeatedly. Clearly, the audience has a potential for deferred demand and multiple purchases. In such a situation, content marketing work, used for warming up the audiences towards decision making and as a self-reminder, is expedient.
How it works
If someone has a problem the center can solve, they make an appointment with a specialist. The specialist consultation of around $13 is an intermediate product.
During the appointment, the patient is prescribed a course of treatment, if indicated. Thereby, it is the course that is the main product.
Stages of work
Social media chosen for work were Facebook и Instagram. The main source of leads from them is the official targeted advertising.
Landing pages
However, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the landing pages preparation. Quite a few people go to the Facebook or Instagram page after seeing the ad.
The landing pages preparation makes it possible for the page visitor to find all the necessary information, ask questions and make an appointment. Besides, the landing page content must highlight the company’s expertise and build product trust through the content.
Facebook and Instagram
- We completely changed the account feed design.
- We changed the bio to showcase the main product offering.
- We edited links and addresses.
- We created story highlights with the main information.
- Moreover, we added Facebook Automated Responses with instant replies to FAQ.
Instagram before/after:
Facebook now:
Targeted advertising
The primary data collection from different social media showed the possibility to get enough leads on Facebook, Instagram. In the first 15 days we managed to get around 55 applications with a cost per action of $5.
The limited audience size remains a major challenge. There are only around 200 thousand people over 30, residing within 5 km of all 4 medical centers. And considering the various options of audience segmentation, there are even fewer target customers left.
To some extent, repeat sales and customer loyalty to the same specialists helped to avoid audience burnout. We used dozens of ads to keep the engagement levels high.
These are some examples:
Facebook and Instagram
A big advantage of Facebook is its perfectly functioning Ad Optimization. Because of it, we can get more leads by means of ad display to those similar to the people who have already engaged with the ad.
We used several types of lead generation:
- Application form
- Use of the landing page
- Use of a quiz
The landing looked like a beautifully designed application form, but it was enough to increase the conversion rate.
The quiz consisted of a series of health-related questions and contained an offer to have a specialist’s consultation and get a bonus video of pain relief exercises after leaving the phone number.
We also actively gained Facebook and Instagram followers, who regularly convert into customers.
The results
- Spent $5580
- Received 906 applications
- Cost per action $6,16
- Gained over 6000 followers on Facebook and Instagram
- Cost per follower up to 40 cents
- There is always high event attendance for Open Days and lectures for patients, limited to 200 participants.
- Organized advertising support for over 30 events
Despite the limited audience size, we managed not only to avoid its burnout, but also to keep cost per action under $7.
Conclusion
It’s important to understand what audience we are engaging in the medical niche. These are not typical customers looking for a trendy outfit or a useful thing to buy, but people solving their health-related problem. Yes, the approaches are similar, but we’d better not try to attract clients in all imaginable ways.
It’s good if the brand image of a clinic or a doctor speaks for itself. If not, we shouldn’t use the tactics of “intimidating with the incurable disease”. We can’t promise to rid the person of their problems quickly and for good, it’s not the home appliance repair. It’s better to clearly describe the benefits of the clinic and the problems its specialists can solve. And to do it in such a way that a prospective client could recognize themselves and understand that their quality of life can improve after the communication with a specialist. Perhaps, these are the main content marketing goals.
We must also remember to mention the specialists’ eminence and regalia. Audience in the medical niches reacts very well to such information, often regardless of the real professional level of a doctor, unfortunately. To some extent, it’s related to the age of the healthcare consumers which is usually over 40.
A big advantage is the deferred demand and occasional medical examinations / consultations. But in no way does it mean that we can endlessly display ads to the same audience. Audience burnout is still there, so we have to be ready to test new approaches in targeted advertising and in marketing in general.