Search vs. Display Advertising for Podiatrists

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. I am joined today by my cohost, which I am every week. It is big Jim Mac. Hey, Jim.

How are doing?

Tyson, I'm doing fantastic. Thanks as always for the flattering intro. You really know how to pump me up and get me ready for the the conversations we're gonna have here on the podcast.

Okay. I've got a quick Canada question.

Sure.

So you're in Quebec. Is that right?

I am. Right. That's right.

So does Quebec treat themselves differently to the rest of Canada?

Yeah. I mean, for example, French is the official language of Quebec. So we're a French first province. People do speak English here somewhat, but, yeah, that that's probably the biggest difference is that, you know, it's a French first province.

Okay. Now it's like talk to Italians, for example, and they're from Sicily. If you say, oh, you're Italian? They go, oh, no. I'm Sicilian.

Then they go, well, it's part of Italy. But they do look at themselves a little bit different.

It's very similar here, I think. I mean, I would say, like, The US, right, people are you from The US or are you are you from Texas? Right? Or like, if you're from that's how I kinda compare it to you. Right?

If you're from Canada, you live in Quebec, you're you're most like and you're French speaking, you're gonna say, I'm like Quebecois. Like that's that's kinda that's kind of how you identify. So but it all varies. Right? You know, I'm a I'm an American immigrant living in Canada, so, you know, everyone's got their own stories.

Yeah. I must admit, that's one thing I have noticed in America. Whenever you ask someone, oh, where are you from? They won't just say, oh, I'm from Detroit. They go, I'm from Detroit, Michigan.

Right.

They'll always they always put the the town they're from, and then they'll mention the state. So it'd be like me, ask me where am I from? And I say, I'm from Cairns, Queensland.

Yeah. I don't know. It's a little different. I mean, I guess there's what you know, I I kind of I haven't grown up in The US. I kind of forget how big it is, you know, what 340,000,000 people and

Yeah.

Lots of lots of big cities. So I guess people like to be specific when when they are maybe they're proud of their state as well. So, I mean, not that you're not proud of Queensland, but

Oh, no. Queensland. We're proud proud Queenslanders. Yeah. Don't say we're from anywhere else other than Queensland.

For sure.

Definitely don't say we're from New South Wales.

I will I would never say that. I know better. I know better. Lots lots of rivalries there.

Yeah. And the New South Welshman, they'd say the same thing how they don't say I'm a Queenslander. But they're gonna tell me Queenslanders and Canadians and go, So so they reckon. Anyway, I love at the beginning of our episodes, I I like the banter that has nothing to do with marketing.

So just call it we're gonna need a new podcast called podiatry banter or non non podiatry banter and see how that podcast goes.

I'd enjoy that. I'd enjoy just the the banter podcast. Nonspecific.

Yeah. Unfortunately, I think most people when they they tune in, they're hoping to maybe learn something more than, you what it's like to live in Quebec or in in Queensland, but I enjoy talking about it.

Yeah. Okay. So let's move on. After three minutes, let's move on to today's topic, which is

So today, we're gonna talk about understanding when to use search versus display advertising. I think it's something that gets brought up a lot when I, you know, talk to clients or people I'm working with with their digital marketing. Really kind of understanding the basics and kinda when to use one and when to use the other.

First, I think you should explain the difference.

Yeah. So when we're talking about search advertising, you know, we're talking kind of about, you know, type something into Google or Bing or Microsoft search and, you know, you get those the links at the very top of the page and they'll have a tiny little label that says add on them now.

Yeah.

You can you can barely tell unless you really look for it now that it is an ad, but most people know that that is an ad. And, know, and we'll get to benefit what the benefits of those are, but these are kind of very relevant. These are, you know, type in, let's say, podiatrist near me, and you're gonna get a search result in a search page that comes back like that. When we're talking about display advertising, we're more talking about sometimes it can be on Google Display Network or on Facebook. But basically, a way to kind of get some general awareness about a topic or a service you provide that does is not related to search.

So, you know, it's just kinda showing up there. So let's say you're, like, on the Chicago Tribune website, you see this, you know, and maybe you'd gone to a podiatry clinic office or to a different, you know, maybe you're looking at cars or something, you'll see an ad in the in the sidebar

Yeah.

With a graphic of something. Or you're just scrolling through Facebook and you get like a an advertisement for a local dentist or a local roofing company or something that pops up. So that's kind of the main difference is the, you know, the kind of this how the how when and where you see those search versus display ads, for example.

Yeah. And I've seen that when we might be looking at a cruise, and you'll be on a, say, Caribbean cruise website. You're looking at, yeah, should we or shouldn't we? Then you move off of that, and then you're over something else might be reading an article or marking. The next thing, poof, it just pops up down the side, and you're going, oh, that's right.

I was looking at that just before. But then the next day, it's there again, and then next week, it's still there, which it definitely works.

Yeah. I mean, it's I think they say, like, it takes somewhere between, like, seven to 10 interactions with the brand or interactions with a with a company before you can kinda, like, feel, like, trust they feel trustworthy or you kind of know have that name recognition at least. Whether you trust them or not is probably different. But just kind of having something in your mind and and like you said, this kind of repeatedly seeing things will sometimes, you know, bring you bring you enough awareness and kind of being top of mind to people when they're looking for specific things.

So when should they use one over the other?

Yeah. So we'll start off with kinda like when is, you know, when is should a podiatry clinic consider search advertising? We'll kinda work work through three examples there. And the first one being that really when you're using search advertising, you want to kinda be thinking of like, you're basically be in the shoes of your patient. Yeah.

So this is search advertising is highly kind of intent based, meaning that when someone types something into Google, like, you wanna make sure you show up there. And there's gonna be certain things they type in that maybe you wouldn't think about doing. Right? Like, maybe you consider yourself like a surgical podiatrist. Right?

You only do surgery, but it's probably pretty rare that someone's gonna type in, you know, podiatry podiatric surgeon or podiatry surgery, like, near me or something. That's just not something they're gonna search for. And there's also things like just very generic or very general diagnosis or terms. Like, maybe it's like heel pain. Like, you don't necessarily wanna show up for searches for heel pain even though you may treat heel pain because you'll have doctor Scholes, you'll have some other staff, you'll have maybe five other podiatrists that are spending way too much money on these terms.

And maybe you're going up against multimillion dollar businesses that have enormous ad budgets and it's not gonna be as intent based. So we really wanna kind of find out the, you know, those terms, things like podiatrist near me, foot doctor, like name of your town. And these are opportunities to kinda get this really strong intent based kind of targeting. Because, you know, when people are searching for things like podiatrist near me or foot doctor near me, they have kind of a they're really looking to make an appointment with someone. Yeah.

There's obviously different ways to kind of like, you know, filter those patients or understand whether they're the right fit for you or not. And maybe they bounce, you know, they go from that when they click on that ad, they go to your website. And maybe you have a picture of you doing a surgery, or you treating sports medicine patients, or you doing wound care or something. And then they'll kinda self select from that period of time. But when you're doing these ads, you wanna make sure that they are this kind of lower funnel, like, almost ready to make appointment.

Because if you're, you know, making these ad campaigns on very, I would say, educational topics or even just non relevant things. Right? So you don't wanna show up for things like podiatry school or, you know, like like podiatry like podiatrist lawsuits or something. Right? So there's Yeah.

Certain, like, negative keywords you need to use to make sure you don't show up in some searches and you make sure that you're not bidding on things that are gonna waste your budget. So that's the kind of first thing is like making sure that the keywords you use are these high intent things that are gonna lead to patient appointments.

Okay. If a podiatrist had never done this before, where do they start? What's the what's what's the process to to kick this off?

Yeah. So I think there's different ways to approach it. Right? So there's definitely a lot of good resources online to learn the basics of it. And you just have to be a little bit aware that there's kinda different levels of the platform that, like, basically Google will show you when you're doing ads.

So Yeah.

You know, there's kinda like the basically, give us your money and we'll kinda decide all of these things for you. And while that might seem convenient, I don't recommend it. If you have a lot of if you have more time than money, you can learn how to do kind of the the pro version of the pro dashboard version of it. I like that.

More time than money.

Yeah. But I mean, if you're just sitting there, you know, you have five patients and you wanna learn how to do Google you can't do it. There's a lot of good resources online. But once you kind of have more money than time and you wanna make sure that you're spending each dollar wisely, you know, working with, you know, not to toot my own horn, but I do this for clients and I do this for my fellow podiatrist, but someone that has experience really going after and knowing the right keywords and the right ways to write these ads so they're, you know, number number one, trustworthy and and number number two, super effective to make sure that you're spending your budget wisely. So those are kind of the ways to get into it if you think that search advertising is something you wanna consider.

And I would say it's probably the it's only the first type of advertising that people should consider because it is does have higher conversion rates than display advertising. When people are actively searching for something and they're looking for it Yeah. And if you use those right keywords, like you I mean, if, you know, if you're spending $15 to get a new patient through Google search ads, like, you would do that all day. Right? Because, like, you're like, the kind of return on investment would be so huge.

But, like, depending on where you live at, you're either gonna be limited by kind of search volume, like meaning like there's only so many people looking for podiatrists near me because you're maybe in a medium sized town or a smaller area, but there is a certain amount of volume there, or you live in a big city where there's just so much competition. Like if you're in New York City, yeah, there's like millions of people, but obviously there's other people using search ads at the same time. So you will get these higher conversion rates using search ads, but you have to know that it is relatively limited either through the search volume or limited by competition.

So should you be a lot more specific about your location? Like, really narrow down your location? So, like, it says a New York City, which could be, is there, like, another way you would say that to give a better indication of where you are?

Yeah. That's a good point. And I think the the third aspect of utilizing search these search ads over display is that local relevance can be a factor. So if you have kind of what I call like areas we serve pages on your website. So let's say you're in New York City and you're close to like, you know, these different neighborhoods within New York City.

It probably benefits you to have pages of those five different neighborhoods or those 10 different neighborhoods or whatever, you know, it's like the, you know, West Upper West Side Podiatrist. You know, whatever the terms that your patients use

Yeah.

When they're searching for things is what you should show up for. Right? So it might be maybe in your local area or somewhere near you, be a radius or by zip codes, you could have something more generic like New York City Podiatrist, but you wouldn't have a pretty tight radius on that. Right? You don't want someone if you're located in Manhattan, you don't want someone like way out in Brooklyn, you know, finding you and then realizing that you're like an hour and a half away by train or something.

And then because they're never gonna see you. Right? And it's just a waste of ad spend. But there are ways to kind of be more, I guess, generic or more general if you do kind of keep that radius. Because like I said, these search ads will allow you to have kind of a either a zip code or kind of a a radius around your clinic that you can use.

But there is a huge benefit. Like you said, if if you're in, like, let's say in the Chicago suburbs, maybe it's, you know, you know, you wanna have those five other large suburbs or maybe it's even the suburbs where you have kind of your ideal patients, but they'd be willing to drive to you. So maybe that's twenty minutes away or thirty minutes away at max. Mhmm. It's really gonna depend on who you are, your expertise, and how how how far you think people will drive to come see you.

I think one thing that could be beneficial is to look at your current if you've been in practice for a little while, look at your current current kind of patient roster and see what you know you know, do fifty percent of your patients come from Naperville or, you know, 2020% come from LaGrange or something. Right? So you can get a general sense of where people are already coming from and you can, you know, really tailor either your advertising or try to go after people in a different area that for some reason just haven't that don't know you exist and and make yourself kind of a more relevant to them.

What what's some of the when people are doing it themselves, what's some of the biggest mistakes they make?

Yeah. I would say the biggest some of the biggest mistakes they make, like I said, is just number one, advertising on really, you know, general terms. Like, I would say more like diagnoses. So it's either like way too wide open where you're competing against, like I said, against, you know, Doctor. Scholl's heel pads, where they're spending, you know, 50,000 or a hundred thousand dollars a month on on budget, and you'll just never Yeah.

Can't compete. You'll you can't compete and you'll outbid them. Or you'll also, if you do plantar fasciitis, you're gonna get these really educational searches. People wanna do it themselves or you know, home treatment for plantar fasciitis will show up if you just advertise for plantar fasciitis. So it's either like leaving it like way too wide open or it's making it too narrow with the keyword.

Try like I said, if you're trying to like you have this brand new machine, maybe it's like swift swift wart removal or something. Maybe if in the right area, that would work because people have heard of swift before, but the majority of people will have never heard of swift. So you're gonna spend all this time setting up this very narrow term and may you know, you're gonna do all this work writing me ads, all these things, and you're gonna get nobody searching for that term whatsoever. So it's it's finding that middle ground where that it's, know, it's general enough, but specific enough where it's it's worth the click and it's worth you bidding on that that that keyword. Like I said, most of it is locally relevant, podiatrist near me, getting in the shoes of that patient to make sure that, you know, if you were to look for a dentist or if you were to look for somebody, what are the keywords you would use?

But, you know, you gotta kinda step outside yourself a little bit.

Yeah. It makes sense. Okay. So what about display advertising? When should a podiatry clinic use display advertising over search advertising?

Yeah. So I think there's there's two kind of quick, you know, quick wins here for for people is that number one is like, if you wanna get the name of your clinic out there or kind of the brand you know, this is kind of what we call like brand awareness in marketing. If you're new to an area and you just want people to kind of know that you exist, it can be really helpful just to show up where people are at. Right? So utilizing, like I said, you could do also do this in display having a, you know, maybe it's a maybe it's Facebook, right, for example?

Yeah. Maybe you have a 15 mile radius around your clinic. You're let's say you're located in Austin, Texas outside of Austin, on the West Side Of Austin. You wanna have, you know, 10 miles around there just to let those people know in that area that you exist and like, hey, I didn't realize there was a podiatrist there. One thing to realize that when you do that though is there's there's gonna be kind of less conversions or less ROI because it is more of an awareness play.

It's not if someone's on Facebook, they're not necessarily like hot to like make an appointment for podiatrist maybe at that time. You may get a couple of those, but most of it's just like you're hoping that they'll remember you in three months or six months when they when they or their spouse or their kid or someone in their network needs a podiatrist, that you'll come top of mind and they they recommend you. So that's the first thing is the kind of the branding of your clinic and just getting clinic awareness. I'd also say that it's helpful for if you do have a new piece of a new machine or new procedure that you're providing that's different or provides a really unique value to patients. You know, like, no one likes wart treatment.

I don't know, Tyson, if you ever had plantar's warts growing up. Even when I was in podiatry school, some of the treatments we would do to remove plantar's warts, you know, people would be off of their foot or not be able to do stuff for a while, and it was less than ideal. But you can utilize, you know, things like for like, they had the Swift. I'm kind of giving Swift a lot of plugs here today.

But Yeah.

You know, no no one knows what Swift is. But if they know there's a relatively pain free effective means of removing warts where they can walk out of the office without, you know, having a hole in their foot or they use when I was a kid, they used liquid nitrogen and basically would dig it out. And after using liquid nitrogen and like, you wonder what you did to your parents to have them, you know, take you to the doctor to torture you like that. Yeah. But like when you can have this kind of value proposition and kind of display it in your local area, the next time someone has a family member with an ingrown toenail or a planter's wart, maybe it'll come top of mind, or maybe someone's had some and didn't get effective treatment from it.

It gives you an opportunity to kind of make that awareness play.

No. I've had the pleasure of never having a planter's wart, which is good. I actually had a wart

You're lucky.

I think I had a wart once on my knee when I was younger or something like and I fell off my skateboard and got rid of it pretty quickly. So that's my recommendation if they're on your knees. Just scrape them along the road, and it's almost like probably using a swift.

There you go. I mean, that's there's your million dollar idea right there.

Yeah. Just take your patient out on road. Just drag the foot. Drive along in the car and just now put your foot out the car door at twenty five and just let it drag along the floor for a bit. Yeah.

Not really acceptable treatment. What what else about display advertising? Anything else that people need to need to and I understand the awareness part because it's like even just traditional marketing. When you see billboards and things on the back of buses, that is really very few of them have a call to action. It's really a we just wanna be seen on a regular basis, and by being seen when they need us and then one of their display ads pops up later.

So these two things actually work hand in hand where you you can use display advertising as awareness and then search advertising specifically to remind them that you're there.

No. Exactly. I mean, there's you probably will run kind of like you mentioned. The you'll kind of run a brand campaign for in your search ads. So if people do type in your clinic, that you do your name or your your name, your clinic's name, do so you show up.

But like I said, the the display advertising gives you that kind of first line of kind of general brand awareness or clinic awareness. But the next step as far as getting, you know, kind of kinda getting a little bit more filtered when it comes to who sees these advertisements on display is utilizing kinda targeting specific demographics. So a lot of Facebook and also on Google display and other display providers, ad providers. You can say like, okay, we only want people between the the these ages. Right?

So it doesn't make sense to to to advertise to people under the age of 18. I would say no. You probably wanna advertise to their parents. Right? So they're gonna ignore any type of advertisement you have.

So just making sure that you're kind of targeting and kind of being seen by people that are the decision maker is really, really powerful. And also it helps save your budget as well. You're not kind of people aren't because basically with display advertising, every time your a page loads, they're, like, charging you a fraction of a cent for whoever sees it, whether they take an action or not. So I think that's an important component to know as well is that display advertising is it's they're gonna get charged by how many people see it and not necessarily by how many people click on it like you do in search.

So Ah, that's a big that's a big difference.

It is a big difference. So you have to be aware of that, and you really wanna show it you know, show these display ads to people that you want to be your your patients. So whether maybe you're doing you know, you really wanna treat you're like a wanting to treat, like, female athletes or something, right, or male athletes or there's a way to kind of, you know, change the demographics of your campaign or you can make two different types of campaigns with the display. Right? So maybe you only wanna show women a female athlete or you wanna show men a male athlete or maybe the vice versa.

Yeah. You can test those things out. There's different ways to kinda utilize the demographic information, not only of the person searching the person that's being shown the display ad, but also kinda how they react to to some of the creative that you have there, the the images that you show.

Okay. And this is where so display advertising is a lot about what you can just have to display it there, but this is where remarketing comes into it?

Yeah. So there's different obviously, like, we didn't I didn't kind of break it out from kind of you know, when we talk about display, used to talk about images. It can also be video marketing is another form of media that can be utilized for display advertising. If you search things on YouTube, right, you're usually in the top left hand corner. There's some non relevant thing that's not a video you really wanted to see, but

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There is. Always now.

Yeah. It's always there. So so there those are kind of different types of display. But getting into what we're talking about with remarketing there is that it's kind of like we talked about previously is that if you go someone comes to your website or maybe they can they they clicked on your Facebook page, you know, there's technology now available that people, you know, Google or Facebook knows that that person was looking at it or spent time there. And what what you can do sometimes, and it sometimes vary between countries and states, but you can do some remarketing.

Meaning that they're gonna get tagged, but they get kind of a cookie, which is kinda like a digital way of like knowing like a person, you know, went to your website.

Yeah.

And and then basically, like you talked about previously with, you know, I don't think you wanna follow them all around the internet. But if someone went to your website and then they go to their local newspaper, they go search something on Google, or they go other places, you can make, you know, an image or a video show up in the sidebar. And it can be a beneficial thing because it is you're not just hitting people cold all the time. Right? If, you know, you have to kind of build trust and kind of build brand recognition with kind of the more times they see you, the more you might become an option and kinda be top of mind for them.

So that's there are these kind of specific retargeting campaigns or or remarketing, I guess, to really kind of show people that have shown interest in who you are more about maybe your services, your clinic, the type of care you provide. It just provides another opportunity that you don't get with with search advertising.

Yeah. I probably noticed that on Facebook more than anything else.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think I noticed it sometimes when when I had Facebook on my phone, like I feel like I just talked to my wife about something or just talked to a colleague about something, and then all of a sudden I get something that's kind of relevant to what I was talking about. And I I I'm not I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat tonight, but I sometimes wonder when you when you were on the Facebook app if they have your microphone on on the sly and I don't know.

I I like I said, no conspiracies here, but it was just it's been a little too creepy at times.

I have had somebody say that. They go, if you if you wanna test it out, they said every now and then, just have your phone near you and start talking about a particular subject. There's totally something you don't want, but keep talking about it. And, like, trips to Africa. So we keep saying trips to Africa, trips to Africa, trips to Africa.

I got my phone in front of me here. And they said, and eventually, say it after a couple of days, and you'll be on something, and trips to Africa will turn up in display ads. That's a conspiracy theorist. Yeah. Then again, it could be your reticule activating systems now talking about trips to Africa, and you start noticing it.

Yeah. Who knows?

So have you got anything else to say on this subject before we wrap up?

No. I think that's good. I think there are definitely, you know, different times to utilize search versus display. If you don't know what those are, you know, feel free to reach out to to reach out to me. Send us a message.

I'm happy to give you some advice or kinda give you some some best practices. But, no, I think that was a pretty thorough rundown of those differences and and the best times to use them.

Yeah. We're gonna be digging into this subject a bit deeper in October at the one marketing workshop.

Yeah. I think so. We'll have definitely some you know, we'll have a good mix of, you know, your, you know, traditional marketing chops and and the and the things that have worked for you in practice and definitely some some digital options for people that that show up there and hang out with us in October.

See, I like to call mine, not traditional anymore, evergreen. It's stuff that just always works regardless of what's happening in the world or because, you know, social media and the whole online world constantly changes. So you always have to be on top of it. I don't wanna be. That's why I let you do that.

I I just follow what other people do it. But there's evergreen and traditional marketing that I think will always be there. And like they say, platforms change, people don't.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah. So it's something people remember. Just platforms and different types of market will always change, but people don't change. So certain things that worked a hundred years ago still work today. Fantastic.

That gets everybody thinking they wanna be there now. October 21. Okay, Jim. Well, I look forward to talking again next week.

Sounds like a plan, Tyson.

Okay. See

you. Have good one. Bye. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at podiatry marketing.

That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.