We’ve all seen it…

The pesky ad that follows you around after you searched for [insert product] on Amazon.

But there’s a reason those ads follow us around the internet.

It works!

In today’s world of distraction and 6-second-attention spans, just because someone didn’t take an action doesn’t mean they didn’t want to or won’t in the future.

So it is up to YOU to remind them.

Who Should be Using Retargeting

The best thing about digital ads like retargeting campaigns is that you can run them for as low as $1/day and adjust your budget as your practice needs.

That means that every health and wellness business that is getting website traffic and/or their Facebook page has engagement of over 100 people a month can (and should) be running retargeting.

Principle: The money is in the follow up

Why Retargeting is the Best Way to Bring Patients into your Health Practice

Retargeting is the best way to make sure you are serving the RIGHT ad to the RIGHT person at the RIGHT time.

This ensures you are making the most out of your marketing dollars.

You are already…

• creating a social media audience of fans or followers.
• creating an email audience of people who come into your world and opt-in to receive information from you.
• building a list of current and past customers. (We typically only find this in your invoicing system, but you should also be putting these people into your email audience 😉

So, why are you ignoring your website traffic and Facebook engagers (people who like, comment or share your content, but do not like your page) as an audience?

What many forget is that the people who visit your website or engage with your Facebook page are also an audience—they are just not quite as warmed up to you… yet.

You can create both Facebook and Google Custom Audiences to track these people and provide RELEVANT marketing messages.

To kickstart your retargeting audience, create content on your website and/or Facebook page that answers your patients’ top questions and discusses in detail each condition/disease that you help.

Your patient journey is…

Symptoms >> Research >> Resolve

They will repeat this process until they are satisfied with their results.

To start their journey, your patient will experience unwanted symptoms.

Then they will search WHY or WHAT the problem might be.

The Pew Research Center found that 77% of all health inquiries begin at a search engine!

Sometimes they will visit a primary care, urgent care, or hospital depending on how severe they believe it to be.

Let’s walk through an example.

Say someone is consistently waking up groggy and find themselves needing an afternoon jolt to stay alert at work.

They may put up with these symptoms for a while before starting the Research stage where they’ll likely start with a search.

An internet search will come up with MANY potential diagnosis, but if you have an article on your site on Sleep, Fatigue or Energy and they find it… they are now on your audience for this symptom.

So if you run a webinar on “The Top 5 Tricks to Increase Your Energy” or “Sleep Do’s and Don’ts,” those audiences would be prime to run an ad to and you can now get their email address and bring them further into your circle.

BUT say one day they faint at work.

In that case, they’ll head straight to a local doctor or urgent care to figure out what is wrong.

Once they are satisfied with their current diagnosis (whether self diagnosed or by their physician), they will research and find information about it online.

72% of total Internet users say they’ve looked online for health information within the past year. (Source)

The patient from above who went to their local physician to discover they had iron deficiency anemia, will now start on their search to make sure they believe the diagnosis (yes, they will go online to confirm!).

They found an article you wrote on iron deficiency and now they are on your audience list for that condition.

How to Set Up Retargeting with Your Healthcare Practice

Build

The first thing you need for this strategy is CONTENT! If there is nothing for them to consume, you won’t attract traffic to your site.

Next, go into your Facebook and Google Ad accounts and set up your Custom Audiences based on their behavior on your website. Start with a generic traffic audience. Then once you start driving more traffic, make symptom/condition specific audiences.

On Facebook, you can also make specific audiences for those that engage with your page and/or videos you’ve published.

To build a campaign you will need to obtain, create, or set up the following:

• Creative
  • Copy – Establish yourself as an expert, and make your message as specific to your niche as possible
  • Images – Show off your space and differentiate yourself from others
  • Videos – For nurture retargeting campaigns, video reaches the most people for the lowest cost.
• Install Pixels on your site (We HIGHLY recommend using Google Tag Manager to keep it organized)
  • Facebook Base Pixel, Lead Pixel on conversion pages and Purchase Pixel on checkout pages
  • Many CRMs/email marketing tools integrate with Facebook custom audiences so you can use your email list as a custom audience as well
  • Google Audience Pixel
  • Google Conversion Pixels for the same activities as you set up for Facebook
• Set up the audiences in both platforms

There are 2 purposes of retargeting campaigns: NURTURE or CONVERT.

Nurture

A Nurture Retargeting campaign is simply providing great content and adding value for your audience.

The best way to nurture your audience is through VIDEO!

If they were looking at a specific symptom/condition, you can have a video ad with tips or recommendations based on their concern.

In this case it might be easiest just to release the video and then do a boosted ad it just to that specific audience.

You can also use ebooks, quizzes or similar lead generation options to your retargeting list and exclude your current list. This will help you convert your Retargeting Audience to your email list where you are hopefully also nurturing them with Email Newsletters and content.

Pro Tip: Nurture campaigns should be set up for CPM so that you reach your whole audience whether they engage or take action.

The goal is to stay top of mind.

Convert

A Convert retargeting campaign’s primary goal is to get your audience to take the next step in your pipeline.

I always recommend your first retargeting campaign to be for your audience to schedule a free phone consultation with you to help answer any questions they may have on their symptoms/conditions. Use images of yourself and your office for this type of campaign.

This is the most direct call to action and will move the needle for those on your list(s) that are warm, but haven’t taken action yet.

Future retargeting campaigns can also promote:

• Paid Initial Evaluation (You’ll get better if you just target people further down the pipeline, ie. Already did a free consult or Filled out an online interest form.)
• Supplements (You’ll get better results if you just target people who have visited your supplement store not just your generic website.)
• Program or Service Offering (You’ll get MUCH better results here if they engaged with a webinar on a specific topic that leads directly into the offering.)

But reserve these for very specific audiences, or you will waste money on people who aren’t ready for the next step.

Scale

The goal of scaling is to break free from 1-on-1 and being tied to your office 24/7. You can set up retargeting to a live or on demand webinar based on your niche audience.

On the webinar, you’ll provide extra value and have a solid close that sells a specific program or service without having to meet with each person individually.

Based on the program, you may not ever meet with them 1-on-1.

This is a goal to work toward.

In the meantime, another great retargeting campaign that will also help you scale out of 1-to-1 consultations is a local seminar or workshop (similar to a webinar, just in person) which gets people in your center/clinic to meet you.

Pro Tip: Always make sure your content for a particular symptom/condition has the keyword in the URL so you can easily create your niche audiences (it also helps with SEO).

For example, all blogs and content around sleep on your site should have “sleep” in the url: https://yourdomain.com/5-tips-to-sleep-better. This way when you go to create your audience in FB or Google you can simply put URLS containing “sleep.” So no matter what they looked at, it was sleep related. Then they are in your Sleep Niche Audience!

Retargeting Resources:

• How to Use Remarketing Like a Pro to Grow Your Healthcare Practice (Dec 23rd 2016) – https://www.cardinaldigitalmarketing.com/blog/remarketing-grow-healthcare-practice/
• Health Care Audience Remarketing: A Users Guide – https://www.haileysault.com/blog/strategy/health-care-audience-remarketing-a-users-guide/
• Medical and Healthcare Retargeting Explained – https://niche.builders/blogs/medical-and-healthcare-retargeting-explained
• Google Remarketing Toolkit – https://marketing.wordstream.com/WSContentDLPaidGGLRemarketingToolkir.html
• The complicated world of healthcare retargeting – https://www.medicodigital.co.uk/the-complicated-world-of-healthcare-retargeting/
• Retargeting Pros and Cons for Your Healthcare Organization – https://hirschhealthconsulting.com/retargeting-pros-and-cons-for-your-healthcare-organization/
• 20 Strategies to Boost Your Healthcare Marketing Campaigns – https://www.evariant.com/blog/10-campaign-best-practices-for-healthcare-marketers https://www.evariant.com/blog/build-and-manage-new-physician-marketing-campaign