Getting your medical devices business up and running is one thing, but to make it earn profits and run sustainably requires consistent marketing effort. To conceive successful healthcare SEO and healthcare digital marketing strategies for your medical device store, you need a deep understanding of Google’s continual innovations to extract the maximum benefit from them. Recently, Google has brought about certain online-to-offline innovations that could benefit your store in helping you analyze its popularity or the lack of it, and make the required changes.
Google has been focusing on local search for some years now. Local search traffic could be of a significant advantage for your store, when doctors and hospitals in your town or locality are looking for the kind of appliances and devices you sell. The reporting capabilities and shopping features Google has added are aimed at brick-and-mortal retailers ahead of the holiday season, but they can really benefit your medical devices store since ultimately you want more hospitals or doctors to visit you quite like how brick-and-mortal retailers want more consumers visiting them.
Measuring and Driving Store Visits from Google’s Properties
Search Engine Land reports Google’s announcements made at the recently held SMX East conference where the search engine giant’s product management head for online-to-offline solutions, Kishore Kanakamedala, revealed plans for brick-and-mortar stores to measure and drive more visits from Google’s properties. Kanakamedala mentioned the importance of mobile in customers’ purchasing decisions, with mobile ads generating 160% more incremental store visits than tablets or desktops as per Google research. Local search is also important here, with local inventory ads driving 80% higher incremental store visits.
Capitalizing on the Rising Popularity of Voice Search
Google Assistant is an integral part of these measures. Google has acknowledged the growing and widespread importance of voice search for consumers. It isn’t much of a surprise then that Google is including local inventory data into search results provided through Google Assistant. When you upload the feeds of your local inventory to the Google Merchant Center, they will show up in users’ local inventory results when they ask Google a question related to some product you offer.
Local Inventory Display Ads
Remember that Google had also added location extensions earlier this year for displaying ads. Google is now adding the format of local inventory display ads which will contain local products and promotions from the inventory feeds of a store. This ad format is offered to all advertisers who upload their feed, images and assets and set up display campaigns.
Google reports that it has globally measured over 7 billion store visits. Google will also add reporting for store visits based on impression. That’s a significant development because measuring store visits now doesn’t need an ad click. It means the capability of measuring Google’s store visits has improved significantly.
Three New Reports in AdWords
Another development is Google adding three further reports to AdWords regarding store visits. These reports include:
- The time lag report which records the time elapsed between a click on the ad and the store visit,
- The demographic report in which users can add store visits as a separate column, and
- The new vs. returning customer report which will reveal the number of store visits that are from repeat customers, which will give a clear idea of how efficient your ads are in driving incremental visits.
Effectiveness of Showcase Ads
Early in 2017, Google had also introduced Showcase Ads support in the new AdWords interface and AdWords Editor. These ads are conceived for queries of broad categories featuring three product images in relation to the query. Google had revealed that Showcase Ads were more effective than standard Shopping ads since they could drive more brand searches as well as click-assisted conversions, causing a purchase.
With these updates Google has given brick-and-mortar stores a big boost. Now it’s up to an advanced healthcare digital marketing agency to come up with the tools to conceive strategies to leverage the power of local search and benefit from the aforementioned innovations for your medical device store.
