VMP 265: The Veterinary Practice's Guide To Google Ads

Brandon (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients at your veterinary hospitals using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears and in today's episode, this is going to be a good deep dive into what is possible with Google Ads. Most people think of Google Ads, and they probably think of one thing going to search and the little ad that pops up there. But did you know there's actually nine types of ads that you can run through Google ads? We're going to break down each one of them. We're also going to talk about when you should consider Google ads versus other types of platforms, and how to be successful with your Google Ads. Obviously, it can take decades to master Google ads. They've been around for almost two decades now, and I've been working on them in-depth for at least ten years, and I feel like there's always room for improvement. So hopefully this is going to just be really distilled down. To give you a high level overview of exactly what you can use Google Ads for, depending on what your goals are in your veterinary practice.

Brandon (00:00:58) - Before we begin, just a couple of things. Number one, if you haven't done so already, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play wherever you get your podcasts from. And then also, if you could be sure to leave an honest review in the platform that you're listening in, I would really appreciate it helps to get the word out, and it helps the algorithms to figure out who to show this to. So I really appreciate you for listening. Anytime you share it, it's always helpful as well. All right. We have two sponsors for today's episode. And here they are. This episode is sponsored by Call Rail, and I have a special offer for listeners of this podcast at veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/callrail. If you've ever wondered where are my clients coming from? How are people finding out about me? Which channels of marketing are actually providing a return? Have you ever asked yourself any of those questions which every practice I know has call rail is a great solution for you? Well, call rail does is it gives you detailed call tracking so that you can identify exactly which traffic sources are turning into customers and clients and which ones aren't.

Brandon (00:02:04) - So if you would like better handle on your data. If you'd like to understand where your clients are coming from, which marketing channels are working, and then also it gives you a really great qualitative data to like, how are my CSRs doing when it comes to handling phone calls? Is there any improvements that we could make in our conversion rates and how we're talking to clients? It gives you all of that data, and I suggest it for all of my ad clients that I work with. So if you'd like a $100 off call rail and think that I look about it too is it's all month to month, there's no contracts and it's a really high quality service that works really, really well. It's also very easy to set up. So if you go to a veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/callrail, you can check it out and get $100 off. For most practices, it's anywhere from 50 to $100 per month. So this will let you try it out and see exactly how it works in your practice. This episode is being sponsored by two websites by Brad Haven.

Brandon (00:02:59) - We have used vet equipment and newvetequipment.com for over nine years now. Usedvetequipment.com has been helping vets to buy and sell used equipment. You can save money when you buy. Used everything from cages, kennels, pumps, extra equipment, lasers, ultrasounds, dental equipment, surgery equipment, lab equipment from a backside and tables, tubs and sinks, vet trucks and vet boxes. What do you have to sell at usedvetequipment.com they bring the buyer and seller together. Also, if you're looking for a new veteran equipment with amazing warranties, check out new vet equipment.com where they show you the price up front. They have digital X-ray equipment, dental X-ray equipment, ultrasound equipment, LED surgery, lighting, surgery tables, autoclaves. When you go to newvetequipment.com, you'll clearly see the price on every single item for sale, and you'll also know what the warranty is so that you can buy without regret. All right, Google ads are one of my favorite subjects because that is what I do for my clients.

Brandon (00:03:54) - I do Google ads, so I love them. They are wonderful. I think it's probably the best opportunity to generate your ideal clients depending on what you're looking for. Now, there's always strategies that we can talk about. I think, number one, before you start talking about strategies, you have to understand what principles of marketing are we going to be implementing. So we always start with goals. When it comes to marketing, what is our goal? What are we trying to achieve? And that will inform the strategy that we're using. I would say be aware of anybody who says you need to do this cool strategy or this cool tactic. And I see that happen a lot of times at conferences, people come back Clyne's will come back and say, I saw this. They said, we need to be doing this. Well, maybe we need to be. What is the end goal that we're trying to get to? And obviously that's an opinion, right? These are all opinions. But beware of people who tell you you need to do these strategies, because your strategy should be informed by what your goal is.

Brandon (00:04:57) - What is the best way for us to get to a point from point A to point B? Is it walking, taking a bike or taking a plane? Right? It depends what what the goal is. So same thing with ads or marketing in general. So should you be running ads for your veterinary practice? I think that's the first question that we need to start with. Should you be running ads? That is a question of number one. Are you looking for new clients? Number two, would you like more of a specific type of client? Are you trying to engage the current clients that you have? The beautiful thing about paid advertising is that it is completely controllable. So you can scale it up, you can scale it down and turn it on and turn it off. And when it comes to paid advertising, there's really two types, uh, two ways to reach your ideal customer. Number one is target people based on demographics. And that is things like, you know, let's say we're targeting people that have children that are ages 35 to 54 who live in this zip code, and they like Home and Garden magazine.

Brandon (00:06:04) - Right? That's demographic. That's very detailed. We can target people just based on the characteristics that make them up. The second thing that we can do is we can target people based on behavior. Somebody went on YouTube and they searched for, how do I groom my dog? Right. You could target those people. You could target, um, people that are on Google searching near me, or people that go to maps and are looking for veterinarians near me. So that is behavior. And obviously you can mix those two things. You can do behavior targeting with layers of demographic on top of it. And so that is also an option. So I guess technically three ways. But generally we're going to figure out are we trying to target people by demographic. And if we're targeting people by demographic we're typically interrupting them. Right. The way that we can interrupt people is people on Facebook and Instagram through meta ads where we show up and we say, hey, we have something that we think might interest you.

Brandon (00:07:01) - Check us out. Right clicking on an ad. Um, we're a piece of content that's going to engage them. Something like that. And then the behavioral networks are things where people are taking action and doing something. So, you know, technically Facebook and Instagram could be a behavior network. They have certain topics and topical placements for search and Instagram. I haven't seen a bunch of success there, and I don't think it's a super. People aren't on Instagram searching for products and services generally speaking. So it's not the best use of, um, behavioral network, but definitely Google, Pinterest, YouTube. Um, TikTok is getting more search based too, which is very interesting. And, uh, it'll be interesting to see how that adapts and improves over time, especially with their shop that they've been pushing. I mean, they're just innovating like crazy. So there's going to be tons of opportunity there. But today we're talking about Google. Now, the cool thing about Google is that it has networks and placements that are available for both of those things.

Brandon (00:08:03) - You can target people solely on interests or demographics. Those are. Three types of audiences there we have in-market segments affinity audiences, and then demographic data. So targeting people because of the characteristics or the types of buckets that they've been put in. Now Google puts people in multiple buckets based on what they buy, uh, where they go shopping, where they travel. And the cool thing about the Google, and also the creepy thing about Google is that they have just tremendous amounts of data about every single person. So people that are using Google Maps, if you visit websites that have Google Analytics on it, which I think 85% of the internet is using Google Analytics. So most of the sites that you shop on are giving, uh, in-market segment data based on, you know, are you shopping at chewy.com and buying dog food? Okay. Now you're in the bucket of people that buy dog food. And and so, uh, they just have so much data and that can inform the demographic choices and options and targeting that they have.

Brandon (00:09:16) - The other thing that they have are all of these different properties, including the Google search site. They have YouTube, which is the second most used search network, um, and search engine on the internet. Uh, they are. On maps. They have Google Chrome, they have Google devices, they have Google Play App Store, they have all of these apps with app networks and AdSense. They have partner sites where you can advertise on websites like CNN.com and like all over the place. Right. So there just is tons of potential inventory and placements when it comes to that. If you go to google.com, forward slash ads and sign up for an ad account, what they're going to do is walk you through what is called a smart campaign. And there's ten total campaign types. And the first that we're going to talk about is smart campaigns. Now, smart campaigns sound like a cool idea because they're labeled smart campaigns, but they're actually really dumb. And I don't suggest practices run smart campaigns under any circumstance.

Brandon (00:10:19) - It's a waste of money unless I give you an exception, unless you're a low cost vaccine or a low cost spay and neuter practice, that makes sense. That is the only instance that I would suggest running those ads, because that's what you're going to get traffic for. You're going to get low quality traffic, and it's not going to be helpful for you. So the way that smart campaigns work is you put your website in, it'll automatically create targeting and choose keywords, and then just start showing you in a lot of the placements that they have. And it is garbage traffic, because again, they're giving you things that are kind of the most volume, lowest kind of barrier to entry. So you're just going to get tons of irrelevant traffic. That is probably not your ideal client. I can't tell you how many times I've had practices that do like euthanasia only. They'll go set up campaigns and it'll be smart campaigns, and so they'll get declawed and spay and neuter and all of these things that are just not what they're looking for.

Brandon (00:11:17) - And so they're like, oh, Google ads don't work. And that's just not the case. Those ads don't work because it's not giving Google the right input. You're not being choosy on what you're getting and there's really no control. So don't do smart campaigns. I can safely say that they are a waste of money for every practice, honestly. So the next type of campaign that we'll talk about, and there's nine more types that I think are worthwhile, um. One of them? Well, two of them are actually not. The best. Um, but the next type is search campaigns. And search campaigns are exactly what they sound like. Somebody goes to the search bar either on their phone or on Google, and they type in near me. And search campaigns are great because you can get really tailored in your messaging, really tailored in your targeting, and, uh, really tell Google exactly what you want to show up for. If you have conversion tracking in place to, you can make it more broad and more scalable, and Google will start to find the right places to show you based on who's converting.

Brandon (00:12:22) - And, um, it's a great placement. So right now, search campaigns are probably my favorite campaigns for veterinary practices. And the reason why I like it is because, number one, it is behavior driven. So you're able to target people based on the actions that they're taking. And then number two, you can choose what you're showing up for and how you're presenting your practice. So with search you really have three types of searches that happen. You have informational searches. For example why does my dog drag its. But on the carpet you have branded searches for example. Um ABC Animal Hospital, right. You're naming doing a name brand practice or you have transactional searches. Everything falls under those. Transactional is vet near me, vet open now vet with low wait times. Emergency vet euthanasia vet near me. Pet crematorium near me. Right. Those are transactional people looking for service to basically purchase something. So with search, you can target each of those types of searches. And depending on what your goals are in practice, you are going to be able to drive either new clients or traffic or, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to do.

Brandon (00:13:37) - And so the reason why I like search best is because most practices need a direct way to generate new clients and get new people in the door, and searches a way to get in front of those high intent customers at the right times, in the right locations on Google search. And so they're fantastic for that. And I really like that. I think that's probably the bread and butter for 90% of practices. This is something they'd want to do and be in control of, so that they could generate the types of clients that they're looking for, for the types of services and, and all of that. So if you're not run search campaigns, consider it. It's very, very effective. And um, I love search. It's the next type of campaign is called performance Max. The cool thing about performance Max is the newer ad type. It was released I think, two years ago now. Uh. It's been it's been out for a little bit and it lets you reach audiences all across Google with the single campaign.

Brandon (00:14:37) - So it's on search discovery, uh, which is maps, it's on display, it's on Gmail, it's on YouTube. And the focus of performance Max is to get conversion for your practice. So that means that you need to have some type of conversion that is meaningful to measure, so that Google can go out and find more of your customers. Now with performance Max, this doesn't work as well for specialty services. It's better for general practice in general because it's going to find pet owners generally. For example, if you did euthanasia, uh, it's tough to give Google the distinction that we only do euthanasia. They're just going to put you in the pet owner category. Uh, that is you're you're targeting general pet owners. So this doesn't work perfect for everybody. I'm sure that they're going to be doing ways to address this in the future. The cool thing about performance Max, though, is this is what is going to be used primarily for their new SGA campaigns or I'm sorry, their SGA, which is search generative experience.

Brandon (00:15:45) - So in Q2 or Q3 of 2024, they're going to be implementing for everybody AI results in search. And if you want to be running ads in those search results you have to use performance Max. So I would say most practices should get started with these placements because it's going to be rolled out in a way that is I'm sure going to be really sophisticated, very cool. And you're going to be able to show up in those SGA results. Where with search that's going to show up below. The eye results for a lot of these instances. And so I think it makes a lot of sense to consider testing these out. And again, there's going to be there's going to be caveats to this. There's going to be groups and campaigns that you shouldn't be doing in performance, Max. And it depends on your overall strategy. With performance. Max, you have a lot less control over exactly where you're showing up with. You don't have the same detailed control over negative keywords that you would typically. Um, and so you have to really make sure that your data is great, that you're giving meaningful conversions and that it is generating return for you, because it is very easy for Google to just spend your money and not get you anything.

Brandon (00:17:07) - So I would say that, um, it's a little bit more advanced to get set up. And um, it also is a little bit more creative dependent because it's going to show on all of those other placements, not just search. So it's a multimedia campaign with video, images, text call extensions. It's it's a really cool campaign type and I like it depending on the goals. So the next type of campaign that we have are called display campaigns. And display campaigns are banner ads. They're more traditional. Display ads have been around forever. I don't really care for display ads for the most part for veterinary practices, just because the traffic quality for display is very low. And, uh, these are the types of ads that you're showing up on partner sites, blogs, you know, if you wanted to run ads on CNN.com or, you know, another website, that's where that would be happening. They do revenue share with the person that is generating the traffic. And so they pay the person who owns the site part of the ad revenue.

Brandon (00:18:12) - It's called AdSense. And this is how they do this. It's been around for a long time, especially um, since blogging started. And so the display ads are a good way to get awareness. And that's the primary goal for these type of campaigns. But the traffic quality again is very low. You're also going to show up a lot in app networks. So people that are playing video games on their phone. And so it's just not the highest quality of traffic sources. I would much rather prefer performance max over display because you have the conversion element. And I think there's very few veterinary practices that are at the point of scale that they need to go out and just continuously be hammering people in the display placement. So display is not the best in my opinion. The next type of campaigns that we have are shopping campaigns. And shopping campaigns are cool. If you're selling physical products like pet food, um, or, you know, pet products at all in your practice, there's a lot of practices that do sell pet food that are not using this type of campaign.

Brandon (00:19:19) - And I think it would be very interesting to test this out, because it would be a great way to, uh, you know, acquire clients, especially if you have like, raw diets that you sell or frozen food or like higher end food. I know there was a practice that was selling a frozen food, and so people would do local pickup. And it was very popular because it's tough to buy that kind of stuff on the internet in general. And so, um, the shopping campaign is a very cool way. The cool thing about shopping, too, is that you can measure return on investment right away. You have to be able to sell a product online. And, um, there's a lot of ways to do that, but you can tell exactly what you made because you're able to track that entire process online. So not a ton of applications there for vendor practices. But if you're selling dog food, something like that, it might be a good thing to do. Obviously you're going to be competing with, you know, Chewy's and Petco, Amazon, etc. so if your your stuff is more expensive, you're probably not going to sell as much.

Brandon (00:20:21) - So again, it just depends like you have to have some kind of a USP. You can't just say I'm selling it to you, so just show me, right. It's going to be dependent on how you can provide value and also what your unique selling proposition is for the products that you're selling. All right. The next thing that we have in terms of campaign type is called video campaigns. And very simple. This is on YouTube and partner sites. And if you have video content that's high quality that you'd like to use, I'd highly suggest checking out video campaigns on YouTube. The cool thing about video campaigns is you only pay once somebody watches at least five seconds, or I'm sorry, 15 seconds. At five second mark of your video, the skip ad button pops up and so people can choose to skip. So there's a lot of opportunities there. You can show people with, you know, and instead of just telling them, they can see, um, what your practice is all about. And there's just a lot of really good opportunities in demographic targeting or behavior targeting on YouTube, where you can still place the local placements and the local settings where you're targeting zip codes or radius around a practice, and then also using video ads.

Brandon (00:21:33) - So very cool. I like video ads a lot. It just the barrier to entry is higher because you have to produce video. So a lot of practices are not willing to produce video. And so there's I think a lot of opportunity there. The next type of campaigns are apt campaigns. If you have an app for your practice, you could push out downloads and grow engagement for an app. So that's pretty cool. So it is targeting specifically in app networks. If you've ever played Candy crush and then you get an ad for another video game app, you've seen these app ads in progress. And that's basically what app ads are. So practices that have apps might want to consider it. It's kind of cool. Uh, something to test out for sure. There's actually also hotel campaigns on Google where you can promote your hotels. It's a it's own specific category. Now, I have never tried this with the veterinary practice, but if you had a pet hotel, I bet you could set it up.

Brandon (00:22:31) - For search and maps, and I bet it would probably be pretty interesting. And I would love to test that if you'd like to test that with your hotel or boarding. That would be really cool. I'll have I'll have to look that up, um, and go more in depth. I've never had anybody that that wanted to do those type of ads, so I'll have to take a look. But generally not too many opportunities there for veterinary practices. And then the last type of campaigns are called demand gen. And demand gen used to be called discovery ads. And then back in October they switched over to demand Gen. And demand gen are a very cool ad type. So especially if you have some type of a lead magnet where you're trying to collect contact data. Let's say you have a really great course for puppy owners, and it's free, and you're trying to just generate leads for that. Or you had a lead magnet that's a puppy potty training guide or a senior pet health guide, whatever that your lead magnet is.

Brandon (00:23:28) - Demand gen is probably a pretty good option, so you can run ads on YouTube, Gmail, discovery, and uh, it is focused on conversion, but using these more typically display type placements. So I like the mansion because it is conversion focused. As a direct response digital marketer. I like ads that give you more. Um, just direct response focus and conversion focus rather than just getting awareness and clicks, but actually numbers that matter and make a difference. So that's in total all of the campaign types that Google has across all of their placements. And there's just a lot of opportunity. Most people only think about search. And when they're doing search campaigns, they're typically only setting up smart campaigns. Those there's so many more options than that. And depending on what it is that you're trying to do in your practice, I think you'd be very well suited to go through and and take a look at all of these types and say, what kind of marketing assets and collateral do we have, what type of offers and lead magnets do we have? And then really test and match up the different types of placements with the offers, with the lead magnets, with the targeting options, and figure out what works best for your practice.

Brandon (00:24:49) - If you are looking for any help or if you'd like to have me help, please don't hesitate to reach out. If you go to Veteran Marketing podcast.com, you can click that chat widget, send me a message, I'll send you a link to my calendar. And, uh, I'd be happy to go over all of these with you. Just reach out. So I hope this was helpful. Um, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or you need help with anything, but we'll see you on the next episode. Have a great day, everybody. Welcome to the Veteran Working Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your veteran hospital using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breashears. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen in today's episode. We're going to be talking about a massive shift that is going to be taking place here in marketing, and I can't overstate how important this is. I'm going to be screaming this from the rooftops because things are changing.

Brandon (00:25:43) - There is a massive just change in order in terms of technology here that we are seeing. There's going to be major changes that if you're not up to date on this, you're not thinking about this. It's going to be difficult for you. You're going to be in a world of hurt. And so my hope for you is that at least start thinking about this in this episode. It's an in-between episode. We're not going to super deep dive into this today, but this is going to be very important in the future. Which leads me to the next things I'm be talking about and deep diving on these topics here for the next year. I think that the changes that you're going to be seeing in the digital marketing world are unprecedented. Um, there is so much coming up that is exciting and scary and interesting. And if you continue to do things the way that you've always done them, you're going to be left behind. Guarantee it. So if you would like to avoid the pain that's going to come from that, be sure to subscribe in iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Brandon (00:26:43) - So let's just jump right into today's episode. There are major changes coming to Google to search engines. Everything in the digital marketing space is going to be disrupted significantly from the SGC experience that's going to be coming out. What is SGA? It is search generative experience, which is Google's AI. We have Bing AI. I'm sure Apple's going to have an AI product. And it is going to change the way that everything takes place on the internet. Uh, I've been thinking a lot about this. I've been looking and researching into the new ad placements that are coming out. Google search is just this. I mean, this is the first time in 25 years that there's a major change to Google Now. And the way that people are googling things, there's been algorithm changes and updates, but nothing like this. And if you think about it to the way that people are going to be using search engines is going to dramatically change because it's talking back and it's conversational, it's going to be conversational. I think what you need to consider is that a lot of the marketing tactics and strategies that used to work are not going to work.

Brandon (00:27:58) - And so two things that you absolutely need to make your focus when it comes to marketing. In my opinion, if you want to be successful because the world is changing, if you don't want to get left behind, it's these two things. Number one is data. Number two is audience. If you can master those things, you're going to be so much further ahead than all of your competition. Doesn't matter if it's corporate or private, you will dominate the market. And here's what I mean by that. Number one data. You need to be able to report conversion data and understand where your clients are coming from, what it costs to acquire sources, all of that, the way that this is working and it's going to continue in this direction is Google or these platforms need data to go out and find more of your audience. And so you need to be able to generate leads and customers and clients. And then at the same time, you need to have accurate reporting data in place. And we're definitely going to be doing deep dives on the best reporting tools and reporting methods, because this is just it's going to be important.

Brandon (00:29:06) - And I'm going to give you a specific example. So with the SGA that's coming out, the generative experience is going to be at the top. The placement that is going to be in that generative experience is performance max campaigns. That might sound like I'm speaking Spanish to you or a different language, foreign language here. I also speak Spanish, so that's why I referenced that. Um. It might sound like I'm speaking a foreign language to you. And if that's the case, that's okay. We're going to go through all of the different placements that are available, but this is just a major change. There are far fewer inputs that you can put in. And so it's really giving these platforms the freedom to go out and identify segments of customers and try to acquire more. But the way that it works is it relies on data and quality of data. The better data you can put in, the better results you're going to get out. Incredibly important. Can't overstate that. And these SGS are going to be coming out in Q2 or Q3 of 2024, and it's going to completely change the way that the search results look.

Brandon (00:30:17) - So most practices and I'd say most are using Google My Business, you're using Google Ads possibly, or organic. And it's going to completely change. So you have to be ready for it. Um, and data is the way to be ready for it. The next thing I mentioned is audience. So let's say that Google is no longer a great way to get clients because it has AI in it. And it's, you know, maybe you didn't do everything that you need to do to figure out your, your ad placements or your Google My Business listing or whatever. And so. The alternative to using Google is building an audience, and that's targeting people on social channels or different networks where you can. Cultivate trust and an audience through content creation. So having those two things working together, data and your audience, and being able to grow your audience of ideal clients who know, like and trust you, who are looking forward to hearing from you. Those are going to be the things that you, in my opinion, need to focus on, and it will keep you far ahead in all of the changes that are going to be coming in this year.

Brandon (00:31:30) - And this is going to probably be the biggest change that is felt in a long time. I think last year when ChatGPT was announced almost a year ago, that was. A black swan event that nobody really saw coming. I mean, it's a amazing, um, what's come out of that, but I don't think people are necessarily feeling the effects yet. And those effects are going to be implemented because people are starting to develop more solutions. Everybody's really starting to implement all of the cool things that are that are coming out of this. And so this will be the year that people feel it. Even though it was last year that that these things came out. So I would love to hear your feedback though. What do you think? I hope that you're heeding this warning. I keep saying we need to have conversion data. I would say less than 1% of practices have accurate conversion tracking in place, and as a result. You're far behind every other industry that's out there, and the few practices that just take the little bit of time that is necessary to set up conversion tracking, understand where your clients are coming from, how much it costs to acquire customers based on source.

Brandon (00:32:44) - You're so far ahead. So I hope that you take this and you do something about it. If you need help with it, head on over to Vendor Marketing podcast.com. Send me a message. Always happy to help. Have a great day. And if you think somebody would benefit from this, please be sure to share it. I appreciate you. Have a wonderful day.