We've been working closely with podiatrists up and down the UK on several marketing strategies for over three years now; so we'd like to assume we know a thing or two about this industry! Here are our top tips, top do's and don't's and some marketing strategies you might not have already thought of for your podiatry business.

Get a well optimised website

Something we see regularly, not just within the podiatry industry, but from smaller businesses, in general, is poor website quality. Your website's quality will have a massive impact on the results you achieve from any type of marketing campaign.

You don't need an all singing all dancing website. But do make sure your site;

• looks modern

• has simple and easy to use navigation

• has been optimised for use on mobile

• contains all of the basic information about your business, your products and your services

• add a price list if you find you're getting a lot of time waster enquiries

• has an online booking section and/or a contact page with a contact form. We usually advise clients to add both online booking and a contact page with a form where possible. Not everyone interested in making an appointment with you will want to book right away, so it's important to provide a means of contact for any questions or queries.

• has a blog section (for SEO benefits)

In our opinion, the best and easiest to use website platform builder is Squarespace; however, WordPress should also be a consideration when looking for a platform to build your site on. Wix is another good platform, however, note if you need a lot of content to add to your site (ie big pages or many pages) Wix websites can be slow. Your site's speed may impact SEO and organic rankings as well as your conversion rate (the percentage of people who visit your website who then go on to book an appointment or enquire with you). If you do consider a Wix website, we recommend getting in touch with Andy at WixWorks for professional assistance. Contact us for Squarespace or Wordpress help.

Now you've got yourself a great website; you can look at some marketing strategies to boost website traffic and conversions. 

SEO

Nine times out of ten, SEO will be the most impactful long term strategy for your podiatry business. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and looks to increase your website's position in the organic search results.

We usually advise SEO as a longer-term strategy, but that doesn't mean you don't see results fast. Generally, clients see results (more website traffic and therefore, more conversions) within 30 days. However, SEO is an ongoing process where results will continue to increase month after month as your organic ranking increases and increases for a greater range of search terms. 

SO WHAT EXACTLY DOES SEO INVOLVE?

SEO involves a huge range of optimisation points ranging from optimisation directly on your website to Google My Business optimisation and social media influences. 

PPC - Google Ads

PPC stands for pay per click and is usually used to refer to Google Ads but can also refer to other PPC marketing platforms such as social ads or bing ads. The most common form of PPC marketing is through Google Ads and is what we're going to have a quick look at today. 

PPC Google Ads places your website on the Google search results page (usually at the top of the page). You can determine which search terms trigger your ads using keywords - for example, if you're a podiatrist in Bury you might want your ad to show when people search for "bury podiatrist", and so we add this as a keyword. 

Google Ads takes a lot of optimisation if you're going to get serious ROI. You need to monitor which ads, locations, keywords, audiences, genders, age groups, days, hours, and more lead to the most conversions for the lowest cost and optimise around this data accordingly. This is where you might want to bring in the help of a qualified professional like ourselves. Qualified PPC professionals will monitor the performance of your account and optimise around the data they obtain. You'll also need to set up conversion tracking which can be complicated. This tracking monitors phone calls, form submissions, bookings and sales (if you have an e-commerce store) - all of this data is imperative if you're to optimise your campaign properly. You need to look at your conversion data to calculate which ads and keywords are performing best. You don't want to allow specific keywords to spend budget without leading to conversions. If this happens, you need to change the keyword and or the ad.

WHAT SORT OF RESULTS CAN YOU EXPECT WITH GOOD OPTIMISATION?

With a well optimsated campaign you can expect to get enquiries for as little at £5 cost per enquiry. Of course, this varies depending on your area, how much competition there is, your website quality and the services you’re advertising. As an average our podiatry clients get enquiries for around £4.50 cost per enquiry.

Social Media (Organic)

Organic social media generally refers to the regular posting you undertake on your social media platforms. Such as sending out tweets, posting images on Instagram or posting updates on Facebook. These are all forms of organic social media. 

Of all the strategies we mention in this post, this strategy is the slowest when it comes to delivering ROI. 

Search engine marketing such as PPC Google Ads or SEO targets people actively looking for your product or service. This means they are already interested in what you have to offer before they even click through to your site. Social media, on the other hand, isn't targeting people actively searching. Instead, you're showing your ad or organic to people who may or may not be interested in your service, but if they consistently see you online, you'll be the first person they think of when they are in need of your services.

Search engine marketing and social media are effective marketing strategies; however, search engine marketing will generally deliver better ROI and more quickly due to the nature of the audience you're targeting. 

What social media organic metrics should you be measuring? The most common KPI's (key performance indicators) for social media organic are reach and engagement. Reach measures the number of people who have seen your posts and engagement measures comments, likes, link clicks etc. 

It's equally as important to measure the amount of website traffic from your organic social campaigns. Just like with PPC or SEO, you want to measure which channels are generating traffic and conversions and which aren't. A common issue we often see is people spending a lot of time on a specific social media channel, but when we look into the analytics, this channel isn't actually generating any real results for them. Measure as much data as you can and optimise your time and monetary investment as suited.

Social Media Ads

Similar to social media organic, but not exactly the same is social media ads. These are the paid-for/sponsored ads you see on social media. There are several ways to set these up, including boosting your organic posts or setting up full ad campaigns from within the ads platform of the social media channel you choose. 

Boosting your organic posts is a great quick and easy way to showcase your post to more people. However, boosting posts lacks a lot of the more advanced settings and tracking options you have with full ad campaigns. 

Whether you boost your organic posts or set up full ad campaigns, you need to choose who you show your posts too carefully. Get too specific, and you'll end up with high frequency (the average number of times each person in your audience sees your ad). Go too broad, and you'll waste money showing your ad to people who are not at all in your target market. 

I know we keep mentioning it, but remember to track your conversions with your social ads too! Don't ever spend money on ads that don't work.

Email Marketing

When creating this post, I wasn't too sure if to bother including this marketing strategy or not. It's not the most common strategy, nor is it the most effective for obtaining new patients; however, it can help with existing client retention, which is why I'm adding it in here.

Building an email marketing list of non-existing clients will be challenging in this industry. Most people aren't going to be interested in hearing news and updates or receiving promotions from a podiatrist they don't visit. However, you can use email marketing to encourage existing patients to re-book for general checkups or encourage them to leave reviews, which would help obtain new customers. You could also send out a monthly newsletter with tips and advice for general foot care or include some of your recent blog posts. You could include a lot of different things in your newsletter - mix it up and don't let your content become boring.