If you’re a senior living facility looking to increase your visibility and reach new audiences, you may want to consider using Google Ads.
You may ask yourself: “Why Google ads? Why not regular print advertising?”
Well, let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages to using Google Ads before making that decision, because let’s face it: if you’re a consumer looking for a long-term care facility, you don’t want to weed through tons of print advertising when the job can be done much easier and more efficiently by just typing a few keywords into Google.
What are Google Ads and how do I use them to garner interest in my senior living facility?
To put it simply: Google Ads are a “pay-per-click” (PPC) service that brings your website’s visibility to the top of Google search results through certain keywords. In many cases these ads can follow you around on the internet, with each click bringing someone to your website and garnering interest and moving your prospect closer to becoming a lead and getting a tour. (All while you keep doing your work)
You pay to get quality traffic to your website and often the only limitation is in regards to budget or search demand in your local areas.
Bonus: As an incentive to opening a Google Ads account, Google will give you $500 in free ad credit when you spend $500! That’s basically a win/win! (Greatness Digital helps our clients take advantage of this incentive with new accounts)
A quick little bit about Google ads:
Google Ads started out as Google Adwords almost 18 years ago, but as times change so do the ways we advertise. That is how Google Ads was born.
Google Ads works across all different platforms to make it easier for a potential customer to find exactly what they’re looking for exactly where they’re looking for it. Does it get better for advertisers?
Still not convinced? Take a look at some of the advantages.
Advantages of advertising your senior living facility on Google Ads:
- Pay-per-click (or PPC) ads are a quick way to reach a larger audience than almost any other form of advertising, including print ads, radio, and more.
- More traffic is driven to your website when you implement Google Ads by using the right keywords. If a potential customer types in keywords such as “assisted living facilities,” “assisted living facilities near me,” “senior living,” “senior living communities,” they can easily be directed to your website.
- You think getting the same ad banners on different websites is a coincidence? Think again. When you search Google, those search terms follow you around on the internet and will show up on just about every website you visit. The same is true for your senior living website. This is what is referred to as remarketing.
- When someone clicks on your ad, they will be directed straight to your site where they can schedule a tour of your facility, ask questions, view your FAQ page, and more! Interactivity is what makes digital so appealing.
- As opposed to print ads, change in terminology or keywords can be done quickly and easily using digital advertising. This keeps your page up-to-date and always on brand.
- With Google Ads, you can check analytics to see how well your ads are doing and what is driving traffic to your site and how much traffic is being driven there. This information is important because it details how people are finding out about your assisted living facility and, of course, the most important part: they find out that the facility exists! That information can prove to be priceless. This is all done in an easy-to-understand format.
- It is simple to change an advertisement that is in digital form. A Google Ad can easily change as seasonality changes or as new marketing initiatives are created. A print advertisement with a typo takes time and more money to fix. That is, if you can fix it at all! After all, once an advertisement is sent out in the world in print form, it is out there, errors and all.
However, perhaps you are considering advertising your senior living facility solely in print? After all, advertisements still appear in print, right? Let’s weigh the advantages of using print advertising as opposed to using Google Ads.
Are there disadvantages to Google Ads?
We’d be way to bias to say that Google ads doesn’t have drawbacks as well. So, in our experience here are some potential drawbacks of Google ads for the senior living industry.
- Google is well aware that they are a premier spot to advertise and that for the last 15 years digital has increased as a research point for prospects which has increased the cost per click and cost per lead to be fairly high in medium and high competition areas.
- Google ads requires multiple components to be optimized. Unlike radio for example, where you normally hire the agency to voice the ad and then let them run it, Google ads require a strong landing page (website) experience and a good system to convert those visitors into leads.
- Text based ads are only a piece of the pie, if you want to FULLY get the best results from Google you’ll want to have both visual and video assets available to approach people on different platforms and in different ways to win the lowest cost per lead.
Are Google Ads Better Than Print? Uh, not entirely, just different:
- Many people looking for a senior living facility still read print marketing materials, such as flyers, magazines and newspapers.
- Seniors may find print easier to read and seniors (although growing explosively) are still the least likely to use Google to find what they need.
- Older individuals like to share what they read by word-of-mouth.
Conclusion
If you are still wondering if you should advertise on Google Ads or if you should stick with print advertising, stop right now and read over the advantages of both again.
Don’t forget the $500 credit for advertising with Google Ads! That is definitely another advantage for digital advertising but deserves its own mention.
Now what are you waiting for? Get started advertising your senior living facility on Google Ads now and get the word out there about your facility! People are just waiting to discover you and see what you have to offer, and find what they need.
