You’ve probably been advised to focus on SEO or Google Ads to get leads to your business. Or maybe you don’t know why you are spending so much money but not seeing the results you expected.
Relying solely on Google is not a good idea for your strategic effort. You need to think about other channels to help develop your overall marketing strategy.
Why the Google hype isn’t as what people say it is
In an earlier article, we discussed the lack of buying intent when buying hearing aids. There are not enough buyers seeking to purchase hearing aids, or should I say openly showing any action towards buying hearing aids.
Globally, monthly search terms are at about 6000. However, if we were to narrow your country and narrow further to your neighbourhood, it could lead to nothing or a handful.
We know people are buying hearing aids. Many factors are playing into the decision. This makes it all too difficult to capture the attention of people who should be buying or wanting to buy hearing aids.
People have different buying behaviours when it comes to hearing care
When people need an electrician or a plumber, they either ask a friend or family for referrals or they will search on Google. With hearing aids, which involve a much bigger decision in one’s life, they don’t follow the same behaviour as looking for an electrician or a plumber.
For higher priced items, we often see decisions being made way before they need to buy.
Take the situation where you are buying a car. Most of people search online for a car brand near them, not a car dealer. They know what kind of car they want to buy before visiting the dealership.
Even if there were an ad promoting a car a person had never heard of, they wouldn’t jump and buy the car based on a Google ad.
The same applies to high-price, high-trust and high-risk devices like hearing aids.
The number of people who click on ads is low.
The percentage of ads which are clicked on Google ranges around 1%. It may increase by industry, but you rarely see figures above 5% on average.
People don’t trust ads. They want to be in control and not sold to.
If you are working with an agency that is pushing you to buy Google ads, stop as ask what differentiation factors we have to get the majority of those 1 % clicks and also ask if there are other ways to spend money where we can get more visibility.
Knowing people don’t trust ads, you will naturally want to see what SEO will apply to you.
SEO Traffic is getting harder
To get the remainder of the traffic, you need to be on the top 1-3 spot. By getting the top spots, you can convert up to 70% of the people searching on Google.
You must find ways to keep competing with others who want to be in the same spot. The money you spend will equally be expensive to keep fighting for the top spot and visibility.
With the low search volume, the number of leads may not be enough to bring you business or keep your lights on.
Google has now added several features to prevent people from clicking onto the website and web pages. There are rich snippets and FAQs, a business info box, and a business map that allows you to call without clicking on a website for more information.
A better effort will be to target the less popular keywords that do not involve people who are ready to buy but are in the educational mode. This long game requires more than 100 articles targeting specific keywords to bring even some noticeable effect.
Every Channel has a Ceiling.
Marketing is about volume and getting seen as many times as possible. Each channel will have its limits on how many people are actively buying, searching, or consuming information.
Remember, Google makes money by selling ads. All the free software like Google Docs, Live Transcribe, and Google Meets have a cost to be paid and financed through Google ads.
Google benefited by selling you the dream of making money by advertising. They will tell you your ad copy is not converting and why you are not seeing the result. You’ll spend so much money on that rabbit hole.
First, you need volume.
However, at the end of the day, if you can’t achieve the volume based on the number of eyeballs you can potentially see in a competitive market, you can’t rely just on Google.
The key here is diversify your channels. Do not rely on one channel to bring you all the volume you need to run a successful business.