How Brevard Medical Equipment Cut Google Ad Costs by 90%

By Joshua Schneiderman, VGM Forbin

Look around. Maybe you’re at work, at a restaurant or even at home. Everyone you see ended up in roughly the same place you are right now, but they all got there in a different way. Ask each how he or she got where they are now, and you could get a range of answers from “I drove” to “took the 405” to “my cousin recommended this place” to “10 years ago, I decided to move here for a job.” Our search histories on platforms like Google and Bing can be just as complex. When you’re using web marketing efforts to draw new business, it is helpful to remember we get to the same places online in a variety of ways also.

In November 2018, the SEM team at VGM Forbin was looking for ideas to help a valued client increase home medical equipment rentals for vacations and cruises around Cocoa Beach. We were running paid search ads in Google Ads for this client for a number of years with decent results. This was an effort to push further — to get even more from a modest budget.

Brevard Medical Equipment was getting little bits of business from an array of Google searches. In some ways, this company resembles other HME retailers around the US, but Brevard Medical has built a strong segment of their business on renting equipment to customers visiting Central Florida for cruises and vacations. We found a notable area of opportunity preparing ads for searchers who didn’t yet know how the machines, hospital beds, mobility equipment and other devices they needed would be available during their vacation. Our team sought ways to strengthen search efforts for people who were trying to buy home medical equipment in dozens of different ways.

The challenge was determining how that gap in information could change how their searches might look. Our keywords were expanded to include more how-to terms and segmented into campaigns around how someone would search for equipment without knowing exactly what they were looking for. Our locations put more focus on the points users pass through to get to Merritt Island, such as Orlando International Airport. And we gave more consideration to how the adult children of vacationers might be assisting in these searches.

When we compared the 10 weeks following these adjustments to the 10 weeks prior, we saw some impressive differences. Click through had jumped from 5.42 of every 100 relevant searches to 7.02, a 29.4% improvement.

Because Google now saw us as a more relevant result for those searches, we were able to pay on average 15.31% less for each of those clicks from $1.16 down to 98 cents. More importantly, the searchers we attracted with those ads were more freely and more efficiently connecting with Brevard Medical and Greg Bonenberger’s helpful staff. After the change, more than 15% of those who clicked on the ad, called or filled out an email form. This meant instead of seeing a new potential customer for every $60 we spent, we were now seeing one for every $6.34.

Those who run digital advertising campaigns in Google Ads know that the metrics aren’t everything. Frankly, you could get numbers to improve quickly by doing some of the wrong things. For instance, loading up on searches for the business name or showing those ads only to searchers who have already been to the site in the past could help you only pick lower hanging fruit. The trade-off is that you wouldn’t be nurturing new growth. While brand search and remarketing were updated, we didn’t load any more spend into those lowest-funnel efforts. We wanted to do the most we could to compel new visitors who might have otherwise ended up buying or renting equipment somewhere else.

“We have seen tremendous results and value all Forbin does to enhance our digital presence in the home care market,” applauds Bonenberger for Forbin’s work developing Brevard Medical Equipment’s online marketing efforts.

Changes made in November didn’t just improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Brevard Medical’s search advertising. Those optimizations were also designed to give us better insight into new areas for improvement in the future. Precise terms that indicate someone is ready to make a decision get the best bids and as much budget as they command. On the other end, more general terms with more frugal bids are designed to give us information on the variety of search patterns that lead to new business. Those will provide insights we can analyze for future optimizations.

Look around you, again. If your view is anything like mine, you’re seeing months-old mounds of snow, thick icicles and bare trees. Beaches and a cruise sound splendid. Next time you find yourself preparing for a getaway — or for any trip, consider the many different ways you get together items you’ll bring or prepare for when you’re there. Sometimes it can be as clear as “CPAP rentals near Orlando.” On other occasions, it may be less direct like “Do cruise ships provide accommodations for special needs?”

VGM Forbin’s experience in online marketing for home medical equipment outlets make us a natural choice for your marketing efforts. Investment in a strategic web marketing plan helps you do more of what you love: caring for your customers. Call Forbin today at (877) 659-5241 or reach out to us online.

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