This is the story of how our digital marketing efforts enabled the rapid growth of a telemedicine brand from a startup to market leader, scaling conversions on SEM by 2,985% over the course of 4 years while improving the efficiency by 40%.
In this article, we share the top 5 strategies we used to drive 15% YoY growth even in 2022, despite the challenges of post-covid drop in demand and increase in competition.
Client Overview
Our client is a nationwide virtual primary care provider that offers a quick and simple alternative to traditional health care. With board-certified doctors licensed in all 50 states and high ratings in app stores, they’re on a mission to help everyone live longer, healthier and happier lives.
SEM Growth Throughout the Years
Source: analytical data obtained via Google Ads, 2019 – 2022
2019: +130% Conversions | +35% Spend | -40% CPA
“The year we took over the account.” — Immediately we started to focus on optimization and efficient expansion. This resulted in over 100% customer base growth at 40% lower cost per customer compared to 2018. Mainly, the strategies that got us there were better traffic control and orchestrating the user’s keyword-ad-landing page flow which led to 97% CvR boost.
2020: +440% Conversions | +390% Spend | -10% CPA
“The year Covid hit.” — In March 2020 the world changed, and so did the telehealth industry. The natural demand for our existing core keywords grew exponentially, but we also drove significant incremental volume by retesting all the keyword themes that didn’t perform in the past. For many initiatives, we finally had enough volume to build more granular structures and further customize the user flow.
2021: +100% Conversions | +165% Spend | +30% CPA
“The year Covid continued.” — The industry’s increase in demand was followed by an increase in competition that impacted the CPC. Suddenly, we had doctor chats, symptom checkers, and even Amazon entering the playing field. One of our main strategies focused on ad messaging and repositioning ourselves to stand out in the new competitive landscape, as well as doing extensive landing page testing which led to 12% CvR increase.
2022: +15% Conversions | +/-0% Spend | -15% CPA
“The year Covid ended…” — As of February it seemed like Covid didn’t matter any more. We got the vaccine, several Covid pills, and life was going back to “normal”. Just look at the search demand diving off a cliff on the trendlines below.
Source: publicly available Google Trends data, 2019 – 2022
So, how did we maintain a flat spend and almost 15% customer growth year-over-year?
Let’s dive in!
The 2022 Challenge & Top 5 Strategies for Success
Without Covid, 2022 was going to be a challenge. We needed to identify new pockets of volume that will help us deliver YoY growth, and we needed to do it fast.
So, we rolled up our sleeves and kept them rolled up in order to stay on top of new keyword expansion opportunities. Here’s the anonymized traffic for a few of our key finds:
Source: anonymized Google Trends data of newly identified keyword themes, 2018 – 2022
To identify these much needed volume-drivers we used the following 5 Strategies:
- Scraping competitors keyword for any gaps
- Tracking the popularity of specific medical conditions
- Using internal business data for month-over-month changes in diagnosis and prescription trends
- Following FDA medication approvals
- Staying on top of seasonal patterns
Then, we just launched fast, optimized faster, and dug for new expansion opportunities again and again.
Needless to say, we continued to focus on optimizations for ad copy and messaging. This time, we perfected the RSA testing strategies, which brought a 15% CTR increase compared to the previous year.
Conclusion
At LeanSEM, experts run your entire PPC operation better than an in-house team. We execute the right ideas faster and better, delivering meaningful results and insights. Our results speak for themselves, and that’s why clients stay in business with us for 5+ years, while the industry average is around 1-2 years.
But, don’t take our word for it…
Testimonial from the client:
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Check out the LeanSEM methodology and brand promise here.
