Taking over Digital Marketing during COVID: A Case Study

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From the Client

“There’s nothing easy about growing an orthopaedic group. Add in a global pandemic and you’re faced with quite the challenge. However, here at Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic, we saw NEW patient growth up 36% in 2020 compared to 2019! The digital marketing strategy & execution provided by Today’s Business in 2020 was definitely a catalyst for this growth. We love working with the Today’s Business team and trust them to continue to uplift our brand, enhance our online patient experience, and grow our practice in 2021 and beyond!”

Brian Bizub

CEO, Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic

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Overview

Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic is an orthopaedic group with 23 board certified and board eligible orthopaedic surgeons plus 6 clinic locations throughout Wake County, North Carolina. Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic dominates their market with 58% of the market share in Raleigh despite being in a competitive marketplace with UNC Healthcare, Duke & Emerge all within a few miles of each other. They want to have their marketing keep them relevant and help them outrank competitors.

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The “Crux”

Although Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic dominated their market, it didn’t show when it came to their internet footprint. Raleigh had the following issues:

Website

  • Slow, outdated website that wasn’t mobile friendly
  • A myriad of technical issues for SEO and Website Maintenance

SEO

  • Inconsistent listing and citation information
  • Thin content that wasn’t keyword optimized

SEM

  • 98% of Conversions coming from branded search queries. Primarily “raleigh orthopedic”
  • Dynamic Search Ads were dominating spend on clicks for branded keywords not allowing for prospecting ad groups to perform
  • 0 negative keywords
  • 0 Responsive Search Ads

Analytics

  • No goal tracking to help provide ROI
  • Google Adwords call tracking not firing despite 100% of Google Ads conversions coming from call extensions

The Strategy

Today’s Business took a multi-channel approach to Raleigh Orthopaedic’s campaign, combining SEO and SEM and supplementing it with the Website Development team for maintenance and supplemental SEO efforts. Overall, the strategy within these channels focused on.

General

  • Keyword Research
    Targeting [Service] + [Location] Keywords
    Targeting speciality + “doctor/surgeon/specialist”
    Ensure Brand strength on current keywords
  • Help transition to a new patient CRM
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SEO

  • Update blog structure for URLs, categories, and tags to better utilize the content AND improve rankings
  • General Onsite Work and Technical Clean Up 
  • Create Urgent Care related content for commonly asked questions
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Analytics

  • Reconfigure Analytics for better data and goal tracking.
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Website

  • A patch-over website update: rather than creating a whole new website, TB updated framework while keeping the current website WordPress theme. This was to improve speed.
  • Update the homepage and location pages, followed by the service pages. This was to improve keyword rankings, UX, and conversion generation.
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SEM

  • Simplified & Optimized Campaign + Ad Group structure to focus on relevant & lucrative prospecting keywords like “urgent care” and “surgeon” search queries 
  • Added 25 negative keywords across all campaigns 
  • Optimized landing pages to align with search queries 
  • Optimized Campaign Daily Budgets so that non-brand keywords can get more clicks
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The Results

Despite the campaign starting in the middle of the pandemic, Today’s Business was able to create improvements across multiple digital channels for Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic leading to substantial growth in majority of the marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) we measure.

The Results

Site before

Before

Site after

After

Website Page Speed Scores

Pagespeed before 1

Page Speed Before

Pagespeed before

Page Speed After

Overall Web Traffic

Increased Website Sessions 1

SEO

Increase num keyword rankings 1
Increased LP Clicks 1
Increased NewUsers 1
Traffic Cost 1

SEM

Before Today’s Business took over the SEM for Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic the only keywords that drove conversions were brand name keywords. In other words, the practice was spending money on clicks for users who were searching for “raleigh orthopaedic clinic” and other similar branded keywords. A lot of these people were likely already patients or had intentions of becoming a Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic patient.

Today’s Business adjusted the Google Ads budget to focus on acquiring new patients who may not be familiar with Raleigh Orthoapedic Clinic. You will see below that after Today’s Business adjusted the SEM campaigns the practice went from getting nearly all conversions from branded search terms to now having a healthy mix of branded vs. non-branded search term conversions.

SEM Conversions by Keyword Type (Q1 2021)

914

Branded Conversions

Example Branded Search Terms:
“raleigh orthopedic”, “raleigh orthopedic urgent care”, “raleigh orthopedics”, “raleigh orthopedic garner”, “dr. barker raleigh ortho”

234

Non-Branded Conversions

Example Non-Branded Search Terms:
“orthopedic urgent care”, “orthopedic urgent care near me”, “best knee doctor in raleigh nc”, “raleigh orthopedic surgeons”, “orthopedic near me”, “torn meniscus”, “hip specialist near me”, “best knee replacement doctors in nc”

Average Monthly Conversions

2000

Appointment Clicks

Per month

5500

Phone call clicks

Per month

Takeaways from the Team:

“Overall this is one of the most difficult campaigns to analyze because it started right in the middle of COVID, and orthopedics search volumes have been down from previous levels. What we have been seeing is rankings continuing to move higher, so despite lower search volume, we’re getting more clicks. The website is faster than it has ever been, and we are now able to get a better sense of their lead generation because of proper ROI attribution. At 22.5% conversion rate based on phone calls and booking appointment clicks, Raleigh Orthopaedic is poised for exemplary growth as the pandemic lessens in impact.”

Forrest Old

Sr. SEO Strategist at TB

“Looking back on this campaign almost a year since we started I couldn’t be more proud of the TB team. Our team is excellent at keeping things straightforward and effective. People often try to make digital marketing so complicated. When you work with the TB team, we make sure that we’re maximizing your ROI, but also ensure that clients know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. There are so many times where people say “Wow, you make it seem so easy.” or “How did we not think of that.” It really comes down to experience and I think that is what allowed our team to shine here.”

Joe Sanfilippo

Manager, Growth & Partnerships at TB

“Updating the framework to give us more control over the site was key. It allowed the site speed to be improved, and also gave us the flexibility to make and apply UI/UX changes. All of these combined lead to a better visitor experience and journey, which contributes to the overall increase.”

Justin Ramsammy

Website Project Manager at TB

“An updated design was crucial in bringing our multi-channel approach all together. Our goal with design was to create a more modern aesthetic, primarily focusing on a mobile-first approach to enhance the user experience. Overall, the new designs help guide the user throughout the site by strategically using color to define specific call-to-actions, a redesigned navigation, and the implementation of a progressive footer navigation on mobile.”

Mario Teixeira

Graphic Designer at TB

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