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I’m confident that unless you’re one of the few people I’ve spoken to already, you have no idea what is happening on Bing & Yahoo Search for pharmacies. Fair warning: what you’ll read about in this article might annoy you…

If you Bing “pharmacy”, and you’re a community pharmacist, you’ll encounter a problem. Though you may not realise it.

This is something I noticed by accident, stumbling across the issue when one of Pharmacy Mentor’s laptop browsers was set to Yahoo Search by default.

Big pharmacy companies are advertising on Bing search engine across the whole of the UK for the term pharmacy. You might question why. You might question why you should care. Let’s explore both of these questions step-by-step below.

What is Bing?

Bing is the Microsoft equivalent of Google’s search engine, only less popular. Because Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, it comes pre-installed on all Microsoft Devices as standard.

Other search brands use Bing’s search engine too

Yahoo Search is just Bing search with a different branding, and is the default search function for Mozilla Firefox. Yahoo’s search engine is powered by Bing, which means both Bing & Yahoo deliver the same results, including adverts.

Why should pharmacies care about Bing, or Yahoo Search?

The fact is, Google dominates the search engine market, with 92.47% global market share (91% in the UK) as of June 2021 (Statista, 2022). It seems most people don’t care about Bing or Yahoo Search. So why should you?

Bing Pharmacy PPC (Pay-per-click) Advertising

Advertising on Bing, which feeds through to AOL & Yahoo, has a considerably smaller Cost-per-Click (CPC) than Google.

Still irrelevant to you?

Go to a Bing-powered search engine
Search for “pharmacy near me”, or even your own pharmacy name.
Look at who appears first.

Saving you a bit of time, I’ve already done searches for “pharmacy near me” as well as “Pharmacy John O’Groats” and “Pharmacy Lands End” below, demonstrating the issue for pharmacies anywhere in the UK.

Scroll through the image sideshow below to see the searches.

1 2 3 4 5

But here’s where you get annoyed…

What I didn’t search for, was your specific pharmacy name. Open a Bing search, and search for your pharmacy name.

If you didn’t just utter “you crafty cusses”, or words to that effect, you don’t yet understand what is happening.

So let me enlighten you a little more.

(N.B. If you don’t see Ads, it might be that the adverts have reached the maximum daily/monthly budget. But they’ll be back.)

Who uses Bing?

91% of the UK uses Google. 5% use Bing. Whilst 5% doesn’t sound like a lot, it translates to approximately 3.35 million people using Bing.

According to the macro statistics, if you open up your browser and Bing is your default search engine, you probably go into your browser settings and change your default search engine.

You know who doesn’t do that? People who don’t know enough about browser settings, or don’t know how to do it.

You know which demographic doesn’t know how to work the Internet? The one that needs prescriptions the most.

It’s an incredibly savvy tactic.

Have another look at those screenshots. Can you see how minimal the indicators are that the top results are adverts? Again, the people with eyesight sharp enough for “Ads related to: pharmacy near me” aren’t generally the ones using Bing.

Advertising over people’s businesses on Google is noticeable.

Why?

Because the business owners use Google. So they’ll probably see.

But doing this through Bing is sneaky. You avoid a snarling dog, because it’s obvious. But the mosquito that gets you in your sleep bites you all they like.

What can you do about it?

Unfortunately the only way to fight Bing Ads is with Bing Ads. (The same is true with Google Ads.)

If someone puts a poster over a signpost to your pharmacy, preventing that means either asking them to stop, or putting your own poster up over their poster. If it’s a local competitor who’s doing the advertising, there’s a good chance of finding an agreement that works for both parties.

But do you think the companies who’re paying for adverts targeting “pharmacy” all over the UK will stop because you asked nicely?

Are Bing Ads for pharmacy it worth it?

These big pharmacy companies advertising on Bing think so.

It’s worth noting, they advertise on Bing, but not on Google. The budget on Google is too high to cover the entirety of the UK all the time, but because of the smaller user base of Bing, it’s possible.

But they wouldn’t continue to do this unless they had a valid reason to. The reason is that the predominant user base for Bing is people who don’t know how to change to Google. And that’s pharmacy’s target market.

How much does it cost?

Advertising on Bing obviously has a cost, typically between 25-50 pence per click. Pay-per-click on Google for Pharmacy is more like £1-3 per click, for reference.

But don’t worry about competing with a big company advertising budget. Competing with them in your local area won’t cost anything like that much.

Weigh up whether or not remaining inactive whilst these big companies skim the cream off the top of your catchment area is worth less than to you than a couple of hundred pounds a month.

Worth noting: The patients these companies pick up could be searching for your pharmacy, but they could be from any pharmacy searches in the UK. You aren’t being directly targeted.

Not Just Protecting Your Pharmacy Business

And don’t forget – advertising on Bing isn’t just protecting your pharmacy’s existing patient base. You’re actively promoting your pharmacy and attracting new patients too. Advertising on Bing is probably a worthwhile endeavour even if you weren’t being forced into it.

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Google Ads for pharmacies. They’re happening on a small scale right now for Travel Clinics and Private Services, compared to the rest of the business world. But they’re growing, as people realise how much money they can make using them.

How do Google Ads work?

Even if you appear at the top of the page organically, companies and pharmacies using Google Ads appear above this because of the way the Google results are laid out. (Strangely, Google rewards people giving them money?)

How do they do it?

It’s really simple.

Create a Google Ads account.
Make a Google Ad.
They choose search terms to target, such as “Travel Clinic.”

Then when people search for things that are related to Travel Clinics on Google, e.g., Travel Vaccinations – the ad appears like this:

Ads display at the top of Google for the search terms they target.

It might seem like a waste of money to pay for ads to appear when you are already ranking at the top organically, but if you don’t, you’re giving advertisers an opportunity to appear above you and steal the customers who were looking for you.

Especially when they’re searching for something like “Travel Vaccines.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t go home and search for Travel Clinics to relax. It’s because I need one. Now assume I don’t care where I get my vaccine from, I just want the damn thing. So I’m going to click on the first relevant thing I see.

And if that’s an Ad, that’s exactly what I’ll click on. If they make it easy for me to book on their site, and they’re the price I’m expecting to pay, then I book my appointment and go on with the things I actually want to be doing.

And that’s it. Deal done. Transaction over. It cost that business however much Google charged them for a click, which on average is between 50p-£1.

How can you get a piece of that sweet, sweet Google Ads pie?

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em. Funnily enough, it’s really simple.

You create a Google Ads account.
Then you make a Google Ad.
You choose search terms to target, such as “Travel Clinic.”

Then when people search for things that are related to Travel Clinics on Google, e.g., Travel Vaccinations – the ad appears as above.

If that all sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly the same process that they used to get all the customers unchallenged. Except now you’re actually competing for the business, not just standing by and letting them take it.

The best part? You have something they don’t. You have access to a digital marketing agency that runs Google Ads for pharmacies all the time.

We know the ads that work, the best times to run them, and the way to set them up for success. Your ads will attract clicks, even when alongside another ad.

Unconvinced by Google Ads?

You’ll likely want to understand how this happens, to get similar results for your pharmacy.

You might have tried Google Ads for your pharmacy and not seen much success from them. You might have heard horror stories of people pouring thousands of pounds down a black hole with no return. This is entirely possible, when Google Ads are run without the proper knowledge of how to get results.

But our results speak for themselves. Here’s an Ad we pointed towards a website. Note – we are showing you SMART Campaigns here, not Advanced Campaigns. We’ll be adding info about Advanced Google Ads at a later point.

Example SMART Google Ad Campaign

It gave the option to call immediately or visit the website for more information, as well as links to book appointments for that service. 50p/click which is the low end of average. Think we’re showing off? I literally just picked a random ad. Here’s another one. (This was the second one we looked at, I can’t even guarantee it’s the best performing.)

This Ad targeted flu jabs and averaged approximately 30p a click in North London.

This second Ad was promoting a Flu Jab service (the Pharmacy forgot they’d asked us to do it and were wondering why they were getting private flu jab enquiries!) They got an even lower cost per click at 30p! This one was aimed at driving calls to the pharmacy and physical visits.

Google Ads for pharmacies get found by so many search terms

The search terms this ad got results for.

You lose customers by not showing up when they’re searching online.

Exceptional results even without a massive budget.

Both of these ads are LOW budgets. And we don’t recommend that. For multiple reasons.

Our management fee remains the same regardless of your budget (unless you want super serious Ads). So the more you spend, the greater the value is.
The same is true of Google’s charges. The more you budget, the lower your average cost per click is. It’s the equivalent of buying in bulk.
A limited budget means that your ad switches off during the day when the daily budget runs out. This means lots of people could be searching for your service and your ad stops displaying whilst your competitor’s ad keeps going. And they go back to winning all the business.

Also, please note that the above ads were run on SMART campaigns which is the basic form of Google Ads. Advanced Ads require more budget and management fees because of the data we are gathering. We’re learning exactly how to make the best ROI from every pound we spend.

Want to increase clinical bookings with Google Ads? Book a call and we’ll get you up and running.

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Is BING losing you pharmacy patients?