1. SEO Ranking
Prospective customers can’t buy you if they can’t find you.
The fact is, 77% of patient use online search & reviews to
choose their next healthcare provider with 84% of healthcare
consumers relying on this channel, alone, to evaluate
providers.
Given all the discussion we’ve been having about content
clutter (here: The Future of Digital Media… and, here: 5
Steps To A Captivating Story), it’s no surprise that people
are viewing content and social proof as minimal qualifiers
to their conversion journey prior to purchase. Therefore,
what has started has come full circle with websites and SEO
being of pivotal importance in the current climate of online
marketing… even as it serves to be word of mouth 2.0 — being
that > 80% of patients trust online reviews as much as
personal recommendations!
2. E-tail to Retail Conversion Rate
Everything you’re doing online is essentially e-tail. While
you may not have an e-commerce store on your website or
social media outlets, what you ARE doing is positioning your
company’s brand for purchasing behaviors aligned with a
buyer psychology.
This is one of the reasons why having a patient facing
website is so important. Clinician facing content tends to
drive prospective patients away and doesn’t serve to capture
that much more talent acquisition as much as social media
would. In any case, the key element here is the aggregate of
all your digital leads per time period (monthly, quarterly,
and year-to-year comparisons are appropriate — after all,
you want to compare like seasons versus short term
fluctuations).
And, so… what you want to do is sum all the: click-to-calls,
website driven calls, email and online scheduling
appointments, free screening requests, DMs, SMSs, etc etc
etc. — of all these digital requests, how many walked
through the front door? AND… of all those who walked through
the front door, how many stayed to initiate a course of care
or engage with a service/product line?
If…
1) You’re getting a poor ratio of online visitors to online
leads, you need to up your digital marketing game.
2) If you’re getting a poor ratio of online leads (e-tail)
to front door (retail) prospects, you need to up your team’s
nurturing game — likely with set scripts and brand
standards.
3) If your retail conversion itself is poor, then you likely
need to work your retail marketing savvy which includes your
sales strategies and tactics.
3. Profit Per Lead Source
One of my favorite lessons in business strategy and
operational finances is the Profit Pool Analysis. While this
thorough; yet, sometimes terribly exhausting exercise,
reveals incredible insights into the true opportunities in
current and potential revenue activities… the shortened
version of measuring profit per lead source can be similarly
effective while saving on time/effort required to implement.
Essentially, breaking down profit per lead source bypasses
the myopic temptations of focusing only on channel specific
metrics such as open rates, click rates, cost per clicks,
cost per lead, costs per impressions, cost per reach, etc.
etc. etc. After all, all these cost based and single moment
user behavior metrics are just that… they are ONE
DIMENSIONAL and yield very little insight as to HOW a
marketing channel is truly performing.
With a savvy office manager and/or a solid EMR reporting
system, a practice can easily break down its first round of
analysis by three major types of lead sources: (1) referral
sources; (2) word-of-mouth by customers, both past and
present; and, (3) looping the remainder into the category of
digital marketing.
These three major categories can be broken down into
sub-segments, such as:
• Referral Sources
⋅ Primary Care vs. Specialty (ie. surgery, pain management)
⋅
Payer (ie. case manager, insurance adjuster)
⋅
Strategic Partnerships (ie. yoga studio, CrossFit gym)
•
Word-Of-Mouth
⋅
Past patient vs Current patient
⋅
Family/friend of past patient vs. of current patient
•
Digital Marketing
⋅
SEO
⋅
Adwords
⋅
Facebook organic
⋅
Facebook ads
⋅
Instagram
⋅
Instagram ads
⋅
Snapchat
⋅
Twitter
⋅
Yelp
⋅
YouTube
⋅
Email Marketing
⋅
DM Marketing
⋅
Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
PLEASE NOTE:
It is severely important to recognize that the entire
cluster of referral sources count as ONE typology of lead
source; just as with energy companies, technology companies,
real estate companies — should you invest in their stock —
while there are many companies, each belong to ONE typology
because they all belong to the same economic circumstances.
I can’t express how important this is in running an agile
and accurate marketing strategy, particularly when so very
many referral sources have gone dry for even the largest of
organizations in our space — everyone is flocking toward
direct-to-consumer channels.
All together, Profit Per Lead Source tells you where you
should be focusing your dollars, and, where you should be
easing off the gas. When combined with other management
metrics, you can even determine the internal marketing
contributions of clinician as well! #BrandEquityAddedFTW
4. Analyzing Abnormal Returns (Quarterly Campaign
ROIs)
Comparing apples to apples is at the core of what makes
metrics meaningful.
In all my formal MBA education, there’s nothing better in
this space than analyzing market returns when trended
against current and projected company growth. After all, you
shouldn’t be comparing week to week or month to month.
That’s basically like watching the stock marketing and
having an anxiety attack.
However, gauging your company’s Q1 this year versus last
year is a great way of accounting for seasonality while
comparing apple vintages. It also gives you precise insight
as to what your quarterly campaigns are actually drawing in
and what is otherwise noise; after all, the beauty of
digital marketing is that everything can be data driven vs.
guess and check — just as you would with a pre-intervention
assessment and post-intervention re-assessment, the very
same approach can be utilized here… quarter by quarter,
campaign by campaign, year by year, channel by channel.
Ultimately, keeping up with metrics is a question of how
meaningful and how actionable these metrics are going to be.
It may very well be the case that you’d benefit from hiring
an in house marketing for $70k a year. Or, it may be that
you’re better outsourcing for someone else’s core
competencies — whether by partitions or finding an
all-in-one solution.
Whether you’re an owner, an officer, a corporate director,
or a manager: the definitive answer to this has much to do
with what type of company you wish to be running.
Are you company that wishes to grow through the assimilation
of knowledge capital and core competencies? Can you
reasonably scale in this direction?
If Yes, it’s time to grow a marketing
department. If No, then it’s time to consider bringing on
strategic solutions as to not waste time reinventing the
wheel or waiting until the right time to build an entire
vehicle all at once.
If you have any questions or would like to strike up a
convo, please let me know! EMail:
ben@updocmedia.com
Website:
www.updocmedia.com Cell: 470-BEN-FUNG
