Generating High-Quality Leads

Every sales funnel starts with awareness – and how do leads become aware of your practice? Through your marketing. The advertising channels and campaigns that are responsible for drawing leads into the top layer of your funnel are known as your lead sources.

Successful lead generation starts with an effective, multi-channel marketing strategy that maximizes the number of leads your practice receives. Getting high quality leads into the top of your sales funnel is first and foremost when it comes to growing your patient base. Every component of your advertising strategy should be optimized to drive the highest-quality leads to your practice that are ready to take action.

Tracking Performance

However, the problem that many practices face is making the mistake of spreading their marketing too thin to really be effective. The truth is, many physicians are flying blindly when it comes to marketing. Advertising investments are frequently based on opinions, guesswork, or the latest “hot marketing trend”, which often results in thousands of dollars of wasted revenue.

If you have no idea which ad channels are sending you leads, and more importantly, which of these leads are converting, then you’re already at a disadvantage right out of the starting gate. Thriving practices take the time to determine what is working the best and turn those tools into a streamlined, revenue-producing system.

Plan, Measure, and Optimize

Most physicians do not track their marketing because they’re not entirely sure how, or they think it’s too time-consuming. Some make attempts by asking patients “How did you hear about us?” But when you rely on this method, what you end up with is usually vague or inaccurate information, such as “Google” or “online search”. Patients don’t always remember exactly what website they found you on either, such as a particular directory or review site.

Tracking which ads are bringing in the most revenue can be a challenging feat. However, online performance tracking can be done manually thorough Google Analytics and adding UTM parameters to URLs, and most social media platforms have their own ad tracking capabilities. Still, reconciling this data with actual revenue can be difficult. More often than not, this tracking data only shows traffic that was sent from a particular ad, missing key information about conversion and what the visitor did after viewing your ad. Your promotional content may be drawing in a load of traffic, but if it’s not leading to conversions or scheduled appointments, it’s not meeting your needs.

Automatic ROI Tracking

Tracking true ROI and the profitability of your marketing is indeed tricky, when you don’t have the right technology. Luckily, there are tools available that can track leads all the way from first touch to revenue.  Software programs like MyMedLeads use web form integration and call tracking phone numbers to automatically capture leads from virtually any source.  The system tracks leads from inception all the way through procedure completion, comparing the resulting revenue against the specified marketing costs for you. This allows doctors to review highly accurate ROI reports for each of their individual marketing investments, so that they can make more informed decisions regarding future marketing expenditures.

Making Smarter Marketing Decisions

With this crucial information, practices can make more strategic decisions about where they invest their future marketing dollars. Tracking marketing ROI not only reveals which channels are the most effective, but also what type of messaging is resonating the most with potential patients. Marketing ROI reports can also be used to see what ad copy is performing the best, so you can better tailor your marketing messages for conversion in the future.

Once you have refined and optimized your marketing strategy to draw in “sales ready” leads, you’re ready to move to the next stage in your sales funnel – lead response. Check out our next blog post for best practices and tips when it comes to responding to new leads.

Stay tuned for the next post in our Sales Funnel Series – Response Time.