December is a time for looking back on the past year and taking stock of what did and didn’t work. We use this information to guide our decision-making process of how we want the next year to look. How can we set the right goals that will get us more of the things and feelings we want, and just as important, less of what we don’t?
The simple answer: Track. Evaluate. Recalibrate.
With the proliferation of smartphone apps, new gadgets, and wearables – we can track just about everything in our lives now – we track our steps, our workouts, our sleep, our food, our productivity, our spending habits, and the list goes on and on. But, all too often this data goes unanalyzed. We look at it from time to time with good intentions of taking steps to improve our metrics, but life is busy and chaotic, and we’re only human, after all.
The problem is this mindset can also creep into our businesses. In particular, in the area of marketing. Running a busy practice takes up an enormous amount of your time, and it can be difficult to focus on marketing (let alone track it). But, if you want to make more money in 2020, an effective marketing strategy is crucial to growing your practice.
Properly tracking the performance of your marketing is one of the most powerful ways that you can generate more profit for your practice in 2020.
What is Marketing ROI?
For the unfamiliar, marketing ROI (return on investment) is the practice of attributing profit and revenue growth to the performance of your individual marketing initiatives. Many practices already do this on some level by asking patients “How did you hear about us?”
While this method is a step in the right direction, it is an unreliable and incomplete way to track the different referral sources your patients were actually exposed to prior to becoming a paying patient. Not only are these answers often inaccurate (think vague answers like “the Internet” or “Google”), they rely on a single-attribution model.
Single-Attribution Model
In this methodology, full credit for a sale is either given to the first touch or the last touch. Google search ads often look like they have a high ROI, but they are frequently building on and benefiting from many of your other marketing initiatives.
For example, say an individual opens their search engine and does a search for “ultherapy or filler for lifting cheeks?”. This query returns an in-depth Q&A post you wrote on Realself. After reading your answer and realizing you’re in their city, they contact your practice to ask a few questions but don’t schedule a consult. A few days later, they’re on some random site when they see one of your Google retargeting ads, they click the ad, call the number on the landing page and eventually purchase Voluma treatment from you.
In this instance, if you are using “last-touch attribution”, Google Adwords will get all the credit for that revenue, even though it was the content on Realself that introduced them to your practice and initiated their research on you. If you are using “first-touch attribution”, then all the credit goes to Realself. However, without seeing the Google display ad when they were in the right setting and mindset to call your practice to book a consult, who’s to say they would have done it at all?
While single-touch attribution has its place (think online impulse purchases), practices that offer high-ticket services like elective cosmetic surgery tend to involve more research and have longer sales cycles. Therefore, with this model you are not getting a full and fair picture of how your marketing sources are performing.
Multi-Attribution Model
As mentioned above, the single-attribution model works fine if you have a short sales cycle or only use one or two marketing channels. However, for a plastic surgery practice that does a lot of marketing through a variety of different mediums, this model will produce less accurate data on the true ROI of your marketing.
Multi-attribution models are designed to give you a fuller, more accurate view of marketing performance by giving credit to more than one source. In the former scenario, a system like MyMedLeads, which offers first and last-touch attribution, would show Realself as the initial referring source and Google Adwords as the final attribution lead source.
Having both lead sources counted will be important when it comes time to look at your ROI reports during your year-end marketing assessment.
Why Track and Analyze Marketing ROI Data?
Marketing campaigns require financial investment. If you are able to accurately track the performance of your campaigns, you will get a clear picture of exactly which lead sources are bringing in the most revenue for your practice and which ones may actually be costing you.
Armed with this knowledge, you can start 2020 off with a big advantage by reallocating your advertising dollars to lead sources that produce the highest converting leads, while reworking or eliminating low-performing marketing campaigns.
Tracking marketing performance doesn’t just have to be a ‘Judge, Jury, and Executioner’ situation. It can also be used to help you better refine and tailor your content to what leads are responding to. ROI tracking helps you measure the impact of similar campaigns to see what type of messaging resonates the most with your intended audience. You can then use this data to optimize future content for the highest impact and improve your chances of getting more leads from your new campaign.
How Do I Track Marketing ROI?
Trying to track ROI manually by asking patients and using spreadsheets is tedious and time-consuming, and not something most busy practices can do. MyMedLeads makes marketing ROI tracking an easy, automated process. Our system seamlessly integrates with virtually any online lead source and offers call tracking numbers for offline marketing.
When a new inquiry comes in, MyMedLeads auto-captures the lead source along with the lead’s data. Our reporting tools automatically compare the cost of a lead source to the revenue it has generated to create ROI reports on each of your individual marketing investments. Our attribution reporting allows you to track the initial source that a lead originated from in addition to the final lead source that converted them into a booked appointment.
Tracking Your Progress in 2020
The strategies we’ve discussed this week are just a few ways you can help make your practice more profitable in 2020. To discuss more ways that MyMedLeads can help your team enjoy a more profitable year, including client success coaching and custom campaign creation, give us a call at 844-446-9633.
We hope reviewing some of these strategies has also inspired you to bring elements of personal growth and motivation to your own role as well. Tracking and monitoring your progress really is crucial to accomplishing any goal, because it shows you when you’re on track — and when you need to adapt.
We hope you had an amazing 2019 and are ready for another BIG year!