Tips to Make It Easier to Track Your Marketing Performance
At BrinsonAnderson Consulting, our job is to help make your practice more efficient. As administrators ourselves, we understand that there are a lot of moving parts in any practice that need your attention, and maybe dealing with marketing is not in your natural wheelhouse. We have some tips to make it easier to track your marketing performance that don’t require a digital marketing degree.
First of all, if you have a good website designer, he or should should be:
Keeping an on eye on your Google Analytics
Tracking the success of Adwords
Monitoring your SEO
However, it is never a smart idea to assume that this is happening. It’s why we always encourage our clients to set up a monthly meeting to go over analytics and website performance with the vendor. And if you don’t understand some of the marketing mumbo jumbo, that’s ok. Ask questions. Remember that these guys (or gals) work for you.
For today’s blog, we want to focus on 3 KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are more tactical.
KPI #1: Online Reviews
The first marketing KPI to track is online reviews. Like it or not, we live in a culture that lives or dies by online reviews. You simply cannot afford to ignore them. There are dozens of reviews sites including:
Healthgrades
Real Self
Google
Yelp
The last two are the big players for any business. We can guarantee that prospective patients are reviewing your online reputations before making an appointment.
In order to increase the number of patient reviews, you need to be proactive about asking your patients to write them — and make it easy for them to do so! Our clients have found the best success by verbally asking the patient for a review and whether he or she prefers a text or email with the review link, and then immediately sending the link when the patient leaves the office. Some EHR software and website companies have tools to automate this process. Or, you can get a free Google voice phone number and send a manual text. Sure, it takes a few moments of time to send out the review request. But, generating more positive reviews is going to result in more leads so trust us, putting a little effort into encouraging happy patients to write a review is well worth it.
KPI #2: Leads & Consults
You probably already track volume of appointments by provider and location. But do you track the number of leads generated through your website? Doing so will give you a good idea of how well your website is performing as well as your staff’s ability to convert those interested prospects into scheduled patients. You have probably invested considerable cash into driving people to your website through Adwords and SEO. It would be tragic to lose a prospective patient because your staff failed to follow up. Or because your web form was broken. True story: our web form was broken when we first launched our website, and we didn’t know. How embarrassing! We now make it a habit to regularly check that the web form is performing properly. We encourage you to do so as well.
KPI #3: Social Media Followers
Social media is here to stay. It has fundamentally changed the way that a patient finds a provider. Our number #1 rule with social media is: “Do not try to sell me something”. Social media is about educating and engaging your audience. It’s a little bit like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. Your social media presence is a way to show patients both the personality and philosophy of your practice. If you do it well, when a patient comes in, he or she will feel as if you already know one another. This kind of “instant” trust goes a long way to converting a consult into a procedure.
It’s important to keep in mind that investing in social media is a long game. Three posts do not a ringing phone make, no matter how great they are. However, building a consistent online presence only takes about 2-3 quality posts a week. That’s doable. And just this little bit of effort has the potentially big payoff of more visitors scheduling consults and becoming patients.
To find out more about how BrinsonAnderson Consulting can help you track your marketing performance, for a predictable monthly fee, contact us here.
