It’s important to have the ability to evaluate your return on investment.
Automated call tracking phone numbers do not work. Often times patients can find your website from a mailer. Then call the number on the website. Perhaps they find you on Google, then visit your Facebook page before calling. Gone are the days when multiple phone numbers provide accurate data.
To value how your marketing is working, do the following:
1. Identify all of your referral sources. Enter them into your practice management software as referrals.
2. Train your team to ask every new patient how they heard of you EVEN BEFORE they schedule their first appointment. This allows you to track their ability to convert. It also can show failed appointment percentages. For instance, if you run a mailer and get 10 new patients scheduled from it but only 2 show, you may need to reevaluate the creative (design and written content)
3. Put a team member in charge of calculating your new patient reports. Break down each referral source by month and put the number of new patients from that source.
4. Last but not least, consider the investment amount. If you are investing $1500/month on internet marketing and seeing 15 new patients from it. You are spending about $100 per new patient. Compare this to your direct mail campaign, which may average $500 per new patient.
These numbers are crucial in determining where to place your marketing budget. As your marketing mix (strategies) grow, so will your ROI if you are doing things right.
Actual ROI is defined as: ROI is usually expressed as a percentage and is typically used for personal financial decisions, to compare a company’s profitability or to compare the efficiency of different investments. The return on investment formula is: ROI = (Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100.
It is difficult to evaluate exact ROI, since patients spend money over many years. To calculate your exact ROI, you can average the value of a new patient. You can also take the extra step and evaluate how much production was created per referral source.
For instance: If those 15 new patients end up spending $22,500 in a 6 month or year period, you can do the simple math ($22,500 / $9,000) x 100 = 250% ROI.
In reality, our ROI is usually much better than this example. I prefer to evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign on the average cost to acquire a new patient. It’s simpler to digest and and makes the investment decision easy. If I am able to get your new patient acquisition cost below $100 and ideally even below $50 – I know you’ll have no qualms investing in our solutions and services.
