If your idea of how to track marketing results is to instruct your receptionist to ask each caller, “How did you hear about us,” then this article may be for you…

The devil is in the details, but when the devil is your poorly equipped and poorly trained receptionist, you might not get any details, never mind accurate ones. Even if the “where heard” information gathered is correct, the source of the information (your patient) is frequently WRONG.  They forget and just tell you whatever pops into their head. For example, they may have received your direct mail piece, and a few days later searched for you on Google, and Google is what they report.

Some clinics spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising, and still have no idea if it is producing a return on investment.  It’s like the old advertiser’s adage, “I think one half of our advertising budget is working, I just don’t know which half…” Is that really the best you can expect, just a guess as to what expenditures produce results? We say heck no!

In fact, if you implement a disciplined system for tracking, you’ll always know what works best to produce results. In addition to making your advertising work better, a disciplined tracking system will provide an even bigger business benefit – a window into what may be holding your practice back from exciting, satisfying growth. Well planned tracking systems with disciplined implementation will uncover and document the following key strategic elements:

  1. What headlines and selling slants have broadest appeal, and which ones are duds.
  2. What “need to know/want to know” information is most important to the prospects in your area.
  3. Which offers for more information and calls to action are most effective.
  4. What points of contact in your business have the most potential to drive the top line, and which ones are driving away prospects.

A quick example of a basic tracking system-
You run a postcard campaign with the tracking elements below in place:

  • A website landing page – a unique website page that can only be viewed by knowing the address. Visitors to these pages can only be from the postcard.
  • A website “tracking” URL – a unique domain name that is reserved for the marketing campaign.
  • Website tracking code – lines of code placed in your site pages that track visitors, which pages they view, length of visit, in which order, and what links they click on.
  • A variety of actionable offers – each “offer” requires a specific action from the prospect that can be measured and compared.
  • Tracking phone numbers – unique phone numbers and/or extensions reserved for specific ads or campaigns. These numbers should be equipped with reporting and call recording features. The incoming call volume is measured, and the caller experience is captured. In addition to measuring response, the insights gained from these recordings should lead to other business innovations and staff training opportunities.

These tracking mechanisms create a complete picture with real data – details even the devil can’t dispute.

Want to see a live tracking system  and learn to set one up for your practice? Join us on one of our webinars to see tested concepts and a live (not a demo) tracking system in action.

Thanks for reading.