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With SocialClimb you can easily calculate your healthcare marketing ROI down to your patient acquisition cost. 

Bluegrass Orthopaedics quoteYou may have heard that calculating your healthcare marketing ROI is too complicated. The problem is, your marketing efforts need to be generating a healthy margin, so your return on investment (ROI) is vitally important. And let’s be honest, a reliable ROI is a great way to get C-suite buy-in. If you can’t measure your ROI, you may as well be throwing your marketing spend up in the wind and hoping it goes somewhere. 

Good news. With SocialClimb, you absolutely CAN calculate your marketing ROI. Let me lay it out for you. 

Patient Acquisition Cost

Your patient acquisition cost (PAC) is one of the most valuable metrics for your medical practice. It’s calculated by dividing your marketing spend by the number of patient appointments derived from that spend. You know what your marketing spend is, that’s the easy part. The trick is to know exactly which patients were pulled in from those marketing efforts.

patient acquisition costWe can track that. Because our platform integrates with Google, we can identify who is calling your practice from your GMB listing and from your Boost Ads. You can see in actual numbers how effective your ROI marketing is. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

Our Call Tracker identifies new patients using their phone number as a unique identifier. Because our platform integrates with your practice’s patient management system, we can tell if a phone number has been used to call your practice in the past. The Call Tracker can also identify if the call was made from your GMB listing (reputation) or Boost Ad. 

Once the patient has made an appointment, they are listed on your Marketing Report with their patient ID number, their phone number, and their name. Their entire patient journey can be tracked, with important data being gathered along the way. And because our tools integrate into your system, it is all completely HIPAA compliant. 

SocialClimb marketing reportMarketing ROI

The Marketing Report we provide shows you a performance summary of how many website clicks and phone calls your practice received from your reputation and your Boost Ads. The report gives a rundown of how your marketing dollars were spent and includes your estimated revenue and your calculated Patient Acquisition Cost.

Desert Orthopaedics ROI quoteThe revenue shown on your report is a calculation of your average patient value (a number you provide) multiplied by how many appointments were booked. In the report above, the average patient value is $1,100. The estimated total revenue—the column on the right—shows 43 total appointments made from both the reputation (GMB listings) and Boost Ads. So the estimated revenue is 43 X $1,100, or $47,300. 

We don’t show the ROI on this report, because we wanted to focus on the PAC. However, the estimated ROI is easily calculated using the following formula: 

ROI calculation With the numbers from this report, the ROI calculation for the total marketing spend would look like this: 

ROI calculation with numbersIf you want a hard number calculation rather than a percentage, you’d simply subtract your marketing spend from your total estimated revenue. In this case, that number would be $45,700. With this report you can also easily find the ROI from reputation marketing efforts (6,500%) and from Boost Ads (2,015%).

ROI Ratios

Your marketing efforts should yield a minimum 3:1 ratio on your marketing spend. A 5:1 ratio is considered good. The example above, showing numbers from an actual SocialClimb client with patient names and phone numbers changed, yields a much higher ratio of 29:1. 

The ratio for their reputation marketing is 66:1, which makes it a no brainer. If your practice is not currently engaged in low-cost reputation management, we need to talk. Their Boost Ads ratio is 20:1 (keep in mind that a good ratio is 5:1 and an excellent ratio is 10:1). I want to quickly mention the hidden value of Boost Ads versus straight reputation management. 

Reputation management yields a high return for a relatively low investment, but that type of patient acquisition, while extremely necessary, will hit a ceiling. To move beyond that ceiling, and to bring in patients specifically ideal to your needs (which could include a higher return), using Boost Ads is the way to go. 

Measuring your healthcare marketing ROI is possible with SocialClimb because our platform has the ability to track the patient journey from beginning to end. Knowing your PAC and your marketing ROI gives you the power to aim your marketing efforts directly at driving revenue. 

You no longer need to speculate on the effectiveness of your marketing spend. Give us a call at 866-338-8270 to partner with SocialClimb and take the guesswork out of the equation. 

Additional Reading

This article on measuring your ROI is the last in a series of five articles on how SocialClimb and GMB marketing will impact your bottom line. To read the other articles in this series, please click on the links below: 

GMB series article #1: Google Game Changers Healthcare Marketers Need to Know

GMB series article #2: How Important Are Online Reviews for Doctors? 

GMB series article #3: Google Posts for Healthcare

GMB series article #4: Start Up Your Boost Ads

GMB series article #5: Are You Measuring Your Marketing ROI?

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