A new practice was recently referred to Audiology Practice Builders. The conversation included discussing her advertising and marketing. Below is a portion of the conversation,
My question, “Have you tried any direct mail or pay per click ads lately?”
Her answer, “We tried both, they didn’t work.”
My next question, “What was the Return on Investment (ROI) for each campaign?”
Her answer, “I don’t know.”
If you don’t know the answer to the second question, then you will have no idea if your ad campaigns are worth repeating.
Ad campaigns are a costly monthly expenditure, in most cases second only to the cost of goods expenditures in most hearing healthcare practices. Ideally, you want to spend as little as possible to get the number of patients you need on a monthly basis. Too often practice owners will run ad campaigns with little thought as to why a prior ad piece or event was or wasn’t successful. Experience will teach you better ways to manage the event. But tracking the results in as many ways as possible will allow you to make better decisions about where to put your marketing dollars in the future.
The impact of tracking the ROI
A minor change to an ad piece can significantly impact the ROI of any ad. The use of a photo of a couple versus a photo of a single person can influence the response to an ad. Another example might be to change the demographics of who sees the ad by increasing or decreasing the age bracket. The change of one variable can have a significant impact on the outcome.
Investing time in establishing a tracking system will pay dividends in the long run in other ways. When you sit down to plan your upcoming ad campaigns, you’ll have historical information that will make the planning session brief without sacrificing quality.
Patterns will develop if you carefully cultivate and store information from the patients who respond to your advertising and marketing, particularly those who purchase. After all, they’re the ones you want to make sure keep coming in your door.