80% of Therapy Practices Are Making a Mistake That Costs Hundreds of Dollars Per Month
Many therapists don’t use data to guide their marketing decisions or they try to, but do so in the wrong ways. As a result, thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time are wasted every year on one problem that has already been solved. Therapy groups that can gather this data properly stand to gain thousands of dollars in revenue by increasing ROIs and better guiding their lead generation strategy.
Many therapy practices come to me and do not have this basic idea implemented, some of whom have worked with other marketing groups (that should have been doing this) in the past! This means that marketing groups that don’t implement this strategy are hiding this key result from their clients. I may not get a good response from others in the marketing field by saying this, but this either means that they are incompetent at their job or actively hiding something. I hope it is the former.
I know this because I have been helping therapy practices grow with my marketing consulting, I would say that 80% of the work that I inherit doesn’t include this one basic step: data integrations for lead tracking. Essentially, 80% of practices can’t tell where their leads are coming from, why they are coming and how much they are spending to get these leads.
This means potentially thousands of dollars wasted every year. If you are using a marketing group and don’t know exactly how many leads you are getting per month from your spending, something is very wrong.
There are 3 steps in any potential client’s journey to your firm, and tracking data about each is key to make that journey easier for clients in the future, this is illustrated below.
The first interaction anyone will have with you is with an initial impression. Maybe they saw your website when they searched “therapist near me” in Google (see: Search Engine Optimization), or they clicked an ad on Facebook or Google (see: Google PPC) that you have paid for. Maybe they saw you on the news or on one of your social media profiles. In any case, they saw you.
Now comes step 2, did they engage with your content? Online this engagement is mediated by clicks, so did they click your ad? Did they watch your video? Did they follow the link to your website? When on your website and how did they engage with it? Both steps 1 and 2 are collected automatically by Google when you install Google Analytics on your website. (You can watch many how to’s on how to do this, including: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcrSjDaK9MY)
Step 3 of client acquisition is determining how many of these engagements on your site resulted in a conversion. For most practices a conversion is an initial phone call or form submission made with the intent to book an appointment. This is the step that 80% of practices are not tracking. If leads are not being tracked, then nothing in your digital sphere can be optimized.
How Does My Business Benefit From Lead Tracking?
If you have ads, tracking leads will help you answer:
- Which ad copies convert?
- What landing pages are best?
- What Keywords are people using to choose us?
- Are there any new opportunities for ad services?
- What is my return on investment?
If you have other digital assets, tracking leads will help you know:
- Where are my leads coming from?
- What is their path to find me?
- What are my audience demographics like?
- Are there any new opportunities to grow the business?
Okay, How do I start doing this?
The good news is that we live in the 21st century, and google can track all of this information already at the drop of a hat, because they know that if they give this data to businesses, they will adapt and better serve searchers and improve the Google experience. All the tools are there, all therapy practices need to do is implement them and interpret them.
The benefits are obvious. You know where each dollar went and what you got out of it, and as a result you can optimize your efforts to attract more clients for less money.
Every practice needs to be doing this today, and I can explain how to do it yourself if you contact me and set the subject line to “Lead Tracking Tutorial” or you can contact me to set it up for you for $150 with the subject line “Set Up Tracking”