A marketing return on investment (ROI) holds healthcare marketing teams accountable to their goals and budgets. Tracking your healthcare marketing ROI is difficult, but dissecting the nuance is worth the effort.
In this article, we’ll break down the benefits of measuring your healthcare marketing ROI, the metrics you should pay attention to, and how you can use that data to improve your marketing efforts.
Why healthcare marketing ROI is a must-have for business success
Blindly funding a healthcare marketing effort fails to create the transparency top-performing healthcare brands need to sustain success.
That’s why measuring your healthcare marketing ROI is a healthy practice. The benefits of using this measurement include the following:
- Accountability
- Justification for healthcare marketing spend
- Direction for marketing budget distribution
- Data to compare against competitors
After measuring your healthcare marketing ROI, you’ll have clear answers to questions like, “Is my marketing budget money well spent?” or “Does healthcare marketing work?”
3 key healthcare marketing ROI metrics to track
Healthcare marketing ROI can be tricky to measure. These are only some of the nuances requiring expert healthcare marketer analysis:
- The exponential value of a digital marketing
- An omnichannel approach to a comprehensive healthcare marketing campaign
- The lag time between launching a marketing campaign and seeing results
You can begin your healthcare marketing ROI analysis by monitoring three key metrics: cost per acquisition, engagement, and conversion rate.
Cost per acquisition
Keeping track of your cost per acquisition (CPA) lets you measure your campaign’s conversion power in dollars. The CPA formula takes the total amount of money spent on the campaign and divides it by the number of generated acquisitions.
For example, if you spent $1,000 on an inbound marketing campaign that results in 20 new patient appointments, your CPA for that campaign was $50. Check with healthcare trade associations to determine if your CPA is typical for your niche.
Engagement
In healthcare marketing, engagement refers to the frequency and quality of patient interactions with healthcare brands. Social media commenting, sharing, and liking are popular examples of patient engagement, but the savvy healthcare marketer is willing to test out-of-the-box ideas.
For instance, healthcare brands can place QR codes that link to educational health information in public spaces. Surveys that help you personalize patient care are another way to show prospects you value their humanity more than their pocket depth.
Conversion rate
How do you know if your website’s stickiness is worth the marketing effort you put into its redesign? You keep track of your conversion rate. The conversion rate in healthcare marketing lets you know how often your leads accomplish the goals you’re after.
Most often, the moment of conversion in healthcare marketing is when a person schedules an appointment. Here are healthcare conversion statistics to keep in mind:
- The average conversion rate is 3.2%
- High performing healthcare brands can see conversion rates as high as 21.2%
- Referrals have an average conversion rate of 7.2%
- Paid search has an average conversion rate of 5%
The conversion rate you see depends on the marketing channel you use and your market. Work with a healthcare marketer to select the best strategy for a positive marketing healthcare ROI.
3 ways you can improve your healthcare marketing ROI today
The more time you invest in developing a customized marketing solution, the more you can expect from your healthcare marketing ROI. However, you can implement the following immediate changes to support long-term growth while solving urgent problems.
Set goals to keep your marketing campaigns focused
Every healthcare organization needs marketing to keep up with the industry’s evolving demands. But one brand’s healthcare marketing solution is not necessarily going to be another’s.
Define your healthcare marketing strategy around specific goals, such as the following:
- Build brand awareness
- Reduce marketing costs
- Get more patient reviews
- Establish thought leadership
- Automate essential processes
- Improve patient engagement
- Generate increased high-quality leads
If you’re meeting your goals, you’re getting a positive healthcare marketing ROI (even if the outcomes aren’t directly financial).
Use marketing automation
Automation saves time and energy, and those resources are in high demand across the healthcare industry. More than anything, automation saves healthcare organizations money.
According to the 2020 Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare Index, workflow automation could save the healthcare industry $16.3 billion. The same report found that automation could save medical institutions $43.39 on each patient interaction.
Healthcare marketing automation solutions include automated referrals and surveys, online listing management, text and email communications, testimonial pages on your website, etc. This tech area is rapidly growing, and a digital marketing agency can make sure you’re using the most advanced, practical tools available.
Test campaigns oftenTest campaigns often
Tests aren’t just for the lab and classroom—they serve an essential role in improving your healthcare marketing ROI, too. Your marketing results might be excellent today, but no one knows better than healthcare professionals that tomorrow’s market may have radically different needs.
Conduct A/B testing on your websites, email headlines, ads, and social media posts to find the strongest iterations of your promotional material. Make testing a part of your healthcare marketing hygiene instead of occasional practice.
FAQs about healthcare marketing ROI
Measuring healthcare marketing ROI requires nuance and expertise, but the challenge is worth it. Learn more about this method of evaluating marketing strategy below.
How important is ROI really?
Your healthcare marketing ROI is a planning and evaluation tool, making it one of the most critical measurements to track.
Healthcare marketing ROI is the best way to justify your marketing spend, make choices about distributing your marketing budget, and hold your marketing team accountable.
Marketing goals are not always financial, making it even more important to have a proven method of measuring the value of your healthcare marketing strategy.
How do you measure ROI in healthcare?
You can measure your healthcare marketing ROI by following four steps:
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- Set goals for your healthcare marketing strategy.
- Choose the metrics you will use to measure progress toward those goals.
- Use marketing tracking software for the duration of your healthcare marketing campaign.
- Evaluate those metrics to see if you met your campaign goals.
Your step four results will help you determine your healthcare marketing ROI. If you met or exceeded your goals, you had a positive return on investment.
What is a good ROI in healthcare?
A good healthcare marketing ROI depends on the marketing strategy and channel you use. Paid ads are not comparable to organic social media, and video content will have a different ROI than blogs.
Marketing experts predict that organic search, paid ads, and email offer the highest ROI. These methods play essential roles in healthcare marketing, but each takes varying degrees of effort and costs.
How do you forecast marketing ROI?
You can forecast your healthcare marketing ROI the way that you measure it. Set marketing goals, use marketing tracking software to analyze your marketing efforts, and evaluate your progress.
Keep in mind that each marketing method and channel will produce different results. That said, set goals based on the individual campaigns that make up your overall healthcare marketing strategy to get the most accurate forecast for your healthcare marketing ROI.
Partner with TBH Creative to get results-driven healthcare marketing
They say the devil’s in the details, but that’s where we find the best healthcare marketing solutions. The team of digital marketing experts at TBH Creative has worked with medical brands for over 15 years, and we know the ins and outs of healthcare marketing.
Our marketing precision has delivered the following results for our healthcare clients:
- Northpoint Pediatrics acquired 146 new patients within the first nine months of launch
- The Indiana Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center saw 306% more appointments within the first year of the website redesign.
- OrthoNebraska won 24% more patients in the first year of site launch.
We take pride in customizing each patient-centric marketing strategy to meet our clients’ and their patients’ unique needs.
Demystify your healthcare marketing ROI
Here at TBH Creative, we love knowing that brands that work with us don’t have to worry about a positive healthcare marketing ROI. Our proven digital marketing strategies deliver results, and we’ve received state and national recognition for the work our healthcare marketing agency does.
Comprehensive healthcare marketing is a long-term solution that can transform and grow your business. If you want healthcare marketing that’s worth the investment, we can’t wait to talk to you.
