As a doctor running your own medical clinic, you’re also a small business owner with all the jobs and tasks that come with that. One of the biggest jobs of a small business owner is finding new customers. As a doctor and owner of a medical clinic, there is already a built-in customer base, but you’re competing against other doctors and clinics for it.
Marketing is one of the ways that you can attract new customers, You can use a variety of tools for this business strategy, such as your website, social media, review websites, and other activities. One word you may hear in connection to marketing is KPIs, and no, it isn’t a radio station. Here’s a look at KPIs and why they matter.
What Are KPIs?
In marketing, key performance indicators (KPIs) are specific numerical data that are used to track the success or failure of a specific marketing channel, such as your website or Facebook account. You can use these key metrics to determine how far along you are in meeting a specific marketing goal.
For instance, say the goal is to get 25 new patients to fill out a contact form on your website within a month’s time. At the end of the first week, you check your KPIs to find out that you’ve only had three possible clients fill out the form. In this case, the KPI is showing you that you’re going to need to make changes to your website and marketing strategy to reach your goal.
For this reason, you should routinely check your KPIs to see how your marketing campaigns are being received by possible clients and make tweaks as necessary. KPIs can also help you see the things that you’re doing that are really working. If you leverage your KPIs properly, you can really grow your customer base and see your practice grow.
Social Media Platforms
As part of your marketing efforts, you have accounts on all the big social media platforms, such as:
- Tik Tok
- and more.
You probably alternate posting fun messages and content to drive sales. One of the KPIs for this type of marketing is the number of likes or retweets you get from various posts. Other KPIs you find in social media include mentions of your brand and the number of followers. Also, you may notice your current customers mentioning and sharing your social media posts with friends; this is another KPI.
When you track these KPIs, you may notice a pattern begins to form. Do you get more likes on a specific day of the week or time? Do your clients share links to your blog posted on social media or your health tip of the day? It could be that your clients love retweeting behind-the-scenes photos of your staff over Twitter. You can leverage this information from the KPIs to provide more content that your clients enjoy.
Reviews
Long gone are the days when prospective patients would look in the Yellow Pages — you might not even remember the Yellow Pages — and select a doctor or clinic based on who has the most appealing ad. Today, your media-savvy patients make their way to Yelp or Healthgrades to check out the reviews of various doctors and clinics. There are KPIs in these reviews that you can use to see how marketing campaigns are faring and ways to improve.
These reviews are another KPI that you can leverage into new customers. First, you can ask your current clients to review you on these websites. You might consider offering some sort of promotion, such as money off their copay and select one random a winner each month from clients who’ve left reviews.
Another way to leverage this KPI is to interact on these websites with people who’ve left reviews. Commenting on positive reviews can indicate that you appreciate your patients. If you get a negative review, you need to respond to it immediately and look for ways to appease the customer to turn a negative into a positive.
Website Traffic and Conversion Rate
Your website is one of the biggest marketing tools you have, and you need to pay attention to the KPIs to ensure you’re reaping as much reward as possible. At least once a month, you should be looking at the analytics for your website. This covers KPIs such as:
- Total number of visitors
- Total number of pages viewed
- The average number of pages viewed by each visitor
- Time spent on the website
- Time spent on each individual page
- and more.
You also want to determine your conversion rate — one of the best KPIs — from the number of visits and the number of guests who completed a certain task. This can be a task as simple as requesting more information or signing up for a newsletter or something more, such as scheduling an appointment. For your clinic, you want as many people as possible to complete the task. The total number of people who complete the task is your KPI.
For example, if you have 100 guests on your website in a month, and five of them sign up for the newsletter then you have a conversion rate of five percent. This is an indication of low performance. You want that percentage to go up. Once you know how the website is performing, you can tweak it for better performance. If you continue to check these KPIs and make adjustments, you’ll see your conversion rate go up and the number of new patients.
Number of Referrals and New Patients
If you’re marketing campaigns are successful, you’ll see an increase in the number of referrals and new patients. As a KPI, new patients and referrals are numbers you want to see constantly increasing. It shows that your marketing projects are working. But which ones?
It isn’t enough to track KPI. You must know which marketing ad generated the leads. You need to create a system that tracks how new patients learned about your practice or clinic. It can be something as easy as asking about how the patient heard about you on the new patient form. However, this is very basic information. For example, they may have seen one of their friends retweet you on Twitter, but you don’t know which tweet.
At Baker Labs, we know that you have a choice when it comes to hiring a marketing firm. This is why we look at you as a partner and not simply a client. We’ll work closely with you at each stage of a marketing campaign to get your opinion and feedback. Contact us today to learn more.
