Why You Need to Be Tracking Numbers on Your Marketing Efforts
By Mara L. Shorr, BS, CAC II-VIII and Jay A. Shorr, BA, MBM-C, CAC I-VIII
We’re going to fully admit it: We love data. And you should too, because tracking both the time and the dollars that are consuming your annual marketing budget is key to any business’s growth efforts.
With that concept in mind, we are big fans of utilizing tracking phone numbers to see which marketing campaigns are bringing in the majority of your patients, and which are falling on deaf ears. Tracking phone numbers are remote calls forwarded to your practice’s main phone number of choice, so that you’re team only has to answer one line. Tracking software that works with your phone system then allows you to view reports, revealing how many calls came in through which phone number, and therefore which marketing channel.
Following are some tips on how to make the most out of this marketing tool:
- Attach a different phone number to each campaign, including magazines with which you advertise, billboards, your website, social media channels and your online marketing efforts, like Yelp, for example.
- Yes, we said social media. Some practice staff swears that the time and effort they’re putting into Facebook posts are well worth the patient engagement, while other leaders of the practice stand by the fact that it’s a waste of time. This is your opportunity to see if those “likes” are making the phone ring!
- If possible, opt in to call recordings from the software. This is an excellent way to see what sort of calls are coming in from which source, and it allows you to do a bit of “mystery shopping” in the process.
Are the callers asking about particular procedures based on something you advertised in a local magazine, for instance, or are you finding that certain efforts only bring price shoppers? How is your team answering the calls? Are they fully prepared to book consults or procedures for the majority of the calls, or do they need additional training? - Once you’ve gathered the data, the most important thing is to use it! If you see that you’re not getting any phone calls from a particularly expensive marketing spend, it may be time to re-examine that effort.
Jay A. Shorr, BA, CMBM, CAC I-XIV and Mara Shorr, BS, CAC II-XIV are partners in Shorr Solutions, a medical practice consulting firm specializing in the operational, administrative, staff training and financial health of cosmetic, aesthetic and plastic surgery medical practices. Contact this father-daughter team at www.ShorrSolutions.com or [email protected].
