A common misconception when it comes to marketing is that it is a creative endeavour. Although creativity is important, at its core, marketing is a numbers game and by knowing what numbers to focus and embracing data, you are going to be infinitely more successful.
In this article I will be breaking down some of the ‘’need to know’’ metrics, numbers and tips on how you can keep track of what your marketing campaigns are really returning for your business.
Need To Know Numbers:
LTV – Lifetime Value.
Your lifetime value is the average numbers amount a customer spends at your practice. You can work this out by taking your PVA and multiplying it by your average cost per visit. When working out what your LTV is, please take into consideration the following.
You should include all patients when working out your PVA, that means anyone who has booked and paid for an initial consultation should be included (not just those who start care). Remember, this exercise is all about getting the most accurate number, not the biggest number.
Your average cost per visit is not your pay as you go rate (It is typically less than this due to package discounts, historic discounts, family and friend discounts etc). To work out this number, take your revenue for the past 6 months (or services revenue if you have multiple revenue streams) and divide this by the number of visits you have seen in this period.
After working with Chiropractors over 5 years, I can tell you for a fact that the majority inflate both their LTV and PVA numbers. Although great for the ego, this can be detrimental to your marketing efforts, so embrace accuracy with these numbers.
Ninja move: Break down LTV by patient source. It is great to have an overall LTV, but it is even better to have this broken down into marketing source. E.g one LTV each for patients from Facebook, patients from google, patients from screenings etc. This is INCREDIBLY powerful as it allows you to analyse your marketing sources and determine which generates the ‘’best quality’’ of patient and the best return on advertising spend (ROAS).
CPL – Cost per lead.
Cost per lead is the amount of money spent to acquire someone’s details (Phone, email, name etc). Cost per lead is an incredibly important base line metric that allows you to analyse how cheap or expensive a specific marketing source is.
By focusing on your CPL you are able to easily track how different campaigns compare or how changes/improvements you have made to an advert have affected the performance.
To work out your CPL, take your overall campaign spend and divide it by the number leads you generated. This can be applied to both Traditional or digital marketing campaigns.
CPC – Cost Per Click
Similar to CPL, cost per click is a metric used to track the amount you are spending to have someone click on your advert. Cost per click is a fantastic baseline metric when looking at ‘’traffic’’ based campaigns (campaigns designed to drive traffic to a webpage/website).
Event campaigns and google ads campaigns are a perfect example of when the cost per click can be used as the baseline metric to monitor performance.
To work out your CPL, take your overall campaign spend and divide it by the number of clicks you generated. Most digital platforms will work this out for you.
CPA – Cost Per Acquisition/Action
CPA is the arguably the most important metric and refers to the amount you are spending to acquire a ne patient. Definitions can vary when it comes to what classifies as a ‘’conversion’’ or ‘’acquisition’’ but I would recommend classing anyone who has booked and paid for their initial consultation as an acquisition.
You can work out your cost per acquisition by taking your overall campaign spend and dividing it by the number of acquisitions you generated.
The key difference between CPA and CPL/CPC is that CPA brings conversion percentage into the equation. You may find that some campaigns have a cheap CPL but an expensive CPA. This means the leads from that campaign are not converting as well. This can point to numerous issues and does not necessarily mean the campaign is not worth pursuing.
In this case here are a few potential causes:
- The leads are bad quality and hard to convert
- The follow up systems are not robust enough and need tweaking to generate more conversions
- The campaign itself is set up for nurture so short term acquisitions are low (but more may convert over time)
This shows why it is so important to know your numbers. It allows you to work backwards, leaning on your metrics to troubleshoot campaigns to determine potential issues with your marketing. You can then dive into and work on solutions. This beats ‘’guesswork’’ and simply getting a ‘’feeling’’ that the campaign isn’t working and axing it before it has chance to perform.
These key metrics only scrape the surface of marketing numbers you could be tracking, but if you only get your head around these 4 numbers and track them across every campaign you run, you will have much more insight into your marketing campaigns and will be able to make better, data driven, decisions.
If you liked this this read, why not give How to manage your Marketing, Time and Money a read!
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Love and Light,
Ry
