Due to the importance of the human touch in palliative care marketing, tracking ROI for hospices has largely been conducted offline in the past. However, the coronavirus pandemic has shifted the landscape, necessitating digital transformations for many hospice care providers.
While face-to-face interactions will never lose their place in end-of-life care, there are occasions when digital communications are practical and effective — and attracting new partners and patients is a major example.
Not only can you increase admissions, but you can also gain meaningful insights into which marketing efforts work and which don’t.
Digital marketing takes the guesswork out of attracting new partnerships for palliative care programs, increasing profit margins by using analytics to make data-based decisions about future campaigns. If you’ve ever been frustrated about spending money on marketing efforts but not being able to effectively track returns, it’s time to invest in digital. Read on to find out the top 12 ways hospice organizations can tangibly track digital marketing ROI.
1. Pipeline and Revenue
Of course, the leading metric for hospice ROI is revenue. Comparing marketing spend with the bottom line provides the ultimate insight into how well your marketing tactics are working. When it comes to going digital, not only will you see a marked increase in leads and conversions, but you’ll also be better equipped to track which techniques generate the highest returns.
2. Acquisition Costs
The primary aim of hospice program marketers is to acquire new patients, and there are a variety of ways they can do it. It’s important to break down cost per acquisition for each different channel and campaign to get a clear understanding of how much you should spend in the future. Comparing ROI to the last year, before your palliative care organization implemented a digital marketing strategy, will show how much enrollment in internet marketing raises your profile and drives growth.
3. Payer Mix
Even after implementing online marketing techniques, metrics such as the payer mix will retain their importance in determining hospice ROI. Keeping an accurate log of how many private patients you have compared to individuals using Medicare or Medicaid ensures you keep the balance profitable yet fair.
With enhanced technological capabilities, you streamline all these analytics (and many more) into one place where you can create easy-to-generate reports and projections.
4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising Analytics
People with chronic conditions and their families are very likely to use the internet to conduct searches for palliative care services. Getting on the front page of search engine results pages is the best way to capture these potential customers, and PPC marketing is the fastest way to do this. Another great feature of services such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads is the potential to harness the data you capture to drive future marketing strategies.
Website Analytics
5. Time Spent on Each Page
Length of stay on your website is a crucial metric that can help you measure ROI. You can see how long visitors spend on each page — which is actually also a key measurement for the Google algorithm that determines how high up your website appears on its SERPs. By ensuring the website is well-designed and the content engaging, you increase the likelihood of making conversions and appearing higher up on search engine listings. If lots of people make an immediate exit, there’s work to do.
6. Returning Visitors
A unique visitor is a person who’s coming to your site for the first time, whereas returning visitors have been there before. It’s rare that consumers make a booking or inquiry on their first visit, so lots of repeat viewers is a sign your site is well-branded, memorable and compelling.
7. Page Views
It’s not just about checking how many people have visited your website in a time period but also tracking the journey each customer goes on. Customer experience is essential in our consumer-led society, so your hospice website needs to be able to draw people in and guide them through the logical steps towards making a conversion. You can track page views to get an idea of how well website upgrades are working to reach this goal.
8. Traffic
Tracking parameters let you connect incoming traffic to the campaign that sends people to your site. This shows you exactly which social media, email, PPC and other referrals are giving you the highest returns.
9. SEO Analytics
Any modern website requires optimization for search engines, which uses every trick in the book to make your palliative care business as visible online as it can be. Google Analytics lets you evaluate key drivers of success from various SEO optimization efforts and shows you which content is performing the best. Armed with this data, you can make wiser investment decisions in the future and focus your efforts on the right areas.
Social Media
10. Community Numbers
Social media marketing is an excellent tool for attracting business, and it can help you measure ROI for digital marketing techniques. By providing a safe space for family members of those with serious illness to express their thanks to your care team for their work, you build a positive community that’s highly visible. There’s no more effective way to attract new clients than by showing off how professional and caring you’ve been with previous patients.
11. Engagement and Click-Through Rate
It’s a good idea to have two separate social media pages on each channel, one for B2B and one for B2C. The former would be focused on getting referrals from primary care physicians, emergency departments, inpatient health care departments, ICUs, home health providers and senior care facilities. Instead of focusing on building an emotional bond, you offer resources, research findings, data-driven articles and content related to working within the health care system to draw attention to your service.
You can track reactions, shares and comments for all your social media campaigns — and it’s vital that you also pay close attention to the CTR. These measurements of ROI allow you to easily make intelligent choices about what to spend marketing money on in the future.
12. Tracking Parameters
By including tracking parameters in your social media URLs, you can see which ones bring in the most website visitors. If there’s a particular campaign that drives loads of traffic, you can invest more in it. Likewise, if you’re not seeing many visitors from another marketing effort, you can pull the plug and make cost savings as necessary.
Increase Your Health Care Business’ Return on Investment Today
Digital marketing makes tracking ROI for palliative care services easier than it’s ever been, but it requires specialty knowledge and expertise. Lead to Conversion™ is a digital healthcare agency that will help you develop and implement an effective strategy for attracting more partnerships with relevant clinicians and caregivers so you can focus on what you do best: enhancing the quality of life for terminally ill patients.
