Enquiry to contact
How many got an answer, and how fast. In most clinics this is the biggest single leak and it costs nothing to fix.
Blog
Clinic marketing analytics: measuring the thing that pays
Clinic marketing is unusually measurable and unusually badly measured. The data exists, it is just cut off one step before the point where it would change a decision.
Three numbers that look like each other
Reach, enquiries and bookings get used interchangeably in clinic marketing conversations, and they behave completely differently. A campaign can triple reach, double enquiries and produce no additional courses, and every one of those statements can be true at once.
The reason is qualification. Channels that produce volume produce volume of every kind, including people who were never going to book. Judging that channel on enquiries rewards exactly the wrong thing.
What to measure at each step
Contact to consultation
How many booked. If this is low the message is attracting the wrong person, not the wrong volume.
Consultation to course
How many bought. If this is low the problem is in the room, not in the campaign.
Course to completion
How many finished. This is where the revenue actually is, and it is almost never on a marketing report.
The report worth building
One table. Channel down the side, those four rates across the top, and spend in the last column. It takes a morning to build if the source is being carried, and it usually ends one long-running argument on the day it is first shown.
What it tends to reveal is that the channel everybody defends is producing enquiries and the channel nobody funds is producing courses. That is not an argument you can win with an opinion, which is the point of building it.
Response time is the cheapest lever on the table
Of the four rates, enquiry to contact is the one that moves fastest and costs least. An enquiry answered in five minutes and the same enquiry answered the next morning are not the same enquiry: by the morning the person has usually messaged two other clinics and is talking to whichever replied.
So measure it in minutes, not as a percentage. The useful figure is the median time to first reply, split by hour of day — which is how you find that the leak is lunchtime and Friday evening rather than the campaign.
The fix is rarely more staff. It is an automatic first reply that acknowledges and asks the one qualifying question, so the conversation has started before a person reaches it, and the person arrives to something warm rather than cold.
Reading the table without fooling yourself
Three ways this report misleads, all avoidable. Small numbers: a channel with eleven enquiries and one course has a 9% rate and no information in it, so set a floor below which you do not draw conclusions.
Seasonality: most clinic demand has a shape over the year, and a channel judged against last month during a quiet season looks worse than it is. Compare to the same period last year once you have one.
And lag. A course takes weeks to complete, so this month’s spend shows up in next quarter’s completion rate. Cutting a channel on one month of completion data is the commonest way a working channel gets killed.
Questions
What is a good conversion rate for a clinic?
Too specialty-dependent to be worth a number. Your own rate by channel and by month is the comparison that changes decisions.
How do we attribute a walk-in?
Ask, and record it — one field at registration. It is imprecise and still far better than leaving the largest channel in most clinics unattributed.
Should we measure return on ad spend?
Yes, but on collected revenue from completed courses rather than on invoiced amounts, or you will be optimising toward people who book and do not finish.
How long before a channel can be judged?
Long enough for a course to complete, which in a specialty clinic is usually a quarter rather than a month.
How do we handle seasonality?
Compare like periods rather than consecutive ones, and keep one full year before you make a structural decision about a channel. Until then, judge on the rates between steps, which are much less seasonal than the volumes.
Who should own this report?
Whoever controls the spend, reviewed with whoever answers the enquiries. Those two owning it together is what stops it becoming a monthly document that justifies last quarter instead of changing next one.
See it on your own clinic
Thirty minutes on how your clinic actually runs. We will call you within 24 hours.