How to track ROI from digital campaigns for your hospital

How to track ROI from digital campaigns for your hospital?

Hospitals today run digital campaigns on various channels like Google, social media and online marketplaces like Practo, Justdial to boost their revenue and gain awareness. However, it is important to understand certain aspects related to tracking the ROI to check whether those campaigns are effective for your hospital or not. 

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Here are some basic points to keep in mind before starting a digital campaign:

Clearly communicate specialty focus area for the campaigns

Digital campaigns in healthcare should have a certain focus area. It can be related to an entire specialty or certain specific services whose revenue you want to grow. For e.g. you can run a campaign for cardiology overall or a special cardiac health check-up service you want to promote. Same is the case for dental as a broad specialty or Invisalign services for teeth straightening. It is important to  communicate the focus area to your marketing agency to ensure that you don’t waste your marketing spend on non-relevant areas. Also, in Google campaigns selecting focus areas will help you with a refined bid strategy and optimize volume. On online marketplaces like Practo, JustDial you can maximize your ROI by focusing on opening doctor inventory only for selected specialties. 

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Implement a robust tracking system

This is an important point and is often missed out. Tracking ROI from digital campaigns is not a one-time process. You must track the funnel for a longer period of time and hence it is important to have a robust tracking system to track leads and measure ROI. Hospitals often make a common mistake of tracking campaign data on Excel and then stop tracking post campaign is over. Acquiring leads through digital channels is effective only through continuous engagement and tracking ROI over a long period. The period is often decided by the health episode. Decisions on surgeries which are elective in nature can take months and patients go through a comprehensive multi-step journey before converting to IPD. It is recommended to use a professional CRM tool to track your patient lifetime value, CAC, channel performance, ROI to ensure you have complete 360 degree visibility of what’s happening with your hospital marketing strategy. 

Important metrics to track:

• New Registrations vs Repeat Patients Channel wise
• Cost of New Patient Acquisition & Cost of Repeat Patient Acquisition
• ROI channel wise
• Cost per Lead, Cost per OPD Conversion (New, Repeat, Overall), Cost per Surgery Conversion
• OPD to IPD Conversion %
• Lead to OPD Conversion %
• Appointment Confirmation TAT

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Plan for operations

To maximize conversions from the campaign funnel, the hospital marketing and operations team should be thoroughly prepared to understand the offerings of the campaign and plan for incoming volume. Missing calls, not confirming appointments can lead to a bad patient experience and negative reviews online which might impact the reputation of your healthcare establishment. The staff should also be aware in case you are running any discounts on promotional campaigns so that your hospital information system (HIS) has the necessary configurations to facilitate the same. Prepare your hospital marketing team to reply to positive and negative feedback coming from online channels to ensure that your online is brand is responsive and customer centric. 

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Ensure availability of inventory

During the duration of the campaign, ensure there is enough availability in terms of doctor’s appointment slots to cater to the demand. A lot of patients request for appointments within 3-4 days of the current date and low inventory availability might lead to drop off. If the campaign is doing well, try to maximize with additional slots for online patients. Marketing team should coordinate with doctors on leaves and how to manage emergencies. 

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