In medical marketing, conversion is a key indicator that determines the effectiveness of not only all promotion channels but also the internal call center and the level of service in the clinic.  A high conversion rate indicates that the selected tools and activities produce the desired results.

Conversion is important because it allows you to optimize your promotion budget and get customers with an acceptable cost per acquisition. In the healthcare industry, competition is high, profitability is often low, and efficient use of funds becomes critical. By analyzing conversion rates, you can determine which communication channels generate the highest quality leads and direct resources to them. Ultimately, a deep understanding of conversion rates helps to identify growth points and improve the strategy to achieve even better results.

Conversion is a transition from one state to another. For example, an average website visitor turns into a completed application that comes to your CRM system. It should be noted here that in the medical field, the following main types of conversion are distinguished, according to the path of a person to your institution:

– advertising conversion (how many people clicked on the ad out of all the people who saw it)

– website conversion (how many people performed the targeted action on your website as a percentage of all visitors)

– Conversion to appointments (how many people made an appointment to visit the clinic out of all those who called or wrote to you) 

– Conversion to sales (how many people became patients and came to the clinic out of all those who made an appointment).

Why is it important to count conversions at each stage? Because you may have a great marketing team. But if the call center processes incoming calls with a conversion rate of 10%, not 50%, as the market average, then you get 5 times fewer appointments with the same marketing budget. 

Now let’s look at each stage separately.

Advertising Conversion

This metric can help you analyze whether your marketing channels (SEO, contextual advertising, video marketing, etc.) are working effectively. It should be noted here that to calculate conversion, you must have a general analytics system set up that allows you to collect and process the necessary data, but we will not discuss this topic in this article, as it requires special attention 

To calculate the conversion rate of advertising (marketing channels), use the formula:

Ad conversion = (clicks to the site)/(audience reach)*100%.

For example, your ad banner was seen by 5000 people, 50 of whom clicked on it to your website: 50/5000*100 = 1%. In this case, the conversion rate of the banner is 1%. What conclusions can be drawn at this stage:

  • whether the advertising activity is effective;
  • whether individual marketing tools are working effectively;
  • whether creatives are working effectively;
  • whether you have chosen the right target audience;
  • whether the advertising is properly customized.

It should also be noted that this indicator is calculated only for activities that have a pre-set goal of “clicks to the website”. If the clinic places an ad on a blogger where the goal is to increase brand awareness, then other indicators should be considered. 

Website Conversion

This is the number of people who performed a targeted action on your website as a percentage of all visitors. This indicator will help you determine whether your website is effective in attracting potential customers. If 10,000 people visited your website in search of a specialist, and 100 of them signed up for a consultation, the conversion rate will be 100/10 000*100 = 1%. Usually, the conversion rate of a medical website is 1-10%, depending on the specific page. Conversion rates are higher for inexpensive services and consultations, and lower for surgeries. We also often see a situation where the number of site visitors increases, but the conversion rate decreases. This occurs when advertising campaigns are scaled poorly, when a marketer begins to attract new, but lower-quality traffic over time. For effective promotion, it is important not only to increase website traffic but also to stimulate targeted actions of visitors: 

  • making an appointment
  • registration
  • browsing the pages; 
  • filling out forms; 

This is done with the help of high-quality content on the website that will encourage site visitors to perform the actions you need. We will discuss how to do this in separate articles. 

Conversion to records

You can evaluate the work of the clinic’s administrator or call center using the conversion rate from requests to records. It will help to find out how well each application (lead) is processed by the clinic. When calculating this ratio, it is determined how many patients who called the clinic made an appointment. Hence the formula:

conversion to appointments = appointments/applications*100%.

Let’s assume that 500 people called the clinic in a month, and another 200 wrote through the form. In total, we received 700 applications. Of these, 140 made an appointment. So, 140/700*100 = 20%. The conversion rate from leads to appointments in this clinic is 20%. This indicates that administrators manage to register only 20% of all potential patients, with an average of 40-70% depending on the type of service. That is, there is something to work on at this particular link. 

Conversion to sales

Many people forget about this stage, but it is just as important as the previous ones. Not everyone who made an appointment will make it to the doctor’s office. During this time, the hospital will be idle and will not receive the planned income. Moreover, it will spend money on the doctor’s salary and other expenses, but will not receive any income – that is, it will make a loss. How to prevent this? For example, call the person back in one day and remind them of the appointment. If they can’t make it, reschedule it for another date. The following formula is used to calculate the conversion from records to sales:

conversion to sales = appointments/patients*100%.

Conclusion

A clinic needs to work at all stages of interaction with potential customers, increasing conversion rates at each stage:

  • advertising conversion 
  • website conversion; 
  • conversion to records;
  • conversion to sales.

For clarity, let’s imagine that we spent 10,000 UAH to display our banner 10,000 times. But in the first case, the conversion rate at each stage (1-3) will be 10%, and in the second 20%. The conversion to sales will be 70% in the first case and 90% in the second. 

10 000*0.1*0.1*0.1*0.7 = 7 customers with the cost of attracting each customer 10 000 UAH / 7 = 1428 UAH

10,000**0.2*0.2*0.2*0.2*0.9 = 72 clients with the cost of attracting each one 10,000 UAH / 72 = 139 UAH

The difference in efficiency is more than 10 times with the same marketing budget. That is why it is so important to improve this funnel constantly. At the same time, you need to understand that marketing is responsible for attracting targeted traffic and the number of applications, and the next stages are the responsibility of the clinic itself. Only joint comprehensive work will bring good results