Measurement of ROI for Dental Marketing Spend
Monitoring Website Visits With Google Analytics and Phone Call Tracking Systems
All marketing campaigns should be results driven with key deliverables defined at the outset. Effective management of such campaigns relies on accurate monitoring of website visitors; where they came from, how they progressed through your site and if they completed your contact form or called you. A number of highly effective tools exist to facilitate this including some great free ones like the industry standard “Analytics” system from Google.
Please continue reading for more information about measuring dental marketing return on investment:
Google Analytics:
All websites should be equipped with Google Analytics as standard and should be the first port of call for you or your dental marketing partner when evaluating the performance of the website. The data within the Analytics system is very comprehensive and a skilled user will be able to use this to identify opportunities for improved performance. It is also straightforward to configure overview reports which can be mailed out automatically once per month to show how the website is progressing. As a minimum, a website owner should request these overview reports which show key statistics at a glance.
Google Analytics can be configured to show the performance of organic dental SEO campaigns and pay-per-click (‘Adwords’) – altogether extremely flexible and also free!
Telephone Call Monitoring:
Up until quite recently, a significant grey area existed in website performance monitoring – the number of visitors who surfed your site but then picked up the ‘phone to contact you. At this point, typically we lost the ability to trace and had to rely on manual systems implemented at the practice to try and pick this up.
However, we now have a ‘dynamic number replacement’ system which plugs the gap admirably and very cost-effectively. This system cleverly presents a unique telephone number to each site visitor which facilitates tracking – we can now see exactly which keywords prompted your visitors to pick up the ‘phone! The system integrates seamlessly with your own so there are no new numbers or reconnection costs; this is all handled in the background at server level. You can also generate unique telephone numbers for tracking your off-line campaigns so if you do a mailshot or pop an advert in the local press, you can see which works best. Calls can also be recorded and played back for training and audit purposes as required.
Summary:
Dental marketing needs to be targeted, measured and reviewed regularly to ensure the best return on investment. Modern tracking systems are a key part of the process and easy and cost-effective to deploy for all dental websites, small or large. Ask your marketing provider to share the tools and techniques they use and be sure to request full access to the data that is generated.