As more practice owners sat home or in an empty office, waiting to be able to open your doors to patients again, many of you decided it was time to really get a handle on your online presence and marketing. Great! I think online presence and marketing is so important in today’s marketing climate, especially as online activity has sky-rocketed.
During this time, I got a lot of questions about interpreting marketing results, and honestly, I’m not surprised. CTR CPM CPC SEO ?? During a busy time you might look at your monthly results and think, what does this mean?? But then the next patient is in the office or someone’s on the phone or you need to get home to go to a child’s school function; life and business need your attention, and the last thing you want to do is decode this dashboard of gibberish.
I wanted to provide you with a general overview of what these terms mean and IF or why they matter. I say IF because, from my perspective as a marketer, these metrics matter. But from your perspective as a client, they are not a quick benchmark of performance. You’re thinking, ok, so why do you include them? Well, simply, because you expect them to be there. If I didn’t include the amount of clicks you got this month, you’d ask. Not because it means anything substantial to you, but it’s a metric that makes sense and is familiar. And that’s fine. But there are easier ways to use different metrics to get a quick snapshot of your marketing performance.
Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, different metrics will matter more or less. But below are the top metrics to watch, and why some metrics aren’t as helpful to you.
1. Conversions/Leads
This is what you ultimately want. A conversion is essentially the completion of the goal of the campaign. Usually for audiology practices, a conversion is a form submission or a call to the office. Conversion rate is an indication of the campaign’s effectiveness. There are too many factors that can affect conversion rate to get into here, but this is your top metric.
Examples of types of campaigns this is most important to
Most campaigns, especially Facebook lead generation, Google Adwords Display with the goal of conversions
2. Click-through-rate (CTR)
CTR is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. This is the percentage of people who have seen and clicked on your ad. CTR is important because it helps us understand how a message or offer is resonating with the demographic we are targeting. More relevance to the users, the more interest, the more clicks through. But why isn’t just clicks important? I’m glad you asked. Because if one ad gets 500 clicks but has 10,000 impressions (5% CTR) and another ad gets 20 clicks but has 30 impressions (67% CTR) – the ad with lower clicks is actually more effective. In this case, we would want to see how to scale the conditions of the ad with less clicks if possible, like adding more budget. Impressions alone aren’t as good of a metric for the same reason.
Examples of types of campaigns this is most important to
Google Adwords Search, Facebook Traffic Campaigns
3. Cost per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
This metric is important because: the more impressions on your ads, the more it’s being seen, the more the ad is seen, the more chances for clicks. A lower CPM can indicate a lot of things, but it almost always indicates efficient ad spend because the lower your CPM, the lower your CPC and the lower your CPL. As your CPM creeps up, it can mean your ad is less relevant to your set demographic or your reach is limited and the same people are seeing your ad over and over. Higher CPM can indicate that it’s time for an ad refresh.
Ok… but what about Cost Per Click (CPC)?
Let’s talk cost per click! Generally speaking, we want to keep your CPC low. But, let’s look at an example.
What if I post an ad that says “CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR INFORMATION IF YOU WILL BUY A HEARING AID IN THE NEXT 3 DAYS”
How much would you spend for everyone who clicked that button? Would you insist that cost per click for that button stay below $1? Would you be willing to pay $20 for every click on that button? $100? Maybe more?
We generally would expect very, very few people to click on a button like that, since we know that as an industry, our sales cycle is long and that would be the smallest end of the sales funnel – a customer, ready to pay. But we need to remember that cost per click is generally dictated by the sales funnel. Clicks for competitive keywords and phrases in Google Adwords are generally more expensive than clicks in a Facebook traffic campaign. Google search shows results to users actively searching for your product, service, or business, whereas Facebook shows your ad to a targeted audience that isn’t necessarily looking for you, but may find your information useful.
As a marketer, I use CPC as an indicator of multiple things in a campaign but it is not a good benchmark metric for you unless you have a target cost per click in mind.
The information above is a great guide for quick reference on campaign performance. Please remember that just because a metric is easy to understand or is familiar, doesn’t make it an efficient indicator of performance. But most importantly, your benchmark metrics will always depend on your particular campaign and goals, and I am always here to discuss your campaigns one-on-one.
