Search engine marketing, also known as SEM, is an important tool to acquire new patients. While it’s a crucial marketing lever, it can be difficult to perfect.
One major mistake you might be making is misinterpreting your data within Google. Making measurement mistakes can skew your read on the cost per acquisition, also known as the CPA.
(Read about a few other common mistakes you may be making in our “What Healthcare Businesses Get Wrong about Google” white paper.)
Google displays ads relevant to users based on their searches. The search engine then charges a business every time a user clicks on one of its ads. Since this is simply the way Google Ads is set up, you might focus on tracking the cost per click, also known as CPC, and inadvertently start to think of that dollar amount as if it’s your acquisition cost for the channel.
This is a misstep. You shouldn’t make the mistake of conflating cost per click with cost per booking. While receiving clicks is a positive sign, not everyone who clicks on an ad will make a booking.
There’s an entire funnel of behavior after a patient books where they can drop off and drive up actual acquisition costs. Do they click but never book? Do they book but never show up? Do they show up but turn out to be a returning patient versus a newly acquired patient? These are fairly common scenarios and need to be factored into the math.
Taking the time to account for multiple factors and refine your true CPA will ensure that you make the best decision for your business’s growth in the long run.