Patient acquisition cost (PAC) encompasses all the dollars your practice spends to find and acquire new patients. These costs are robust—factoring in everything from marketing to overhead expenses—and they add up quickly.
PAC = (sales and marketing costs) / (number of new patients)
Patient acquisition cost eats into your potential profitability—so it should be significantly lower than your patient’s lifetime value (PLV), or how much they’ll spend during their lifetime as a patient. To keep your practice going strong for the long haul, widen the margin between the two—aiming for a 3:1 PLV to PAC ratio.
PLV = (average revenue per visit) × (number of visits over lifetime)
So how can you get everything to line up properly? Tag along as we look at how to reduce patient acquisition costs and increase lifetime value through the lens of healthcare marketing.
Reducing patient acquisition costs
Marketing is the largest cost component of patient acquisition. That’s why it’s important to do your due diligence and spend efficiently on your efforts. Be open to adjusting your strategy and experimenting to find marketing channels that both resonate and lower acquisition costs.
Without understanding the cost of bringing in each new patient via different channels, it can be difficult to know how to invest your time and money. One avenue to pursue? Call Tracking. Through call attribution, CallRail helps reveal which marketing efforts are bringing in patients—and which aren’t. A few tactics you may consider include:
Optimizing PPC ad spend and performance
Is PPC working for you? It might take some time to refine your approach for the best results. As a benchmark, consider a few average metrics for healthcare marketing and patient acquisition search ads:
- Click-through rate: 6.11 percent
- Cost per click: $4.22
- Conversion rate: 7.118 percent
- Cost per lead: $53.53
Consider a few things you can do to help your ads. First, refine your copy. Healthcare advertising copy can move the needle for both click-through rates and conversions, especially if you use the right language and calls to action. Second, remember your ads are leading somewhere—so give your landing pages some TLC. Make landing pages relevant to both your keyword and your ads, ensuring they have clear calls to action to help visitors navigate and provide their information.
If you want to go a step above to bring ads and call attribution together, consider the value of Conversation Intelligence™ to enhance your SEO and keyword bidding. With it, you can analyze promotions that drive calls, automate lead qualification based on predefined parameters, and integrate with Google Analytics and Microsoft Advertising to get insights into the best-performing marketing sources and keywords.
Investing in SEO
SEO can not only help you improve your online performance, but it’s also generally less expensive than running PPC ads. It’s baked into your organic efforts, so when you write and optimize content, you improve discoverability and build authority online.
Of course, it’s a mixed approach in that you must balance incorporating both the right keywords and topic relevance to potential patients. When you want to see how your efforts are performing, tools like SEMrush and SEOprofiler can help with tracking your healthcare marketing ROI.
Increasing Google reviews
Reviews help to inform decisions. So it should come as no surprise that patients are more likely to use a practice with multiple five-star reviews.
These votes of confidence provide a competitive edge, increasing the likelihood of friends and family recommending your practice. The recipe for success is pretty simple: Show your best at every turn. Earn positive reviews by providing excellent patient care, asking for feedback, and using feedback for engagement and continuous improvement. It’s a low-cost way to build your reputation.
Earning referrals
It’s no secret that referrals are the top patient acquisition source. Referrals come from all over—including insurance companies, other physicians, and friends—and at a minimal cost. Healthcare is still very word-of-mouth-oriented, and the better a practice meets diverse needs, the more likely it can pull new patients in.
Of course, you can make it easier by refining your referral management process. That may mean enabling online submissions with unique URLs based on the referral source.
Increasing patient lifetime value
Patient lifetime value varies by type of practice and the breadth of needs you can support, but there are universal ways to get the most from loyal patients. Help your practice target appropriately and never settle for second best in the service you provide.
Leverage opportunities to enhance patient care
Healthcare is a continuum that is constantly changing by age or evolving needs. Recognize this by leveraging cross-sell and upsell opportunities that take care to new heights. You can upsell by encouraging patients to opt for premium health services or increase the scope of their treatment. Or you might cross-sell by swaying patients to opt into a complementary service or treatment.
Dynamic forms help to expand your patient services. If your office provides specialty treatments related to a patient’s chief concern (upsell), once they indicate this on the intake form, you can automatically ask follow-up questions or direct them to more information. Or, if a patient indicates a specific concern on the form, you can likewise direct them to alternative treatments they might not be aware of (cross-sell).
Target highly-engaged patients
The most engaged patients are the ones who prioritize their healthcare and recognize the significance of quality care over cost. You can identify these individuals and attract patients with similar attitudes. “Engaged” can be characterized by one or more of the following traits:
- Those who are more likely to bring in referrals
- Those who pay on time (or even pay full price)
- Those who are most loyal and choose you for all of their healthcare
Create personas based on the needs and characteristics of your most engaged patients to determine tactics that help to maintain their loyalty. Once you do this, you can refine your communication, healthcare marketing channels, and even your website.
Ensure and improve quality of care
Exceptional care begins before a patient even walks through the doors and carries throughout their entire experience with your practice. Start by making scheduling easy, both over the phone and via self-service online, and ensure patients stay on top of their care with appointment reminders.
Once patients enter your practice, make their experience a satisfying one. Provide efficient care and foster positive patient relationships in addition to monitoring patient health and treatment outcomes.
Constantly measure patient satisfaction
If there’s an opportunity to improve, be open to it by welcoming feedback. Net Promoter Score surveys can help determine satisfaction and assess the likelihood that patients will refer your practice.
Doing this can separate patients into a few groups to help you increase overall lifetime value:
- Word-of-mouth promoters who are the happiest and can help you grow organically through referrals.
- Passive patients who need to be wooed to both come back to you and recommend your practice.
- Detractors who are unhappy but can still be swayed if you address their problems.
Look for ways to improve customer service
Calling in and choosing from a vast menu of options easily becomes tedious, leading some patients to avoid reaching out altogether. You can streamline service by offering options such as always-on chatbots or AI-enabled chat support.
But because calls remain the top contact method, you should make them easy for both patients and staff. Conversation Intelligence elevates calls with prospects, patients, and their families. After recording and transcribing conversations, CallRail’s AI scores and categorizes calls, generating insights you can use to train staff and improve patient experiences.
Maximize the value of your acquisition efforts
Outside of the day-to-day of running the practice and providing healthcare services, you spend significant time, money, and effort bringing new patients in via marketing. While referrals are still top priority, digital captures the attention of prospective patients. Take the time to reevaluate your paid ads and SEO and earn positive reviews—all in the name of lowering patient acquisition costs and maximizing patient lifetime value.
Get the most from your patient acquisition efforts. Try CallRail free today to see how you can reduce patient acquisition costs for your practice.
