The Importance of Conversion Tracking

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The Importance of Conversion Tracking 

When it comes to digital marketing, conversions are what matters at the end of the day. You want to know that your marketing efforts are paying off and that your business is seeing revenue as a result. 

This is where Google Analytics comes in. The one big advantage of digital marketing over traditional marketing is the power of conversion tracking – knowing which activities are working and which aren’t.

Did you know that dentists in the US spend around $4 billion every year on marketing?

In business, there’s a saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” if you can’t measure your results, you won’t know what you can improve. 

This is why conversion goals are so important and it’s easy to do in Google Analytics. 

What is conversion tracking?

If you don’t yet have conversion tracking set up, you need to do so ASAP. Conversion tracking is one of the most important aspects when measuring your online success and one of the main reasons why website owners use Google Analytics as part of their marketing strategy. 

There are different types of conversion, and you can set these up to track different events on your website. For example, you can track website purchased, newsletter signups, app installations, and more. 

You can set up website conversion tracking to monitor events happening on your website, or you can also use mobile app conversion tracking, and even set up tracking from phone calls. 

You can also track multiple types of conversions, by setting up a conversion action for each type of conversion you want to track. For example, you can set up call tracking to track conversions from phone calls, and also a separate conversation action for purchases on your website. 

Types of conversions

With Google Analytics you can set up and track different types of conversions. Here are a few examples of conversions you can track:

Micro-conversions 

  • Signing up for a newsletter 
  • Checking of your pricing page
  • Checking out your contact page
  • Video views

Macro-conversions

  • Contact form submissions
  • Phone calls
  • Online appointment booking
  • E-mails

Building a funnel

Funnels in Google Analytics can be used to visualize a series of events. A funnel is essentially made up of three parts: Top of funnel (TOFU), Middle of funnel (MOTU), Bottom of funnel (BOFU).

Top of Funnel

This is where a visitor’s first interaction will take place. This can be attributed to how a visitor finds your website, for example, organic search, social media, mobile app, paid ad campaign.

Middle of Funnel

Also often referred to as lead nurturing, the middle part of your funnel is where visitors move from the initial interaction to an initial sale. Or, if they have already made a sale, moving towards another sale or conversion. This is where decisions take place, where visitors (potential customers) evaluate information in order to help them decide how to move forward.

Bottom of Funnel 

The leads you find here are highly qualified and ready to purchase. They have already done research, evaluated the information you’ve provided, and have made a decision. From here, they are ready to talk to, so you can drive them – without coming at them with a hard sell – towards a conversion.

When you set up a funnel in Google Analytics, you can create a name and description for the funnel, and select the steps you want to add to that funnel. You can click on Add Another Event for each additional step you want to add. When you’re done, click on Create. You’ve set up your funnel!

Setting up conversion tracking will set your dental practice up for success, and that is the very minimum that I suggest dentists to implement.

Even better if we can put a financial value (remember the last article? Always think business impact) on each conversion, both micro and macro conversions.

In order to not come up with a false number out of thin air, we should work with realistic financial values for each conversion type. While we cannot get an exact number, we can get a fairly accurate representation by looking at the typical patient in your dental office.

For this we need to understand 4 things:

How much is a patient worth to your dental practice?

If you don’t know the value of a patient in your practice, you can refer to this article.

Let’s assume that the average dental patient is worth 250€ per year to your dental office and that the average patient stays with you for 7 years.

This would mean that the patient lifetime-value of a patient is worth:  1,750€ to your dental office.

What percentage of your incoming leads are you able to convert into actual new patients?

Lead conversion is extremely important for any dental practice. Getting leads is one thing, but converting them is quite another. This is why it’s important to know where your leads come from, and how to convert them to patients. 

If your staff is able to convert 60% of all incoming leads into registered new patients then for every 100 incoming leads you’d on average create 60 new patients.

Which conversions are resulting in leads?

The conversions that result in leads on your website are phone calls and form submissions.

As a result we should find a financial value that represents the true financial gain from those conversions, which will help us find out if our marketing activities are profitable or just wasting money.

The value of this conversion?

As you will not convert all leads into active patients for various reasons, we will work with the conversion percentage of 60%. Note that it is recommended that you convert at least 30-50% of your leads to patients. If not – you could benefit from a Google Ads agency for dentists. 

So, here’s an example:

60% x 1,750€ = 1,050 € (long-term 7 year value)

How much are you willing to invest at the absolute most to acquire a new patient?

If you decide that you are willing to invest at most 10% of a patient’s lifetime value and you are converting 60% of leads into patients, then you should be willing to invest at the most

10% x 1,050€ = 105 € / lead

Or

10% x 1,750€ = 175 € / registered patient

What can you notice right away?

While you will not be able to raise your marketing % much higher, there is a second metric, Conversion rate, which will have a big impact on your cost per acquisition. The better you can train your front-office staff to convert 65, 70 or 80% of your inbound leads, the cheaper your cost per acquisition the better will be the ROI of your dental marketing activities.

To do list:

Implement Google Analytics and conversion tracking on your website at the very least for these items:

  • Phone call clicks
  • Email clicks
  • Form submissions
  • Contact page views
  • Appointment booking / requests

You can do this even better, by working out your financials, and assigning a financial value to each conversion, based on the average patient in your dental office.