Pearls For Determining Practice Goals and Marketing Return on Investment

Before spending a cent on marketing and building an online presence to acquire and retain patients, first, podiatrists must determine their practice goals. It is surprising how many practice owners jump in and spend thousands of dollars with little or no plan. Fear of missing out (FOMO) can be difficult to ignore and lead to expensive missteps.

I often hear, “Jim, I just want a few new patients and to do a few more ingrown toenail procedures.” For some, that’s true. But, in this article, I’d like to inspire you to think about the things you love doing most in practice:

• Which procedures or services bring the most satisfaction?
• If you could be a go-to person in a specific niche or sub-specialty, which one would that be?
• What group of patients do you love to treat?

Let your mind run wild with ideas. It’s OK, I’m not going to tell anyone.

Identifying Offline and Online Action Steps Towards Your Goals

After formulating or writing down those ideas, how can we make them become a reality? Imagine you’ve written down “see more sports medicine patients” as one of your practice goals. While this thought exercise focuses on developing a marketing plan, it is important that the online version of you and your clinic matches with the real world. For example, if a podiatrist wants to see more sports medicine patients, finding ways to be more visible to the sports community (athletes, coaches, parents of athletes, and other sports medicine providers) would make sense.

Here are a few examples:

• Is there a local high school or university where you could contribute your services?
• Do you know where the local running shoe store owner sends their customers experiencing foot pain?
• Is there a local marathon where you could volunteer on the medical staff?
• Do you have a certification or special training in sports medicine, or participate in a sports medicine association?
• The point is, getting out of the office and becoming an active participant with the people you want to treat is important. You can’t just list these things on your website and expect those patients to fill your waiting room.
• Once you’ve started building your offline reputation, it’s time to ensure your online marketing fully complements and enhances your efforts.
• Does your website biography mention your area of expertise and these community activities?
• Are there images on your website that show you working with your ideal patient type or performing your preferred procedures?
• Are you listed on the website of the organizations you’re working or volunteering with?
• Do you display your specialized training or credentials in that sub-specialty?

These offline and online actions might seem minor, but imagine this scenario: a runner shows up at a running shoe store and mentions to the owner that he’s been having heel pain for a couple of weeks. The owner tells him that he’s familiar with a couple of local foot specialists, Dr. Tommy Talus and Dr. Kathy Cuboid.

What do you think the runner will do after hearing those names? If you said, “search on Google,” I agree with you. Dr. Talus’ website has no images or credentials, and no dedicated page about treating runners. Dr. Cuboid’s website says she’s run 5 marathons, is a member of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine, is the co-medical director of the Achilles Marathon, and has a ton of 5-star Google reviews from happy runners. Who do you think the runner will choose to schedule with?

Setting a Course for Success

Some of you may now realize that you control the direction of your practice. This can be a very empowering change in perspective. But building your dream practice must coexist with the financial reality of running a small business. Most of us can’t just drop what we’re doing and focus on our preferred procedures or work only with our favorite types of patients. We need to provide services that patients and/or insurance companies are willing to pay for. So, it’s vital to understand the financial impact of your current patients and that of acquiring new patients.

The purpose of developing a marketing plan is to bring patients to your clinic. So, whether it’s building a better website, starting an ad campaign, or other methods, the investment you’re making should provide a return on investment (ROI). In order to better understand the return on investment, it’s helpful to estimate how much revenue each new patient brings to your practice over their time in your practice. This revenue amount is called patient lifetime value (LTV). With the exercise and formulas below, I will walk you through how to assess both LTV and ROI.

Learning How to Calculate Patient Lifetime Value

I will walk you through how, in my experience, one can assess both LTV and ROI.

1. Look at your appointment book/software for an average month for your second or third year in practice.
2. Count the number of new patients that were seen (example, 50) and record that number.
3. Pull up those patients’ billing statements and add up the revenue for all these patients during their entire time in your practice to determine total revenue (example, $150,000)
4. Take the total revenue and divide by the number of new patients.

The longer you are in practice, the more likely you are to have patients with multiple visits and additional procedures. By marketing you’re not only bringing in new patients, but also educating your established patients about all the foot and ankle care you provide.

Total revenue / new patients = patient LTV
Example: $150,000 revenue / 50 new patients = $3,000
The average LTV for a patient in this example is $3,000.

The numbers you calculate for your patient LTV will differ based on services and other factors. But conducting this rough assessment to calculate your patient LTV potentially adds business insight and gets you closer to understanding your acquisition ROI.

Are the procedures that you love doing, or the patients you really love treating, creating a sustainable amount of revenue for your clinic? Running the LTV numbers for patients who fit those criteria will help you make that determination.

Taking a Closer Look at ROI

Next, let’s calculate the ROI of acquiring new patients. With today’s analytics and online marketing, it’s much easier to determine underlying costs. We’ll use an acronym for marketing spend per new patient—MSNP. In this scenario, we’ll estimate the MSNP to be $300.

(LTV – MSNP) ÷ MSNP x 100 = ROI
($3,000 – $300) ÷ $300 x 100 = 900%

The return on investment in this example is 900 percent. So, for every $1 invested in marketing, the clinician generates $9 of revenue.

It’s important to keep in mind that a successful marketing strategy will include more than an online ad campaign, but this clearly emphasizes why you need to consider a patient LTV when determining the return on the investment. Regardless of the costs to acquire new patients and ROIs, the foundation for strong patient retention begins with you and your staff. Are you offering patients convenience and relevant information? Are you responding to their feedback and delivering an exceptional patient experience? If you answered yes, your patients will appreciate your outreach, build patient retention and, in turn, enhance each patient’s LTV.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this article provides readers a better understanding of the financial realities that will influence how to build a successful marketing plan. Acquiring patients, treating them well, and having them return to you for their foot and ankle needs are essential to your business.

Dr. McDannald is the Founder and Director of Podiatry Growth, providing online strategy and services for podiatry clinics.