For an aesthetic practice owner – or a marketing agency managing an aesthetic practice – there’s nothing more frustrating than succeeding in your efforts to drive more traffic and generate more leads only for them to fail to get these leads through the sales cycle.
One of the biggest roadblocks in this lead-to-new-patient sales funnel is the inability to get ahold of the new lead, or web form submission. In this article, we’ll refer to these form submissions as “web leads,” as opposed to leads who call into the practice. That’s step 1, and if you’re getting stuck there then you won’t be able to get the lead in for a consultation, let alone book them.
Part of the problem is how long it takes for practices to reply to web inquiries. Your goal should be to follow up with any new web lead within 5 minutes. That’s right, 5 minutes. Before you throw in the towel and say “that’s not possible,” consider using automation to help you here.
Here are the top 3 automation tools you should consider using to increase the ratio of leads you’re able to get ahold of:
1) Email: This has been around for more than a decade and is pretty simple to set up. The easiest way to configure an automated email responder is with your website contact form solution. If your website is built on WordPress, make sure you’re using a plugin that allows for automated email replies.
Your automated reply should thank the prospect for submitting their information and tell them what the next steps are, which is the practice getting the prospect on the phone. Plant the seed for the consultation, which is your goal with each lead. You also may want to throw in some social media links for them to view, as well as links to your reviews and photo gallery.
2) Text message: At TRBO, we’ve seen clients who were able to increase their contact ratios by over 50% by working in two-way texting into their lead follow up process. The key isn’t just the text messaging, but the automation.
At TRBO, we’ve partnered with ZipWhip to bring our practice partners TRBO Text, the best in text messaging services. Using Zapier, or another API feed, you can connect your web forms with a text messaging service to automatically text prospects who submit their information on your website.
You can learn more about how TRBO Text works by clicking here.
3) Ghost voicemail: This is a pre-recorded message that that automatically bypasses calling the prospect and drops directly in their voicemail inbox, hence the name “ghost” voicemail. A great compliment to automated text message followup, ghost voicemail can be configured to only send the message if the client has not replied to your text.
Individually, these are all solid tools that every practice should test. However, the real power
Start By Understanding Your Numbers
Don’t JUST look at your traffic growth or decline and don’t JUST look at your cost-per-lead. These numbers can trick you! I’m not saying they’re not valuable to know and track; they are. If you have no traffic then you cannot generate leads and there, you cannot generate new patients.
However, traffic and lead data only give you information pertaining to your marketing funnel. These stats don’t tell you anything about the performance of your sales funnel.
The sales funnel evaluates everything that happens AFTER the lead is generated…
- were you able to reach the lead by phone, text or email?
- were you able to schedule them for a consultation?
- did they show up for the consultation?
- were you able to convert them into a new patient?
If you want to take it to the next level with your marketing you HAVE TO know your numbers. For example, if you paid $5,000 on an ad campaign and generated 50 leads, that’s a cost-per-lead of $100. For most aesthetic treatments, particularly surgical procedures, that’s a very solid number. However, what if you weren’t able to get ahold of any of these leads? That would be a waste of $5,000, right?
Know your cost-per-lead AS WELL AS your cost-per-consultation and your cost-per-acquisition (or cost-per-new-patient). Start with your ad campaigns, as these have a clear budget you’ve allocated and used for each click you’ve received.
Tracking Leads Down to the Source They Came From
The only way to effectively evaluate how each lead generated from specific source/medium progresses down the sales funnel is to tie each name – whether web lead or phone call lead – to the source/medium they came from.
In the example above where we spent $5,000 and generated 50 leads, if we cannot determine WHO those 50 leads are then there’s no way we can dig deeper. Those 50 leads may account for only 30% of the total leads generated during that time period, so you need to be able to sort through your lead list and categorize by the source/medium they came from.
We recommend using a tool like Zapier to feed all your web leads and phone calls leads (assuming you’re using call tracking software) into a shareable Google Doc spreadsheet. The goal is for your leads to dynamically populate the doc.
Yes, I Want to Improve My Lead Follow-Up
If you’re struggling with making sense of your marketing and your ROI you’re not alone. The good news is that TRBO can help!
The first step is to schedule a Strategy Session with one of our Marketing Strategy Specialists. You can schedule your session here.
We can’t wait to speak with you!
