If you’ve ever launched a PPC campaign, you know just how much data you have instant access to on your audiences.

Through PPC, you can determine:

  • who clicked on your ad
  • what web pages they visited prior to clicking
  • what actions they took once they landed on your site


office-phoneBut here’s the problem: Many of your prospective patients prefer to call your offices directly after seeing an ad, rather than clicking on a link, especially since more searches now occur on mobile devices than on desktop.

Couple that with the fact that healthcare is extremely personal. Your prospects are much more comfortable talking directly with another person about their health concerns and questions, than acquiring that information through the impersonal means of a web page.

And while the standard PPC campaign delivers tremendous data on web-based conversions, the same can’t be said for your phone leads, unless you implement call tracking.

If you haven’t enacted call tracking into your paid search strategy, you could be doing your practice a great disservice. Here are four reasons why every orthopedic surgery practice needs to use paid search call tracking as part of their PPC campaigns.

1. Accurately optimize your marketing campaigns

The data you receive from your paid search advertising helps you determine what strategies to retain, revise, or remove, so that you can continue to invest your dollars wisely.

But how can you confidently invest in your digital marketing campaigns if you’re an orthopedic professional that’s ignoring a significant portion of your conversions: your phone leads?

Only when you can account for every single conversion in your patient lifecycle can you optimize your marketing for what works, and trash what doesn’t.

2. Track calls back to keyword searches

search-resultsYour PPC campaigns are most effective when you provide your audiences with a bevy of choices from which to contact you, including your phone number.

With mobile searchers among the fastest growing segment out there, it’s important now – more than ever – to know which keywords are driving your prospective patients to the specific action of calling your offices.

Call tracking helps you determine which keywords are most likely to encourage your prospects to place a phone call. You can then use that data to optimize your mobile ads and launch specific campaigns, such as call-only campaigns.

3. Recording your calls as part of call tracking

When you incorporate call recording with your call tracking program, you can gain insight into the specific approaches your team is taking to turn phone leads into actual patients.

Is your team asking the right questions? Are they using the right tone and language? The records of your calls will help you analyze these results and train your staff, accordingly, to ensure more leads turn into patients.

The transcripts of your calls can also help you uncover new keyword lists that will target qualified, top-of-funnel prospects. One of the most effective healthcare PPC strategies is to listen to what your prospects are saying, and use that information to create new campaigns.

For example, you may discover an increase in phone calls from prospects looking for more information on ACL reconstruction surgery. You might want to use that data to launch a targeted campaign around this service that you offer.

4. There’s very little effort required on your part

While chances are slim that you’ve enacted a call tracking strategy into your paid search advertising, the good news is that not only does it take very little effort on your part to get started, but not much will change on your end once you start tracking calls.

You’ll still get calls. Your team will still nurture these leads into patients. The only significant difference is you’ll now have far more measurable data at your disposal to improve both your ad campaigns and call strategy, which in turn will improve your conversion rate.

Call tracking – offering a closed loop PPC marketing strategy

Call tracking provides your orthopedic practice with a closed loop PPC marketing strategy. In other words, data accumulated from the top of the funnel can now be used to improve the back of the funnel. Then, your back-end funnel insights will help you optimize how you target the top of your funnel.

To put it differently: the more you know about who’s calling your offices, what led them to call you, and how they (and your staff) behave once they call you, the better you can adapt your paid campaigns (and in-house training) to reach a wider audience and cater to those prospects who are most likely to become patients.