Case Study: Increase Conversions by Managing Online Leads

About

A fertility clinic that has been creating life for more than 8 years and has more than 20 years of combined professional experience has been very successful. It is a small boutique style clinic that offers personable services at a lower cost than competitors. Originally a single physician clinic it has expanded to a two physician practice and added a physician’s assistant (PA).

Situation

At the end of last year, the founding physician expressed concerns over a decrease in new patient visits (NPV) in Q4 of 2019 and requested our assistance.

Our discovery included an in-depth review of website performance and conversions. During our review we discovered that the clinic was getting between 50 – 75 online leads per month which is substantial for a 2 physician clinic. Most of these leads were of high value and had requested a new patient consult. New patients will typically convert to and IVF (In vitro fertilization) patient. IVF cycles can vary anywhere from $15,000 – $40,000. The value of each lead was estimated to be $20,000. 50 leads = $1,000,000. Needless to say, each and every lead is extremely valuable.

Without having to increase advertising or make any major changes the quickest way to increase new patient visits (NPV) was to focus on the people who already visited the website, made contact but hadn’t scheduled an appointment yet. In order to create a plan, we met with the client and did our research. We needed to know:

1. Was the clinic currently managing online leads?
2. How many leads were they receiving?
3. Which leads were qualified and how were they prioritized?
4. How long did it take to respond to leads?
5. Were they tracking online leads?
6. What was the conversion rate?
7. Were they using sales funnels and drip campaigns?

It was determined that the front desk received email notifications of incoming leads and would follow up by phone or email. Once they were contacted there was no process in place to track these leads.

The Challenge

COVID-19

At the beginning of 2020, the client was already experiencing a decrease in new patient visits (NPV). To make matters worse, they were faced with a government ordered economic shut-down in March 2020 which eliminated in-person appointments. The staff was under severe stress without any direction. Before executing an online leads management program, we first put into place telemedicine and created a plan to reschedule all cancelled new patient visits (NPV).

With lots of distractions and a complete end to revenue generating services, the practice was faced with the possibility of losing their business. As such we fully took over managing the front desk staff, coaching them, provided training, and executed an online lead tracking process and conversion strategy.

The Plan

We created a process for responding to online leads, tracking those leads and conversions using a CRM platform along with our management services including training and coaching the staff.

Our Goals

1. Increase new patient leads 30%
2. Respond to all leads in less than one hour
3. Increase conversion rates to more than 50%
4. Create an automated drip campaign to nurture non-converted qualified leads

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We partnered with a CRM platform and began tracking the leads. The initial 3 months with no process in place or training our KPI’s were as follows:

A process was created, and the staff was trained which included weekly Zoom meetings during the beginning of the 2020 Pandemic and economic shutdown period of 2020 (April – August). We focused on reducing the average time to respond to leads, how they responded and created a process for nurturing leads using a sales funnel.

Since this all occurred simultaneously with limits on elective services and surgeries, we also set up and executed video conferencing, so they could continue to do new patient consults.

The Results

Mission Accomplished

Monthly online leads as well as the conversion rate increased significantly. More new patient visits (NPV) were scheduled and the client began generating additional revenue and building a foundation for reopening and converting leads into IVF patients.

Although they did not meet the minimum goal of 50% conversions the client considers our lead conversion strategy to be a huge success. To improve more we recommend reducing their response time to less than 1 hour. Should they accomplish this goal, conversion rates would be even greater than 50%.

Prior to executing a process and training average response time was about 48 hours; whereas, at the end of this project it was 2 hours 8 minutes.

Summary

During a critical time for medical practices this client took action with a quick response for not only maintaining their business but growing and filling their schedule to continue to be profitable in both the short and long term future.

Many practices and small businesses lack processes and follow ups for nurturing online leads. It is vital in this competitive environment to respond to inquiries quickly and schedule appointments before your potential clients seek out another clinic. In the current economic environment, it is now even more important than ever to have a process in place to respond to and nurture qualified leads.

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