In March 2016, ACS began a healthcare digital marketing partnership with an expanding regional medical practice. There were two primary objectives for the healthcare digital marketing partnership:
- to increase the number of patients, and
- to improve the medical practice's online visibility, with a particular focus on achieving high positioning on search engines for valuable keywords.
More than a year in to the partnership, our client has experienced major lead generation growth, which is a result of achieved 1st place and 1st page positioning on Google for relevant keywords.
But how did this success happen?
Read the below healthcare digital marketing case study to find out.
Diversifying Ways to Generate Traffic and Leads
Prior to our healthcare digital marketing partnership, our medical practice client only had three sources of online traffic to their website. Current and potential patients arrived at our client's site either through:
- Limited traffic from search engines (organic search), including traffic from searches for our client's brand name,
- By typing in our client's domain name directly (direct), or,
- By clicking on a link from another site that lead to our client's site (referral).
In the early stages of our healthcare digital marketing partnership, we identified the need to diversify the channels in which people could arrive at our client's website. There were two main reasons for this strategy: 1) the more ways people could get to the website, the more opportunities to acquire new patients, and 2) diversifying the means in which someone can arrive at a website prevents a website from being overly dependent on certain ways to generate traffic. For example, if a major change to the Google search algorithm resulted in significantly less traffic from the organic search channel, we wouldn't want our client to have all of their traffic coming from this one source, which could devastate an organization's ability to acquire new patients, clients or customers online.
Our early stage efforts of our healthcare digital marketing partnership included launching digital marketing campaigns that delivered more ways for potential patients to find our medical practice client. These channels included:
- Display ads,
- Paid search ads,
- Social media platforms,
- Search engines (organic search),
- By typing in our client's domain name directly (direct), or,
- By clicking on a link from another site that lead to our client's site (referral).
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Increased Opportunities Resulting in Lead Generation Growth
These increases in ways for people to get to our client's website brought significant traffic increases, resulting in more opportunities that in turn created lead generation growth.
Year-to-Year Traffic Growth
Within the 1st month of our healthcare digital marketing partnership, visits to our client's site increased by 21%. This growth continues to expand. Visits more than doubled within a year, as visits increased by 66% in March 2017 compared to March 2016, the first month of our digital marketing partnership.
Year-to-Year Growth in Potential New Patients
Similarly, new visitors to our client's website increased by 65% in March 2017 compared to March 2016, the first month of our healthcare digital marketing partnership. This 66% increase is especially valuable, as this is evidence of growth in new patients to the website.
More recently, in October 2017, our client set a record high for the most number of visits to their website of any month since their website launched in June 2015, as traffic more than doubled in October 2017 compared to the first month that our client's website was launched.
Our client also set a record high for monthly new visitors to their website in October 2017.
Lead Generation Growth for Patients
While traffic growth is a positive indicator of progress, we are performance based marketers. This means that our true objectives align with our client's project goals. In this case, and in many cases, lead generation growth for new patients is an important metric of growth.
By many metrics, our client has experienced major lead generation growth.
78% Year-to-Year Increase in Leads
In a year-to-year comparison between the first month of our client's healthcare digital marketing partnership (March 2016) and a year after (March 2017), our client saw their online leads increase by 78%.
80% Increase in Leads since Beginning Marketing with ACS
Our medical practice client also experienced an 80% increase in online leads in the form of Contact form submissions in October 2017 compared to March 2016, the first month of our healthcare digital marketing partnership.
This lead generation growth is evidence of success in terms online lead generation growth since our digital marketing efforts began. 
168% Increase in Leads since Website Launch
Our client experienced a 168% increase in online leads in the form of Contact form submissions in October 1-30, 2017 compared to June 1-30, 2015, the first month after our client's website launch.
To make this an accurate data comparison, the above figure compares the entire month of June 2015 (1-30) to an equal time frame in October 2017 (1-30).
How Did We Make This Lead Generation Growth Happen?
The above lead generation and traffic growth is a result of the ACS team's efforts to increase ways that people can get to our client's website. With additional healthcare digital marketing campaign builds, coupled with SEO efforts, we successfully increased traffic to our client's website, and in turn caused major online lead generation growth.
If you recall from the beginning of this healthcare digital marketing case study, our client had two objectives for their digital marketing partnership with ACS. The first was to increase leads for new patients, which was accomplished as detailed above. The second objective was to increase the medical practice's online visibility, with a particular focus on achieving high positioning on search engines for valuable keywords.
Getting Found with SEO
Prior to our healthcare digital marketing partnership, our client lacked high positions on search engines for many valuable keywords. Our benchmark reporting at the beginning of our digital marketing partnership showed that our client held just 4 Page 1 rankings on Google. 3 of these 4 Page 1 Google rankings were for keywords that our client would expect to hold 1st page positioning for. This included two variants of our client's brand name and one 1st page Google ranking for the name of a specific doctor employed at our client's medical practice.
Today, our most recent reporting shows that our client now holds 18 Page 1 rankings on Google. To protect confidential client information, we cannot reveal the specific keywords that our client now holds Page 1 Google rankings for. However, in addition to the 4 existing Page 1 Google rankings, these 18 Page 1 Google rankings include the following:
- Page 1 Google rankings for 12 distinct, medical specialty keywords
- Page 1 Google rankings for 2 specific medical exam related keywords
This increased online visibility in the form of valuable 1st page positions on Google also translated to lead generation growth. Contact Form Submissions from people who arrived at our client's site from search engines increased by 81% in a year-to-year comparison (March 2017 compared to March 2016, the first month of our digital marketing partnership).
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The above healthcare digital marketing case study is based off of real performance data from a medical practice that is an ACS digital marketing client. The highlighted lead generation growth and improved positioning on search engines are a result of custom, performance based strategies implemented by our team of experienced digital marketers.
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