Many healthcare providers actively use a “How did you hear about us” form as one of its key marketing strategies on its website or in the office. By asking a quick and easy question the marketer seems to be able to find out the key platform that drove the audience member to visiting. However, these forms do not quite show the whole picture. In terms of learning your attribution with digital marketing there are better methods available in order to track success.
We can see this is true when looking at impact versus attribution. The “How did you hear about us form,” gives credit to one platform, measuring a platform’s impact, this is because the survey taker will choose the platform that most influenced them. However, there are other platforms that helped to drive the audience member’s decision, so only measuring one platform can hurt your business decisions later on.
The average number of interactions needed in order for someone to make a purchase is seven. When you put out a “How did you hear about us” form you are discrediting six interactions and only taking one into account. When you make business or marketing decisions based on this, you are only really going off of 14% of the data of the full picture.
Google Analytics is a great tool to look at linear attribution and take all brand interactions into consideration. This will give you the ability to see 80% to 90% of the data rather than just that 14%. When it comes to what lead up to a purchase, every step a long the way in the buyer journey counts as that is what got them to this point. Linear attribution gives this equal value to both lower funnel and higher funnel interactions, as well as tell you what the leader of that decision was.
One way to better understand this strategy is to compare it to a sports game. When the team wins, it is not just the one person who scored the goals that won the game, but the whole team that made it happen. Just the same, it was not just one platform that made a buyer make a decision, but all brand interactions working together.
Advance Media New York helps healthcare providers develop effective marketing campaigns with an eye on attribution. Find out how our dedicated team of healthcare marketers can you your organization acquire new patients, retain current patients and tell your brand story. Contact jperkins@advancemediany.com for more information.
