You’ve worked hard to create a sound marketing strategy for your physical therapy clinic and even harder to implement it. At last, you’re starting to see some results – those articles you’ve written for your blog are finally gaining some traction, and your traffic rates are growing like crazy.
That’s great!
After all, more visitors mean more potential patients, right?
Well, not necessarily.
The problem is that there are only so many online users that are interested in your services. Some want to learn how to deal with their back pain at home; some are looking for some remedies for their bad posture, and there are also those who thought you could help them solve their problems but were disappointed by what you offer.
If you only focus on raising your traffic rate, then you’re going to hit the ceiling eventually where you can’t drive any more visitors because you’ve either reached the vast majority of them or because your niche is so large that you can’t afford to target any more prospects.
So, what can you do to avoid this situation?
You should focus on driving conversion instead of visitors.
That’s where Google Analytics can come in handy.
This Google tool is a powerhouse of data. You can use it to collect valuable information on your visitors and get insights about how to improve future marketing campaigns and boost your conversion rate. It can provide predictive analytics and help you get a sense of how your marketing methods would perform and what you need to tweak before launching your campaign.
But a lot of the utility of Google Analytics goes unrecognized, or at least untapped by many. Sure, it’s essential to check for traffic and bounce rates, but there’s more to Google Analytics than just that. You need to study the platform better and get a bit creative if you want to drive conversions and take your PT clinic to the next level.
So keep on reading to find out how you can use Google Analytics to boost your conversion rate.
Traffic counts show you how many people end up on your website, which is a pretty important thing to know, sure. However, you should also be paying attention to what happens after the visitors access your link.
Are they doing what you want them to do? Be it to browse around, read articles, schedule an appointment, or whatever other action meets your expectations, having decent website traffic is nothing if you don’t take control of conversion rates (or goals as Google calls them.)
You can set specific goals in Google Analytics to see if visitors are using your platform the way you intended, such as accessing a specific page on your website or clicking on a particular link. That’s an excellent way to track your conversions and get an accurate sense of the effectiveness of your strategy.
Of course, how well your content is performing will ultimately depend on you, and no trick can help you boost your conversion rate if your articles are irrelevant, low-quality or superficial. But, if you know what to track and how to use that data, you can get more out of your efforts.
According to one study, the best performing campaigns have an average conversion rate of 3%. While you can certainly hit more than that, a 3% conversion rate is, in fact, a very good target.
So, here are a few actionable Google Analytics tips that could help you increase your conversion rate and, consequently, your sales.
You can’t just open your Analytics, run ten different reports, and expect to see a boost in conversion. It doesn’t work like that. If you want to see an improvement in performance, then you need to have a clear goal in mind and analyze your numbers based on that.
Make sure that you know what you want to achieve before opening Analytics. What specific issue are you investigating? Maybe visitors aren’t clicking on your CTA as often as they used to or maybe you’ve noticed a drop in online appointments. After you’ve identified the problem, ask yourself what metrics you need to analyze to understand the change in visitor behavior. Lastly, try to determine what you need to tweak and monitor to improve the situation.
Let’s assume you’ve successfully converted a user into a lead. Then, you’ve collected data on your user, knowing that it might come in handy during a remarking campaign. After all this effort, you’ve managed to turn the lead into a happy patient.
Here’s the problem, though: Google Analytics won’t be able to identify the patient if they switch devices to access your website or if they delete their cookies.
That’s why you need to sync you Analytics visitor ID with your preferred Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) service to let GA know when it’s a recurring visitor that’s just using a different device. That way you can provide prospects with relevant content and turn them into recurring patients. Imagine how damaging it can be to your marketing efforts to promote a first-time visit offer to a visitor who’s already a patient.
Loading time can dramatically affect your conversion rate. Online users aren’t particularly patient, especially if they’re navigating from a mobile device. They’ll close the tab if it takes too long for your page to load. That’s why it’s vital to improve your loading time and ensure your PT clinic’s site performs flawlessly regardless of the device.
You could do a lot of things to speed up your website – you could optimize your images, enable caching or scrap away any useless add-ons or plugins that don’t do you or your visitors any favors. But if you want to go further than that, try speeding up a user’s next page loading time.
A great way to make your website blazing fast is to incorporate prefetch, a service that predicts browsing and preloads the next page.
Imagine that you’ve just landed on a website that features hundreds of articles and dozen landing pages. Chances are you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. So, what’s the first thing you do? You use the search function to look for the information that interests you.
Your search bar is a potential goldmine for understanding your visitors’ needs and motivations. It can give you valuable insights into what people want to see when they land on your page. Use the “Search Terms” option under the Behavior report on your Analytics to leverage his data and create customized retargeting or email marketing campaigns.
Keywords are essential in online marketing, but it can be rather complicated to anticipate every single combination of words your prospective patients may type into Google’s search bar when they look for your services. Or, more explicitly, it can be complicated to do all that without the help of Keywords Planner.
Here’s the thing: when it comes to online marketing, relying on your gut isn’t the best of strategies. You need data to back your intentions and action. And, the Keyword Planner is an excellent tool that can help you drive qualified traffic to your site that you can then nurture into leads.
As long as we’re on the subject, there are two other important things that we need to discuss: location and long tail keywords.
Here’s the thing: over 60% of U.S. consumers use their mobile devices to look for local businesses. And, 50% of those who conduct a local search will visit the store within a day. So, if you aren’t targeting location keywords already, then it’s high time you do so.
Make sure to combine them with a long-tail search term too. For instance, a long tail-location combo, such as “find a physical therapy clinic in Chicago” could generate more relevant traffic and potential leads than basic head terms.
More often than not, the landing page is the first thing a user sees after clicking on your link. How this page performs and the content it delivers can make a big difference in a user’s decision to explore your site further or bounce right away. If a lot of visitors get stuck on the landing page and don’t look around, then you may need to tweak a few things.
Tracking these engagement stats will give you an SEO advantage, as you can get a sense of what’s popular on your site and how to leverage it to boost your conversion rate.
If you check your landing page reports and notice a high bounce rate and a low average time spent on the page, that is a clear indicator that prospects have not found what they wanted. But once you have clear data on these issues, you can take the necessary measures to improve your site’s performance, ultimately boost your conversion rate.
Most probably, you’re not interested in all the metrics and tools Google Analytics has to offer. It’s common for marketers and business owners to focus only on the particular data that brings valuable insights into what they can improve. Otherwise, you’d be subjected to a lot of white noise and checking your Google Analytics can turn into an exhausting ordeal.
Google knows this, which is why it gives users the options to customize their dashboard, either to save time or to prioritize the type of data they want to see first. You can create your custom dashboard or look around and import an existing one and add or remove particular elements.
Moreover, each Analytics account lets you create up to 20 dashboards, so you can group metrics as you wish.
Google Analytics is only one out of many different services available online that could help you grow your PT clinic’s online presence. If you go to Google’s Webmaster Tools, you can see an array of several services, including a Webmaster Academy where you can learn more about how to improve your website’s SEO.
Merging multiple of these services can come in handy. Google Analytics is pretty comprehensive on its own, but other platforms that are highly targeted for a specific purpose can offer a lot more insights. Your GA account can easily be linked to other Google Accounts, so you don’t have to check multiple places to get your data. Moreover, you can also add other services like CRM to improve your analytics experience.
That’s the gist of the secret benefits of Google Analytics, though it’s far from complete. However, you can use it as a basis to further dive into the perks that GA brings to the table and go beyond traffic stats and bounce rate. Understanding how your website performs is key to growing and improving it. And, when your website grows, so does your business.
Google Analytics can feel a bit overwhelming, especially if you are just getting started with online marketing. There are so many metrics that you can track that it can be easy to spend hours every day looking at numbers that don’t tell any story. If you would like some help from someone who knows how to turn a report into an actionable strategy, then get in touch with the experts at PatientSites.com. We can help you turn your PT clinic’s website into a lead generating machine so that you can focus on other aspects of your business.
Do you want to take your physical therapy marketing to the next level? Download our Free Evergreen Marketing Blueprint for Physical Therapists and start creating long-term assets that generate new patient bookings for years to come.
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