Strategies to Correctly Evaluate and Reduce Costs Per Patient Acquisition

Cost per Patient Acquisition (CPA) is a strategic metric that healthcare organizations use to measure the average total resources spent to acquire a new patient. It is essentially performed to improve marketing techniques and direct them toward an ROI (return on investment) focused approach to determine, and eventually maximize, patient acquisition and retention rates, as well as their lifetime value.

CPA calculation:

CPA is calculated by dividing the sum of total sales and marketing costs by the total number of new patients acquired in a given time period. This method takes into account total sales along with marketing costs to get potential patients to visit the website, participate in social media, share blog posts, etc.

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Cost reduction starts with calculating the right CPA in the first place. To achieve a positive ROI, queries should set a promising target that serves as a benchmark for the practice's sales and marketing efforts.

Pages visited, ads clicked, social media engagement, etc., are only part of the pie. The real work is being able to manage and convert viewers into customers. Clinics can do this effectively by generating high-quality content and advertising campaigns after conducting a psychographic analysis of the customer group and creating buyer personas for their ideal patients. Content, including blog posts, images, videos, etc., is the most reliable way to ensure that your online presence attracts prospective patients.

Maximize conversion rates:

Another way to reduce patient acquisition costs is to employ marketing strategies that produce maximum conversion rates. This means that for every penny spent, there is almost always a positive return, i.e., conversion of leads into customers. Conversion rates can be maximized by optimizing published content to meet the needs and preferences of your target audience, as explained above.
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CPA payback time:

This metric is useful when practices aim to achieve a certain ROI within a given time window. It describes the efficiency of the procedure by evaluating the time it takes for the practice to recoup the CPA it spent on recruiting new patients.