Without a doubt, I can quickly look at 2 different chiropractic marketing metrics (numbers) within your chiropractic practice and predict, with relative accuracy, your future level of profitability as a chiropractor.
The two metrics I am referring to are: Cost of New Patient Acquisition (COA) and Lifetime Patient Value (LPV).
COA tells us the average amount of money it currently costs you to acquire a single new patient. Whereas, LPV tells us how much the typical patient is worth to your practice over the lifetime of their care with you.
When COA is subtracted from LPV, we can quickly see the average amount of gross profit your practice generates per patient.
For example, if you spend an average of, say, $1,000 per month on marketing…and, on average, acquire 5 new patients…your COA is $200 ($1,000 divided by 5). If the average patient in your practice is worth $700 over the lifetime of their care with you… your gross profit per patient, in this case, would be $500 ($700 LPV minus $200 COA). In this case, it is worth acquiring $700 new patients at a cost of only $200 each. It is a highly profitable marketing process.
But, for most chiropractors, their numbers don’t come close to the example above. Really worse; most chiropractors don’t even know their numbers. However, at a minimum, most are only aware of LPV without knowing the cost of acquiring a single new patient.
Without knowing both crucial chiropractic marketing metrics intimately, how can a chiropractor make an informed marketing decision? They cannot. Just as an investor cannot make an informed decision about a rental property without knowing the cost of the property and how much the tenants are worth to them. Even if they know one of those numbers, it’s still not good enough. They need both. Like you.
Armed with both metrics, you can easily make decisions on whether to continue or give up a particular marketing campaign. You will be able to look beyond the response rate (a poor assessment of the profit value of a chiropractic marketing campaign for your office) and see if you are losing money, breaking even, or making a profit, regardless of the response rate. response.
The response rate only tells you what percentage of people responded to your chiropractic marketing and became paying patients. It doesn’t tell us whether that response rate, good or bad, resulted in a loss or a gain. Just knowing COA and LPV does that.
So make a commitment today to review your LPV every month. And, any time you spend money on chiropractic marketing or advertising, be sure to calculate the COA for that campaign. If you run multiple campaigns (ie ads) in a single month, make sure you calculate the COA for each campaign separately. Grouping them significantly dilutes the precision of the numbers.