A booked diary and a quiet till
The free hearing test advert on Facebook fills the diary. The newspaper insert brings fewer calls. The Google Ads agency reports a healthy number of leads. But when the practice owner looks at fittings, the numbers do not seem to follow. Are the Facebook bookings the ones who miss appointments? Do the newspaper readers go ahead more often?
Nobody can say, because the ad platforms stop counting at the booking, and the practice system does not know where a patient came from.
Why the link between advert and fitting is missing
- Ad platforms count clicks, calls and form fills, not what happens weeks later.
- Phone bookings do not carry any record of which advert prompted the call.
- The source question at booking, how did you hear about us, is asked inconsistently and stored as free text.
- Assessments and fittings are recorded in the practice system, which does not hold the source.
- The time between first contact and fitting can be weeks or months, beyond most ad attribution windows.
What you lose by not knowing
Marketing budget moves by feel. Channels that bring bookings but few fittings keep getting money. Channels that bring fewer but better enquiries, such as GP referrals or word of mouth, get less attention than they deserve. And agency reports cannot be checked against what actually happened.
| What platforms report | What you actually want to know |
|---|---|
| Clicks and impressions | Who booked |
| Leads or calls | Who turned up for the test |
| Cost per lead | Cost per fitting |
| Conversions inside the platform | Fittings, by source, weeks later |
How we connect the advert to the outcome
- Online bookings and web forms capture the source automatically: which campaign, advert or page the visitor came from.
- Each advert or insert uses its own tracked phone number through a call tracking service, so phone bookings carry a source too.
- The booking source is written to the patient record or to a small linked table, with a consistent list of sources rather than free text.
- As the patient moves through test, recommendation, trial and fitting, those events are picked up from your practice system.
- A monthly report shows, by source, how many enquiries, bookings, attended tests and fittings there were, and your spend alongside.
- Where you want it, fittings are sent back to Google Ads or Meta as offline conversions, so their bidding learns which people go ahead.
The report shows what happened. How to judge it, and what to spend next month, stays your decision.
Referrals from existing patients, GPs and audiology colleagues are tracked the same way. They often bring fewer bookings than a paid campaign, but the report lets you see how they compare at the point that matters, and whether a simple referral card or thank-you letter is worth doing more of.
We also look at what happens between booking and test. If one source produces many bookings that never attend, the report shows it, and the reminder process can be adjusted for those patients rather than dropping the channel outright.
Marketing decisions with the full picture
The practice owner sees which sources lead to fittings, not just bookings. Agency reports can be checked. Money can move towards what works for your clinic, rather than what works on average. And the front desk asks one simple source question, with a dropdown, instead of writing notes nobody reads.
Is your marketing flying blind?
- You measure marketing by bookings or leads, not fittings.
- Phone bookings are not tied to any advert.
- The source of each patient is recorded as free text, or not at all.
- You cannot compare cost per fitting across channels.
- Your agency's figures cannot be checked against your practice system.