Funnels Are For More Than Just Water

If you haven’t spent much time around sales & marketing chances are when you think of a funnel a cone shape comes to mind. If your hungry maybe even funnel cake is what you think of. In sales & marketing funnels are talked about as part of your patient journey and you strategy. It is a marketing plan that is designed to take potential patients in through the largest part of the funnel and then point them where you would like to go. So what does this look like in practice?

A funnel will normally have several stages and in this case we are going to keep it simple with a 3 step funnel.  The funnel itself is going to be based around a pitch for hearing aids. It’s a simple pitch and the idea behind it is this, “Get a free dentist appointment for children under 2”. The hope here is that the child will be brought in for the free appointment and then transitioned into a patient as they grow. So what does this look like? Our three parts of the funnel will be as follows.

1. Top of the funnel – An ad offering a free under 2 healthy teeth checklist if they provide their email
2. Middle of the funnel – A page containing the list and information on the practice and offer to schedule a free appointment to have a professional evaluation
3. End of the funnel – At the appointment the next appointment is made and the family are now ongoing patients

Although this could be more complex it is a very easy to understand funnel. You are hoping to get a few actions here.

• First a click on the ad
  • Then the potential patients email
    • Then the initial appointment
      • Then they become a patient

When looking at this you may ask why not just ask them to come in for a free visit. The answer to that is pretty simple, they won’t. The smaller each commitment is the more likely they are to make it. By offering them free content they can consume now you give them a low risk high return commitment. You also have a way to communicate with them in case they don’t take the next step so you can ask them to in the future.

Everyday we at filmMED help our clients build funnels similar to this one for a variety of targets and desired outcomes. It is by building these funnels that we are able to ensure that when ad dollars are spend we are to help our clients just the most out of them. If you looking to improve your return or the ads you are running we would love to talk to you. Either drop us a line or give us a call.