CampfireWhat's the ROI? Is this worth it for a practice my size?
Measure it in plans of care. Take what a new patient is worth to you over their plan, divide by what it costs to book one, and you have your return. Across our clinic accounts last year, a booked appointment from Meta cost about $130 where it was tracked. If your plan of care is worth ten times that, the math is not close. If you can't answer what a patient is worth, that is the first thing we fix.
The three numbers
- Value of a plan of care. Average visits times your rate. Most cash practices know this roughly and have never written it down.
- Cost per booked patient. Ad spend divided by appointments booked. In our clinic accounts in the last twelve months it ran about $130 per booked appointment where the booking was tracked, and about $60 per lead overall. The full breakdown is in the Campfire Benchmark.
- Show and convert rate. What share of booked evaluations show up and start a plan. Follow-up is where this number lives, and it's the one most clinics never measure.
"Is this good? I have no gauge."
That line comes up on calls more than any other, and it's the real problem. You can't judge ROI without tracking, and most clinics are told "it's working" by whoever is spending the money. The first thing we install is the gauge: where each patient came from, what they cost, what they were worth. After that, ROI is arithmetic.
For three or four patients a month
If three or four new plans of care a month would change your year, the system pays for itself on the first one or two. If it wouldn't, you don't need marketing yet; you need pricing. We'll tell you which on the call.
Questions around the fire
How long until I see a return?
Leads in the first two weeks of ads running. Booked evaluations in the first month. Trust the numbers after 60 days, when enough patients have moved through a plan of care.
What if the ads don't work?
Then the numbers say so within weeks, not months, and we turn them off and fix the part that's broken: the offer, the landing page, or the follow-up. See the answer on that.
Is Google or Facebook better ROI for a clinic?
Google catches people already searching; Meta creates demand. Most clinics start with Google call ads to find the steady point, then add Meta.