BLOG: A structured process for success with AI-enabled marketing
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Key takeaways:
- Success with AI-enabled marketing requires a structured plan.
- This entails defining and tracking objectives, key results and key performance indicators.
“We have enough votes to pull the plug.”
More about this later.
In my previous post, we explored the challenges and considerations of adopting AI-enabled marketing. As with any successful technology adoption program, following a structured process is critical to success. A structured process forces alignment with your practice financial goals and your culture without adversely impacting the top and bottom lines.
“AI-enabled ophthalmology marketing is the new black”
So, let’s look at AI’s possible contributions to top and bottom lines. In an ophthalmology practice, the top and bottom lines refer to two crucial financial metrics that provide insights into the practice’s financial health and performance.
1. Top line: The top line in an ophthalmology practice refers to the total revenue generated by the practice over a specific period, usually a month, quarter or year. This includes all income earned from patient visits, procedures, surgeries, and the sale of eyewear or other products.
The top line is calculated before any expenses are deducted and is a measure of the practice’s ability to generate income.
Think about these top-line challenges:
- Revenue from office visits and consultations.
- Income from diagnostic tests and imaging services.
- Service line revenue.
- Sales (offline and online) of glasses, contact lenses or aesthetics products.
2. Bottom line: Your net income or net profit represents the ophthalmology practice’s financial performance after accounting for all expenses and costs.
The bottom line provides a clear picture of the practice’s profitability and financial sustainability.
Think about these bottom-line challenges:
- Salaries and benefits.
- Rent or mortgage payments.
- Utilities, maintenance and other overhead.
- Medical supplies, equipment and technology expenses.
- Marketing and advertising costs.
- Insurance premiums and professional liability coverage.
- Taxes and licensing fees.
Taking these into consideration, AI-enabled practice marketing is great for:
- Identifying overlooked areas for marketing and sales process improvement.
- Higher-order decision support and making informed decisions. You will be shown (if you ask the right way) where to use marketing to best optimize revenue and profitability.
- Marketing strategies to improve your top line such as expanding/branding service lines, attracting new patients or adjusting pricing.
- Bottom line improvements by controlling marketing costs through automation, operational efficiency and productivity enhancements.
A framework for success
Some of you might be too young to remember, but the integration of electronic health records was fraught for doctors, many of whom assumed it was no different than just buying an OCT or autorefractor. Then came weeks to months of decreased productivity, second-guessing and in some cases eventual abandonment of the entire project.
We came close to “pulling the plug” on our own EHR implementation project back in 2008, as a few partners got cold feet over the scope and cost of the endeavor. But having a plan and sticking to it paid off in the end. And we lived to tell about it, with no drop in productivity (read about it in my book Navigating the EMR Jungle as well as an online column where I documented the entire project in real time).
All this to say that a plan for the adoption of AI as an expansion of your digital marketing program is key for success. Here then is a framework for such a plan based on both defined metrics, called key performance indicators (KPIs), and goals, called objectives and key results (OKRs). Relying only on one will either leave you lost in the weeds or charting a course to nowhere.
Step 1: Define OKRs and KPIs
This involves aligning AI marketing initiatives with your overall practice goals. For example, if you want to increase patient volume (your goal) for a specific service such as LASIK or premium cataract surgery, the AI marketing objectives should focus on targeting potential patients and driving conversions for those services.
To achieve objectives, it is essential to establish measurable and achievable targets (your metrics). Look at data points all along the path to purchase. Look at leading and lagging indicators. These may include website traffic, lead generation, conversion rates and revenue growth. By defining specific metrics, your practice can track the performance of AI-enabled marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategies.
Step 2: Identify data sources and requirements
Maybe you’ve heard this: “Data is the new oil.” In 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby was first quoted as saying it. Just like oil, data must be refined before it can be useful. Its value comes from its potential. Also, just like oil, once it’s refined, data is the fuel that powers AI marketing.
To effectively leverage AI in marketing your practice, you must identify and assess existing data assets and gaps. This involves taking inventory of all your available data sources, such as prospect and patient marketing information, website analytics, social media metrics and marketing campaign performance data. Once data sources are identified, it is crucial to implement data governance and quality control measures.
Step 3: Select and implement the right AI tools and platforms for your practice
When selecting AI systems and tools, your practice should consider factors such as ease of use, scalability and customer support. It is also important to assess the vendor’s experience and expertise in the ophthalmic marketing industry, as well as its ability to provide custom solutions tailored to the unique needs of your ophthalmology practice. Ask for references and speak to your colleagues who may have evaluated and acquired such tools.
Once the appropriate AI tools are selected, the next step is to integrate them into the existing marketing technology stack. This may involve configuring data connections, setting up automation workflows and training staff on how to use the new tools effectively.
For example, your practice may want to implement an AI-powered chatbot on its website to provide instant answers to patient inquiries and guide them toward relevant services and resources. While many of these are ready to use “out of the box,” they will likely need customization on your part so that the tone and information are consistent with your practice.
Step 4: Monitor, analyze and optimize
This involves tracking key metrics (KPIs) defined in Step 1 and using the insights generated by AI tools to make data-driven decisions and improvements toward your goals (OKRs).
For example, your practice may want to use AI-powered analytics to track the effectiveness of its email campaigns, identifying which subject lines, content and calls-to-action generate the highest engagement and conversion rates. Based on these insights, you could then optimize your email marketing strategy to deliver more personalized and relevant messages to individual patients.
Continuous testing and experimentation are also crucial for optimizing AI marketing efforts, such as conducting A/B and multivariate tests to compare the performance of different marketing elements, such as ad copy, landing page designs and content formats. By iteratively refining strategies based on data-driven insights, practices can continuously improve their AI marketing return on investment and patient engagement.
Next blog: The AI content engines.
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