As a dedicated healthcare practitioner, your top priority is to guide your clients through the healing process. You’re always looking for new ways to help more people too, and a strong marketing plan will allow you to do just that.

The right hospital or clinic advertising strategy will place your website and web content in the crosshairs of online searches. However, you need to be able to study your website’s performance, to know which elements of your plan are most effective.  

Google Analytics (GA) is a free tool designed to help website admins learn more about their website’s visitors, and how well the website is performing. In this article, you’ll learn how to create your GA account and link it to other useful marketing and analytics tools. Follow the steps here to get timely traffic data for your online assets and optimize them to increase your leads.

Consider Your Goals

Before you begin setting up accounts, you should carefully consider what your hospital or clinic advertising goals are. Would you like to achieve a certain number of website visitors or email signups per day? Is there a blog entry that you’d like to see gain more traction, or a survey that you want a certain number of visitors to complete?

When you’re clear on your goals, you can configure GA to collect data points that are goal-specific, giving you exactly the information you need to improve your strategy.

Google Tag Manager Account Setup

Google Tag Manager is a free platform that can communicate with your GA account so it knows which pieces of information to gather from your website for analysis.

Begin creating your Google Tag Manager account by giving it a name. After that, you can “set up a container for macros, rules, and tags.” This simply gives your tags and related data an online hub.

After setting up a container, you can choose from the options provided to designate descriptions for the types of data to be collected. Be sure to select those that are most closely related to the kind of information you need. Once your container is set, you’ll be given an installation code that should be copied and pasted into the code of your website.

Step 2: Google Analytics Account Setup

With the kinds of analytics data you want to be collected clearly defined, you can now go to the GA platform and create a new account. Input the basic identifying information about your website, then select the industry that comes closest to that of your hospital or clinic’s operations.

Next you need to choose a time zone. Don’t skip this step, as it is critical to making sure your data is collected and reported at the times you desire.

Once your GA account is created, you’ll be given a tracking ID. This ID is used to identify a proper destination for information each time GA sends it your way. Be sure to never share this with anyone.

Step 3: Build Your Tags with Google Tag Manager

You now have your GA account ready to collect data and your Google Tag Manager container prepared to organize your tags. The next step is to program your Google Tag Manager account for the specific types of data that should be gathered.

With Google Tag Manager, you no longer need to manually assign tags to each article, picture, or other element on your website. That’s because this platform will automatically assign tags for you, based on what you specify on this platform.

From now on, when you want to use a new tag, select “Add a new tag” in the dashboard and provide two kinds of information:

·       Configuration

·       Triggering

Configuration will tell Google Tag Manager where your analytics data should be sent upon collection. Triggering will specify what data variables to single out for collection.

To make this process as easy as possible, select “Universal Analytics.” You will be presented with a list of options for data variables, and you can choose those that are most important to you.

Step 4: Decide How You’ll Measure Performance

Now head to the dashboard of the GA account that you created and define the goals that will help you measure your website’s performance. GA will know exactly what information to set aside about your visitors, and when to transmit that data after you clearly specify these benchmarks.

Select “Admin” to get started. Then select an item from the list that is the closest match for each of your goals.

Step 5: Connect Google Search Console to Your GA Account

Finally, connect Google Search Console to your GA account (GSC). GSC will work alongside GA and Google Tag Manager by showing you how Google evaluates the traffic to your website.

With GSC, you can see when the Google Algorithm crawls your website and what data it collects. You’ll gain a better grasp on your ranking by understanding the analytics that Google uses to produce it.

This information will help you optimize your website static pages and dynamic content with keywords and phrases that are used in searches related to your industry. The more you apply this data in developing your website and content, the more traffic you’ll get.

Enhance Your Hospital or Clinic Marketing Strategy Together

Armed with these tools and the accurate analytics data that they provide, you’ll be able to generate more leads for your hospital or clinic. For best results, be sure to provide your staff with access to your GA account so they can see the data. Then everyone can put their heads together to create a marketing plan that brings more clients to your practice. 

[Links

 1. http://103.38.12.142:8081/jspui/bitstream/123456789/159/1/Marketing%20Without%20Advertising%2C%20Michael%20Phillips%2C%20Salli%20Rasberry%20-.pdf

Phillips, M., et. al., “Marketing Without Advertising, 3^rd Edition”, 2021.

2.  https://www.jmir.org/2021/12/e23210/

Taylor, K., et. al., “Impact of Medical Blog Reading and Information Presentation on Readers’ Preventative Health Intentions: Mixed Methods, Multistudy Investigation”, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Vol. 23, Number 12, December 2021.

Sources:

https://blog.alconost.com/en/doctorbormental

https://www.anvilinsights.com/case-studies/cincinnati-childrens-hospital

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9306384?hl=en

https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/3281060?hl=en

https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-set-up-google-analytics/

]