Digital agencies have something in common with accountants and fitness trainers. On our best days, we all find hidden value.

No one goes to a personal accountant just to file their income taxes. Good accountants also uncover ways to save money and improve your cash flow. They dig into your spending patterns to uncover deductions you didn’t know existed. They may find ways to structure your finances in order to improve your near-term cash flow and protect your long-term future – important, life-changing improvements that you would not have discovered on your own.

The same holds true for fitness trainers, whether you go to a gym or train remotely as millions of people do now. They get to what makes your body tick. Based on their deep knowledge of health and wellness, they uncover little changes in your workout routine and lifestyle that will have a long-lasting impact on your long-term health. Even simple changes like adjusting the setting of your stationary bicycle may have a major impact.

Which brings me to digital agencies. At aha!, we work with healthcare providers that are sitting on a wealth of hidden digital marketing value waiting to be unlocked. We recently helped one of them, Memorial Hermann Health System, improve its customer acquisition efforts, resulting in a 175% higher appointment volume, a 38% decrease in cost per acquisition, and much more.

How?

I’ll tell you one thing we didn’t do: we didn’t blow up what they were doing and start from scratch. We didn’t have to. Memorial Hermann was already operating a largely successful digital customer acquisition effort, including a strong performance marketing program. The healthcare system’s early success led to the expansion of their paid search efforts to build visibility for 14 service lines ranging from neuroscience to heart and vascular.

Memorial Hermann was doing many things right. But the organization knew it could do better. As Memorial Hermann had expanded its digital marketing reach, its paid search performance began to plateau, and its return on ad spend declined. Managing the structure of Memorial Hermann’s Google Ads account and optimizing its website content had become a large resource commitment for the organization’s digital marketing team.

That’s when aha! entered the picture. We got to work taking a deeper look at how the company was structuring its Google Ads account, just like an accountant getting a snapshot of your financial picture or a personal trainer understanding your own physical machinery. For example, we did a detailed audit of how the entire account structure aligned with the consumer journey, ranging from on-site content analysis to keyword research. As part of that process, we identified ways to update Memorial Hermann’s digital content – including its keyword bids, ad copy, and landing pages – to match the evolving ways consumers search.

Our collaboration achieved strong results even at a time when healthcare providers are being rocked by the Covid-19 pandemic. The search engine marketing portfolio on average increased conversions by 80% and decreased cost per acquisition by 31%.

Memorial Hermann didn’t need a do-over. The organization just needed to find ways to get more efficient. The key to our collaboration:

• Memorial Hermann was completely transparent and collaborative. The organization shared data openly and encouraged us to help. Memorial Hermann needed to be transparent in order for aha! to perform an effective audit of its performance.
  
  
• We brought our specialty expertise in customer acquisition and performance auditing to uncover hidden value. We acted like detectives. Having the knowledge of digital marketing was not enough – we also needed to know how to search for ways to make the Memorial Hermann team more effective.

You can read more about our partnership in a newly published case study on our website. The case study goes into more detail about our client’s challenge and how we collaborated. As our case study shows, no digital agency waltzes in and “fixes” anything. We roll up our sleeves and partner. That’s how you unlock hidden value.