Back To Case Studies

Overview:

Your Path Counselling (YPC), a counselling service provider based in Victoria, British Columbia, offers individual, couples, and family therapy province-wide. They specialize in treating anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, and stress management. Their team of therapists provides both in-person and virtual/online sessions, focusing on personalized and compassionate care for their clients. The business’s co-founders created this business to provide mentorship and opportunities for new therapists to build important professional experience while also allowing for more accessible therapy to the public.

Challenge:

Zero Historical Ads Data

This was a relatively new practice with no past marketing efforts. While the co-founders had extensive years of experience in the space and had built their own practices through word-of-mouth and organic efforts, this new joint venture we were going to have to build from scratch.

No Baseline Sales Funnel Data

No baseline sales funnel data to learn and build from (e.g., lead to close ratios, in-person vs. online close rates).

No Lead Nurturing Infrastructure

Advertising rules within the healthcare space are also restrictive, so we were not able to use audiences for remarketing purposes or channels like YouTube.

Strategy & Execution:

Phase 1 - Test, Get Leads, Get Data, Repeat (3 months)

Localized Targeting

Based on our experience in similar industries, we know that typically local businesses can see a spike of anywhere from 15-35% in conversion rates when ads and landing pages show the user’s location. Understanding this, we opted to start with very localized ads within a 5km radius of their main office. This allowed us to test with the highest intent users and quickly address any abnormally low KPIs before expanding our efforts.

Form vs. Matchmaker Call To Action (CTA)

Some of our research indicated that one of the major reasons someone did not start the process of choosing a therapist was uncertainty as to who or what type of therapy would be a good fit for them. We tested a standard input form vs. a questionnaire. After many rounds of testing, we landed a questionnaire being the best option. After further testing varying length questionnaires and types of questions, we were able to identify the right length (7 questions) that reassured the user they would be matched with the therapist who was the best fit (we called it matchmaking).

Long vs. Short Form Landing Pages

Different content and industries have different response rates to various lengths of landing pages. We tested both long and short-form landing pages as well as various creatives and copy.

Email Marketing (Lead Nurturing)

We set up a fully automated email marketing lead nurturing system that continued to follow up with leads until they booked a meeting with a counsellor. Testing email copy, headlines, and frequency were all critical components that were tested.

Phase 2 - Optimize & Scale (Months 3-6)

After ongoing testing in phase 1, we were able to address our initial challenges. We had some Google/Microsoft Ads data, a lead nurturing system in place, and now had baseline sales funnel data including lead to close ratios for both online and in-person inquiries. Key learnings included:

1. Matchmaker outperformed standard forms (significantly)
2. Long-form landing pages proved more effective
3. Online session bookings converted to leads at a higher rate than in-person session inquiries
4. In-person leads converted to booked meetings at a higher rate than online session inquiries
5. Established an effective frequency and messaging for email lead nurturing campaigns

These learnings allowed us to identify gaps in the marketing and sales funnel, establish reasonable baselines, and from this point, optimize and scale based on the results we had in the first 3 months. We scaled our geo-targeting to the entire province of British Columbia (for online session inquiries only), while continuing to test various components of our strategy.

Results:

We compared the results of the end of phase 2 (month 6) vs. our results at the end of phase 1 (month 3) to see if there were improvements or if we could at least maintain KPIs as we scaled budget and geography. Some of the key results were:

1. 62% Increase in Qualified Leads: Our split testing of ads, landing pages, CTAs, and email marketing allowed us to identify winners and ultimately increase leads.
2. 134% Increase in Lead to Booked Meetings Ratio: Working with YPC to hone our strategy on how to nurture leads and also using the questionnaire as a pre-qualifier and our email marketing efforts, helped increase our leads to meetings booked ratio.
3. 163% Increase in New Clients: With improved ratios for booked meetings, and the volume of qualified leads being strong, YPC was able to see a noticeable surge in closed business (new clients) and subsequently improved revenue.

Platforms Leveraged:

Google Ads
Microsoft Ads
ActiveCampaign (Email Marketing, CRM)
Unbounce (Landing Page Builder)
JotForms (Questionnaire Builder)