How to Drive More Healthcare Appointment Calls With Google Business Profiles

Though Google Business Profiles (FKA Google My Business) is one of the biggest drivers of local leads, most healthcare businesses set up their listings and then forget them. Unlike Google Ads, organic search, or other channels that marketers continually update, the success of Google Business Profile listings is often left to chance.

It’s a common mistake, but one you don’t need to make. There are optimization levers you can pull to drive more engagement and patients from Google Business Profiles, especially when it comes to phone calls. Calls are often the most valuable conversions from Business Profiles — many people searching for providers, specialists, or specific office locations call to schedule appointments or get more information about the practice. 

Phone Calls Are Popular Conversions From Google Business Profiles

According to Google, nearly half of all searches are for local information, and there has been a sharp increase in local searches for terms like “where to buy” and “available near me” over the last two years. These local searches drive a ton of actions: Google has said that search results showing local businesses drive over 2 billion monthly phone calls, website clicks, direction requests, and other connections. 

Google Business Profiles remain one of the biggest drivers of phone calls to businesses, especially when the search takes place on a smartphone: 

• 60% of consumers said they overwhelmingly prefer to engage with Google Business Profiles by calling vs. other methods (BrightLocal)
• Consumers using mobile search to find businesses are 39% more likely to call the business (Google) 
• Phone calls to businesses convert to customers 3x more than web clicks (Google) 

These calls can be one of the biggest sources of new patient appointments. Driving more calls from Business Profiles — and converting a higher percentage of them to appointments — would have a huge impact on revenue growth and new patient acquisition. 

Strategies to Drive More Appointment Calls From Google Business Profiles

If you want to acquire more new patients from calls from Google Business Profiles, consider these strategies:

1. Drive More Calls by Driving More Engagement With Your Listings

• Post Photos: By posting photos of your locations, products, services, events, staff, and customers, you’re more likely to generate calls. 
• Solicit and Reply to Customer Reviews: People carefully consider online reviews before selecting a provider. Be sure to respond to reviews promptly — it shows potential patients that you value their business.
• Post Content Regularly: We all know social media pages enable marketers to post content to drive engagement but so do Google Business Profile listings. The number of posts you make on your profile is a factor in improving your ranking in local searches.
• Drive More Calls With Local Search Ads: If Google Business Profiles is a good source of phone leads for your business, you can test investing in Google local search ads to boost call volumes, especially to locations that aren’t getting as many calls. Local search ads appear at the top of Business Profile results, increasing their visibility and likelihood of driving a call or other conversion.

2. Attribute Phone Call Conversions From Your Google Business Profile Listings to Measure Results

Marketers must get attribution and analytics on the phone calls from local listings to understand their volume and value. Insights from those calls provide the foundation for many of the marketing actions you can take to convert more callers to patients and revenue. 

A conversation intelligence solution like Invoca can provide you with that data. When someone calls from your Google Business Profile listings, Invoca correctly attributes the call, captures identifiers and data about the caller (such as phone number, name, location, and device), and connects that data to their call experience and conversation with your business, analyzing if the call was answered, if the caller is a marketing lead, if they converted on the call, and more.

You can view reports on how your listings drive calls that convert to appointments in Invoca. Comparing the volume and value of Google Business Profile calls to other channels like Google Ads and SEO helps you understand the total impact of your search marketing, and activating Invoca call data in tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Salesforce enables you to analyze online and call conversion results together to see what drives the best results.

3. Take Control of Call Routing to Improve Experiences and Conversions

Driving phone leads from Google Business Profile is only the first step — you still have to provide the right experience to convert them. What the right experience is, however, can depend on when, where, and why a person is calling and the options your business has to assist them. 

Marketers can use Invoca to take control of call routing and automate the right experiences at scale using two options:

• IVR: An IVR is an automated phone menu that asks callers questions to determine how to route them, provides information and answers to common questions, and more. Invoca makes it easy for marketers to build and modify your own IVRs without help from IT.
• Rule-Based Call Routing: Marketers can set up their own rules within Invoca to use any data points they choose to route each caller automatically to the best location to assist them.

Popular call routing options for calls from Google Business Profiles include:

• Routing New Patient Calls Differently Than Existing Patient Calls: Many multi-location healthcare businesses also have a call center and prefer to have new appointment-related calls handled by one and existing patient calls by the other. Or they may have agents in their call centers that specifically handle one type of call. You can use Invoca’s IVRs to qualify if the caller is a new patient opportunity or an existing patient and then route them to the best location or call center agents to assist.
• Routing Calls by Day and Time: Calls can be routed differently based on when the call is placed. If calls come in when an officeis closed, for example, you can have them automatically routed to an open location or call center to assist. 
• Routing Calls by Caller Location: Invoca can route callers by their ZIP code to get them to the best location.

4. Segment Callers Into Audiences to Improve Digital Advertising Results

When consumers call your business from Business Profile listings, those phone conversations can tell you each caller’s intent, urgency, interest, stage in the patient journey, and more. By capturing the caller’s phone number as their identifier and insights from the conversation automatically, Invoca enables you to segment Business Profile callers into the best audiences for your digital advertising campaigns. For example:

• Retargeting: For callers who are good leads but didn’t convert on the call, retarget them with search, social, and display ads for the service they called about. Consider providing a special offer to incentivize these good leads to choose you over your competitors.
• Upsells, Cross-Sells, and Lookalikes: For phone leads that converted to patients, put them into upsell or cross-sell ad campaigns if you have other products or services to sell them. You might also add them to lookalike campaigns to extend your reach and generate engagement from new prospects resembling your best phone leads.
• Exclusions: For callers whose conversations show they aren’t potential patients, add them to your exclusion lists so you don’t serve them ads. Why waste ad budget retargeting someone who called to inquire about a job or to solicit business? You might also exclude callers who converted on the call if you have nothing else relevant to sell to them. 

5. Acquire More Patients by Reducing Unanswered Calls at Locations

No matter how well your marketing generates phone leads, it won’t matter if your locations aren’t answering the phone. Invoca enables you to monitor location call handling performance and identify issues in your call channel. You can view the number of total calls your marketing channels sent to each location within a selected timeframe, how many of those calls were answered, how many were leads, how many were successfully converted during the call, and more.

You should review these reports regularly to ensure call handling issues aren’t impacting your results. If you see that a location is having problems answering calls, you can also use Invoca reports to diagnose the reason why, including:

• Call Volume Is Too High: See if you are sending them an unusually high volume of calls that are impacting their ability to assist callers efficiently.
• Too Many Non-Sales Calls: For the calls they do answer, is a low percentage of them actual leads? The location might be spending too much time dealing with non-lead calls while good leads are hanging up or going to voicemail.
• Too Many Calls Occur When Locations Are Closed: Understanding if missed calls are happening when the location is closed can help you form a plan to fix the issue.

You can take action once you’ve diagnosed the reasons behind the issue. For example:

• If missed calls occur when the location is closed, set up rules to reroute calls during closed times to a call center, open location, or IVR to assist.
• If missed calls occur when the location is open, work with the location to ensure they are properly staffed to answer calls. If the location gets slammed with too many calls to handle efficiently, reroute a percentage of calls (or a specific type of call, such as support calls or sales calls) during peak times to other locations or call centers to help. You can also pause any ad campaigns during peak times that are contributing to call overload.

You can also have Invoca email call handling reports to locations to help them understand when and why issues are occurring, along with a list of missed calls to follow up with. Plus you can segment missed calls into audiences to re-engage through digital ad or email retargeting campaigns.

6. Use Insights From Phone Conversations to Improve Conversion Rates

Phone conversations are one of the best sources of intelligence on your patients and location performance. Invoca can record, transcribe, and automatically analyze what’s said on calls in a HIPAA-compliant manner to provide important insights your business can use to improve conversion rates, including:

• Location Call Conversion Performance: Invoca will analyze calls to your locations and score staff performance to measure the criteria that you set, including how well each location greets the caller, follows your scripts, asks callers to schedule an appointment, mentions promotions, and more. Invoca provides reports on which locations do well, which ones need help and the specific areas where they can improve. You can input coaching comments directly in the Invoca interface in specific areas of conversations and tag locations to review the call to improve their performance.
• CX Issues: Invoca can surface calls where a patient experience issue was detected. Is there a problem with your IVR causing callers to abandon the call? Was the caller irate, did they cancel an appointment, and was it the location’s fault? You can share these calls with locations to help mitigate issues costing you patients. 
• New Consumer Trends: Invoca can analyze calls to locations to spot emerging trends to leverage in marketing messaging, location phone scripts, and more. For example, Invoca might detect that many callers that convert mention your new promotion — you can then ensure your ad and website messaging features that promo and your locations use it as levers to convert callers reluctant to move forward.  
• Caller Questions: You can access call recordings and transcriptions in the Invoca platform to understand what questions callers are asking. Adding answers to these questions on your website can help increase SEO visits and convert more website visitors to patients.

Learn More About How Conversation Intelligence Improves Healthcare Marketing Results 

Phone calls are one of the most popular and valuable conversions from Google Business Profiles. Getting the right intelligence on phone calls from Business Profiles — and providing the right experiences to callers — helps marketers increase leads, appointments, customers, and revenue. Conversation intelligence solutions like Invoca can help. 

If you are interested in learning more about Invoca, you can request a personal walkthrough of the Invoca platform and we will show you how it works and answer all your questions.