Attribution From Ads

[OddProjectsCo]

It sounds like you are seeking ‘multi-channel attribution’. There’s lots of options out there – northbeam, triplewhale, dreamdata, etc. They take paid advertising, organic traffic, sales outreach, etc. and bridge them together in a unified system that statistically models how likely a lead came from each touch. All have their positives and drawbacks, and you’ll probably need to find one that aligns with your rough buget level.

i.e. northbeam is great, but it’s enterprise level and often $30-50k per year. So unless you are getting at least that back in ROI on optimizations to your ads (which likely means high 6 / 7 figure spend) it’s not going to be a good fit. Cheaper ones might have more limitations or drawbacks, but be better budget fits.

That’s where I’d start. Demos from a few of those companies will probably also help you get a better sense of common attribution pitfalls.

[dillwillhill]

It really depends on the rest of your marketing stack.

The other commenter suggested some advanced tools, but your post suggests you’re not even set up with the basics.

Do y’all use a CRM? Do leads come from form submits and phone calls? A scheduler?

Are you appropriately using UTMs?

[Lorathis]

This is consult a knowledgeable digital data attorney familiar with marketing and PII to comply with HIPAA territory.

I’ve worked with medical providers from single location to global enterprise level.

A lot of advanced tracking breaks HIPAA privacy laws so you really need to be familiar with what you can and cannot do.

[TTFV]

You can easily start with GA4 attribution reports to get a better sense of how different channels work together to generate leads for your business.

The other thing you should be doing is ensuring that the correct channel source (last click) is passed through your webform into your CRM. This isn’t the whole story of course but last click attribution is important.

If you need something more comprehensive you can try Funnel, Full Story, or similar to provide more in depth reporting.

Importantly, though, attribution is in the eye of the beholder. For many years advertisers based everything on last click attribution. It was only when Google launched the ability to use other models (we’ve all settled on data driven recently) that we considered user journeys to converting.

But for your specific business you might decide the first clicks are the most important ones by far, or last clicks, or those have equal value while clicks inbetween aren’t very valuable.

[SaltyEmployer]

this is super common, especially in medical + multi-location. a lot of people jump straight to “attribution” tools, but the first thing i’d sanity-check is whether new patients are actually being asked (and logged consistently) how they found you. if that intake step is messy, every downstream metric will look worse than it really is.

also worth setting expectations: google ads will never give you a full picture here. plenty of patients see an ad, don’t click, come back later via brand search or direct, and get counted as “organic.” for this kind of business, what’s usually more useful than perfect attribution is watching how patient volume changes when spend changes, by location and over time. it’s more directional, but it’s often enough to make confident investment decisions.

happy to share what i’ve seen work (and not work) in similar setups if you want to compare notes

[Available_Cup5454]

Pass every booked patient through a single tracked action with unique source parameters so you can match each record back to the exact ad click in your CRM

[ppcwithyrv]

What does your UTM, first click traffic say?

[searchandperch]

How you onboard new patients and/or acquire leads will inform the best methods for attribution.

i.e. phone calls may need a different tool or attribution method from say, a form fill. Walk-ins/foot traffic can complicate it further.

I think a simple “How did you hear about us” on a form, intro call, or intake form is one of the more powerful and under-utilized forms of attribution.

[ManagedNerds]

Before you can think about the best ways to get attribution metrics, consider how you want the potential customers to contact you as a result of the ad.

Do you want the result to be more phone calls? Use a system like callrail to correlate calls to specific sessions on your site.

Do you want the result to be more contact forms? Ensure you configure lead tracking in your contact forms.

There will always be a subset of leads that appear to be organic which were actually a result of the ad. A way to capture some of that would be to have ad landing pages that are not indexed, so the only way they would be found is via the ad. More complex setups use a different landing page per ad campaign for granular attribution back to a given campaign.

[QuantumWolf99]

You need proper conversion tracking that ties back to actual patient visits not just form fills or calls… most healthcare accounts I work with integrate their scheduling system or CRM with Google Ads so we can see which campaigns drive actual appointments that show up.

The setup is usually Google Ads conversion tracking plus UTM parameters feeding into your CRM… then you can report back offline conversions to Google. Without that closed loop you’re flying blind and wasting budget on campaigns that drive clicks but not real patients.

[telvarin_]

You’re not missing a magic report, you’re missing clean tracking.
You need call tracking + form tracking tied to ad click IDs, not just GA pageviews.
Use unique phone numbers per channel/location and push conversions back into Google Ads.
Until leads are tagged at intake or in your CRM, Ads will always look fuzzy.

[Sonar114]

There are no simple answers for attribution, it’s a whole field to itself. The best solution we found was to install an edge tag and run first click imports.