Case studies / Healthcare
Home care · Paid media, social & landing pages1,322 leads. 201 of them became clients.
Most agencies would report the first number. Anchor Health Homecare needed the second, so we tracked every enquiry through to whether it became an actual case, including the 415 that didn't. Cost per lead was $16.44. Cost per client was $108.
A trusted home care provider almost nobody could find.
Anchor Health Homecare Services delivers in-home care for homebound and pediatric patients across New York, working with Medicaid, Medicare and private-pay families.
The care was well regarded, but the digital presence barely existed: no meaningful social footprint, no structured paid acquisition, and landing pages that weren't built for the enquiry they needed to produce.
A lead is an enquiry. A client is a case.
In home care the gap between those two things is enormous. Someone calls about a parent, and whether it becomes a case depends on eligibility, payer approval, geography, the level of care required, and whether the family is ready to proceed at all. Report the enquiry count and you've told the agency almost nothing about what its marketing produced.
1,322 enquiries at $16.44.
Accurate, easy to produce, and the number every platform hands you. It's also roughly seven times better than the number the business actually runs on, which means budget decisions made against it are made against the wrong figure.
- Leads 1,322
- Cost per lead $16.44
- Outcome tracked No
- What the client learns Volume
201 clients at $108.
Every enquiry followed through the client's intake process and recorded as converted, pending or lost. Six and a half times the cost per lead, and the only number that can be weighed against what a home care client is actually worth.
- Clients 201
- Cost per client $108.13
- Losses recorded 415
- What the client learns Where to spend
A trusted provider almost nobody could find.
Anchor Health Homecare Services delivers in-home care for homebound and pediatric patients across New York, working with Medicaid, Medicare and private-pay families.
The care was well regarded. The digital presence barely existed: no meaningful social footprint, no structured paid acquisition, and landing pages that weren't built for the enquiry they needed to produce.
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The decision is emotional and rarely made alone
Families arranging care for a child or a parent are usually in a difficult moment, often coordinating between siblings, and choosing something they'd rather not need. Advertising that reads as transactional in that context fails, however well targeted.
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Eligibility decides more than interest does
Payer coverage, hours authorised, service area and level of care determine whether an enquiry can become a case at all. That filtering happens after the click, which is why lead counts overstate performance so badly in this category.
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No social presence to build trust against
A family checking whether a provider is real finds its social profiles. Empty ones answer that question the wrong way.
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Enquiries arrived by phone as often as by form
Roughly half of all leads came as calls. Without call tracking, half the account's performance would have been invisible.
Five parts, measured as one system.
Paid search, paid social, organic social and landing pages, all reported against the same outcome.
Track forms and calls to the same place
Contact form submissions and call tracking feeding one record, then followed through the client's intake process to converted, pending or lost. Half the enquiries came by phone, so anything less would have measured half the account.
A cost per client, not just a cost per lead.
Google Ads for families already searching
Search campaigns reaching people actively looking for home care: service-specific, geographically bounded to the areas Anchor could actually serve, and written for someone in a difficult moment rather than someone comparing products.
4,375 clicks across 222,408 impressions.
Facebook and Instagram for families not searching yet
Paid social reaching people earlier in the decision, often an adult child considering care for a parent before they'd started looking. Clicks came in at roughly half the cost of search, which is what makes paid social work in this category despite lower intent.
4,794 link clicks from 165,504 people reached.
Landing pages built for the enquiry
Pages structured around what a family actually needs to know: what's covered, which areas are served, who provides the care, and what happens after they call. Built and maintained so paid traffic landed somewhere designed to convert it.
638 form submissions alongside 684 calls.
Organic social to make the brand checkable
Consistent branded content and active community management across platforms, built from nothing. Not a lead channel in its own right, a trust layer, so that a family checking whether Anchor was a real, active provider found evidence that it was.
Instagram from 0 to 850 followers organically.
Every lead, followed to an outcome.
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January$4,892 spend · 345 leads · 58 clients$84.35 Per client
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February$5,193 spend · 311 leads · 43 clients$120.77 Per client
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March$4,395 spend · 244 leads · 29 clients$151.54 Per client
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April$2,627 spend · 182 leads · 33 clients$79.60 Per client, cheapest
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May$4,627 spend · 240 leads · 38 clients$121.76 Per client
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Total$21,733 spend · 1,322 leads · 201 clients$108.13 Per client
Alongside those 201 clients, the reporting recorded 124 enquiries still pending and 415 recorded as lost. Tracking the losses is what made the conversion rate real rather than assumed.
April is the interesting month
April 2020 was the first full month of pandemic lockdown, and home care was in the middle of it. Budget came down to $2,627, roughly half the previous month, and lead volume fell with it.
But conversion to client rose to 18.1%, the highest of the period, at $79.60 per client, the cheapest. Half the spend, fewer enquiries, and the best cost per actual case in five months.
Nobody would have seen that on a lead report. On lead volume alone, April looks like the worst month of the year. Measured on clients acquired, it was the best, because the families still enquiring during a lockdown were the ones who genuinely needed care now.
That's the argument for tracking through to the outcome, in one month of data.
Four things for any service business.
Track the losses, not just the wins
A conversion rate calculated without recorded losses is a guess. 415 lost enquiries is what made 201 clients a real number rather than an optimistic one.
Count calls or measure half your account
Roughly half of all enquiries here arrived by phone. In any business where people call rather than fill in forms, an account without call tracking is being optimised on partial data.
Cheap leads can be expensive clients
March had a reasonable cost per lead and the worst cost per client of the period. The two numbers move independently, and only one of them pays the bills.
Some channels are trust, not acquisition
Organic social didn't generate the leads and shouldn't be credited with them. It made the brand checkable, which matters enormously when someone is choosing care for a family member.
What went into it.
Seven of our services, across a one-year engagement.
Other healthcare accounts.
Do you know what a client costs you, or just a lead?
Those two numbers were six and a half times apart here, and they move independently: the month with the best cost per lead wasn't the month with the best cost per client. Give us read-only access to your ad accounts and intake data and we'll show you both. Findings are yours to keep either way.
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