The challenge
MHA faced three main challenges:
1. Identifying the marketing channels effectively driving valuable enquiries
MHA had previously struggled to understand and gain a holistic view of attribution reporting, especially for telephone calls, making it difficult to assess the return on investment (ROI) of different marketing channels.
2. Cutting through the noise of unwanted calls and reducing wasted ad spend
Google pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns were generating unwanted calls from recruiters and other businesses, making it difficult to prove the effectiveness of their marketing efforts in driving care placement enquiries. As a charity, MHA was concerned about wasting marketing budget and wanted to ensure their ad spend was used as efficiently as possible.
3. Difficulty tracking telephone call conversions and outcomes
It was a struggle to know what telephone calls were about and nearly impossible to follow them through their customer relationship management (CRM) system to understand if they converted. MHA aimed to move to a multi-touchpoint view and properly weight all the marketing channels that influenced a conversion.
The solution
“We had several key primary objectives for using Mediahawk. These objectives were centred around gaining a deeper understanding of our marketing performance, enhancing our targeting capabilities, reducing inefficient spending, and ultimately driving more relevant care placement enquiries and move-ins,” says Ashley.
- Dynamic call tracking: Mediahawk’s dynamic number insertion (DNI) allows MHA to track calls back to specific marketing channels, campaigns, and keywords. This gives them clear attribution data, so they can see which marketing efforts are driving valuable enquiries.
- AI-powered Speech Analytics: This gives them deeper insights into phone conversations without needing to listen to every call. It also helps them categorise calls easily, identify trends, and refine their marketing strategy based on real customer interactions.
- Interactive voice response (IVR): MHA mapped their IVR options to conversion events, with care placement enquiries as their key metric. By integrating this data with GA4 and Google Ads, they could provide Google with a more precise ‘care seeker’ persona, improving ad targeting and reducing wasted spend.
- PowerBI and CRM integration: Pushing Mediahawk data into PowerBI and their CRM system (Caresys), allows them to link phone enquiries to move-ins so they can track ROI more effectively and move towards a more comprehensive multi-touch attribution model.
The results
MHA has achieved significant early successes with Mediahawk, particularly in improving campaign efficiency and lead quality.
“By feeding data from Mediahawk into Google Ads, our targeting is much more effective,” says Ashley. “We’re making sure our budget is being spent as efficiently as possible and reducing wasted ad spend.” He adds, “That’s a key point for us. Because we’re a charity it’s even more important that we make our budget stretch as far as it can possibly go to achieve success.”
32% reduction in Google Ads cost per acquisition (CPA)
By refining their audience targeting, MHA reduced their CPA by 32%, ensuring a more efficient allocation of their advertising budget.
“We set up conversion events in GA4 based on IVR options. This allows Google’s algorithm to identify and target high-intent care seekers, leading to more relevant enquiries. For example, IVR option one is for care placement enquiries, and this is our key conversion event. This data is then shared with Google Ads.”
Sending their high-value conversions into GA4 allows their Google Ads campaigns, particularly Performance Max, to be more refined when serving ads in the future, targeting individuals with characteristics similar to those making care placement enquiries.
“By feeding data from Mediahawk into Google Ads, our targeting is much more effective. We’re making sure our budget is being spent as efficiently as possible and reducing wasted ad spend. That’s a key point for us. Because we’re a charity it’s even more important that we make our budget stretch as far as it can possibly go to achieve success.”
– Ashley Toon, Digital Marketing Manager, MHA
Filtering out unwanted calls
By tracking conversions at the IVR level, they significantly reduced irrelevant calls – such as supplier and recruiter enquiries – that had previously skewed their Google PPC results. This refinement has been instrumental in reducing their CPA from PPC.
Better lead attribution insights
MHA has gained clearer visibility into their attribution by integrating Mediahawk data with their PowerBI reporting dashboard and Caresys.
“By linking call data with CRM records, we can identify the original marketing source of an enquiry that came through a phone call via Google or Facebook, for example. This has allowed us to better link calls to enquiries and move-ins, providing a more accurate measure of marketing ROI,” says Ashley. “It’s given us a clearer insight into the channels that are producing leads and those that aren’t. We get a full view of how many enquiries Google Ads is generating, for instance, and how many move-ins those enquiries result in, so we can get a clear return on investment on the various marketing channels that we’re using.”
These improvements have strengthened MHA’s ability to optimise their marketing spend, gain deeper insight into their campaign performance, and attract more high-quality enquiries for their care homes.