Measurement + decisions
Know what to fix before spending more
A practice marketing scorecard that ends with one useful action
A weekly scorecard and decision sheet for inquiries, bookings, visits and costs.
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For owners + practice managers
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- Define the numbers
Keep inquiries, bookings and attendance distinct.
- Read the pattern
Use the worked example and blank scorecard.
- Choose the action
Give the next decision an owner and a review date.
A practical companion to Build a Growth Dashboard That Shows What to Do Next
When inquiries are coming in but appointments are not following, you need to know where the journey is getting stuck before spending more. This scorecard helps you distinguish a response problem, an availability constraint and a measurement gap, then assign one useful action.
A quick example: 24 people scheduled out of 40 inquiries is 60%. If 18 have attended and four appointments are still ahead, calling the other six “no-shows” points your team at the wrong problem. The completed example below shows how to keep those distinctions visible.
Use the definition sheet, blank scorecard and meeting agenda to turn the numbers into a decision. The completed example shows the arithmetic; the decision record makes sure someone owns the next step.
Start with two different views
The work queue shows what needs attention now: unanswered requests, upcoming appointment capacity and unresolved tasks. It is a current snapshot.
The inquiry cohort follows the same group of people from their first inquiry through later stages. It answers how that group progressed. Give it an entry period and an observation cutoff. Recent people may not have had time to attend; show that explicitly.
Do not divide all visits attended this week by all inquiries received this week and label it an inquiry-to-attendance rate. Those may be different people. Weekly activity counts remain useful when they are honestly labelled as activity counts.
Define your counting rules once
| Item | Working definition to agree with your team |
|---|---|
| Unique inquiry | A new person making a relevant administrative inquiry during the entry period. Deduplicate repeated submissions using approved systems. Define how existing-patient requests are excluded. |
| Contacted | A two-way exchange with the person, not merely an automated acknowledgment or an unanswered call. If your definition differs, name it. |
| Scheduled | At least one confirmed first appointment for that person in this cohort. A request alone is not scheduled. |
| Attended | The scheduled first visit actually occurred, as recorded by the practice. |
| Began care | The practice's explicitly defined administrative milestone after attendance. Do not equate it with clinical success. Omit if not consistently recorded. |
| Pending | A known next step has not happened by the cutoff, such as a future appointment. |
| Unknown | The record does not establish the outcome. Never silently change this to failed. |
| Attributed media spend | Spend assigned to the cohort's acquisition period and source using the stated attribution rule. |
| Collected revenue | Money actually collected for the defined cohort and time window, with refunds handled consistently. It is not profit. |
Counts for “contacted,” “scheduled,” “attended” and “began care” overlap as milestones. Do not add them as if they were separate people. If you need mutually exclusive current statuses, create a separate status view.
Assemble the scorecard
Write the date and source next to every section. If two systems disagree, record the discrepancy and owner instead of selecting the more flattering total.
Blank weekly sheet
Meeting date: ______ Prepared by: ______ Decision owner: ______
Cohort entry period: ______ to ______ Observed through: ______
Included sources: ______ Deduplication rule: ______
| Measure | Count/value | Source and last checked | Context or unresolved issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unique inquiries | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Contacted | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Scheduled | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Attended | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Began care, if defined | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Scheduled for a future date | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Unknown outcome | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Attributed media spend | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Other included acquisition costs | ____ | ____ | ____ |
| Collected revenue through cutoff | ____ | ____ | ____ |
Current operations snapshot, separate from the cohort
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| How many new requests have no assigned owner? | ____ |
| How many requests are waiting beyond our own agreed response window? | ____ |
| What first-visit times can the practice actually offer? | ____ |
| What staffing or availability constraint could change this week's plan? | ____ |
| Is any destination, form or response route known to be broken? | ____ |
The formulas
- Inquiry-to-scheduled rate = unique people scheduled ÷ unique inquiries.
- Scheduled-to-attended rate = unique people attended ÷ unique people scheduled.
- Inquiry-to-attended rate = unique people attended ÷ unique inquiries.
- Attended-to-care-start rate = unique people beginning care ÷ unique people attended, only with an agreed definition.
- Media cost per inquiry = attributed media spend ÷ unique inquiries.
- Media cost per attended first visit = attributed media spend ÷ unique people attended.
- Broader acquisition cost per attended first visit = included acquisition costs ÷ unique people attended. List every included cost; do not relabel media-only cost as all-in cost.
When the denominator is zero, show N/A, not 0%. Round consistently. A cohort observed before all scheduled visits occur will have an incomplete attendance rate; keep future appointments visible. No rate in this kit is a universal target.
Completed illustrative example
Entirely fictional practice and figures. These are arithmetic examples, not PowerSURGE client results, forecasts or benchmarks.
Maple Corner Chiropractic reviews inquiries first received September 1–30, observed through October 21. It has a separate live operations snapshot for October 21. The team excludes duplicate submissions and existing-patient appointment changes.
| Cohort measure | Fictional value |
|---|---|
| Unique inquiries | 40 |
| Contacted | 30 |
| Scheduled | 24 |
| Attended by cutoff | 18 |
| Future first appointments | 4 |
| Scheduled but did not attend by cutoff, no future time arranged | 2 |
| Began care, using the team's stated milestone | 12 |
| Unknown outcome among the inquiry cohort | 3 |
| Attributed media spend | $800 |
| Other included acquisition costs | $200 |
| Collections attributed to this cohort through cutoff | $2,400 |
Read the calculation: 24 ÷ 40 = 60% inquiry-to-scheduled. 18 ÷ 24 = 75% scheduled-to-attended as of the cutoff. Four scheduled people have future appointments, so 25% is not a no-show rate. 18 ÷ 40 = 45% inquiry-to-attended. 12 ÷ 18 ≈ 66.7% attended-to-care-start. Media cost per inquiry is $20. Media cost per attended first visit is about $44.44. Including the stated $200 additional cost makes the broader acquisition cost per attended first visit about $55.56.
The $2,400 collections figure is not $2,400 profit. Dividing it by $800 produces a media-only collections/spend ratio of 3.0 for the stated window; that does not establish incremental revenue, lifetime value or financial return after delivery costs. Do not use that ratio as permission to scale.
Current operations observation: three requests await a human reply; two have no backup owner. Only two after-work first-visit slots remain available this week. These facts come from the fictional snapshot, not from the cohort's stage totals.
Decision: fix response ownership before proposing more demand. The front-desk lead assigns a cover role and checks the pending queue at the agreed handoff time. The owner verifies the assignment on Thursday. At the next weekly review, the team checks whether unowned requests recur. This decision is supported by an observed operational gap; it does not claim that ownership alone explains every unbooked inquiry.
Read the pattern before choosing a fix
| Observation | First question | Evidence to inspect | Avoid this shortcut |
|---|---|---|---|
| More inquiries, little two-way contact | Are messages reaching a monitored route? | Routing, ownership and approved response samples | “The audience is bad.” |
| Contact happens, few suitable times agreed | What practical issue is blocking a time? | Aggregated question themes and actual availability | Rewrite every ad before checking capacity. |
| Many future appointments | Has the cohort had time to mature? | Scheduled dates relative to cutoff | Count all not-yet-attended people as no-shows. |
| Reported costs improve, unknowns increase | Did measurement or attribution change? | Definitions, source coverage and deduplication | Celebrate a number with missing outcomes. |
| Attendance is steady, team workload becomes difficult | Can the practice welcome more demand well? | Staffing, appointment capacity and service experience | Scale because one rate looks attractive. |
| Low counts swing sharply | Is this ordinary variation or a repeated issue? | Several comparable cohorts and direct observations | Declare a winner from one small week. |
The scorecard helps you find the next question. It cannot prove what caused a change by itself.
Run a short decision meeting
Before the meeting: one person prepares the sheet; each source owner resolves obvious missing entries. Do not spend the meeting copying numbers.
- Confirm the frame. Read the entry period, cutoff, definitions and any changed measurement rule.
- Protect today's experience. Check broken routes, unowned work and capacity first.
- Inspect one transition. Choose the stage that raises the most useful question. Separate what you observed from your explanation.
- Choose one action. Decide to fix, investigate, maintain or pause a bounded activity. Avoid changing offer, audience, page and response at once if you want to learn what mattered.
- Assign completion evidence. Name who does what, by when, and what must be visible to call the action complete.
Decision record template
Observation: ______
Possible explanation, not yet proven: ______
Other plausible explanation: ______
Next action: ______
Owner / due date: ______
Evidence of completion: ______
What must remain unchanged: ______
Outcome review date and cohort: ______
Result / next decision: ______
Before you share the sheet
- [ ] Same cohort and cutoff used for the stage rates.
- [ ] Unknown and future outcomes visible.
- [ ] Counts reconcile where the definitions require them to.
- [ ] Currency, taxes/refunds treatment and included costs labelled.
- [ ] Collections distinguished from revenue estimates and profit.
- [ ] No patient-level information copied into the marketing document.
- [ ] One action has an owner and evidence of completion.
- [ ] No benchmark, causal claim or forecast invented to fill an empty box.
A useful next conversation
Keep this sheet small enough to use every week. Bring your strongest question, not a perfect-looking dashboard.
If the numbers point to disconnected creative, a confusing destination or an unfinished first response, bring the sheet to The Defibrillator. It is a conversation about a complimentary managed starting point, with practice fit, campaign direction and delivery details confirmed together. The worksheet is self-serve; custom campaign work is a separate next step.
Continue with the original growth-dashboard guide · Read the campaign-economics guide
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A weekly scorecard and decision sheet for inquiries, bookings, visits and costs.
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- 01Complete workshop PDFPDF
8 pages of steps, examples and working guidance.
- 02Working worksheet PDFPDF
6 pages to use in your team’s working session.
- 03Editable MarkdownTEXT
Copy, adapt and keep your own working version.