Growth & Marketing Glossary

Size the opportunity with operational evidence

Market research gathers evidence about people, needs, geography, alternatives, pricing, payers, workforce, capacity, access, and community context. The SBA market-research guide recommends examining demand, market size, location, saturation, pricing, and competitors.

Total addressable market estimates the full defined demand under stated assumptions. Serviceable addressable market narrows that estimate to the services, geography, population, authority, and payer or financial routes the practice could serve. Serviceable obtainable market narrows further to a realistic share under capacity, competition, referral, staffing, timing, and conversion assumptions.

Public population data can provide context. It does not establish diagnosis, ABA need, eligibility, family preference, workforce, coverage, or revenue. Show the date, geography, unit, source, and assumptions behind every estimate.

Define each referral state

A lead is a person or organization that enters a defined marketing or referral workflow. A qualified lead meets prewritten, lawful criteria for a stated next step. Language, disability, AAC, interpreter needs, or accommodation requests should never serve as disqualifying shortcuts.

A referral pipeline tracks records through named states such as received, contacted, information pending, reviewed, conditionally offered, waitlisted by choice, referred elsewhere, withdrawn, or started. A referral conversion rate divides a defined downstream event by the referrals eligible and mature for that event.

A conversion rate can describe any defined funnel transition. Name the event, denominator, clock, maturity rule, duplicate policy, exclusions, and source. Pending records remain visible by age and owner.

Measure acquisition spend honestly

Cost per lead divides defined marketing cost by unique leads attributed under a stated model. Customer acquisition cost divides defined acquisition cost by new customers under a defined entry event and maturity period. In healthcare, “customer” is a management label and should never flatten the client's clinical rights or payer complexity.

Marketing attribution assigns credit for an outcome to one or more touchpoints. First-touch, last-touch, and multi-touch models can support budgeting. They do not prove that a campaign caused a referral or start.

Match spend, people, services, sites, and time periods. Keep duplicate contacts, existing clients, partner referrals, pending cases, capacity holds, and payer barriers in explicit states.

Make local discovery accurate and accessible

Local search engine optimization improves how a practice's accurate local information can be found in search. A Google Business Profile manages eligible business information in Google Search and Maps.

Google's Business Profile guidelines require accurate representation and specify eligibility rules for physical and service-area businesses. A profile does not prove licensure, payer participation, capacity, or clinical fit.

Google's SEO Starter Guide recommends useful, organized content and clear site structure. Write location and service pages for people. Keep names, addresses, hours, phone numbers, service areas, and accessibility information consistent and current.

Use outreach to build trusted routes

Community outreach is relationship-building with families, advocates, schools, healthcare professionals, community organizations, and other partners. It can improve understanding and referral quality when the practice listens, discloses its role, avoids inducement concerns, and provides useful information.

Track the partner, audience, purpose, materials, accessibility, cost, follow-up, referrals, and concerns. Do not turn a community event into clinical screening without the authority, privacy, consent, and qualified roles that screening requires.

Provide referral partners with current service, geography, access, intake, capacity, and contact information. Retire materials when any of those facts change, and record which partners received the correction.

Govern reviews and testimonials

An online review is public feedback posted about a business or service. A patient testimonial is a client or family statement used in marketing. The FTC advertising FAQ says objective claims need a reasonable basis before dissemination and health or safety claims generally require competent and reliable scientific evidence.

The FTC's reviews and endorsements hub covers the Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, Endorsement Guides, and review-fairness guidance. Do not create or buy fake reviews, condition incentives on positive sentiment, suppress reviews deceptively, or use a testimonial to make an unsupported outcome claim.

For a covered entity, HHS HIPAA marketing guidance explains when PHI use or disclosure for marketing requires authorization and identifies exceptions. A public reply should not confirm that a reviewer is a client or disclose service facts.

A mature referral example

A fictional practice locks 25 unique referrals whose 30-day review window ended. Twenty receive an accessible human response within the target, or 20/25, 80%. Fifteen complete decision review. Nine receive conditional service offers, so reviewed-referral offer conversion is 9/15, 60%, while original-cohort offer reach is 9/25, 36%.

Report the ten open reviews by age and next action. Keep offer, family acceptance, clinical recommendation, payer authorization, staffed start, first claim, adjudication, and payment separate. The campaign associated with a referral is attribution evidence, rather than causal proof.

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