7 Common Podiatry Marketing Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Well, welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I am your I am the cohost, Tyson Franklin. And with me today is Jim McDannald. How are you doing today, Jim? You handsome bugger.

Wow. Well, I'm I'm doing much better now. I know. Hopefully, I'm not too read in the video version of the podcast, but I appreciate I'll take all compliments that are coming my way. You know, it looks like you could use a little bit of a shave there,

but I know. I was just looking at that.

But I'm I'm usually the the hairier one of us too, so I'm not one to really, like, make make make too much fun there.

Well, that's why I was about to shave before I came on here, and then I realized, oh, Jim doesn't shave most times. So I think I'm not gonna shave either. And then I'm looking and I'm going, goddamn, I look scruffy, and and you're looking a little bit tidier today. That's why I came up with you. I was gonna call you a handsome bastard, but I but and I've already said it, so I should've just started with it.

Anyway, so what are we gonna talk about today?

Today, we're gonna talk about the seven common podiatry marketing mistakes, and then how people can try to avoid them or create better habits that will lead to more success and to accelerate practice growth. Think there's we've talked about kind of getting started. We've talked about a lot of tactics here recently, but I think it's going be good to go back to some of the basics and just kind of overview some of those things we touched about in other shows, but just really kind of like drill down on like seven things that people can focus on because, you know The top seven. There's so much stuff out. Yeah.

Yeah. The top

seven It's probably about a 50. It's probably a 50 mistakes they make. But I I like the idea of bringing it down to the main seven that if they can address those problems, they're gonna just do so much better in their marketing.

No. For sure.

So why don't we start? What's the first one that you think as rank are these in order of importance, or these are just the top seven not ranked in any particular way?

I would say the last one is probably the most important, and we'll get to that here in a little bit. And we actually touched on it a little while ago, but these other six are just kind of like no specific order. And the first one's really about taking a little bit of time. I think sometimes people don't take enough time to reflect about what they wanna do in their practice, what does their ideal practice look like. There's just really people just lack some self reflection, and they and they in turn, they try to be kind of everything to everyone.

So that's I'd say that's kind of the first mistake.

Yeah. That's what they say. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nobody for no one. Is that what they say? Is that the

that the Nothing to nobody maybe?

Nothing to nobody. Yes. Something like But And it's true. It's it's think about I I read once and I said, what, you know, what is your ideal day look like? And your ideal day is gonna it's not just your ideal patient, but it's like or your ideal clinic.

But what's your ideal day look like? And then your ideal week, your ideal month. So it all comes back to self reflection.

And if if you don't do that though, right, like, you're gonna be starting a practice, you're not gonna be busy. I mean, it's not that you can't, you know, get started and do some things. Maybe you'll want to, like, you know, move move away from down the line. But if you have a clear vision of exactly who you are and what you wanna do, not only does it help you feel good about your day, like you said, like deciding what's a perfect day for you to, you know, look like, but it helps kind of craft how you're gonna talk to other people about what you do. Maybe it's other people in your community, other health care professionals.

You just have to have that kind of self knowledge and kind of know thyself before you just kinda jump in there. And obviously, we we're all kind of, you know, doing some form of, you know, foot and ankle, you know, medicine or health care. And so there is already kind of a niche there. But what is that kind of, like, that niche that's one step further that would make you super amped up and pumped up to go into the office or into the clinic each week?

Yeah. It's funny you should mention it. I had a conversation with a group of podiatrists last night with the Spartans group that I have, and that was a question I asked to be, what's something you you love doing? And I asked each of them individually, what do you love doing? Over anything else, if could see five patients tomorrow, what would what would that patient be like?

And was surprising. I mean, it said, I just love ingrown toenails. And I said, ingrown toenails surgery or just ingrown toenails? And they said, either or. They said, I just love ingrown toenails because you get a result at the end of it.

There's there's yeah. The patient walks out out of pain, whether it was through surgery or just routine care. And I said, okay. That's really cool. So it's a bit your marketing, your last marketing thing.

How much of your last marketing was all based around ingrown toenails? And I oh, hang on. I got to think about that. So that's the thing. And this is where you need to do your self reflection.

It's what do you love doing. And that's if that's what you love doing, then it needs to be in your marketing.

No. That that's a that's a huge component. Right? If you have to kind of show that to the world because no one's just gonna know what you like to do. They're gonna see you as the foot doctor, but they don't know much more beyond that.

So it's it's up to you to really, like, craft that message, to know what you wanna do, and kinda go out there and get it.

Yeah. It's I said to someone once, they tell me what they love doing. I said, if what you love doing was illegal, could I find enough evidence on your website to convict you? And majority podiatrists would get let off. There wouldn't be enough evidence on there to say, yeah, know, that is what they really love doing.

I just can't find it because they gave so broad.

No. It's it's it's you know, when you're just getting started or even in, you know, the way we're taught in podiatry school, it just can be easy just to try to be everything to everybody and just to be a catchall for all foot and ankle problems. But, you know, as you set up that message about who you are and what you do, you're you're able to better attract those kind of ideal clients or those ideal patients to your practice.

Yeah. And once somebody said, like, on this call last night, but what if I don't know what I love yet? And I said, well, that's okay. Then do just do everything until you figure it out. But you might find there may be 10 different aspects of podiatry that you love, but if you had to rank them, you'll find there will be something that's gonna be more towards the top.

But I think a new new podiatrist like, I know when I graduated, I said, I wanna work with elite athletes. This is my thing. I'm gonna work with elite athletes. I'm gonna be a freaking awesome podiatrist for elite athletes. Twelve months later, I'm going, if I get one more elite athlete walk in this clinic, I'm gonna I said, they are the last people that I wanna work with.

They drove me nuts. I'd rather work with Weekend Warriors, but as a student or as a recent graduate, I assumed that's what I wanted to do. And I could've tried to base my whole clinic around that, but initially, it's when I'm gonna broad. This is what I love doing, so I'm gonna push down that. But then I realized I didn't like them.

They're too much hard work.

But I I think that's a great point, though. It's like it's kind of like it's not necessarily just deciding this is it, but testing those ideas or kind of those things you think you might want to do with some real world and then adjust and pivot as time goes on. It's about being flexible, learning who you are, learning what you're doing. It's not just a static thing.

Yeah. So what's next on the top seven of Jim's tips?

So number two, I would say is, you know, once you start making doing some marketing, people sometimes make it all about themselves. Like, them and their training, them and their clinic, them and they do this thing. And while you need to tell people what you do, it's really more about showing the benefits you can provide your patients than it is really like your website to be a resume of the amazing residency or fellowship or podiatry school experience you had. So I think that's really what it's about is to, like, make sure that the marketing that you do, whether it's your website, Google Ads, any kind of thing online or offline, it really needs to lead first with that benefit that you provide people in your community or the patients that come to your practice.

I think that relates to everything in life, though. It'd be no different to somebody talking to you about marketing or or someone coming to me, you know, wanting to do business coaching. It's how can I help them is the important part? I don't care what I've done or what I can do. It's how can I help them?

So if that's how they would choose a a business coach or other things in their life, then you they gotta realize the patients are thinking the same thing. How can you help me? So please tell me.

Yeah. It's almost kinda like they call it what's servant leadership or steward leadership, where it's really like people are coming to you for help and assistance, and, like, that that is kind of what the the service you provide people. So when you're able to show that in your marketing, that it's not just like, look at me. I'm the foot surgeon. You know, like, obviously, you wanna, like, show you treating specific types of patients and showing your expertise is important on your website, but it is those benefits that you provide your patients that is really gonna, like, speak their language and really connect with them then when they see your website or the marketing that you're doing.

Yeah. I remember a chiropractor here in Cairns. They're not here anymore, so I can talk about them. And they used to send out their monthly newsletter. Used to be hard copy.

And we my wife and I would get it, we would read it and just go, my god. And in the newsletter, it was all about the trip they'd just taken, you know, overseas, the and photos, the new BMW, the matching BMWs they just bought themselves. And the whole news that it was about them, very little was about the patients or how they can help you or what they were doing in the community. It was so centered around them that was to the point of almost being repulsive.

Yeah. Like I said, that's a perfect example of why it should be about the patients and not totally about you.

So what's number three?

Number three is really like so you say you wanna do marketing, you wanna do certain things. This is gonna require a certain amount of, like, work, follow-up, and accountability. And if you don't have a system in place, let's say, maybe it's a member of your staff that's doing it or you're outsourcing it to, like, a marketing expert, you're gonna run into problems because, like, this this is more work. This is something that's not just like all these marketing ways of acquiring new patients or showcasing some of the services you provide. If someone claims it's kinda like set it and forget it, they're kind of selling you a bill of goods because this does take consistent effort, work, refinement, adjusting things on the fly.

So you have to have an accountability system, what either with somebody internal on your team that's reporting to you, showing you what they're doing, how they're making improvements, iterating on it, making it better, or working with kind of a you know, like an industry leader, someone who knows the profession, who you work with and trust and have built trust with over a period of time, to be that person who is working on your behalf. So that that's kind of an important thing because, you know, especially, I would say, like solo practitioners or people that are, you know, solo providers, you've got so many other things going on. If you think you're gonna find some magic marketing solution that just like is an automated flywheel, I'm a little skeptical that that's really possible.

Yeah. It's interesting what you talk about the whole accountability. It's it's no different to when we went through university. The reason they give us exams is to make us accountable. They can't just say, Tyson, we just assume for the last four years, you've actually done the work that you said you were going to do, and now you're qualified.

No. They every semester. Now we'd like you to do these exams just to prove that you have actually been doing the work. Problem is when we get out and we have our own business, this is where I think business coaching is is probably the has the most benefit is it keeps people accountable. Like, I know people that I work with, if they don't do what they're supposed to be doing and they're not getting the results they're supposed to be getting, there's no point of working together.

So but if you're going to do it yourself, you have to you have to be accountable to yourself and and trying to think, yeah, I was accountable at university. So I've been I've been taught for so many years on how to be accountable because as an exam, to me, you should constantly be testing yourself.

No. That's that's an excellent point. I would say also a lot of these different marketing platforms are always changing. They're always, like, adjusting. So, like, it's not like it's it's not that, like, these things can't work kind of as a set it and forget it, but, like, in three months, Google's gonna change something.

Or in six months, like, Apple will change a browser so you can no longer track exactly how that Facebook ad or that Google ad is working. And if unless you're, like, in that in the day to day, like, you may not understand how much of an impact that can have on your practice. So you need to have either someone on your staff that's paying attention to that or work with kind of a, you know, an industry or a, like, a podiatry or marketing expert or someone that, you know, you build a relationship that is in it every day, that knows these little details because it's you know, you can understand 90% of it, but if you can't, you know, understand all of it and be able to really make those adjustments as these platforms are changing, you'll soon be left behind. And the things that worked five years ago or ten years ago, like, those don't work today anymore, and there's a reason why. So you really have to be consistently you have to be on it on a consistent basis with those those changes in these different systems to understand what's working today.

Yeah. If if I went back fifteen years ago and somebody said, what's my number one marketing platform that I use? TV and radio were absolutely awesome for me because TV and radio bank, we didn't have Netflix. We didn't have all the streaming services. So people watched TV.

My and my market watched TV. Now, probably TV and radio. Probably not so much radio because radio can still work in a certain way. But TV, I wouldn't go near it because it's just things have changed so much and people's attention is so different. Somebody posted something the other day in the UK podiatry group and was like, oh, I'm thinking of doing this type of ad.

What's everyone's feedback? And I just wanted to head butt my computer. Because the the comments that were coming through, I'm going, it's more to it than just, I'm just gonna put this ad in here. What does everyone think? And to me, that's what holds people back is they just they're not educating themselves on this sort of stuff.

And they think, oh, if I ask this group, those 10 comments that I got from people, now I've got all the advice I need. And I'm thinking, one some of the comments were actually weren't too bad, but about seven out of the 10 were just rubbish.

Yeah. I I would say that's yeah. I totally agree with that. Because I think sometimes these platforms as well, they try to make it look super easy, so it makes it feel like it's gonna be this this thing where, like, all I have to do is one thing and I'll have success. But behind the scenes, it's much more complex on a lot of these different platforms.

You know, the one comment somebody said to them, well, before you do any marketing or whatever magazine that we're gonna go in, and they said to him, who are you targeting? Who is your ideal client? That was the main thing they said. Right. And I think that's a good question to ask, but there's so much more, like, leading up to that, yeah, in the first place because they might have an ideal client.

But if their clinic's not set up to address those ideal clients, they're sort of gonna be wasting their time as well.

Totally agree.

So, Jim, let's move on. What is the the fourth tip?

Yeah. I would say that sometimes people get a little too distracted by bright shiny objects in the marketing world. Right? They kind of lead with FOMO. You know, they see that Snapchat is big or TikTok is big.

And, basically, what happens is that, like we talked about previously, like, the these different channels and these different opportunities require a significant amount of not only work on the front end, but also on the back end to really, like to just keep things going and and make things relevant for your specific audience. So if you go in too many different directions, it's a huge, you know, lack of focus. You're wasting time. And I just, you know, I think this can be it's kinda keeping up with the Joneses in a way. Right?

You see

that this clinic is doing Instagram, so I have to do it. But really what you need to do is back up, gain some focus, how and start with the website. Right? That website is the home base of your entire online presence

for your Exactly.

So, you know, treat it as if it were your physical clinic, as long as you're treating your clinic really well. Yeah. Because that's that's gonna be a lot of people's first impression of who you are, your professionalism, what you do. So instead of trying to do all of the things, focus on just having a killer website that attracts patients, that allows them to easily make appointments, that builds trust in them before they even step in your foot in your clinic. Avoid and at least initially, avoid some of these other channels.

You don't need an amazing website, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat. I don't know. All those different things, like, start off with one solid thing, and then you can build from there. Because if don't have that solid online foundation, this other stuff is is really kind of worthless and waste of time and effort.

Yeah. So a quote that I posted recently was I was gonna rule the world, but then I saw something shiny.

I like that.

And but it's true. Like, I've mentioned that and we've talked about it before where people will do something because it seems really popular at the time. So they'll see another podiatry clinic down the road, and they're doing these really cool videos, and they're pointing at things on the screen that, yeah, these words pop up or and I said they're just going and then you have a look at the people that like it. A majority of them are just other podiatrists who are they're all following each other because they they're afraid I might miss something. But, yeah, to me, I I agree.

Website has gotta be at your forefront. If that is not nailed, you're wasting your time with all the other stuff.

Totally agree.

Because people have Instagram, Facebook, Snapshit, they'll have all that stuff. And then they they and you say, oh, how's your website? Oh, no. I'm still working on that. It's under construction.

Yeah. That that's bad news bears right there.

Bad news bears. Jeez. That's old. Well,

speaking of old, we'll get to the next one, and that is a big mistake is insufficient marketing budget. So Yes. Like, obviously, this is self serving. I want everyone to spend $10,000 a month on podiatry growth marketing services. No.

That that's not it. But some people think that you can you can get an adequate return on an investment for a hundred dollars or $200 a month, and that should be enough. But really, you don't know. I mean, if you live in New York City, if you live in San Francisco, maybe 3 to $4,000 is, like, a median or an average amount. Right?

So it's really one of these things I think that people, they need to kind of find a way to test their marketing budget, to test the threshold. You know, in the previous episode, we talked about what is a reasonable

Yeah.

Way to make a marketing budget, what are some some hard numbers. But I would say that some people just they wanna kind of dip their toe in the water. And if you're dipping your toe, you're probably gonna give yourself a great excuse why marketing doesn't work. Because until you kind of read reach that threshold where your spend meets that return on investment, you really have to be willing to experiment when you when you jump in and do both online and offline marketing.

I agree a %. And you can what I think the the previous episode when we spoke about having your marketing budget and my I used to put a certain percentage back into it. And up until selling my clinic, I did very little online marketing myself because I was in like, I'm in a regional area, and it was being connected with the community was what really drove our business. There were, say, eight other podiatry clinics. We didn't have a lot of competition, so it wasn't and I was always if you Google podiatrists anyway, we were always number one.

We just just dominated. So I'd never had to do a lot of advertising online. These days, though, if we're setting up another clinic, I mean, the whole online side of things is really, really important, and you're gonna get Jack for $200. You're not gonna get you're not gonna get too much at all. But I think what you said is a good point.

You gotta test it out. You might put in a thousand and see what response you get. And I always say, if I invested a thousand and got 10,000 back, I would be putting in 2,000, especially if I was getting 20,000 back. I'll be putting in 3,000 if I was getting 30,000 back. So look at the numbers and and and keep educating yourself in that area.

Well, you still point number six here. Oh, shit. Exactly what point number six is. That's totally okay. But like, it's having a system.

People don't have a system

Oh, double down.

To assess what to what's working and what's not working. Right?

Yeah.

So like you said, you have to kind of test that budget, see what's working, what's not working. When something's working, you double down on it. You just keep on going back to that, testing it out. But just knowing what works and doesn't work is a huge aspect of that. And if you don't have some way of measuring or having a system to kind of write down because, like, you have so many other things going on in your practice, right, and in your life.

Are you gonna remember this ad type, this video ad type versus this photo ad type was what worked and didn't work. You know, it's

not I was just gonna show you something for a sec.

Yeah. Let's take a look.

This is my marketing manual. So you said, well, this this isn't technically the marketing manual, like, on how to do it, but this is just some of the past things that I've tried and the feedback. That's it. That's why this is sounding very echoey now. It's because I'm holding a big folder above my head.

So, yeah, it's it's like, the reason we came up with well, reason I have this is because we did. We tested things. And we would note down when we were doing some form of market, we would note down the marketing sheet what the weather was at the time, whether it was great weather, you know, whether it was really bad weather because the weather effect we we found the weather, the temperature, the time of the year, so many things influenced our marketing. And that was whether you were doing offline or online. There were so many other variables.

So I think the more information you can gather, you can always throw it away if you don't need it, but you've really gotta gather the information and feedback.

Yeah. That that was cool to see that folder. That thing is that's a thick that's a thick folder there.

It's I tell you, I well, what we used to do each year, at the end of I used to create a folder for each year. Then at the end of each year, we'd block out two days, and I would sit down. I used to hire this room that was all had bean bags and everything in there, a desk for for your computer, and all the walls you could actually write on them. And so we would hire the roommate for two days. I'd with all my marketing folders, and I sit there and I'd flick through everything from going back ten, fifteen years, what worked, what didn't work, results, and I'd be recording everything.

It was like a beautiful mind. I'd just be writing all this stuff up on the walls, and I'd do this for two days, and then I'd take all photographs of the wall, and that was my plan for pretty much the next year. And that's just how I did things. Awesome. And I'm just a a stickler for KPIs and statistics.

And and to me, there's no point gathering information if you're not gonna use it.

No. It's huge in in making good decisions.

So what is Jim's number one mistake in the top seven?

Maybe it's a this is a mistake because it's something I I I myself am guilty of. I'm not a despite, you know, how I sound on this podcast, I'm not a perfect person. And I don't have all the answers, but I know that the thing that is gonna separate a lot of people and make them really great and successful in their own practice and in life and in relationships and whatever you're gonna do is consistency. Just being consistent with your marketing, being consistent with your messaging, it's not that it can't change, but when you're when you're basically consistently putting yourself out there, you know, you're not marketing for a month and then going away for six months. Yeah.

Or you're not like saying, oh, this month, I'm gonna be a sports medicine podiatrist, and then next month, I'm gonna be a, you know, a a wound specialist or something. Right? You can make some gradual changes over time, but it's just consistently putting in the work, consistently hammering home on your message, consistently, like, utilizing different forms of marketing to help grow your practice. Those are the things that makes people successful. So I think when people lack that consistency, they're kind of all over the map or they're just they don't have those things nailed down or, like, you know, not consistent about some of those previous things we talked about, that's when people really run into trouble.

You know, if you're if you're working hard on a consistent basis and doing the right things, I think success will come.

Consistency is the key for everything, whether it's your health, your relationship, your your business, the relationship with your team. It's really been consistent with with everything. And, yeah, I even found ourselves. Whenever we did a a campaign, anything we were gonna be marketing, we had it in place. It was gonna run for six to eight weeks.

That was the campaign. And what we were really pushing was gonna be at the forefront on our website. Any online and offline marketing that we were doing, it was the same message that we were pushing out there. Then before that campaign finished, that's why it'd be six to eight weeks because we'd be basing it on the numbers to see how it went. We already had the next campaign campaign worked out.

So when that one finished, the next one started. So we would have throughout the year, you could have, say, six to maybe eight different campaigns as the year went on. But some of the the but you might be repeating them. So there's probably only three campaigns, but we would be rotating them as we went. I used to have this one ad that we used online and offline, and the title was Attention, people with heel and arch pain.

That ad and the rest of the ad that went with it made me well over a million dollars. It was just that headline, attention, people with heel and arch pain. And you know who it attracted?

People with heel and arch pain?

Funny, isn't it? Didn't attract people that needed the toenails cut or callous removed or or or someone that it just it attracted people with, yeah, heel and arch pain. That was consistency.

I I would say on the side of, like, an online presence or or a website, you know, I think when I'm when I'm building somebody a website, right, I think, you know, the whole I think a lot of the kind of relationships I've had with with podiatrists that I've worked with is that, you know, when they first meet me, they think, okay. Like, this is gonna be a person that builds me this thing, and then, that person will go away, and I'll never see them again. Yeah. The way I have relationship with my with podiatrists I work with is a little bit different. Right?

Like, I'm kind of a consistent partner like, kind of a marketing partner with them because we're not gonna see, like, it go from, you know, 50 new new, like, website visitors to, like, a thousand tomorrow or the next month. It is this gradual build, this gradual gradual iteration in the content and the messaging and testing things together, seeing what opportunities we have in their local area to really help them gain kind of awareness with their local community. So it is like, even with my own work, right, when I'm working with podiatrists or when I'm trying to promote this podcast Yeah. It it is really about trying to be consistent on in the long term that's gonna really reap the best results and build those strong bonds of trust to really help people accelerate their growth in, like, a sustainable and, like, helpful way as opposed to some, like, empty promise or some, like, I don't know, just, like, some unrealistic expectations about what's possible with with marketing a practice.

I I think but, yeah, with the consistency and everything else you've summed up here, a lot of people will say, yeah, I don't need to market myself. My reputation will build my clinic. No. It won't. That's that's a simple answer.

Reputation used to years ago, but it doesn't anymore. And and that's why some podiatrists that have been out for a number of years who had great reputation, great clinics are getting their ass kicked by the younger people coming through who realize, if I wanna build my clinic, I need to market my business. It's just just the way that it is. And the ones that I've seen who are succeeding are the ones that that that last point. They're consistent with what they do.

But the problem sometimes they can have is when they get to that point where they think they've made it and they don't need to market anymore because, yeah, I've now made it, then they very quickly get overtaken. You need to just you need it's something you need to just keep working. Your your business is like a living organism. You need to just keep feeding it, and you need to keep trying to grow it. Just it can't stay stagnant.

That's well put.

So, Jim, have you got anything else to wrap up since I was rant raving on him?

No. That's my fantastic seven mistakes that I see when podiatrists are trying to do marketing.

And they're a great seven seven mistakes too. So until next week, Jim, I hope you have a fantastic day, whatever you got on for the rest of the day, and I'll talk to again next week.

Sounds great, Tyson. You too.

Okay. See you.

Bye now.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.