7 Simple Ways to Get More Bums In Your Practice

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

Welcome back to podiatry marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joining us always my trusty cohost, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how are you doing today?

I'm fantastic. Today, big Jim, once again, feeling great that I'm trusty. So

The most trustworthy podcast host cohost I've ever had.

So Yeah. Well, yeah. And you so many. So, yeah, I'm up there. I'm in the top 10 at least of trustworthy podcast hosts.

My. How's weather in your part of the world?

It's getting cold in Canada. What can I say? It's that time of year where, you know, we're getting into the the winter months. So I gotta bundle up, bunker down, and just ride out another Canadian winter or so.

Yeah. It's but you love you love the cold weather, don't you? Do you have do have a preference?

Used to look.

Do you have a preference summer or or winter?

If it could be like 65 and sunny every day or like that'd be like 20 to you know, 15 to 20 degrees and sunny every day.

Take that.

But you know, what are you gonna do? It's it makes you appreciate the the warm spring days and the warm summer days and the fall days a little bit more when you have to deal with cold and and snow and such, I think.

Yeah. But I reckon the same thing in Cairns. When we're in middle of summer, have when it's just stinking hot. High thirties, humidity is through the roof. Yeah.

It's not pleasant. But when you're that are leading into summer, when it's it's warm, and it's warm enough to be in the pool every single day, but it's not stinking hot is probably the best time of the year. Anyway, that's our weather report for everyone this for this episode. We should get on to today's topic, which is seven simplistic ways to get more bums in your practice or bums on the seats in your practice. The reason I brought this one up is there's gonna be a few things that I'm gonna run through that we have covered before.

So when I get to that, Jim, I'm gonna get some of your input, especially with some of the Google information. But here's the thing. It doesn't always take fancy marketing or expensive ads to get people into your clinic. Sometimes, it's the simple things that are just done consistently, and we spoke about consistent consistency last week that make the biggest difference. So today, I'm gonna be sharing seven simplistic ways to attract more patients, strategies that will cost little to nothing, but can have a massive impact to actually put into action.

So

No. I like it. I think it's good to kinda go back over those things and just reiterate the importance of some of these different channels and some of these different opportunities because I think a lot of clinics are looking for more patients or more specific types of patients that we can deliver that for them in this podcast. And then in real life, everybody benefits.

Yeah. And we we could have called this the consistency marketing podcast because the amount of times that we say that on our episodes, other than we said we're both really good at what we do, but we also say consistency is a key with nearly everything. So the first thing I wanna talk about, tip number one, is own your Google Business profile. And people are beginning, but why is this so crucial? It's most people will be searching locally before booking.

Think when you're looking for a hotel, when you're thinking of a restaurant, we all will go and look at business profile. We went we went on a a urban cocktail trail in Cairns. It's where you can go through and check out all these different places. And when we're doing that, there were we're giving five tickets to go and get cocktails, but there were seven different venues that you could use in that. We went and checked out all seven venues first before we chose which five we were gonna use.

So everybody does this thing. And if if we all do it with hotels, restaurants, bars, then you know people are doing it with podiatry businesses. So you need to own your Google Business profile, and it needs to have recent photos. You need to have the correct hours. You need to be regularly putting posts.

If there's a public holiday or a group of holidays in your area, say whether you're gonna be open or closed. It's really not that hard to do. And and even within that Google thing where they'll have reviews, when you're talking with your patients, if you ask for a review, instead of just saying, oh, can you do a review for us? Try and get a little bit more specific. If they came in with heel pain, ask if they can do a review sort of on the problem that they came in with because that will sort of especially if you're trying to grow your business in a certain area.

So instead of you saying, oh, Jim was really good, or Jim's clinic was really good, if you were a runner that came in with shin splints, just say, I was I had shin splints. I mean, yeah, I'm a professional runner. I came and saw a gym, and then they can go on with the details from there. And encourage patient feedback and always respond because Google Google loves engagement. Do you wanna comment on that, Jim?

Yeah. Think people like you said, people love actually Google loves when people click in and around those Google Business profile Google Business profiles, and it's really really important that when people are searching the name of your clinic, whether it's the Chicago Foot Clinic or the Spokane Foot and Ankle Clinic, they're going to type that into Google. And the first result they're going to see is not your website, not your Facebook, not your, maybe it'll be a Google ad, but on the right hand side of that results page on Google, it's gonna be your Google business profile. And you have to spend not only do you need to have your Google business profile, but it needs to be, something that's gonna build trust with these specific patients because they may not make it all the way to your your website. They might just see that Google Business profile and say, that's that's the right person for me or doesn't look like they've done anything there.

It looks you know, there's a picture of a a gross foot that's like instead of what it could be branding or the face of the podiatrist or the the beautiful clinic you have inside. You need so you really need to spend time on that Google Business profile. It's really really important as far as building that initial trust with with folks. And if you're working with a marketing provider or someone that still calls it Google My Business, that means they're behind the times. So it's Google Business Profile and every clinic needs to have one and make sure that it's up to snuff because that's where you're gonna build trust or you're gonna maybe lose patients on.

Yeah. Well, we've done that recently when we've gone to take a holiday. We're going on a trip somewhere. You're thinking, oh, what can we do in that area? And there'll be a list of different things you can do.

You'll click on a business, and if I can see some updated photos or some updated reviews on someone that was there last week or and some photos that you can tell just by the day of the photo that it was a a very recent photo, That gives that builds a lot of trust because I'm thinking, I want I would rather see five four star reviews that were done last week than see five five star reviews that were done three years ago. Because I'm thinking it's the same staff there. It's a complete why aren't they more why aren't they more up to date reviews right now? And if I don't see that, I start thinking, yeah. Okay.

It's just a little bit dodgy. So

And you're gonna have some of those people to glance. Right? Like, they're gonna glance and see is there what what are the competitors at? Right? So if you're in a clinic is an area where somebody has 500 reviews and like 4.8, and everybody else is, you know, 4.9 but 22 reviews, like it's a huge red flag to people.

Like why does that clinic have so many more reviews? Yeah. Maybe even if it's not exactly the same level as what yours is at.

Yeah. So if you're not updating your profile, your Google profile, you're basically invisible even if you have an amazing clinic. You might have the best clinic in the world, might be the duck's nuts. But if you're not updating and posting things in your Google Business profile, it's just a a missed opportunity. Tip number two is leverage local networking.

Go beyond health events. Attend local business breakfast. You might go to rotary, running clubs. I have mentioned this before. Be curious and show interest in others.

When you go to these sort of things, ask questions and just offer, yeah, small bits of advice. And also be prepared that people are gonna ask you I always find this funny. When I go to someone at a networking event, I say, I said, what do you do? And they and ah. They hesitate.

And they don't even know what they do. And I think, well, if you don't know what you do, how am I supposed to know what you do? Be prepared. You might say something like, yeah, I help people walk with their pain because pain changes everything. Now if I bumped into someone and they said, I I help people walk through their pain because they know pain changes everything, I'd be going, I'm intrigued.

What do you mean by that? Then you can go into it in a little bit more detail. And there's a massive amount of power in consistent community visibility. Do you go to one business event here? You go to a rotary thing here?

You do a talk at this place. You turn up at a local sporting event. People start to recognize a known issue, and that's the whole consistency part.

I think that's huge. It's a huge opportunity, but like you said, you gotta get out there. You just can't kinda like hide away and hope the patients show up at your door. You gotta leverage that local networking and I think sometimes it happens too at these local networking events. If you've never been to one before, you're kind of nervous to go is that the initial feeling is like kind of you know, talk about your like talk about yourself or just talk a lot.

Right? Yeah. But I think it really helps you and it to have if people are just starting to go to these, really what you wanna do is show curiosity and show interest in what other people are doing. Now come with like, you know, maybe you have three to five kind of general questions in your mind going into one of these things like asking them what they do, how they got into it, what has their business been like. If you can find ways of asking people interesting questions that they're happy to answer, it's gonna really ingratiate you to them because you didn't go to this business networking thing just to, you know, talk for twenty minutes about how you're the best thing since sliced bread and how you went to residency here and how you're doing these things here.

It's normal I think when people are nervous just to kinda, like, talk a lot or not talk at all.

Yeah.

But, you know, when you when you go into one of these events, you know, having in your mind some questions you could ask someone else, they would be really excited to talk about. You're gonna get more from that by asking about them. And sure, you wanna let them know what you do as well. But by showing interest in others, they're gonna get they're not gonna be a help, but it kinda reciprocate as well.

Yeah. One other thing I just wanna mention about networking too. I know when I first was ever going to a networking event, I was concerned, what do I wear? What do I wear to this networking event, depending on it is? If you go on to Facebook, that networking group will probably have a Facebook group.

Have a look at past meetings, past photos, and that will give you an idea of what's the appropriate attire for that particular event. Because sometimes you don't wanna overdress and you don't wanna underdress. The other thing is have a look through all the photos. Normally, you'll find there might be somebody there that you know. You could reach out to them and say, hey, you're going to the next event.

I would like to come along. People love taking guests along to these events. But the other part, when you are talking to someone and I remember doing this once. When I met someone, I said, what do you do? They told me, and I said, oh, that's interesting.

Tell me more. And I shut up. I don't think I got a word in for the next five minutes. I then bumped into one of their friends later on, and they said, oh, think they told me that they they met you at this networking room. I said, yeah.

Yeah. I did. They said, they reckon you're one of the best people they've met at the event. You're the easiest person to talk to. I never said anything.

I couldn't get a word in because I asked them, tell me more. And they just went, oh, yeah. Oh, that's that's interesting. And can you yeah. And I just I showed interest in what they were talking about.

And next thing, they thought I was a great conversationalist, but didn't have to say anything.

Absolutely.

Which I think is funny. So tip number three, and once again, we've mentioned this on a previous episode, so this therefore, go back and listen to the couple 100 that we've got there. But collaborate with allied health professionals. So you build relationships with, yeah, your physios, your GPs, personal trainers, chiropractors. But visit them with genuine intent, not a sales pitch.

That is the they know when you ring them up and you're coming to have a meeting with them, they think you're going to try and be selling something to them or just, oh, you should be sending your patients to me. But just go there with genuine intent that you wanna learn a little bit more about what they do as well. It's not just about you. You wanna learn about their practice because you have patients, and there might be four different physios. Not every physio is the same.

So learn what is it that they're interested in more so when you have a patient that comes in, you know where to direct them to? Because not every single patient is gonna be suited to one particular physiotherapist. And after you see them well, when you're seeing them, make sure if you've got branded gifts, if you have things that have got your logo and stuff on it, leave something behind. And therefore, you're going to be memorable, but always make sure that you always follow-up, I think, after meetings with them as well. If you've had a meeting well, if I met Jim, Jim was a physio, he agreed to have a coffee with with me, went to his clinic, said, hey.

How you doing? Found out a little bit more about him, and then I left. Nothing better than a handwritten thank you note that you just pop in the mail and post them. It could be on a thank you card. Tell you, that will stand out because nobody majority of people are too freaking lazy.

They'll send an email, might send a text message. Do a handwritten note to to some of these professional and nonprofessional referrers. You you will get referrals from it.

Absolutely. That personal touch can make a huge difference for people. Like you said, it's it's kind of a lost art these days. Everyone gets tons of emails, tons of things like that, but a very few, you know, written notes these days. These are things that are are like golden away.

Yeah. I have a drawer in my office here where I put all handwritten notes or messages that I receive from people over the the last twenty years. And, like, you know, I've run yeah. I might do a marketing event or or something like that. I'll get the odd email from someone saying, I really enjoyed it.

This I did this, applied that. That was fantastic. And then sometimes, I will get a card in the mail that is just, thanks for putting on that event. That was absolutely fantastic. I've had some slipped under the door in my motel room when I've been at conferences, when I've done a talk, and people have just left a message there for me or they've left something at reception.

And I keep them all. I never throw any of them out because I tell you, not every day would I say you I think you're a 100% mentally switched on. You doubt yourself. You question different things. I can go to the drawer, read through those.

It lifts me every single time. Yeah. We can do a whole episode. It's a we may have. We already done one, the power of handwritten notes.

I have to look back through. We've done so many episodes.

I know. I know. Anyway, tip number four, create micro content from everyday practice, from just the things that you're doing day to day. So every clinic has daily content that would be absolute gold. Could be how you're making your orthotics, it could be about shoes, Just simple explanations.

Keep it educational. You know? Did you know that we do this? It's when people say, I'm not quite sure what to talk about. Just look around.

What do you what did you do today? Everything that you did, probably every patient you treated, there's something there that you could create content around.

Absolutely. It's so easy to create content these days, you know, whether it be a short video or a blog post. There's not really an excuse these days to not really shout out to all the local patients about all the great care you provide.

Yeah. And like you said, shooting short videos is not hard to do. You can put them on Instagram. You can put them on YouTube. Tag your location because that helps with local search.

But also repurpose and reuse the same posts on other platforms. So if you post something, you might put some information in one particular area, then take that and put it. Use it as one your Google post for the week. And when we said earlier on about updating photos in your Google post, if you cannot have take one photo or at least one foot or one condition of all the patients you see all week, you've got problems. You have big problems.

Massive problems. Okay. I'm looking at the time, Jim, so I'm gonna keep moving along. Tip number five, stand out with memorable patient touch points. This goes back to handwritten thank you cards and whether you give patients branded swag as well.

I know you could send an email to patients, hey. Thank you for referring Jim to my clinic. But if you did a handwritten note, said thank you for referring Jim to my clinic. I think the patient will actually notice that more. But personal follow-up messages, yeah, after their first visit, make your brand when you're talking with patients, make it human.

If you use humor that fits in with how you work with you work with your patients, then then do that. It's it's gotta fit how you are, though. Like, with my clinic, my patients all knew that I liked superheroes, and I was a big kid. So we would always be having a little bit of fun. But at the same time, if I had a patient that came in who wasn't the most fun person, then I would just tone it down.

I wouldn't be sometimes it's it's gotta fit the clinic, but it's also gotta fit the patient each time. And the the power of small details that create stories that patients share. So when you're talking with patients, little things that you share about yourself or a successful treatment that you may have done, patients will share those stories when they're with their friends. They go, oh, did you know my podiatrist did this? Like, if you're a podiatrist ever, helped out with a representative team or, you know, gone to a Commonwealth Games or Olympic Games, use these stories while while you're actually talking to your patients.

That's a great point. I think one of the quotes I recently saw is that the old quote was build what people want, but it's kinda been switched now to build what people want to talk about.

Yeah. So if you

can get, you know, provided a great care that people are willing to talk about, that's so much more valuable than just kinda like giving people something.

Yeah. My my physio that I go to, he's gone to four or five Olympic games, all these different things. And I said to him one day, I saw some jersey, something tucked in the corner. And I went, what's all this stuff? He goes, oh, yeah.

I've been to five Olympics. I used to be the the physio for the Melbourne Storm, you know, put you in the National Rugby League, and I did this. I said, why is this not up on your walls being shared by every yeah. And he goes, oh, what do you think people it's not I feel like I'm boasting. I go, boast.

Because when you put them up there, I said, I will tell people that my physio went to the Olympics five times. My physio was the physio for Melbourne Storm for the Brisbane Broncos. So he started doing that, and he went, my god. Surprisingly, people talk about it all the time. It's just funny.

Okay. Number six, be present in the community. Offer free educational talks to gyms, schools, senior groups, but just make sure the talk fits with what you want more of. So if you don't want if you're not chasing older people in your clinic, then you don't necessarily need to be doing talks to senior groups. Bring energy and entertainment.

Don't just give another boring lecture. Whenever I'm invited to speak at a conference, when I get up there on stage, I'm up there to educate and entertain. I want people to walk away feeling good and actually taking away some knowledge. I don't want them to yeah. Another death by PowerPoint.

You may see the person get up and say, just start talking, and they turn to the slides, and they pretty much just start reading what's up there. And you go, oh my god. This is gonna be painful. Don't be that person. And if possible, see if you can record snippets of when you are doing talks for social media and maybe for your website.

I did a talk in Powell River in British Columbia a few years back for the chamber of commerce. And when I did the talk there, I had my wife taking little video shots of me. At the same time, I had my phone in my pocket and a microphone hooked up to myself so I could record the whole talk. I ended up using different snippets in social media in different places, but then I took that whole talk that I did, and I turned it into a podcast episode on my older podcast. Try and capture this information while it's happening.

You may never use it, but if you do, that's great. The other part is local press often covers community talks. So it's basically free publicity. When I did the one in Power River, they had a big write up in the paper because I was an international author coming from Australia. I had the mayor.

The mayor met me. Got photo with the mayor. It was it was a lot of fun. I know. Jim's shaking it.

For people who are just listening to this, Jim is shaking his head at me.

The international man of mystery, Tyson.

Oh, no. It was fun, though. And this thing, if people see you giving before asking for anything, they will actually trust you faster. So when they see you out in the community just doing stuff, and you're doing it on a consistent basis, and you're not asking for anything in return, They they just it just builds trust.

Absolutely. I'd like to talk about like you mentioned, you know, when you're giving out there, people are more gonna be more receptive to you if you're just, you know, trying to sell something or just talking about yourself. That's not gonna be helpful for them. But if you're providing knowledge and kind of the tips and tricks that are gonna help them, you know, get better, have a better business, have a better clinic, they're gonna be much more even with patients, right, you know, providing them a better level of care and getting results they want, it's gonna lead to good things.

Always. So and the the last tip is just use your stationery as a marketing tool. And so if you give out receipts or you send invoices, use it as a promotional tool. What what it is you want more of, make sure it's printed somewhere on your receipts and invoices. Use your letterhead the same way.

We used to have our letterhead look like a normal letterhead at the top, but at the bottom, it was all about promoting the orthotic devices in our clinic. No matter where that letter went to, people were going to see that. Every report that you send to a doctor is an opportunity to tell them what you want more of. And I know some people, oh, it's so easy just to send an an email or to fax something. All our reports used to be typed out on our letterhead so they could see what we wanted more of.

We would include other marketing information in there, and we would, because cancer is not a massive area, we would hand deliver every report to the professional referrers because that was an opportunity to have a chat at the same time to see what they're up to and was there an opportunity to come and talk to them. Or even just using having printed envelopes. So when they see your envelope turn up, they know it's from you. So if everybody is using a white envelope, if your corporate color is red, get red envelopes. Get yellow envelopes.

Get green envelopes. Make it just or get them printed with your logo and everything on there so it really stands out. And if you're thinking, oh, but we hardly ever send out reports. Send the reports. Spend the money, you type words, and put a stamp on there and get them get them posted to them because nobody's doing that.

Everybody is is looking for the shortcut, the fastest way of actually doing things. If you wanna stand out, just you gotta be a little bit different.

You gotta be different and by being different and kinda getting kind of a part of you, that letter with the logo and the coloring, it's another touch point. It's another opportunity for them to know who you are and to build faith in, you know, the type of care you provide and for them to be willing to send you patients. So you don't get many of those opportunities to make that connection. So why not take it by, you know you know, creating letterhead envelopes that have your brand? Because what's what's showing happen with AI and even in Google search is that people are much more trust trusting of brands these days and kind of marks and things they know about than they are just some kind of random result that's on the Internet.

So the more you can build that trust in your clinic, in your brand, and who you are, the better you're gonna be in the long run.

Well, it's like the podiatry marketing podcast. We have that green that we use in the logo, and even your room looks a little bit green there. I'm sure that's done deliberately. Now if all of sudden if every podiatrist here all of sudden received a green envelope in the mail, and they knew the color green that we used for podiatry marketing, straight away, first thing that's gonna pop in the head would be, this is a letter from big Jim and Tyson. They would think that straight away.

So keep an eye out for a green envelope in the mail. Just joking. Ocarina, just start with one idea from today's episode and commit to doing it this week. Marketing only works when you do. And this is what I'm finish on.

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with your other podiatrist who could probably, yeah, need a few more bums on seats as well. And also, share it with your podiatrist friends, unless you don't have any. Then just use these ideas yourself. And if you like to take your marking sort of up a notch, you can join me at my next podiatry marking masterclass. Go to my website, tyssonprangen.com.

Click on events. And if you need help, you can reach out to big jim mac as well.

Yeah. They can either email me jim@podiatrygrowth.com, or they can head over to podiatry.marketing and just contact us on the the web form we have there on our podcast website.

Yeah. So that's a consistent of plugging ourselves at the end of each episode as we should be doing. So that's all I wanted to say on that. I hope everybody gets something out of that. Like I said, if you take just one idea, apply it this week, it'll make a difference.

Nope. Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay, Big Jim. I will talk to you next week.

Alright. Talk to you soon.

Okay. Bye.

Bye now.

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