Are You Visible Online to Your Best Patients? The Practice Visibility Scorecard

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

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of the Podiatry Marketing Pod Podcast. With me as he is every week, it is Jim McDannald. Hello, Jim. How are you doing today?

I'm taken aback because this might be the first episode out of a 238 episodes where you called me Jim McDannald at the beginning. So I'm I'm a little, like, shaken. I don't know what to I don't know how to answer that. I don't Big Jim Mac, you know, all kinds of stuff, but Jim McDannald, wow.

Oh, every week, I try and throw something in to put you off your game, and I thought, why don't I just call you by your real name for a change? That could be something a little bit different.

For sure. Hey, Ben. Anyway. Summertime in in Montreal is a great time to be here. But the Montreal Canadians didn't win the Stanley Cup this year, but that's okay.

We enjoyed a nice run and now just get enjoy the summertime. So

So this Stanley Cup, that's North American competition. That's Canada and America?

Yeah. It's the it's the National Hockey League that both has Canadian and American teams.

Best sport I've ever seen live, I think, ice hockey. Just

Yeah. Can be pretty exciting.

Oh, just crazy crazy sport and tough. Nothing like it. Yep. Yeah. I reckon you've gotta have from the time you start your career to the time you end, the the brain cells cannot be intact.

Just some unbelievable. It can be a tough sport for sure.

So what are we talking about today other than brain damage in hockey players?

Yeah. So today so today we're gonna talk about are you visible online to your best patients? And we're gonna go over something that you and I have been offering for one I'll call the the practice visibility scorecard. So that's what we're gonna jump into today.

Okay. So where do you start on this?

Yeah. So I'd say like, you know, when's the last time, you know, some of our listeners have looked up their practice, you know, on Google. Most owners, you know, do it kind of inside their own clinic, or they type their practice name and they see themselves sitting near the top, but that's not how a patient finds you. Right? So there's a gap between what a podiatrist thinks their online visibility is and what it actually is.

So about half the owners we talked that I talked to are sure that they're number one in the result of their town, and you know, they're they've they usually are not correct about that. There's some stuff that's happening behind the scenes with Google that makes them think they're number one, but they've never really had kind of an outside way to see how they're visible, not only close to physically where their clinic is or where their house is, but just kind of a general area all around their clinic so they can get some real data and some real numbers around that stuff.

Yeah. I was only talking to someone this morning about this, and we're talking about with Google and different searches and how AI is affecting things. And they said, oh, But when I just type in podiatry in their specific suburb, they said, yeah, I rank number one. I said, okay. I said, how many other podiatrists are in your suburb?

There are no other podiatrists in my suburb, but outside of my suburb is about nine. I said, well, how far are those other suburbs from yours? And she went, only a couple of kilometers. So she was ranking one because pretty much that's what she was searching for, was that very, very specific. But outside of that, when we started getting, hey, search some of these other areas, you go, well, I'm not even turning up.

It's terrible.

No. Exactly. And that's why today we're we're talking through the practice visibility scorecard. So this is a free report that you can get if you go to podiatry.marketing. It's up on the the upper top of the the website there.

And it's gonna show you the kinda gap between kinda what you think you're at and kinda where you actually are and kinda how patients can find you. So the first thing that's important is that, like I talked about a little bit here already, is that that kind of vanity search trap. You know, when's the last time you, you know, search for your practice online? If you did it from inside your clinic or you typed it the name of your practice, you really didn't see what patients see. You saw kind of the flattering version of it.

And, you know, patients don't search your name. They search podiatrist near me or heel pain doctor from their couch, their office, the school pickup line, you know. And they're depending on where they're standing, you know, you might not show up at all. So about half the owners I talked to are convinced they're number one, but a lot of them are wrong, and they have no idea this because they've never looked at a way to see what actual patients in the local area are doing it in that way.

So like I I gave that example before, if there was a patient who who was standing in a different suburb and just said podiatrist near me, all the other podiatrists are gonna show up, and not the person that I was talking to.

No. Absolutely. And it's it's tough to do this. Right? You know, maybe if you'd drive if you just get in your car and you drive around town, you can maybe like search from different areas.

But luckily, there's some software that that we use to to basically pull up that information. So you can see, you know, maybe you can determine the number of kind of look the number of locations within a certain kind of diameter. So maybe it's five kilometers, maybe it's one kilometer, one mile, five miles, 10 miles away from your clinic. You get a real sense of if someone's standing in one of those those kind of locations, you know, are you is your clinic number three, number five, number 10? You know, software these days does does more than just, you know, the the clinic owner just sitting in their their office or their home googling and hoping that they, you know, have kind of a a general result, but, you know, it's gonna change from location to location.

Like you said, if you're physically located in a certain zip code or a certain suburb, you know, of course, if you're the only one there, you're gonna show up because proximity is the biggest thing. But, you know, out if you go outside of that or you go two miles or two kilometers away, it could be totally different and you just don't know it because you know, you just can't search from everywhere you know in your local area.

So are you are you trying to say Jim that people when they get these emails and it says, hello dear, I get you number one on Google page one, no problems. I help 50 other business do the same. When you get those emails, you shouldn't actually be paying attention to them.

Yeah. What are you getting those like, some that are broken English. Sometimes it's just like, you know, offers that are too good to be true that are from like, you know, the top, you know, mastermind or the top like, you know, self proclaimed best, you know, healthcare marketing agency. So they're never gonna say podiatry, because they wanna like make sure they get you know, anyone that's in healthcare they wanna get. Right?

So they're they're not necessarily, you know, target on on helping you get patients. But yeah, that's you gotta be careful with some of that stuff for sure.

Yeah. And I think everybody gets a couple of them. If you've been in business long enough, you should be getting a couple a week.

Well, even though I've been out of practice, you know, for like, what what, twelve years, thirteen years now, and I still get a lot of, like, LinkedIn DMs or just random emails because I have the DPM after my name. They just assume that I'm still in practice. So it's yeah. I I definitely get some of those myself. So I I've seen them.

I had one phone me yesterday. It was I had a bit of fun with him for a while until I got bored.

Yeah. For sure. Okay. What's next? Yeah.

What's next is like, I I kind of hinted at that before. It's basically this visibility map. Right? And kinda seeing your share of what they call local voice. So like I said, picture a grid of dots dropped across your entire service area.

Each dot is a real Google search run from that exact spot. So green means you're in the top three. You know, patients see you first. Yellow means people have to scroll down or click on the map in order to see that list, and red means you don't show up at all. So then it kinda boils down to, you know, one number, your share of local voice.

And this is basically the slice of the local map you actually own. So most owners are stunned, you know, how much red is kinda sitting on their maps, and every red dot isn't just a gap on a map. It's a patient in your town or your neighborhood or your city who searched and found somebody else.

Can the average person get hold of this map, or is there a certain search function for doing this?

Yeah. So, you know, if people request that practice visibility scan on our website, this is you know, we usually provide either two or three of these different maps. Generally, we'll pull them up for search terms like podiatrist near me or foot doctor near me. You know, sometimes in The UK, you know, we use things like and other things, other clinics, you know, foot specialists. So you know, depending on where you're at, we'll run the scans.

And just, you know, this is something this is like a complimentary thing given to any podiatrist out there. Right? You know, we're happy to kind of help educate these podiatrists and give you a clear view as far as how you're showing up in Google Maps to make sure that, you know, you have the the the information to make better decisions moving forward. Because like I said, if you're just kinda like Google in here and there, you're not gonna get the full picture, but, you know, there's software out there now that makes it pretty easy. It does require, know, if you wanna do it yourself, it does require, you know, subscription.

But you know, this is something I'm happy to, you know, provide for our, you know, podiatry colleagues around the world.

Yeah. Well, it's a valuable service because like you said, if if you're googling yourself or and you keep thinking you're number one, when you look at it like a visibility map and you find that there's there's a lot of areas there where you're not even being seen, you can patch them up. The difference it will make to your business will be huge.

Absolutely. And I think it also gives you a baseline to kinda start off with, know, if you're starting to do a Google business profile, you're starting to run ads, or starting to do, you know, building out organic pages that wanna rank on your for your website. You know, this gives you some idea as far as what you know, if you have a baseline metrics, which efforts are paying off, you know, which ones are turning, you know, some of the those dots from yellow to green, or from from red to yellow, and then to green. It gives you a baseline just to see how much you have that share of local voice, or how much that local visibility you really have, and you know, are the things you're doing improving that?

I think that's the important part is knowing that as you're doing things, is it making a difference? Or are you just keeping yourself busy and not having any influence at all over the visibility map?

Exactly. And it is it's just something something you can run, if you you're working someone on a monthly basis and just see kinda which where are things trending? Is there, you know, a couple new people that moved in or started doing more marketing that are kind of taking away some of your local share? It just helps you remain competitive and and make good decisions about how to, you know you know, explore different marketing options.

Okay. So what's next?

So next is like, not only do we provide this in the product practice visibility scorecard, we provide that kind of map area, but there's also kinda six categories. You know, this is the actual scorecard. A score out of 100 across the six things that decide whether patients find you, your website, your Google business profile, your local rankings, your reviews, your content, and how you engage patients. So most practices land somewhere kinda on the the scores I see is the average is somewhere in the fifties to seventies. Mhmm.

But the grade itself isn't the point. The point is really seeing, you know, which category are you kind of falling behind in or kind of dragging against competitors. So you might have a great website and still be invisible because your Google Business profile is half empty, or you haven't put in the hours or the right category. This score shows you, you know, where you're strong and exactly where you're potentially leaking patients.

I've seen that a lot, but I've gone on to websites, just Podiatry, but other businesses, where they just haven't filled in the details. Or they they've got part of the details, they've done bits and pieces, but they haven't actually completed it. And and even as someone who finds that that page is sort of go, is this a reputable business? Because it it's incomplete. So I can see how Google would look at it and say, is this a reputable business?

It's incomplete. When it's it's something they should be doing.

Absolutely. And I and we try to create this this score so you can kind of have a general sense of, you know, if you're in the nineties or, you know, high nineties, it means you're doing things the right way. You know, obviously, there's different people are gonna be different levels of the scale and and get a different score, but it just gives you a baseline to kind of, you know, know where you're at and make improvements because, you know, and it's really about the important channels. You can kinda highlight those things to make sure that what you're doing counts and that you gain that visibility.

What's the worst score you've seen?

I've seen in the twenties, you know, like, you know, websites that had, you know, I think I've I've told you this previously, like websites that had dental implants or dental, you know, diagnosis and treatments on it. You know, they had the wrong category for the Google Business profile, you know, hadn't filled out anything on the Google Business profile. Was only the image of the Google car driving by the parking lot next to their office, not in front of their office. So I mean, you know, we run these we do these free scorecards not to shame you, but just to show you that like, you know, it's it's helpful to know kind of where your baseline is, so you can make some of these improvements and have some reasonable first steps to kind of move forward with.

Like anything, anything you measure where there's a score involved gives you an opportunity to improve.

For sure.

Which is why they have gold, silver, bronze. There's a score. If you're in the top three, you get gold, silver, bronze. Not this, everyone who competes gets a medal. So so I think you I think you need that you need that you need that score so you can sort of go, oh, I'm at 40.

I don't wanna be at 40. I wanna be at 70. Or if you're at 70, you go, what do I need to do to get to 90? If you're at 90, go, what do need to to get to 99? So I think that that will push level.

No. Absolutely. It's a good good motivator. And like you said, Google doesn't give out participation ribbons at their in their results. You know, they're either gonna send patients your way or they're not.

So it behooves you to, you know, score as high as you can on the scorecard. So, you know, you're getting those patients, and they're finding you, and they come to your practice and become patients.

But he actually saying like, even though the score is important, don't focus on the score so much. Just focus on what are you not doing, and just make sure you fix that up, and the score will just improve automatically.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think like talked about it, when when we do the scorecard, there's the the websites, and maybe it's you need to have areas we serve pages on there. You need to have better diagnosis and treatment pages. Sometimes what I'll see on websites is they have, you know, a single page has 20 different diagnosis on that single web page, and that confuses Google.

Like, if you have all of those things on one page. So it's little things like that. You know, it's how thorough is the Google business profile filled out. Like I said, is the name, the address, the phone number all correct? You know, is the description filled out?

Are there, you know, photos of you treating your ideal patients? Are people doing Google posts? We take that into account. And then, you know, how many reviews are there? Are they is it five point o?

Is it 2.7? Where is it at there? And just, you know, how engaging is that kinda overall? You know, are people engaging with it? Is there good traffic going to the website?

There's ways to to measure those things to to give you something to shoot for and to improve with.

Okay. So what's what's next after that?

The next thing I think is really important. This is something in 2026. I kind of understand even more the importance of it. I think there's a lot of pressure these days when it comes to, you know, insurance payers and even Medicare in The United States not really paying that well for podiatrists. So a lot of people are going towards, you know, cash pay and fee for service, and the demographic opportunity these days is a real differentiator in this report.

So what we do, this is part of the kind of no one else gives you. The scorecard takes kind of the zones, the the kind of zip codes, or the the nearby low local neighborhoods, you know, that where you're barely visible, and it kinda lays them out for you. And it flags, sometimes the higher income areas full of patients can actually pay for those fee for service offerings like custom orthotics, shockwave, laser, regenerative care. So it's not just that you're missing patients. You're invisible in the exact neighborhoods where you've where your best fit patient best fit patients live.

That's the moment visibility stops being kind of a tech problem, or it's kinda like, oh, I've got a website. I'm good. It turns into a revenue problem. So you're not just losing patients. You're losing the right one.

So I think it's really important that, like I said, folks, you know, when they get this online practice scorecard, you know, you'll see some demographic information that can really unlock some some key areas that are near your clinic.

But but a lot of people, when they're thinking demographics, lot of times, they're purely just thinking age, sex, the most common factors.

Right.

So how's the what you're talking here about shockwave and laser, regen of care, how's it differ in to what most people are thinking?

Yeah. So at least in The United States, we have a census every two years or ten years. Sorry. And when they put out this information, there's usually demographic information about the kind of the overall median household income of a zip code or of a neighborhood or of of a town. Yeah.

So you can you can understand where maybe it makes sense to put a little bit of marketing budget into a certain area. Right? If you're trying to go for some of these fee for service offerings like, you know, orthotic shockwave, laser, or regenerative care, instead of like, you know, just doing kind of a shotgun approach where it's like 20 miles or two miles around your clinic, you really focus on those areas maybe where you your best patients already come from. You know that your best patients come from this zip code or this other town, and you can focus some of the marketing in those areas to try to get more of those kind of right fit patients.

Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.

I said that I think you can get some of that kind of median household income stuff from other other surveys and other publicly available databases, but that's where I kinda pull that stuff from to kind of create it in your report.

Okay. That's right. So what's what's the next after that?

The next is the kinda competitor reality check. Right? So I think, you know, everyone, you know, you might kinda look around a little bit and see what people are doing on the websites and their review. But to really do it more of an analytical faction, you know, way of doing it is important. So, you know, in most markets, you know, one competitor quietly owns the entire map.

The scorecard will name them, shows which directions that kind of on that map they dominate, shows how big the gap really is. And there's a huge difference between a vague we should probably do more marketing and seeing in black and white that you're sitting at, you know, 16% of your local market share while one practice owns, you know, 82 of it. Right? So one of those kind of gets ignored for another year. The other one actually gets you to move.

So numbers like they're kind of hard to unsee. That's what the kind of competitor analysis will do inside the practice visibility scorecard.

So in the competitor analysis, you're comparing the competitors compared to those and giving them a ranking so they know where they sort of relate to everybody else that's in their area. Do you do it just with podiatrists, or are you looking at other therapists that could be providing similar services?

Generally, it's with podi other podiatry clinics. I think, you know, when we were using these podiatry near me searches or foot doctor searches, it makes sense to start there. I think, you know, I do have a paid offering as well where I can kinda go into more, you know, deeper searches and multiple searches if they you do feel like, you know, the good foot store or, you know, like a chiropractor or a physiotherapist is like kind of doing some similar stuff that you want to. So I think it is important to, kinda keep it narrow and podiatry focus with those initially, but yeah, you definitely want to see where you're ranked at. Right?

And like I said, sometimes it can be tricky to to really know how you're ranking because we like talked about previously, if you're just searching in your low you know, in your office or at home, maybe you do show up as number one, and that's great. But maybe the 90 other, you know, points on the map, you're number seven or eight. So you you really wanna have an overall picture and and you're kinda running specific software about this will be really, really helpful when it comes to identifying those, you know, what where do you sit when it comes to the number of reviews? Where are you at when it comes to Google Maps? It it really is helpful to kind of see that information so you can make better decisions with your marketing.

So and when you're putting the scorecard together, are you manually doing this? You're putting it to certain programs so that it's it's not just your opinion? These programs are actually putting these numbers together?

Yeah. Like I said, I kinda pull from different software programs and then kinda put it together into a custom report. So it's something, yeah, on my side, I I'm putting it together. And there's some ways to automate it a little bit, but for the most part, you know, I'm making sure that, you know, I double check to make sure that's that things are accurate and that it can be really useful information. Because I think, you know, obviously giving people some ideas of the things they can DIY if they choose to is important, but, you know, each each clinic, each locations, you know, that we have similarities, but there's gonna be, you know, market specific insights that can be very, very valuable if you for the people that request this online, sorry, this Practice Visibility Scorecard.

Yeah. No. I just wanted to point that out to people that, yeah, you're actually putting some time and effort in when you do these reports. It's not something where you just put in a few details, push a button, it spits it out, took you all of thirty five seconds, and there you go. There's your scorecard.

You are actually physically going out of your way and going through to these programs, and then manually then getting it put together and sent off to everyone.

Yeah. There's a bit of automation in there. I do utilize some Yeah. You know, some of the top AI models to kinda give me some information that kinda pull some stuff together. But, yeah, it's and I'll go through, like I said, the Google business profile, the website, and look at things and kind of dictate about what I see, what's there, what's missing to really kind of make these things as custom as possible.

It's not gonna be a cookie cutter, like you said, like a thirty five second, you need to do Google Ads or like something, you know, something silly like that that I send to the, you know, the you know, I think we've had about both on our website and on my website, I think we've I've done about 75 of these since the beginning of the year. So definitely iterating and making them better all the time and definitely people have, you know, had a lot of good feedback. People said, got more information this one free report than I got from my marketing agency over the last two years. So definitely, you know, can give you some insights that maybe you didn't have before.

That's great. And the website they can get this from again?

Yeah. So they can go to podiatry.marketing. It's the very top. There's a button to click there. They can they can get the online practice sorry.

The practice visibility scorecard there. You know, your search is, you know like I said, you know, when people are searching for home, your search is lying to you. Right? The the visibility map and the share of local voice, you know, when the practice is a little bit of scorecard is gonna show you what's really happening. Like I said, you're gonna have a six six category score that shows you, you know, where you're performing and where you're having some problems.

The demographic overlay, you know, shows where your best fit patients are hiding. Maybe you know already, but this will give you some more information. And, you know, the competitor check really shows, you know, who are those local competitors, what are they doing. So you can kind of do your best to be competitive and get the patients you want to. So I really recommend that people, you know, take action this week.

Get out of your own building. You know? You know? You don't do you have two choices? Okay?

You can either get in your car, drive around for maybe two or three hours, search, you know, from these different places on your phone to see where you're ranking at, or you just go to podiatry.marketing. You gotta get that free practice visibility scorecard, and we can, you know, help you skip the guesswork and all the work and just, you know, give you some help there.

It sounds like a good idea. I mean, not a good idea. That is a great idea, Jim. Do. Anyone listening to this, all you gotta do is fill in that part on the podiatry.

Marketing. Fill it in, it goes to you, you'll do the scorecard, they'll get it. It costs them nothing to do it, but it will open their eyes up to where they truly rank visibility wise compared to competitors in their area.

Yeah. I just really wanna give everybody the opportunity to get that baseline. Right? You know, if you take it and then you can either utilize it yourself, you can kind of like, you know, have that as a baseline and, you know, really kinda give you said, like, some key insights that you can can take back to your practice and hopefully give you that additional visibility. And there's no obligation, you know, if you just want it's just a free report.

If you just wanna get it and not talk to me, great. If you'd like to get it and then talk to either myself or Tyson afterwards, you know, definitely let us know. That's something that we offer as well. So I think this is a great way to like I said, you know, we're getting to the almost, you know, we're past the the middle of the year and you know, let's make it a good second half of twenty twenty six and this is a great way to kinda kick start that second half of the year for you.

That is absolutely fantastic. Jim, anything else you wanna say before we wrap up?

No. I think we're good, Tyson.

Okay. I look forward to talking to next week.

Alright. We'll talk to you then.

Okay. Adios. Au revoir.

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.