Marketing Pillar #4 - Attracting New Patients With External Marketing

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 one of your hosts, Jim McDannald. Tyson, how's it going today?

It is really good. Jim, it's this is one of my favorite times of the week chatting with you because it's it's always fun. And even when I'm talking, if it's my topic or your topic, regardless of what we're talking about, I always take something away from it myself, which and that might sound weird, but I think sometimes when you're just talking through ideas or a concept with somebody else, it just I don't know. All these synapses go off in your head. And yeah.

So I I my favorite part of the week, so I am fantastic.

Well, that's good to hear. I I think one of these episodes you may have to have like a a storytelling about each one of our backgrounds. I think, you know, maybe we talked about a little bit of this in some of our previous episodes or maybe on your podiatry legends podcast. But just, you know, I I do get a lot of value from also our conversations because I think we look at things somewhat similar, but we're different enough where it's not just like, I'm parodying exactly what you're saying and you're saying exactly what I'm saying. We have a little bit different takes on marketing and the way we've approached it in our practices and what our backgrounds are.

So I think maybe sometime in the future, it'd be fun just to dive a little bit deeper into each of, you know, who we are as we run out of topics. Maybe the audience would find that interesting to to hear a little bit about our backgrounds. But before we get into that kind of stuff, we're gonna get a little bit we'll be a little more tactical. Be little bit more on top of marketing. Let's just jump into today's topic.

In in you know, last week we talked about internal marketing. This week, what are we gonna talk about?

Oh, this week, we're talk about external marketing. So over the last four times that I've sort of taken control of the the microphone, so to speak, and and I'm going to cover the six pillars of marketing. So we've done professional referrers, nonprofessional referrers, internal marketing, and today, I wanna talk about external marketing. And and I want people to sort of understand what the difference really is between internal and external. So internal marketing is really just a reminder.

It's everything you do with your how you market to your patients that you that are already patients of yours. They've already come into your clinic. They're already using your services, and you want them to either come back more often or you want them to come back and use another service that you may have introduced. So you may have had a number of general patients. You bring in a laser for fungal nails.

You want them to know that you've got that and use that service. External marketing is everything you do outside of your business to market your business to attract new patients to your clinic. So that's that's the that's the big distinction between the two.

Yeah. It's it's good to have that distinction. You know, like, there's definitely different tactics that you're gonna use depending on whether it's an internal marketing objective versus external. So, yeah, thanks for clearing that up and providing that definition. Just to kind of get us started, what are some ways or some strategies for external marketing that you've used in your practice or ways we've talked a little about some of these things like Google Ads and other aspects, but what are some general concepts you like to kind of frame the situation with?

Well, I think one thing people need to understand is from the time you leave your house in the morning till the time you come back home and you close your doors and people can't see you you should be in marketing mode, and you should be aware that you're in marketing mode. And as simple as having a work shirt that has your business name, you know, on on the breast of the shirt. Because when we were setting up our Mackay clinic, one of the things we we had uniforms, so we always had, like, polo shirts, sports shirts. And when we were setting up the Mackay clinic, we were down there off and on over about a six week period leading up to an opening and the clinic getting fitted out. Had a work shirt on everywhere I went.

And the amount of patients and bookings we got before the clinic had even opened purely because I had a shirt on that had my business name on it. And one thing that I've I've picked up, and this may shock people, that whenever I wore a shirt that had Nike written on there, I never had anybody stop me and ask me about my podiatry clinic. But when I had a shirt on that had my podiatry name on there, especially a new podiatry business that no one had heard of, all of a sudden people were asking questions. Oh, have you have you just moved into town? Where are you located?

What type of work are you doing? So that's the number one thing for people to remember that every time you leave a house, every person you come in contact with potentially could be a patient, a new patient. So make sure you're dressed appropriately. It doesn't mean on weekends, you can't wear a pair of thongs and a and a you know, if you got your favorite torn shirt and and baggy shorts. I'm not talking about it.

You can do that. But when I first set up my clinic, especially here in Cairns as well, probably the first year I set it up, even on weekends, I wore a shirt that had my business name on there. Because I really wanted people to know, well, who bought my business, the name of my business.

No. I mean, you have to find some ways of generating awareness for the the care that you provide and, you know, walking around being a public being a public, talking with people, having interactions with folks in a positive way when you're wearing something like your logo. It's a huge opportunity. And like you said, if you're wearing a Nike or an Adidas logo, they're probably not gonna think you're Phil Knight or the CEO of that company.

So Yeah. Really?

I mean, he's probably the only person or maybe the current CEO is someone that can wear that stuff, but definitely not you. But, you know, as we kind of take make this shift from internal to external marketing, what are some other things to be aware from maybe, like, a cost perspective? You know, what what things should we, you know, people be aware of as they're kind of moving from this, I'd say, more economical internal marketing aspect to external.

Well, yeah. And that's the thing. Internal marketing usually isn't always expensive. It can it can be quite inexpensive just through newsletters and other things you're doing internally in your business. External marketing can be seen as being a lot more and it it can be extremely expensive if you're not getting return on your investment.

And classic external marketing, like old schools, like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, can be very expensive if you're pumping money into that and not getting a good return on it. So and but you can still use TV, radio in those areas if you and they don't have to be expensive. So there is a there was a a company up here in Cairns called they made this mango wine. And I could ask anybody in Cairns, oh, have you heard of such and such company? And everybody in Cairns would say, yeah.

Yeah. Of course, I've heard them. Yeah. Golden Drop Mango Winery. Everybody knows who they are.

And I said to them, where do they where do they do their marketing? And I'm like, I'm not sure. I don't know why I know them then. And I said, I'll tell you right now, They advertise after 10PM every night of the week forever. They've been doing that.

Because having ad after 10PM at night where I live in the regional area, was like $10 for a for a fifteen second commercial. And all their ad said was Golden Drop Winery, and it showed, you know, the prestigious mango, and we'd make this beautiful wine. It's really short, really simple, but they only advertised really late at night. And why late at night? Because they were the people who are probably gonna be drinking Mhmm.

Have come home from somewhere. They sat in front of the TV, flicked on just to sort of unwind. And to me, that's so not all external marketing has to be expensive, but what I picked up from them was the consistency of doing something. Is just being in the same place on a regular basis, and you're eventually just sort of capturing the people.

I think that's a perfect, you know, that's a perfect point because it's not just about like a week long blast or a month long blast. It has to be this brand awareness takes time and consistency over periods of time. And and I think you also touched on a really important aspect of things is that when you're not getting that return on investment, any type of marketing bill, even a website bill Mhmm. It feels like a bill and not an investment in improving your practice or increasing the volume or specific type of care you wanna provide. But it's you're not gonna get that.

You know, anyone that promises 10 new patients next week, 50 new patients next month, I'd be a little bit wary of that because it's something where it takes, you know, time and effort and consistency, with these external marketing channels to make a dent, to get that awareness so people will come to you, trust you, make appointments with you. It's not something where you're just gonna, like, you know, send out an email blast or advertise on TV for a week, and then the, you know, the doors are gonna open and a flood of patients are gonna come into your clinic. It's about that long term vision of the clinic that you wanna build and being consistent building towards that that image of that that that that clinic or that practice that you want.

Yeah. I think it's funny that when, yeah, the biggest load of BS I've ever seen is when there'll be different companies that will say, oh, we've got this, yeah, text message campaign or an email campaign, and we'll guarantee you 30 new patients next month. And I'm like, that's the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, mainly because you you can't just email complete strangers. So it's against the law just gonna grab people's email address and just email them and start my you can't you're not allowed to do that. So what they're really saying is, oh, we can get 30 of your existing patients coming back.

So they're really talking about internal marketing, not external. And even if they do get 30 of your new yeah. Your existing patients coming back, how many of your existing patients did you annoy in the process of you getting 30? So this I just feel sometimes people are just grasping that they want quick fixes. And, yeah, you want the blue pill, the red pill.

And, yeah, they just they jump onto these things thinking, oh, this is how I'm gonna build my business really fast. And the best well, you said, the best way to build your business is with really good long term strong foundations and just and just slowly build it over over a period of time. Now when I say slow, you can build an amazing business in twelve months. And but it's still once you've the foundations there, the business will still be strong another five, ten years' time.

Yeah. It's about being authentic and building that reputation in your local area. Right? Whether it's your local area, the type of care you provide, just being there consistently. You know, you can't build a reputation, like, in six weeks or six months.

It's gonna take it's gonna take some time. And like you said, it's not gonna it doesn't have to be a decade of consistency, but it has to definitely be at least twelve months, five years before you're seeing those kind of it's almost like compound interest in a way. You know, you put a little money away, you have a reasonable interest rate, you keep on putting, you know, that dollar cost averaging, investing for the long term in the future. And before you know it, you know, twelve months, thirty six months down the road, five years down the road, it's like, woah. Like, it just compounds over time with that consistency.

Yeah. And the other part I wanna point out people too, when when it comes to external marketing, usually with all external marketing, not all I'm gonna go over some really cheap ideas. So not everything is expensive. There's a couple that I wanna share with that I normally share in my marketing workshops. And but one thing I wanna point out to people, whenever you're dealing with external companies in any way, beware, I call them marketing sharks.

And these are the people that will come to you with a proposal where it doesn't matter what the proposal is, is read through it, look at the fine print, do not sign anything until you've spoken to somebody else about it. Because somebody has to have a look at it and say, is this a good idea or isn't it? Because you can easily sign up for something where, yeah, you're locked in and you think, oh, no. But I can just, you know, I can cancel after after, yeah, thirty days notice. But in the fine print, it says, but first, you have to run out the twelve months of whatever that agreement was.

So just be very careful. And, usually, when you set up a new podiatric clinic in an area, as soon as you do one bit of advertising, these marketing sharks are out there just watching. They're they're looking for new businesses. And when you when your head pops up in one place, you will get emails from different places, phone calls, because they want your business. So if anybody is this I'll put this out to people.

If anybody's being approached by somebody else in Australia, by someone from a newspaper, magazine, TV, or radio, and they've approached you, you haven't approached them, and they're throwing a proposal at you, send email it to me, tf@tysonfranklin.com. I'll take a look at it for you, and I'll tell you whether it's a good deal or not. Oh, and I'll also tell you how you can sort of get a hell of a lot more out of them for free. That's what you want. Because there's there's always give and take, and everything is negotiable.

That was my rant.

No. That I totally make sense. There's lot of people out there that, you know, they wanna lock you in, like you said, for that twelve month contract, and then go on to the next person and lock the next person in. And, you know, deliver on the the list of deliverables, but until you can really understand what's in that contract to make sure it's gonna be in the best interest of you and your clinic, You know, having that ability to kinda, like, redefine print is hugely important so you don't so you don't get swindled and feel burned by an entire industry and kind of lose trust that some of these things some of these things actually do work. So you wanna make sure that you don't get suckered into some something where, yeah, you just have remorse and turn down great opportunities in the future for a mistake you made in the past.

So Yeah. There's and the thing with, for an example, somebody might come to you from a newspaper, a local newspaper or local magazine, and they'll say, oh, this is what it costs to advertise. Say, it's $600. Everything is negotiable. So if you're looking at it, you go, actually, I think $600 is a good price for that, then it all comes down to positioning in the magazine is really important whether you're on the left page, right page, or that won't go into the details of that.

But you can always get other things to see. What do these guys put on events? Do they have a a box at a sporting event? He's like, oh, yeah. I'll take that.

I'll do that ad three times because you might be trying to promote something, but try and get some extra things out of it, whether it's free editorial space, whether it's an invitation to an event that they've got coming up. There's so many so many perks that you can actually get while you're doing external marketing as well. But I'm gonna cover just a couple of ones that don't really cost too much. One I'm gonna share one that's free. And not too many people are brave enough to do this, but I used to do this all the time.

So you're in Canada. Are they say in America. What's your biggest electrical stores?

Probably like Best Buy.

Okay. That's the go to. I have heard of Best Buy. So in Australia, we have, like, Harvey Norman, and we've also got JB Hi Fi. So this is what I used to do.

Every time I walk past their store, I would duck in there. I would go up to their computers, and I would be looking at all the computers, their iPads. But before I left, I would make sure that my podiatry clinic was on the screen of as many computers as possible before I walked out. Now I've got to the point where the I first time, I just did one, and that's why I challenged her. Come in and just do one, and then try doing two, and then try doing three.

In one of the shops at JB Hi Fi across from where my clinic was, they got so used to me being in there that I walk in and go, hey, Tyson. How are doing? I'm good. They said, just put your website up on the computers. Yeah.

Do you need a hand? What is it again? I go, oh, it's proarch.com. Okay. And they would do some of them for me.

So we'd have a bit of a bit of a laugh about it. So it costs you nothing to do that. And the funny part is, I remember a patient coming in and so I have by the way, how did you find out? I was like, well, funny enough, was over at JB Hi Fi. And I was walking in the shop and they had a sore foot, and it was on a page about heel pain.

And I went, oh, it was it was meant to be. So but it cost you nothing to do that. Now you don't have to go out of your way to do it. Just if you're going past an electrical store, put it on there. I would put it on their phones, and you have a bit of fun.

Have a bit of a laugh with it as well. But make sure you put it on a page of your website that's something that you really wanna promote. The other idea that people can do that doesn't cost too much is sponsoring cups of coffee. So this this comes back to you know, in an early episode, we were talking about who is your your ideal patient. So when you know who your ideal patient is and then you say to them one of the questions, what's your favorite coffee shop?

And they say, oh, such and such. If you find out a lot of your ideal patients hang around a certain coffee shop, you then go to that coffee shop and you sponsor, you know, the first ten cups of coffee, and you describe who you want it to go to, and that's sponsoring cups of coffee. Cost you $50. It's not really that expensive. And another idea that we used to do was, you know, like charity golf days or corporate golf days.

I don't know if have you ever done any of them?

Yeah. I've done them quite a few them actually. I'm not I'm not a very good golfer, but No. It was always a fun day in the sun for sure.

Yeah. You only need to find a friend who's you just need one good golfer. And I know you're lot of good golfers. So and I was not one of them. But we would get a a golf buggy for the day and it might cost us $400 for the golf buggy.

And that included, you know, four people to play 18 rounds of 18 holes. But you invite three people that you want to improve your relationship with. So to spend half a day just think, how much would you pay to spend half a day with three of your best referrers? And they get to know, like, and trust you a little bit more. So there were the guys that I used to take all the time were one of the had the biggest physiotherapy clinic in Cairns.

Another guy had the biggest, like, dietitian clinic, and the other person was the CEO of the Cairns Taipends, the national basketball team. So we did about three or four golf days together. We won two. We also won best dressed because we used to we had gone costume even if it wasn't. But we we had a really good time doing it.

So that's the thing. Think outside the box. You don't have to spend a huge amount of money. We even even sponsorship, we would be approached. And when you're being approached with sponsorship, really think of it.

Is it sponsorship or is it a donation? And just be happy if it's yeah. If it's junior kid's basketball, just give them the money. Don't be a tight ass. Just give it to them.

But we would do some triathlons. And what they instead of giving them money, we would offer them 10 initial consultations, yeah, biomechanical assessments, and they could distribute them however they wanted. And we'd put a thirty day limit on there, and usually about 50% of them would get used. And all we were really giving was their time. Think of these ideas and take yeah.

Use use whichever parts you want.

No. That makes total sense. I think you you can get creative, you know, based off what your interests are, you know, what type of events or activities you think some of your refers that you share and kind of overlap with. I think it's those are great opportunities and low relatively low cost ways to build that trust, get people to like you, and just build these kind of win win relationships like we've been talking about previously. I think that's hugely important.

Are there other things that we should kind of remember when we go into external marketing things? Just a couple other tips maybe?

Yeah. I think the the biggest thing is just to remember that any form of external marketing you're doing, it's not just new patients you're trying to bring in your business, but your existing patients are seeing what you're doing, and your referrers are seeing what you're doing. So you can't see a referrer and say, oh, we're the most prestigious podiatry clinic and and talking about quality and all that. And next thing you're marketing externally is, yeah, we're the discount podiatry clinic. It's sort of it's not congruent, and all of sudden they go, hang on.

Didn't you just come and tell me that you're you're the best podiatric, and now you tell me you're the cheapest podiatry clinic? But also don't market something and offer new patients this this amazing deal to come in and see you, but your existing patients who have been seeing you for ages, you're not giving them any benefits at all. And I've seen, not in podiatry so much, but subscription channels have done that where sign up for us and it's only $50 a month, you know, for the first twelve months. And they're going, well, hang on. I've been with you for ten years, and I'm paying $80 a month.

So some some bastard who's hasn't given you any money for ten years, you're gonna let them have this service for $50 a month. And not this is a true story. I rang them up. They said, I'm not happy. And they said, why?

And I said, well, I've been with you for ten years. They're getting for $50. I'm paying 80. And they're all I'm sorry, sir, but it's just yeah. That's for for new customers.

So good. Cancel my subscription, and I'll sign back up again tomorrow. And they went, oh, I don't think we can do it. I said, well, just cancel my subscription then. So they said, I'll get the manager.

So manager gets on the phone. And he said, oh, here you wanna cancel. Yeah. Yeah. I've got the shits.

I wanna cancel it. He said, well, look. We'll give it to you $50 a month. I said, no. No.

Now I've got the shits. I said, oh, really? I want you to cancel. So they did. They they canceled it, and I missed it.

I missed it really bad, but I stood by my principles and I never never rejoined on that particular service. I won't say who they were. So yeah.

I think that's kind of like what you're that's kind of on brand for you, guess. And that's kind of what we're talking about here is that that consistency is our what does your brand mean?

Yeah.

What does your clinic mean? Maybe we'll get into more like a brand discussion in the future. I guess we've touched on it a little bit when we talked about, you know, finding your ideal patient, knowing what kind of care you wanna provide. But, you know, that consistency and, like, how you present yourself publicly is hugely important because if you like you said, if one day you're the the best and most skilled podiatrist, great. But at the end, you turn around and then two weeks later, you're, you know, either crazy expensive and low quality or you're just, like, super discounted and cheap, like, your messaging is not being consistent or on brand, and you have to put out that public, you know, public face and just be consistent with it.

Otherwise, you confuse people, you erode some of that trust you've built, and it can lead to, you know, poor outcomes for your practice.

Yeah. Well, it like I said, everything everything you do needs to be on brand, right through the colors, just everything. So whether it's external marketing, internal marketing, you're talking to somebody, and going circling all the way back to uniforms, for example. We always had these polo shirts that you'd wear that you could wash them, hang them up, never need to be ironed. They were fantastic shirts.

Never faded just what the material was, and they were great shirts. But I had one guy that was working with me for a while. He said, you know, look, I don't feel comfortable in polo shirts, and he wasn't really the most athletic looking dude either. So he said, would I be able to to get like a business type shirt? I would prefer to wear a business shirt tucked in.

That's just who I am. And I went I said, yeah. I can I don't have a problem with that because the girls wore more of a a business type shirt that they they had chosen? I said, okay. You find the business shirt.

That's fine. So he got a business shirt. Said, yep. It's a good looking shirt. So he wears it the first day.

It's great. But then all of a sudden, comes back the next day, and he bought a couple of them. So a week later, I said to him, out of curiosity, yeah, I said, love your shirts, but do you know how to use an iron? He said, oh, it doesn't look too bad. Said, looks like shit.

I said, it's wrinkled. It looks terrible. I said, go home and iron that shirt, and I sent him home. I said, go home and iron your shirt. And he did this for a couple of weeks, and eventually I said, you're banned from wearing those shirts anymore.

Here are your shirts. Wear the polo shirts. Don't ask me again. And yeah. So that was because the brand of my clinic, I was really fussy with everything.

Just had to be right because it it was it was our image. So if he turned up with a a wrinkled shirt on, and I'd look at it, and I'd just go, that just says you're sloppy. You're what if if you're prepared to wear a wrinkled shirt to work, what are you doing with your orthotics when nobody's watching? Are you cutting corners? Yeah.

Sorry. Like, go I got off track a lot.

No. No. It's totally okay. Like, you had to be a little self conscious. I was I was gonna sneak a peek at my own shirt and think like,

oh, am I gonna do the same thing?

Today or not.

Yeah. I do exactly the same thing. I'm thinking of just rounding to a bit of people's shirts. I'm looking at my shirt and go, oh, yeah. It doesn't look too bad.

I know people on the people on the podcast go, oh, your shirt looks fine from our ears. But if you're watching any of the videos that we put out, then you'll see we're see we're both wearing really well ironed shirts from now on.

Yeah. We're looking good today. If I could say so myself, I think we're we're both looking pretty good.

So Oh, we're looking very dapper. And I'm not sweating as much as I was when we started. I've I've actually started to cool down.

That's the life in Australia and in Cairns, I guess. I I don't to worry about that in Montreal too often. So

No. So I think we've pretty well covered this topic. Like I said, external market is massive, and there's so many there's so many different things about it. And even when you're breaking it down to newspaper magazines, you know, trying to get media releases, you know, advertorials and editorials, each of those little topics, you could almost break that down to an episode itself because there's a lot of detail when it comes to external marketing, which is why if I'm ever doing a marketing workshop in the future, people should jump on board. But I don't have any plan.

So

Well, I'll keep I'll keep our ears open for that. Yeah. And until until the next time, thanks again, Tyson, for for that the great look at external marketing, we'll talk again soon.

Yep. That'd great. I gotta talk to later, Jim.

Bye, Tyson.

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