Finding Black Caviar - The Importance of Testing and Measuring

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, joined always by the shiniest cohost in all podiatry, Tyson Franklin. How's it going, Tyson?

You bastard. Just before, yeah, before we press record, you were just telling me how shiny my head is on the camera here. So and now you've made me sweat. I'm under pressure. It's the lights.

It's the lights. It's the camera. It's all the action that takes place. When we do this podcast, I just get so fired up and ready for it. And and I live in the tropics, so I've got the air con set to 23 degrees.

Maybe need to make it cool.

Yeah. I wish I wish it was 23 here and just know what, you know, whatever I throw those things out, it's all out of love and, you know, just, like, push your butts there a little bit. So

Oh, no.

That's fine. Show. We get things rolling here. Tyson, what are we

gonna be speaking about today? Today, we I told you well, last week when I spoke not last week, a couple episodes ago, episode 70. So this should be episode 72 if we got everything in order. I discussed developing micro pillars. And then I was talking about when you're doing that, you gotta do more of what works and less of what doesn't work.

And and you should be basing your marketing strategy based on if you get bored or not. And and I mentioned that a sales rep once said to me, oh, when are you gonna change your marketing? I said, I'll change it when it stops working. And then towards the end of that episode, I mentioned, oh, I should do an episode about black caviar. And you went, oh, what is black caviar?

And I mentioned it was a racehorse. So today's episode title is finding black caviar or a k a testing measuring. Might be another word that people actually relate to a little bit more.

So so we're not gonna be talking about that, like, fine delicacy that you'll you'll you'll find at the the high echelon events, the, you know, the the lifestyles of the rich and famous, know, black caviar. It's it's just a it's a horse? Yeah. You're gonna tell us a horse story?

Yeah. Lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Yes. No. We're talking about horses.

And what it is is sometimes the how this came about, it's what works today doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work tomorrow. And that's when you you'll see people where somebody might be jumping online or onto a particular platform, and they might be thrashing it thrashing it, and it's doing really well for them. Another podiatrist sees that and goes, oh, if it's working for them, then it's gonna work for me. So they jump on and try and do the same thing, but it either doesn't suit their market or they've missed the boat. Yeah.

It was it was clever when they first started, but it's no longer clever. So sometimes what works today may not work tomorrow. In your marketing, it's the same thing. You can be running in an ad or a campaign that works really well, and then all of a sudden, it sort of just stops working. And you've gotta be able to figure out when that's starting to occur to occur and when you start to need or when you need to make changes or actually stop it for a period of time.

Now I'll explain how that relates to racehorses if you wanna know.

Yep. That that sounds good. I think adaptability is definitely key. Right? You can't just, you know, whip the same horse over and over again and then expect the the perfect results all the time.

So, yeah, let let's get into it.

When I wrote It's No Secret There's Money in Podiatry, the world's greatest podiatry business book, so I keep saying, it in that chapter, I I had a chapter called Finding Black Caviar, and Black Caviar was an Australian racehorse. It had 25 consecutive wins, 15 of them which were group one wins, is, like, the top echelon of of horseracing. It was pretty much unbeatable. Since then, it's retired, and another horse came through called Winx. So now it could be finding Winx, which would be confuse people even more.

It was also undefeated. It had 33 wins. So it's beaten what Black Caviar did, but everyone said we'd never beat it and had 25 group one wins, which is just amazing. Now even with the greatest resources out there that have not been beaten, who are constantly winning, their trainers will watch them, and no matter how good they are, at a certain point, will give them a spill. Have to give them a break.

They give them a a pause. They let them rest for a while, and then at a certain point, they start retraining on, bang, they bring them back out to the racetrack, and they kick every other horse's butt. And it's all about timing and knowing when to do it. So they will know their racehorse. They'll know when it's time to race it and when to pull it back and and not run it.

We have to do the same with their marketing. We have to know when to run something, when to make changes, when to pull it back, when to give it a rest, and then when to sort of rerun it again.

Yeah. I think having that you know, knowing what works, but just not just running it till it, you know, it's completely dry is something that takes time. It takes, you know, experience doing that, but there definitely is a great opportunity there to kinda let like you said, just kinda let your audience or let your, you know, potential or past patients rest a little bit and be ready for the next or maybe for a similar marketing message. But giving them a break is important.

Well, I get a lot of people who say to me they'll send me an email. They go, oh, although post something in a group. Where has anybody noticed their patient numbers this year are down compared to last year? And they'll they'll sell these things that where the business isn't going as well as what it should. And the one question I I will ask a lot of, many of them have been coaching clients or someone who's just started working with me, I said, what are you doing different now than what you did last year?

I was like, oh, no. I'm not doing anything. I'm doing the same thing. Maybe that's your problem. You can't keep doing the same thing.

You've got to change and adapt and evolve. You know, it's on Charles Darwin. Evolution. Things evolve over a period of time because the world changes. Your your patients change.

So you you've got to adapt with those changes as they take place.

No. For sure. I think the pretty another example of that is that the technology, the way that, you know, you market your practice, whether it be the type of technology used to build a website or, you know, all these different kind of social media platforms or ways of creating different marketing materials, you know, whether it's, you know, the the, you know, Snapchat's coming out or TikTok or those channels or trying things like chat GPT and other types of AI that might, you know, save time in your practice, but also just allow you to kinda do more things but just more efficiently.

Yeah. Well, it's like websites, for example. If you ask somebody, oh, do you have a website? And they go, yes, I do, proudly, and they bang their chest. See, that's chest noises.

And you go, okay. When was the last time you updated it? Oh, no. And I haven't updated it since 02/2010. You're like, okay.

Well, you might that website is so old and so ineffective that it hasn't actually moved at the times. And your business, your marketing, and how you do things has got to slowly move, like you said, with technology. And it all comes back and that's why I said this episode is called finding black caviar aka testing and measuring because testing and measuring is all about finding your black caviar ads or your your marketing activities. It's testing and measuring everything that you're doing, looking at the numbers, and knowing what patients are coming in, when they're coming in, the type of patients, and then making little changes to see what effect that has. And always say, only make one change at a time.

Don't make all these dramatic changes to a campaign. And when you find something that works, you just keep running it. But as soon as you see the numbers start to drop off, you might make a little tweak, numbers keep dropping off. It's time to end it and to start a new campaign or at least give it a rest. And you'll know if it's a black caviar ad because after you give it a rest and you rerelease it, bang, the numbers go straight back up again.

I think it's really a valid point there. You have to measure it. You know, sometimes it can be if you're just gonna, like, leave it to instinct or kinda leave it to, like, what what what it feels like, You're so busy with your practice, taking care of patients, taking care of the staff that, you know, unless you have kind of some numbers in front of you to help kind of make, you know, quantitative and qualitative decisions in a way that's kind of data driven in a way. I think it's really, really important to have some basics kinda analytics or numbers to kinda base those decisions off of. So I think that's an excellent point.

Yeah. And Patrick McFadden, a guy who was on my old podcast years ago, he always said, marketing amplifies what you already have. So if you don't like the type of patients that are coming through your your clinic, if you're getting a lot of tire kickers and people that are a pain in the butt, then it's your marketing that is actually doing it. If you're doing no marketing, well, that's why you're getting the type of patients that you're getting. If you're doing a little bit of marketing but in the wrong area, that will reflect by the type of patients that you're seeing.

And also too, it's don't be influenced just by the phone ringing. Sometimes some yeah. Your receptionist will go, oh, wow. Whatever you're doing right now seems to be working really well. The phone is really busy.

But how many of those people ringing are actually making appointments? Or the ones that are making appointments, how many of them are actually following through with one of your treatment plans? So these are the type of numbers that you constantly need to be looking at to see whether a marketing campaign or activity is working or whether it's not.

That's an excellent point. I think one other area that change happens sometimes is the types of procedures, the types of modalities that podiatrists are using in their practice. You know, these days, there's a lot of either fee for service or cash pay opportunities to kind of do some different procedures or modalities like that. And, you know, halves your online presence or the way that you communicate with your current patients about that you have these things, whether it's through email newsletters or putting images of you doing these things on your website. You know, like you said, you have to kind of like gradually evolve over time as far as what your message is and how you're communicating to your patients.

And whether it's through your online presence or through your staff or just kind of the messages and the kind of, you know, what you put out into the community, you need to be aware of that. Because it's like you said, if you think, know, a website or some type of marketing is something you do every five years or ten years and you've had that same website or without new photos or new messaging on there, you're gonna find yourself pretty dated and not very relevant, you know, more quickly than you would imagine.

Yeah. And it's also making sure whatever it is you're marketing is what you want more of. Too often, somebody say, oh, I wanna have a a more of a sports podiatry clinic. I wanna see a lot of runners. And you've said it 70 times, Jim.

One of my classic sayings. If seeing running patients was illegal and against the law and you would get sent to jail for it, is there enough evidence on your website or within all your marketing to convict you? And, unfortunately, a lot of podiatrists, no. They get off scot free. I want more running patients.

Until you gotta scan through everything to even find an article or a photo that's even got a runner in there. And then on the other side of things, they will start marketing. Oh, we do acupuncture. We do dry needling. I said, that's great.

I said, how much extra do you charge for that service? Oh, no. We just include it as part of the service that we already do. Okay. But why are you marketing it then?

If you're if you're not really charging anything extra for it, it's just on top of something else that these people are coming in for, then why why make that part of your marketing if it's not giving you a return? If you're especially if you're spending money to promote that service.

Now that's an excellent point. I think if you're gonna spend money on something to to market, it has to have that ROI. On a practical side of, you know, measuring these type of things, what are some systems you would put into place when you were in practice? You know, if you wanted to see more of a specific type of patient or do certain types of modalities?

So can you repeat that question?

So like what type of practical things? How would you measure? Would you have your staff measure? Would you measure like, you know, say you wanna do more neuro injections or you wanna do more shockwave therapy?

Oh, I can.

What's a simple way someone can get started?

To me, the easiest we used to have a phone sheet at the front of our reception area. And on the phone sheet, it had the date, so you'd write the beginning the day, Monday, yeah, whatever the date was, something May. And then next to it, it would have, like, the patient name, and we'd have some details going across. Every single time the phone rang, we would note down the time that the phone rang. And you take the call.

You do everything that you had to do, but as soon as you got off that call, you would quickly just write it down. It would take you fifteen seconds to fill this form in. The reason we did that is because a lot of times say, for example, your wife, Jim, saw an ad somewhere, rang up, made an appointment for you. Then you come walking into the clinic, and they go, oh, hi, Jim. How'd you find AdBath?

Oh, I don't know. My wife made the appointment. But do you know how she found out? No. No.

I got no idea. So if that phone call had been made and we had missus Jim, missus Big Jim on the on the phone. We said, yes, missus Big Jim. How can we help? Wanna book my husband Big Jim in for an appointment.

No. I'd probably write down Big Jim. Oh, and by the way, how did you find out about us? She goes, oh, I I just saw or I just heard or I just read. Yeah.

Okay. And you note that down. I was talking to a friend. Whatever. You can write that down.

We now have an accurate a more accurate idea of how of why you came in with him because you got no idea. Your wife made the appointment for it. That used to happen a lot. So that that was one sheet that we had on how we would track it. We would also yeah.

At the end of month, we'd always be counting how many new patients that we had, how many new biomechanical patients, how many new general patients. We knew every month, we probably averaged about a 10, hundred and 20 new biomechanical patients a month. That was what we're after. So if it all of sudden was dropping down, we're going, okay. What have we changed?

What have we done? Why are the numbers lower? If we had made no major changes, we're going, let the month run and see what happens. If it was still in a slight decline, we go, okay. It's time to change what we're doing because it's not actually picking up.

And it never just drops in a month. So when people are measuring a drop, usually, it's over about a two or three month period to start to notice. Yeah. You'll notice the drop in the first month. Mistake is a lot of people wait till about the fourth month before they start trying to to resurrect it, and it's hard to resurrect the dead.

Plot of that that nosedive. It takes it it could take some time if you let it go for four months.

Yeah. And it's different there too, like, because there's a lot of online bookings. So someone might come straight to your website that might make the booking that way. So that sheet that I used at the phone may not apply as much in some areas and in some businesses, but it's still an indicator. When a person comes in, it's really finding out where are the people coming from.

And if they just go, oh, yeah. My my wife told me, go, alright. Okay. Well, next time you talk to your wife, do you talk to your wife very often? They go, yeah, of course, do.

When you talk when you see your wife when you get home, just ask her, by the way, how did you find out about the clinic? Because I'm seeing it I'm seeing it in a couple of days anyway.

But I think that that's an important point put there. I think it it can be helpful to put a just a you know, when you make those online patient request forms, you know, you can basically just leave put a line in there saying, how did you did you hear about the clinic? Yeah. And make it required for the person to answer. You don't need to, I wouldn't recommend people put like, you know, put choices there because will get lazy, click one and just want to move on to the next one and

That's what I do.

It won't be very accurate. Most that's what most people do.

I see.

So just leave it blank, but make it required that they put something in there and you'll see, you know, you'll see Google online, wife, you know, those kinds of things will pop up into there. Usually, it'll be like, most time it'll be Google or online, but it's it's helpful. It's a helpful way to gather some of that data like you're talking about so you can measure it more effectively and then kind of make a determination about, you know, whether it's your marketing, you know, how are you gonna change things up and, you know, when are you gonna rest that black caviar a little bit?

Yeah. And what's interesting and I also think it it's hard to get your your team members to do this, the other podiatrist, but I think as the business owner, if you're still seeing patients, you need to dig deeper. A patient may put doctor Smith you know, they they're filling in the form, say it's online, and they put doctor Smith. So when you're in there with a patient, don't just assume that doctor Smith sent the patient. So, oh, by the way, when you were talking to doctor Smith, did he actually say, you should see Tyson Franklin?

Did he say you should get a Parash podiatry and see Tyson Franklin, or did he say, you you probably just need to see a podiatrist? And they go, oh, no. He said just I need to see a podiatrist. Alright. So what made you choose us?

Oh, well, I actually went to I just jumped online and said podiatrist in Cairns, and bang, your clinic came up. I read I looked at your website straight away. Okay. Now it's Google. It's got nothing to do with the doctor.

But there's two things you can do there. One, Google gets a tick, but also, you know, the doctor is friendly for podiatrists but needs more education on why you're the best podiatrist that they should be referring to. So you can be a lazy business owner and just go, oh, the receptionist has filled in that part of the form. I don't need to do anything else because I'm lazy. And and that is reflected in the growth of clinics.

You need to take action. You need to be really proactive with where these patients are coming from.

But there's definitely a few opportunities beyond just kind of, you know, what that referral mechanism is or that person was. I think you're right. If you kind of go that extra step and just ask a question and open in a question to the patient, you can learn a lot more and then you can have some actionable steps you can take after that to really kind of narrow down on, where things are coming from and how to improve that flow of patients. So you can maybe unlock, a significant amount of more people if Doctor. Smith realizes that, yes, you are, you and pro arch podiatry are the way to go.

You know, but if you if you don't kinda ask that question, you're not gonna get that insight and it can't turn into something actionable to benefit your practice.

Yeah. Or they might say, oh, the doctor said see a podiatrist, talk to the girls at the front. So then they come walking at the front, and the girls at the front said, oh, yeah. We'll get one of the cards. This is the and the practice manager, yes, this is the podiatry clinic that we that we recommend.

So straight away, you go, okay. Who's a practice manager there? Contact the clinic. Talk to the practice manager. Thank them for the referral, or drop in a box of chocolates thanking the practice manager or the senior receptionist for that referral.

Because if they go, oh, well, thank you. They're gonna send more people to you. But then when you're talking to her and you go, hey, Mary, does doctor Smith even know that we exist, or is it you? Oh, no. I know you exist because my mom's been there or my brother saw you and got orthotics, so that's how I know you exist.

Is there any chance I can come in at some stage and talk to the doctor? And then you organize it from there. So this is the part of pushing it a little deeper. This is like a whole new episode. Go deeper.

Sounds terrible. Go deep. But you can go deep. But when you're coming back to the original thing about finding black caviar or yeah. And testing and measuring, it's when you find something that works, it it it's all about, I always say, be creative and then be really boring.

In the end, when when I sold my podiatry clinic, I probably had three, maybe four campaigns that I ran each and every year towards the end at at different times. They always worked. They were my black caviar ads. They kicked ass. They brought in a lot of money year on, year out, and my sales reps used to go nuts because I'll go, it's so boring.

I go, yeah, I know. But they work, so I'll keep doing it.

It makes total sense. You know, I want if it's not if it's not broke, don't fix it. Right? So I think that's a huge a huge takeaway that, you people should be aware of.

Well, it's it's just one of those things. I think we we always get more we get bored faster than our patients. And I know that sometimes, like, I've I've seen ads, you know, online. At the moment, there's this ad that I keep seeing constantly because I clicked on something, and now I see it everywhere. And the more I see it, the more tempted I am to buy it.

And it's it's called Meter, m e a t e r. It's got a plug actually now. We're not being sponsored by Meter, not yet anyway. And but it's a it's a wireless Bluetooth probe for your meat. You can put it in your steak, put it in the smoker, or put it in the oven, put it in the pan, however you wanna cook it.

And then on your phone, you say the temperature, and it'll tell you whether it's rare, medium rare, medium, yeah, medium well, what whatever it is that you wanna do. But why do they keep repeating the same ad to me all the time? Because it takes a while for me to see it, to think about it, to just take action on it. Whereas if they went, oh, here's one ad. Let's just just see.

Let's do it. Let's do a completely different ad next week. Let's do something else the week after. Let's have a break for a month because all of a sudden we're busy, so we don't need to advertise. But then, oh, no.

Shit. Now all of sudden we're quiet. We need to advertise again. So it's just this up and down inconsistent action.

But it's definitely one of those things you have to measure yourself though. Right? Think, you know, you and the you and your app there, your your meat thermometer is a perfect example that there's always gonna be something new and exciting out there, you know, whether it's a new social media channel, the best new way to make a website, this AI or chat GPT is gonna take over the world. All those things are interesting and you have to pay attention to them. But sometimes those can kind of be the bright shiny objects that haven't been proven out necessarily by you or other people yet.

And it's good to be on that bleeding edge a little bit. But if you know, one's going be kind of advertising these amazing ways or these black heavier opportunities within your practice, you have to gather those insights yourself and then know that it works because you'll definitely wanna be testing some of these new things. But when you have these kind of stalwart things that you know that work, you you gotta like hold true to those things because only you know that they're valuable. Mhmm. And and it's not gonna show up on a, you know, an iPhone ad or a TV ad or YouTube ad about all this is the, you know, use the best ways that are no cost to you.

They want you to buy something. Right? They want you to buy software. They want you to buy a subscription to something. So, you know, hold dear those things that work well for you.

And like you said, you know, use them and, you know, new things are sexy and fun, but hold on to the things that really work in your marketing and your practice.

So I I think we've covered this topic enough. To me, in summary, it's just test to measure everything you're doing, find what works, and do more of it. And don't do what doesn't stop doing what doesn't work. And even if it's boring, as long as it's working, just keep doing it. If the numbers are telling you it's starting to drop off, give it a break, and and then do something else.

That's sound advice, Tyson. I think that that that's a good way to go about it. And, yeah, definitely look forward to talking to you on the next one.

Okay. See you later, Jim.

Bye, Tyson.

Okay. Bye.

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