Getting Started With Patient Testimonial Videos

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 Podiatry Marketing. With me, as always, is my cohost, big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?

Tyson, I'm doing well. Loving life. Things are good in Montreal. I I've got no complaints.

That's good. And last week, I can't believe, I celebrated my twenty fifth wedding anniversary. That's a long trouble for did

you get in trouble for not mentioning it on the podcast? Or

Oh, last week. Yeah. Was supposed to mention it last week that, hey. This week is my wedding anniversary, and I had it wrote written down to actually mention it too because my wife occasionally will listen to some of the stuff that I do. I didn't mention it.

But if she listens to this episode, she go, oh, isn't that nice? He mentioned their twenty fifth wedding anniversary.

You are a sweetheart. Definitely, you'll score some brownie points with that with that mention. I'm a little bit behind you. I think what this is number 14 for me. So

It was only yesterday I was wearing a t shirt that I now know I've had for twenty five years because I bought it when we're on a honeymoon in Hawaii. Nice. And it is still going strong.

I reckon I'll have That's amazing.

Another twenty five years at least.

It'll come back into fashion by then.

I don't think it ever went out of fashion. My wife disagrees, but I think it's still pretty good. So, Jim, what are we what are we gonna talk about today?

Yeah. So today, we're gonna talk about kinda getting started with patient video testimonials. You know, I think everywhere look on the Internet, on phones, on computers, you know, videos are kinda everywhere. And probably one of most effective ways that you can kind of communicate with potential patients and build trust in your local community is when you have these patient video testimonials. And while I know this is probably more of a North American centric topic, it's it's legal to do in The US and in Canada.

UK as well. I know I think The UK.

UK as well.

Yeah. Australia will get arrested.

Okay. We

don't get arrested. We just get

I don't wanna send anybody in audience in Australia in into prison, but at the same time, you some of these lessons that we talk about can be utilized if you're going to talk about your own services. Obviously, there's a difference between you talking about what you do and what patients talk you and the service you provide. But there's some kind of corresponding lessons that can be used for both. But really today, going talk about how do you create effective video testimonials for your podiatry clinic and kind of how that involves careful planning, execution, and how do you kind of edit these down to ensure that these testimonials are engaging your local patients, providing information that's helpful to them, and really come off as being authentic. Because sometimes that's one of the kind of complaints you hear is like, well, if a patient's talking about me, they're going to know that I kind of cherry picked these patients to come in and talk about me.

But it is one of these things where it does build trust because it's not you just talking about yourself. So I think, you know, it it can be kind of a common thing that people say, oh, push back a little bit against patient testimonials, but these things are very effective, and there's a lot of different ways they can be used.

Well, one thing I know that in Australia, for example, we can't do patient testimonials written or video. Not yet, anyway. It may change down the track. But what an Australian podiatrist can do, one, you're gonna run through some of the processes of doing this the right way. But what an Australian podiatrist can do, if you happen to do a talk somewhere, it could be for rotary, it might be independent retirees, whatever it is, after you've done that talk on whatever the subject is, you can interview the people who are at the talk and ask them to comment on how they found your talk on ingrown toenails or your talk on fungal nails, and you can use that, oh, Tyson was so good when he explained this, this, and this.

You can use that because technically, they're not patients. This is just feedback on a talk that you did. So I think that's one way you could get around it.

That that's that's a good way to kind of approach it there. I think that is important to you know, we're we're kind basically talking about social proof. Right? Whether it be a video testimonial or someone, you know, that saw a lecture that you did that kind of speaks on your behalf or kind of gives you some praise, you know, kind of to others. That that's what we're really looking for is that social proof.

So, you know, really, you know, there's we're gonna talk about some steps here that really will help you create some impactful patient video testimonials and really start off with It's important to determine what your goals of these video testimonials are, right? We've talked about niching down in the past, even in a recent podcast, but you want to make sure that the testimonials that you get and the patients you're going after to do the testimonials are really going to showcase specific types of treatment that are going to highlight your clinic's expertise in kind of a certain patient segment. You're not going to if you're really into sports medicine, don't want a testimonial about diabetic foot care. Or if you want to do ingrown toenail surgery, you don't want to be talking about onychomycosis maybe or something. So really knowing what you want to get out of it is hugely important because you're hoping these are gonna build trust with potential patients in order to do that and get the kind of return on investment for either your time or your staff's time of doing it or you're outsourcing it to somebody else.

You wanna make sure that it's gonna resonate with the right patients and the right kind of patient population.

Yeah. I agree a hundred percent because I don't think there's any point creating any content if it's not targeted or has a specific purpose in your podiatry business. Why talk about wounds if the last thing you ever wanna see is a wound?

No. For sure.

Unless you're doing a video saying, if you have a wound, go somewhere else. And go, oh, okay. We will.

Yeah. And one thing you have to do also is like it's because it kind of comes into like choosing the right patients, right? This kind of like ties into the types of care you want to provide. It's like, who is that right patient? And, you know, how you select the patients that are going to provide the kind of right testimonial.

Like, are they an expressive, well groomed, jubilant person who's going to attract kind of We talked about previously kind of like attracting like. Are they going to kind of pull in patients that you want to see in your practice, right? And you wanna have pick those people who have had positive experiences and they're really willing to share. So maybe they've provided a written review in the past or they've really been very vocal to you or your staff about being excited about the type of care they provided. So there's kind of like clues about who these right patients are.

And by of settling on them or kind of knowing who they are can be really helpful. But you really want to kind of consider a diverse group of patients. Obviously, you wanna make sure they're kinda in your niche, but, you know, maybe it's someone that's, you know, treating sports medicine. It's a you know, that's the weekend warrior type. It's the elite athlete.

Maybe it's a high school athlete. Maybe, you know, it's men. It's women. You wanna make sure you're diverse enough to really bring in a lot of different people kind of in that patient segment that's really, really important to you so you can focus on those kind of conditions and treatments that are offered by your clinic. And, you know, it goes without saying that, especially in The US and North America and maybe in The UK, you need to make sure that they sign a release as well.

Like, there's obviously certain legal aspects of things, but making sure that they understand what that you're gonna be using this on social media or in advertising and marketing and just being really upfront with people and making sure they sign off on those things ahead of time so they don't feel like you know? So they understand kind of what they think of themselves into is a really important component.

Yeah. And also, I I and I mentioned this often before that I think, ideally, it's not you don't have to it's not about having super good looking patients, but the patients that you have on your videos have got to depict the type of patients you want more of in your clinic. So you don't want a barefooted one tooth hillbilly getting on there who can't string two words together. You go, you may have fixed the heel pain perfectly, but that does not depict the type of the more of the you want people to watch your videos and go, yeah, that's that's me. I wanna come in there.

So it's got nothing to do with age, but it's just it's it's a certain type of patient that I think always looks good on video that just has one of those, like, appealing personalities.

Yeah. You don't wanna be pulling, like, answers out of people. Right? Like, if if if, you know, someone had an amazing result or is, you know, has expressed themselves maybe a little bit more reserved way about the kind of care they provided, you're probably going to on the side of someone who is a little bit more bubbly, a little bit more outgoing, and just kind of really wears their heart on their sleeve about the amazing care that they provided. I mean, you don't want them to be be too in that way, but you can kind of you you know, in our profession, we work with people all the time.

So, you know, you you kind of know that those five or 10 patients, they're kind of your ideal patients that you've provided a great result to that have that ability to communicate not only with their words, but also just the way they express themselves and the way they carry themselves. I think you're right on the ball there that it is, you know, everyone knows those five or 10 patients, so it's a matter of just like focusing on them. And, you know, the next step really is kind of jumping into, you know, having not not just really a script, but, like, understanding what questions and what prompts are gonna get the kind of best responses for people. Right? So you need to develop kind of a list of open ended questions or prompts to really help guide the testimonials.

You don't wanna, like, you know, definitely there's there's kind of good questions and bad questions like we talked about. You just don't want yes or no. There's definitely ways to, you know, ask questions that'll lead to yes or nos, and that doesn't make for a very appealing video testimonial like, did you enjoy your care that you received at Yes. You know, ProArch Podiatry?

Yes.

Yes. It was good for lot.

I've had that on the podcast when you have guests on. And I've had I have it some guests where we will talk, and I'll go, so when you did it, yeah, is that right? And they go, yes. And I've had to stop the podcast and go, okay. I'll just give you a bit of I'm gonna go back and ask this question again.

And this time, I need you to say more than yes. I said, because that sounds really boring on a podcast if that's all you're gonna say. Oh, yes. Sorry. I was just nervous.

And then once I get the hang of it all, they're all fine.

And it's it's funny you bring that up because I think there's a this this two to three minute video testimonial is really like a story that we're telling. The story of this patient's kind of treatment path in a way. You know, like, you know, we all watch, you know, Hollywood movies or TV shows and stuff, there's the intro kind of getting to know the person, right? Like, you know, what brought them into, what brought you into the podiatry clinic? And I'll see Doctor.

Franklin or Doctor. McDonald. And that letting them have a little bit of time to describe what their problem was, the things they had tried, the frustrations they had experienced. Then kind of describe it, the condition, the treatment you received. Did you do it on your own?

Did you see another doctor? There's ways of kind of pulling that out of them. And was the trying to kinda, like, see that little struggle that they have because there's always the intro. There's some kind of middle part struggle or they just couldn't get the right treatment or it just wasn't working for them, you know, with another podiatrist or something. That you have to, like, we're not talking about bad mouthing people, but just it wasn't a good fit, and they found some level of frustration.

But then how did they get to the other end of that? Right? You know, how did their you know, what you know, they don't have to go into details as far as like, well, I had a lapidus bunionectomy, blah blah blah. It doesn't have to be like that, but they had a certain procedure that led to kind of either a life changing event or restored their level of activity since coming to see you in the clinic and then, you know, how has that changed their life in a way? And then, you know, just tell us about your experience with the the staff and the podiatrist you worked with and just kinda letting them go with those open ended questions.

Like I said, you know, asking good questions will lead to really good responses. And, you know, like I said, that think about that, you know, very simple story arc where they're the, like, hero, like, the kinda hero's journey. Right? They're they have a problem. They're looking for a solution or they maybe you know, there's a couple bumps in the road, then how do they get to that, you know, you know, that that treatment or that that way that kinda gave them some resolution at the end.

So if you think of it in that way in three parts, then it's able you're able to you or your staff or the people you're working with can really create a compelling narrative that will connect with potential patients.

And the other good part too when you're asking these questions, I think even if you ask a question, they answer it poorly. You can just say, okay. Because you're just gonna let the video run, okay.

Right.

I'll just ask you a question again. Put a little bit more emphasis on what you said there because that sounded really good. I just think a little bit more and just give them that little because you're the director of this as

well. Right.

So if they if they said something that was a really good point, go, oh, that was really good. Can you say that again? And the next time they say it, it might have a bit more enthusiasm in it. And then because when you're doing the editing, you can cut it down to to what actually worked best. So it's not that from you start the video, you have to have all the questions.

If they make a mistake, that's fine. Just reask just give them to do the question again or the answer.

No. That that's a great point. It is it's something where if someone, you know, they cough in the middle of the take or something happens, like, that's a great thing about video these days is that, you know, whether it be an iPhone or a video camera, like, you have kind of unlimited amounts of, you know, material. Right? Like, back in the day when we're taking, you know, for the young people on the podcast who may not know what this is, but a film camera and you have 24 or 36 opportunities to take a good shot, you're a little bit more selective.

But now you can just, like you know, I guess they're sometimes limited by memory of a phone or of a of something. But you can just do unlimited video. Right? So just get the best takes. Take your time in doing it.

I would say the next step is really understanding, is this something you know, asking yourself, is this something you want you and your staff to take on? Like, do you wanna be the ones that plan the shoot? Is that something that you you have a space within your clinic that you can really, you know, have, you know, good lighting? Maybe there's minimal background noise. You have some type of backdrop that maybe has the logo of your clinic.

Is that something you wanna take on and you feel like makes sense for you and your clinic, or do you wanna outsource or hire someone that is a video production crew, not only to handle that some of the, like, the shooting, but also maybe some of the prep work that would handle all the equipment, the lighting, those kind of things. So it's important to make sure that, you know, whatever way you decide to go, that the patient feels comfortable and relaxed. And that just takes time for you and your staff to get comfortable doing it yourselves, but also sometimes by bringing a professional that's maybe worked in a healthcare setting, it helps kind of speed that process up a little bit. So considering what kind of equipment are you gonna use? You have a dedicated camera, a dedicated phone, are you using a tripod or some way to make sure that you have good, steady, and professional looking footage.

It's amazing what you can do these days when you have a tripod, a high quality camera, decent lighting, a backdrop, and a quiet space. A lot of that can be taken care of. Not you or your assistant or your marketing team or your, you know, your office manager. You're just gonna be asking these kind of open ended questions, and it's just gonna be really the patient's voice you're gonna hear as you kinda cut together. But knowing whether it's something you wanna you and your staff to do, maybe a marketing agency can cut some of that stuff together for you, or working with a a film product or video production crew, there's some different options you have there as far as, you know, planning and kind of recording the shoot.

Yeah. I did a a one day video course, iPhone video course here in Cairns. It was amazing just the little tips and tricks about getting the right angle and and framing the subject and how you fade in and fade out. Just doing a a one day course yourself can make a massive difference to your video looking really boring or just having that little bit more professionalism to where people go, oh, did they bring somebody in to do this, or did they do it themselves? It sort of it just lifts that level a little bit.

Yeah. And that's a great thing about the the tools we're talking about. Like, not a lot of them you know, most of them are pretty inexpensive, so you

can Yeah.

You know, practice at home with your family, practice at home with, you know, your staff and stuff until you feel comfortable. Like, you have kind of a routine or you have some type of process in house that makes sense. And if you don't feel comfortable with that, like, there's definitely other options and opportunities. But, you know, the the kind of the steps after getting that area set up is like recording the testimonials. Right?

You want to like, talked about with the questions you ask, you want it to be as, you know, letting them know just speak honestly and candidly about what their experiences have been. You know, obviously, so utilizing these questions you prepared to guide the conversation, but you also wanna like let some let let it be flexible enough where they don't feel like you're just trying to pull a specific answer out of them. Right? You really need to feel like you're having a conversation and whoever's asking the questions of the patient needs to kinda, like, feed off them, like, you and I when we have conversations on this podcast. It's not just, like, Tyson asks question, I answer segment, and then we move on.

It's like, no. We're having kind of a a good conversation about different topics, and we feel free to just jump in and, you know, kind of expand on certain things like, you know, tell us more about this. Or there there's ways to kind of dive into a con conversation with someone when you're asking these questions. And, you know, whether it's recording multiple takes, there's a lot of op opportunities you have in the next step we'll get to with editing that lot of this stuff can kinda be pieced together in ways that make sense and really provide that narrative like we talked about.

Well, we were saying before, the idea is just keep recording. Reask the question if you need need to reask the question, and then, like you said, the next part is editing and basically putting it all together.

Yeah. For sure. And and, like, editing the video, there's different ways of doing that. Right? There's a lot of, like, free or inexpensive tools now available.

You know, we utilize something with this show on our show here to promote it called Descript, which is a pretty interesting tool. You know, each Mac, if you have a Mac that, you know, comes out, you have iMovie to kind of go about and, you know, it's a free editing app, and it doesn't necessarily require a lot of time and effort to learn how to do that. So there's definitely, you know, free or cheap ways of doing it. You know, if, like I said, if you just wanna offload it, you know, to a a kind of a film production or an editing, you know, they they should be able to take care of that for you.

What what's your video editing suite of choice? If you were editing a video, what do you use?

Yeah. So there's kinda like there's three main actually, main ones I use these days. So whenever I you know, some of you might have seen things on LinkedIn or on our Facebook as far as like these kind of short ninety second or two minute clips that I we use Yeah. With the transcription, all those things. So I utilize two tools usually.

One is what's called Descript. So this is a basically a software that, you know, you load images or or video into it, and it spits out kind of, I'd say, about a 95% accurate transcript. And you can overlay images, overlay the text onto the video, and just, you know, kinda just decide what file you know, what is gonna be a a rectangle or a square. So there's ways of kind of editing that, and I can export it into something called ScreenFlow, which is a pretty simple video editor to kind of like, you know, chop up things a little bit more or add music or add some additional things. I I probably would like to try to get better at this Descript program where I'm just doing everything in there.

But for right now, I'm I'm kinda focused on two different software platforms right now. How about yourself, Tyson? What do you like to use?

Editing video is probably ScreenFlow. It's probably what I use because it's just easy. I've I've used iMovie, and there just seems to be more moving parts with it. I get a little bit frustrated with it sometimes. However, iMovie, you can be doing on your desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad, and they all talk to each other.

They know exactly where you are at different times. You can save it and then get on the other device and use it. It's a good pro and I use Headliner for doing my other videos and stuff.

Yeah. It's really about kinda, like, trimming these videos to, like, create that kind of, you know, cohesive and engaging narrative we talked about, the story the kind of power of storytelling. So like you said, we either use Headliner or Descript for the captions. It's nice to have titles, you know, maybe putting your clinic logo to make the videos really look professional. Yeah.

You know, we put our podiatry marketing logo in some of those videos. But keep it relatively short and focused. Right? It's not like you don't wanna hear about, you know, as much as maybe they wanna tell you about their cat or their grandma or if there if there's stuff that's not related to kind of that that narrative arc you wanna tell, it needs to be, you know, chopped out of there. And somewhere between one and three minutes in length is is a good amount of time for testimonial because you wanna be you know, tell that short that story in an engaging way in in ways that will keep people listening to the video and kind of building trust in in you and and the and the care you provide.

I also say that, you know, like, when you after you get done kind of with that rough cut, there are different ways to kind of share and promote this video. Right? So, you know, there's so many different social media channels these days. You got LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you know, even on your own website, you know, Google Business Profile. There's a lot of places where you can share this video, you and just really kind of gain additional visibility for it.

But also, if the patient is willing to do the video themselves too, they're probably more than likely to share it on their social channels as well. So it's an opportunity to, you know, have that ongoing positive relationship with one of your patients when you can and say, hey, you know, we featured you on our Facebook or we sent out a newsletter. If you want to, like, send it to, you know, your friends and family, here is a link. Yeah. So making it very easy for them as well.

And they're probably more than happy to share it with you as well. But I think that's one of the things I would recommend is, like, you know, these videos can be reformatted and really reshared. And like I talked about, like, you know, you have five or 10 of them. It's something you can go back to over years. It's not just a one and done situation.

These these are powerful things you can run campaigns on. You know, if you have different demographics you're going after, you know, the different ways to mix up these to really get the most bang from the buck when you're spending the time and effort to make these video testimonials.

Well, it's the thing is once you've got the video, you can then chop it. You can make it shorter if you want to do just shorts for YouTube or something like that. You can make them slightly longer and you can use them on Instagram. Put them on Facebook. Have them on your website.

There's so many different places that you can actually put that information. The main part is capturing the information first. If you never have the video, you got no chance of doing anything else. So I think when you get the opportunity to yeah. You have a patient that's just the ideal patient.

Sometimes you may not have everything just set up perfectly. I think in some businesses, and I've seen some of them do this, where they have a tripod with an old iPhone or something just hooked up and a and a a little microphone that just clicks into it, and that's always just set up in the clinic in a certain area, more in America because they do testimonials a lot more. And if they just have that perfect patient and the person's really good at talking, and they said, hey, would you love to do a testimonial for us about what you just told me then? And they go, yeah, not a problem. They just take them to this room.

They've already got a little soundproof corner, plug the little lapel mic onto them, and they look into the camera, bang. They just nail it first time. They go, thank you very much. So to me, it's if you have the room to have an area where it's okay. They're not perfect, but they're the sort of things that you can produce on a fairly regular basis.

That's a good idea.

Yeah. I mean, it's not too dissimilar from how we do this podcast. Right? Like, I've got my I've got my little nook in my house. Yeah.

I've got, you know, the the camera setup. I've got the microphone, and, you know, it takes a little bit of time to get a little bit of lighting correct. But besides that, it's just it's pretty much let's get on this call and let's talk talk to each other and record the podcast. It's not too dissimilar from what happens when people are recording, you know, video testimonials. And these are powerful ways to communicate things that, I mean, might get ideas for your own marketing or ideas about your practice when you have these.

Not only is it kind of like great to get these insights and share them with your potential patients, but it helps you get feedback as well, right? They might say things that you never really thought about, right? Or maybe they even will say things that they never expressed in the clinic room when they're kind of talking on camera. So it is a great way to kind of like display kind of the great care you provide for people, but also it helps elicit feedback so you can really understand kind of your patient's journey and how you can play a role, not only for their journey, but also potential patients to get more of them to come into your clinic.

No, no, I agree 100%. So before we wrap up, have you got anything else you want to cover on this particular topic?

No, think it's one of those things, like I said, there's huge benefits of doing this. I think it's a matter of if you do have questions about how to get set up or what's some gear or you know, what are some, you know, maybe places in your area, you know, to find video production capabilities, definitely happy to, like, you know, help. So feel free to visit podiatry.marketing. Send us a message, and Tyson and I can provide you some feedback or some help to get started in this area.

Yeah. We may even on the October 21 when we do our event in Chicago, all the information is on podiatry. What's what's the website to get to?

So you can go to podiatry.marketingbackslash live, or you can go to podiatrygrowth.com, and it's it's it's there in upper right hand corner, and register to see what we're gonna be talking about in Chicago in October.

Yeah. And then when we finish the event, when everybody at the end of the day says, you guys were awesome. We'll have a camera set up. Then we go, now you tell the camera that because we can use that next year when we do it in 2024.

That sounds like a plan, Tyson.

Yeah. Okay, Jim. That was great. So thanks for that, and I look forward to talking to next week.

Alright. See you, Tyson.

Okay. See you.

Bye now. Bye. 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.