Marketing Pillar #3 - Internal 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. This is your host, Jim McDannald with Tyson Franklin. Tyson episode 19. Can you believe we're here already?

It's gone really, really fast. And I've had once again a lot of positive feedback from some of their past episodes because we all posted in the podiatry business owners club and other social media platforms. It's the feedback we're getting what I like about it is the feedback is directly around marketing because it's the podiatry marketing podcast, which sort of makes sense, I suppose.

Yeah. No. It's nice to kinda have a a narrow kind of targeted audience and a targeted topic to discuss. And so, you know, there's definitely lots of aspects of podiatry that you and I know a lot about, but just having this focused conversation on the topic of marketing has been really helpful. You know, like you mentioned, people have reached out to me on LinkedIn and Facebook and other platforms to let us know they're enjoying the show.

They can obviously go to podiatry.marketing if they wanna leave us a message or a voice mail or join our mailing list. It's definitely the spot to check out. But today, we're gonna be talking about what topic are we be talking about today,

Ty? Today's topic is pillar number three because I'm gonna run through the six pillars over a six episode period. So first pillar was professional referrers. Second pillar was nonprofessional referrers. They just need some love.

And the third pillar is what I call internal marketing. And it's I think it's one of those pillars that the difference between internal marketing next week, I'll talk about external. The main thing with internal marketing is it's cheap. It's inexpensive. That's and it's all about all the marketing you do within your business while the patients are are basically already there with you.

That's really great because I think, like you said, there's all these kind of external ways that sometimes require money and attention to, like, get the patient, you know, into the office. But once they're actually in your office, there's a great opportunity to educate them about the all the things that you do. Yeah. They're kind of a a captive audience for lack of a better term.

Well, the the part that's interesting, you've you've got patients that will be in your clinic, and they may come in and out of your clinic for a number of months or could be a number of years. If you stop them and said, tell me the the top five things that we actually do in this business, rarely can they tell you all the things that you do. And a a perfect example, and I've mentioned this on webinars, on other podcast shows, is I had a family friend. I've done it for about fifteen years. The kids had come in as orthotic patients.

The parents had been in as orthotic patients. And she was about 16. She was coming in to get another set of inserts. We're fitting them in her shoes, and as she took a shoe off, all of sudden, her big toe's got a bandage on it. I went, oh, what if you kick your toe?

She went, oh, no. I had nail surgery. And I went, I didn't see you in the book. I said, oh, who who did it? She said, oh, no.

Didn't get it done here. I I got my my doctor to do it. I went, why would you get your doctor to do the nail surgery, your GP, and not see a podiatrist, at least, or come and see me to do it? She goes, oh, you don't do that sort of thing. You just do orthotics.

And I just I sort of I laughed, but at the same time, I'm thinking, I've known these people for fifteen years, and they didn't know I did nail surgery. How bad is that?

Yeah. That's unfortunate because you know all those things that you do. Right? Because they're kinda floating around in your head, but unless there's some way to communicate that to your patient population, to your local community, exactly that scenario just laid down. They may not know that you provide that type of care.

Obviously in The US as well, like, you know, more operating room based surgery, different types of things that unless you can kinda find a way to communicate with patients about that, you know, they may go to another clinic down the street or to another specialist. So definitely, that's worth checking out. Also, like, you know, once they're in your clinic, what do you think about, like, television, you know, video? Is that something that you would consider using to help educate patients?

Well, we actually did it in our own clinic. We had a number of ways that we could constantly try to communicate with them that these are the other services that we offer because, like, we were just saying, we can't just assume that they know everything you do. And because podiatry is one of those professions, I mean, our scope of practice is so broad that everything from nail surgery to making an insert to going into somebody's shoe to general care to diabetic chaps. I mean, there's so much you can do. So one of the things that we did was in our reception area, we had a massive TV set.

We had a couple of them around the place, and we had our own, like, videos playing on the screens. So when the patient was sitting there and we'd have it on silent. So when the patient was sitting there, they could look up, and they could just see what are it is that we were actually promoting or another service that we actually provided, and that worked really well. And the other thing we had is on our on our walls, one main wall of each consultation room, we never put like, we had one anatomy picture or something like that just so you could use it as a reference, But one of the walls was completely covered in all the things that we actually treated. All the words that we actually treated.

I could actually give a I could upload a photo to the show notes so people can actually see one of these walls. And the amount of times the patient would be sitting there, you might be chatting about something, you can see them looking over your shoulder at the wall, and they go, what's a neuroma? And you start telling what a neuroma was. Oh, I didn't know that you helped people with bunions. So we just had all these terms.

So surprising between the TV set and just things on the wall, how that would just spark a conversation straight away. And it's better than having the midday movie on with someone getting knifed, which I had seen in somebody else's place once.

No. I think you bring up a good point because I think there's also different types of learners. You know, obviously, if you don't have those graphics or those abilities to show patients not only what you do and the treatment you're performing that day, but also the other types of treatments, it may go in one ear and out the other. So when you have, you know, visual ways for them to watch it on TV or if you're using an iPad or different ways of kind of explaining your your your diagnosis in your treatment, it's gonna be a beneficial way for people to actually remember what they have, how you're gonna treat it, and what the expectations of care are. So, you know, definitely using those different types of things.

Are there other types of visual aids, you know, besides, you know, the the posters and the TVs you found that were helpful?

Oh, but we had a number of ideas. We used to occasionally put a a poster on the back of the the bathroom door. And you said, well, you're seated and we have your attention, and we would be talking about something that we're doing. And occasionally, get the odd patient that would tell you that was pretty funny. Well, I think what people gotta understand is the internal marketing is all about the patients that you already have.

They already know, like, and trust you, which is why they're there. So while they're there, it's a perfect opportunity to do certain things. Whereas even if it's not just a visual, even auditory, I've rung businesses and you'll be put on hold or you can wait you know, you've been placed on hold. And this thing got their local radio station. And there was one time I was ringing a place to find out something, and while they had me on hold, an ad from their opposition came on the radio.

I listened to it, got the information I needed in harp. Anyway, that's exactly what I was looking for. Or the the music that is being played is either really loud or it's, you know, Richard Clayderman playing piano music, and you go, oh my god. And when you're on hold, it takes a long time. So we used to have on hold messages.

So and and the message would talk about certain things about our business. It could talk about heel pain, certain problems that we treated. And it was amazing how some patients would make their appointment and at the same time go, oh, I didn't realize you guys did that. Could I book my husband in or could I book my son in to get that checked out? And we would we would change the messages on a on a fairly regular basis.

So I mean, there's so many ways of letting your patients know what you do.

That's a really good point. You gotta find those different ways to to let them know about those services. Otherwise, they're gonna go somewhere else. In a previous podcast, we talked a little bit about patient surveys and kind of kind of surveying your patients as far as how would you go about use utilizing those again just to remind some of our listeners about those inpatient or in office surveys, I would say.

Yeah. Well, surveys are an internal marketing pillar. So there's two types of surveys. One, you could you could survey your patients just on satisfaction. So that's something you send out to them.

And this is really about maintaining contact with them as well. But while the patient is actually with you, your your receptionist could quite easily ask them a couple of marketing questions. What radio station do you listen to if it if if you advertise on the radio? What's your favorite coffee shop? Do you still read the newspaper?

Is there a local magazine that you read? What type of car do you drive? And this is just it's not that you're prying, they're just conversations that you have. As the business owner, if you're with the patient in the room, they're the sort of it's the sort of information you wanna find out about your ideal clients is the more you can learn about them, the easier it is to go and find more ideal clients, which is why you wanna do this sort of internal marketing and and surveys with them. And the information you get back, it's worth the time and effort of of doing it.

No. That totally makes sense since they're there. They definitely want to feel like they are in your target audience, so I'm sure they're happy to to share some of those details. So, you know, you can treat them the way that they're accustomed to it and receive great care. Also, like, you know, as things as far as, like, mail and different types of flyers or mails to mail to patients, what would you say in in that realm makes a lot of sense when when you've had those experiences in the past?

Well, a couple of other things we would do is we would never send we'd never mail or send something to a patient, whether it was a letter, without there being some form of marketing in there as well. And we would do exactly the same thing with their professional referrers. If they were on their database, to me, that's part of your internal marketing as well. We would never send a report without sending some form of marketing material in there as well to let them know other services that we actually did. If you were giving so beginning of the month, we would work out, okay, what what's something we wanna promote this month?

We would print it out on a a sheet of paper, say an a four sheet of paper. In America, I think it's legal size or something. Different different shape. Anyway, if we were doing an email to a patient, when you're sending that email to a patient, why not change the the signature down the bottom or add something to that email that promotes something else they're actually doing? So to me, it's every contact with the patient is an is an opportunity to internally market something that you're that you wanna promote, something that you wanna see more of or or an area that you wanna sort of move into.

Yeah. Definitely is that angle where you're trying to educate them about all the things you do, and it's it can be so expensive if you're doing external marketing and you're trying to capture people's attention

Oh, yeah.

Especially if they'd if if they're not, you know, if they're not primed and ready to listen, you know, to kinda that kinda switching cost to go from, like, scrolling on Facebook, and then all of a sudden they have, like, something that they didn't necessarily expect. But, you know, when they're receiving an email from you already and they're they want to know either look at the bill or they're that you've captured that attention already, if you can leverage that into a little bit more education, a little bit more information about the things you do, I can see where that can be extremely beneficial.

Well, lot of our our patient letters, our letterheads were never just normally a letterhead. We would go to the printers, we would get our letterheads done up, and they would be preprinted with something that we were promoting. It could have been a free book, know, what do I have heel pain? And this was all printed on the letterhead, then our letter would fit in amongst the the promotion that we're actually doing. And once again, surprising the feedback that you got from the patients that, oh, whenever I get your letters, it's always interesting because there's always something else on there.

We would like, reactivating patients. Going through old patient files and finding incomplete treatment and reactivating those patients to me is internal marketing. And if you've been around for a number of years and you've got thousands of patients, you are sitting on a gold mine if you know how to actually tap into incomplete treatment and how to reactivate patients.

Well, it's part of that kinda like surprise and delight of people. Right? Like, if you can provide something besides just like, hey. Like, you didn't you weren't treated completely, like, come back to the clinic. Yeah.

But think you've talked about this previously about sometimes either putting a little small gift card or even, like, a little, like, lotto ticket, some way that, like, to kind of build, I would say, like, brand affinity or just like, well, that was kind of a fun thing to get. And then you're associated with that kind of, like, surprise and delight. And, you know, it's something that they actually need as well. You know, it's kinda like a win win win. So I definitely I like that that way of approaching things.

Oh, especially if you're you're doing surveys to thank them with a with a scratch scratchy that they could win $25,000. Whether they win or not, at least you're you're thanking them for the time and effort they're putting in to do that survey and send it back to you. But I think it doesn't matter what internal marketing you're doing, whatever it is you're doing, just keep it really, really consistent. Don't do one thing and then, oh, yeah. That went great for a month and then you stop it.

And then six months later, oh, let's try something else. Just constantly keep trying ideas, test and measure. If it works, bring it into your repertoire and just make that part of what you do on a regular basis. So we used to have different standard letters, l one, l two, all the way through to about L 8. And if somebody came in for treatment, we would send them a letter thanking them for coming and seeing us as a patient.

And I'm thinking how many times have you been to a motel, dropped hundred, hundred $50 for the night or more? Yeah. $250 for the night, stayed there three or four nights, come back home. When was the last time you got a letter? You know, like a handwritten yeah.

Not handwritten, but a paper letter or something that arrived in the mail thanking you for staying at that motel. I've never got one. I might get an email that'll go, how can you fill in this survey? It'll only take two minutes, and that takes fifteen minutes. You get the shits halfway through it, you can it.

But never do you get a letter just saying, Tyson, thank you for staying with us. We we we noticed that, yeah, you did this, this, and this. Love your feedback at some stage and love to see you again. Just a thank you to your patients, I think goes a really, really long way. And we had a letter that if the patient saw us and was had reappointed, we also had different letters of the patient saw us and didn't reappoint.

So we used different letters, and we had letters if they were an adult or if they were a child. We sort of mixed these letters up. All it takes the reason why a lot of people don't do this is it takes effort. You've actually got to put some effort in and you're gonna have systems in place to make it work.

Well, takes effort and also it's but it's that human touch. Right?

I think

a lot of times in the digital world, we get kind of you know, everyone feels time poor, and they feel like, oh, I'm just gonna send up this blast, and that's gonna be good enough. But if it's not personalized, if it doesn't seem authentic, people can really read into that. So, you know, taking a little extra time, you know, people get less and less kind of paper mail every day. I remember back in the day getting, you know, mailboxes full of things, and you would just kind of like you know, it would be it would be quite a thing. But now, you know, real letters are kind of so few and far between that, you know, when you when you do thank someone in a personal way and take the time and effort to put in there, I think that people really do appreciate that.

Yeah. And it's simple. A thank you card. If somebody has if a patient has referred another patient to you, acknowledge that they've referred the other patient, whether we used to give away free therapeutic wax foot baths to patients that referred another patient. We wouldn't say to them, hey.

If you refer a patient, we'll give you this. It's just if the patient came to us and they said, oh, how'd you find out about us? Oh, it was just word-of-mouth. And I'd I would pry a little bit more. Oh, but, you know, you had word-of-mouth written down.

What did you mean by that? Oh, my my next door neighbor sees you. Oh, who's your next door neighbor? They'd tell me. I'd look up the file and go, oh, yeah.

I know Mary. So then we would send Mary about to say, hey, Mary. Thank you for referring your friend to come and see us. Here's a wax foot bath as a thank you. It cost us nothing.

And we worked out probably 50 bit and we put a a, you know, a validate for thirty days, and 50% of the time that we get used, 50% that wouldn't. But a lot of times when they got used by Mary, Mary then reappoint herself for another appointment or reappoint again, that wax footpath was awesome. I wanna get that done another time. It worked for our business really, really well. And always think it's it's noticed a lot more when you thank a patient after they've done a good deed than trying to bribe them to do that good deed.

That makes any sense?

No. It makes it makes perfect sense. Right? Like, the the intent is a little bit different there.

Yes.

Like yeah. I can definitely see where that's is is a nice after the fact as opposed to, like, someone just doing it to try to get the free foot bath or something.

Yeah. Well, if I said, hey, Jim, send me send me a coaching client. And you go, okay, and you send me one. Oh, send me a coaching client and I'll give you a hundred bucks. So you're sending me that page purely because you know you're gonna get a hundred bucks.

Now we don't have this deal if anyone's listening to this. Jim expects a lot more for

Yes. I'm at least like 4 or $5,000. I'm not cheap. I'm not

No. He's not. No. He's not. So but if you sent me somebody and just said, oh, you should see Tyson.

He's great in this particular area. And the next thing, a bottle of scotch bourbon whiskey, whatever, if I knew what you drank, turned up at your house. Just say, hey, Jim. Thanks for referring such and such over. I really appreciated that.

You would get that and go, wow. Thank you for that. And that, I think, means so much more. And I think with your own patients, set up some form of system that you reward the patients that prefer other patients.

Yeah. I like that. That makes sense to me.

Yeah. For sure. It's one of those it's also one of those things where people go out of the way to thank doctors and physios for repair referring patients. Make sure you're thanking your patients for referring other patients and and mean it when you do. Sense.

What other forms of internal marketing do you find a fact effective or beneficial for a practice?

I think one of the things that it's overlooked, a lot of people will have a Facebook page, you know, their business, you know, ABC Podiatry. I'm always wondering if there is an ABC Podiatry because I use them as a lot as my example.

You're plugging that there'll be pain here, I think.

They should be. So ABCF podiatry. And they'll have a Facebook page, put a sign up in your reception area that says, hey, did you know we're on Facebook? Run a competition. If you hey, if you check-in to say that you're at the clinic, once a month, we do a draw for something.

These are run competitions in your newsletters, photo competitions. Yeah. Sometimes you can post a photograph and say, put a caption on this. Those things used to go really well with their patients, and we've got some really sicko patients, so I found out. That some of the captions, you would go, my god.

Who brought you up? But they were really funny. And this is to me, it's about it's it's staying consistent. It's staying in contact with the patient, but it's sort of connecting with them on a more personal level as well and getting to realize that some of your patients are really funny. Some have really sick sense of humorous.

And you then you realize too, I attract a certain type of patient. But that's what make that's what makes your clinic unique unique to you and different to the podiatry clinic down the road. That could be the same as everybody else.

I think you bring up a really good point though, I think we talked about this a little bit previously, but that's, you know, have some personality on your social media, not necessarily just be like, you know, you're gonna be easily ignored if every other post is, you know, come see the clinic, make an appointment, click to make an appointment. That stuff is gonna just go you know, they're gonna scroll by it in a second. But if you're, you know, having having fun with it, having some contest, a photo contest, or showing a bit of personality about you or your staff, that that just kind of in you know, endears you to your patients that you are like them. And, you know, and if it doesn't attract everybody, that's okay. Yeah.

Because you're not you're you're you know, we're all a little bit different. So it's important to to to you know, as long as you're not being totally offensive and just, you know, like out way out on left in left field. But at the same time, I think it can be hugely beneficial to have that personality and show that you are a valuable member of the community. So making that visible both in your clinic and online is a huge opportunity for some internal marketing.

No. I think it's huge. Especially with Facebook, I could go to probably a lot of Facebook pages and you'll scroll through the feed of that particular business and it'll go it'll talk about, hey, look at this foot problem and yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Like, hey. Look. Here's our team having lunch, and it's liked by seven people. And it happens to be six people from the team and the business owner's mother. And these are the feeds that that are normally coming through.

So look at what you're posting. Look at what every other podiatry clinic is posting. Have a look at how many people are not just liking it, but who's interacting with it, who is commenting, and the comments are coming from people that you know are not patients or don't have the same surname as the business owner. And some of our best posts were things where you might have had a podiatrist with you who loves fishing and caught a massive fish on the weekend. Post that, and that's where you get to see all all your fishing patients.

Or something about golf or or could be something about hamburgers or smoking meat. Just something that isn't what they're seeing on everybody else's pages. And when they start to interact with that mentioned before, I'm probably talking about it again, about micro storytelling. It tells a little bit about you, and I think that ties in really well with how you internally market with your patients.

That's that's really great. I think, yeah, there's a lot of FOMO when people feel like they have to post things, not necessarily because they want to. And like you said, when you scroll through specific types of dietary clinics, you can definitely tell which ones are being outsourced to some person, you know, creating their post for them that have no personality or nothing really more than just, like, seven ways that, you know, to treat your heel pain or something. So, you know, having some personality and really engaging with some different types of people and different types of messages and seeing what works for you and the personality and the overall brand of your clinic can be a really helpful thing. So.

Yeah. Well, to finish up, I just just wanna remind people that internal marketing, I think, is one of the most effective forms of marketing you do, and is also the cheapest form of marketing. And if every one of your patients knew about every service that you offered, I mean, and they really understood every service that they could potentially utilize themselves or refer a friend or family member, you would have them lined up at the door.

Well, just like you said, there's a pay you have a patient list, you have a patient database, and if you're not using that in a, you know, effective, you know, economical way, you've already captured that or you already have that information. So, you know, trying to use that to the best of your ability instead of always chasing that next new patient. You already have if you've been in practice for a while, maybe you're just getting started, it it can sometimes feel more exciting to go out and get that new patient and do those things. But when you have a large you know, either a large amount or just a a reasonable amount of consistent patients in your database, you know, and we'll get that probably in in some up upcoming podcasts, whether it be recall emails or just email marketing in general is probably one way to, you know, cost effectively reactivating and get those people back in your clinic. But don't look past internal marketing.

There are huge opportunities there, like you mentioned, Tyson, to really, you know, create more appointments for your practice, but also differentiate yourself from others in the market.

No. I totally agree. So, Jim, what are we gonna be talking about next week? Because I'm I'm done on this topic. Next week is gonna be a topic that you choose.

What is it gonna be just to whet everyone's appetite a little bit?

Yeah. So I think we're gonna get into a little bit of LinkedIn. Oh. Not necessarily for recruiting a patient, but, you know, you being a outstanding and upstanding member of your community. How do you use LinkedIn in an efficient way to maybe just, you know, build the brand of your clinic to, you know, network professionally in your local area?

We'll we'll we'll discuss some tips about that next week.

Cool. Okay. Well, I look forward to that. So, Jim, until next week. Since you speak you speak French, don't you?

I do.

There you go. That's it for me. I'll talk to you next week.

Alright, Tyson. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing.

That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.