Marketing Mistakes (and Wins) from Real Podiatrists

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 McDaniel. Joined as always with my trusted co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going today?

I'm fantastic today. Big Jim, good to be back on here for another episode, and we are we are getting so close to episode 200. I can always I can always hear the fireworks in the background.

We might have a a special episode. We might actually after a 199 on the two hundredth one actually have a a guest join us. So we'll have to see if that works out or not.

Oh, I know. We we are planning on having a guest. Whether we get the guest or not is another thing. But if we get the guest, everyone needs to stay tuned for that one.

Yep. That sounds like it was a good plan.

And we need to turn up for it as well, but probably be a good idea.

For sure.

Okay. So let's dive into today's episode, which is marketing mistakes and wins from real life podiatrists. Not made at once. Real life ones. Actually, some of the examples I'm gonna use here are are based on my own wins and some might be my some no.

Actually, they're not my mistakes. These are other people's mistakes that I've noticed. But I reckon the the best lessons come from seeing what's worked and what hasn't worked in the real world. And when you sort of look at other podiatry businesses or just businesses in general, our reputation is everything. So a little marketing mistake, which you might go, oh, it's just a a little mistake.

Then I realized that could be costing you patience there and then, but also costing you patience long term. But smart, well executed marketing can give you results for years. You do the right you come up with a good campaign that's well thought out. You put it in place. You will get results from that years after actually doing it.

An example I I got two that I wanted to talk I'll just quickly mention. One was when we had we had a TV commercial or video done, and it was all based around it took god seven days to create the universe. And then it sort of went on about seven days. It only takes proarch one day to make your orthotics. It's almost a miracle.

And then it's god came back and he said, no, my son. It is no miracle, but it's damn close. And then we're not about for the deviously fast service. See, Prodigy Podiatry. No complaints.

I ran that ad past a few priests that I knew. Just get the get the thumbs up, get the nod from the guy upstairs. They thought it was hilarious. Only had one person complain. So other than that, that was pretty good.

But even after we finished running that ad, we had people mention it for years afterwards. It was just when when you get it right, people remember it. And when something pops into the head straight away so my opinion was every time someone went to church on Sunday, and they mentioned God, they'd going, that's right. Took God seven days to me. Create the universe.

But, you know, it only takes proarch one day to make your orthotics. These would be the conversations I imagined going on in my head at the local congregations on a Sunday.

Yeah. But it's like we talked about in previous podcast. It's about how can you be memorable. Right? How can you stand out from other folks?

It's not if you just had, like, a generic kinda magazine article or you just had a a really kinda, like, you know, a TV spot that was just really kinda, like, trying to sell, like, how great the orthotics and without some kind of memorable tie in, It might might fall on deaf ears. It might just kinda get lost in the mix with everything else. But the fact that you had something that's a little bit more memorable kinda like yeah. Like you said, years years into it, people were still talking about it.

Yeah. And the thing is if if you look at the whole marketing or business landscape, it is busy. It is noisy. And sometimes, you you don't wanna be doing something really stupid to try and stand out. I don't think podiatrists should be doing that because we gotta we gotta maintain it like a professional standard.

But you've gotta do something that's just a little bit different to what everybody else is doing, and then once you do that, just consistently drive that message. And when you do something consistently long enough, you get none none of that. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go a few real life examples of marking mistakes and wins from podiatrists and also include a, like, a bit of a takeaway at the end of each one. So I've got four mistakes, and I've got four wins that I'm gonna go through.

Alright. Sounds great. Let's get let's jump into them.

Okay. Mistake number one. Relying solely on word-of-mouth. So here's how the story goes. There was a clinic in a regional area, and that was actually in this regional area where I live.

And they've been they've built a pretty good reputation for themselves over many years. Patients, you know, they talked about them, and word-of-mouth word-of-mouth referrals was actually quite high. However, they were the only podiatrist in town before I got here, which basically that word-of-mouth that they'd built up had kept them busy for a lot of years, but they never actively promoted themselves. They never got out of their clinic and did anything in the community, purely just revolved around, we're the only clinic in town. No one can touch us.

Our reputation speaks for itself because they didn't think they needed to go and do anything. Now that was all good until a new podiatrist came to town, which was me. I'd like to point out there were no bad intentions when I came to town. I didn't come to town going, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna come and rule, and I'm gonna cripple their business and shut them. That was not my intention.

I just set up a clinic, and I used at the time, they weren't called marketing pillars. I just used a number of ways to promote myself. I got out there. I didn't realize I was connecting with professional referrers. I was connecting with nonprofessional.

I was doing some internal, external marketing. I was doing talks, it was verbal marketing. And back then, in 1992, I think, when I moved to Cairns, there was nothing online. It didn't it didn't exist. So that that part was was not there.

It was purely just hard work. But this was the thing from it. They never really recovered from that. As the years went on, their business slowly went from four having four podiatrists there to having three to having two to having a business dispute, a split, until eventually those businesses, over the years, just just dried up and went away. So the lesson from this is word-of-mouth is powerful.

And in fact, I used it myself. It it was a great way to build your business, but it's word-of-mouth alone is not a marketing plan. That's what people need to understand. And you need multiple channels, both online and offline, to stay competitive. And if you're not sure how to do in this area, you need to get a coach.

You need to get someone who can help you work through what what a marketing strategy is. Don't just sit at home thinking, oh, marketing strategy is doing this ad or I saw this other podiatrist do something. That's not a marketing strategy.

Yeah. I mean, there's lots of shiny objects out there. Right? There's always the hot thing that people are doing or not doing, but until you have it tied together with a comprehensive plan that's really directed at helping you achieve your specific goals, you know, you're gonna get distracted and and feel like you're go moving in about 10 different directions at once. But so it's better to take a breath, figure out what you wanna do, and work with someone to make that happen for you.

It is is so cost effective to reach out to someone like yourself or me. And go, hey. I wanna work through a marketing strategy for my clinic. We ask you some questions. We talk about a few things.

We go backwards and forwards. Sometimes it might be just one, two, three, or four sessions that you need to go through. With what you pay for that and what you get on the back end of it, not just next month or month up, but for years to come, pays for itself fifty hundred times over. Yet, some podiatrists are just tight. We used to call them guppies.

Did you call people who were tight guppies?

Not not North America.

No. We call them guppies. Tight as a fish's bum. Guppies. Anyway, so I'm gonna win the first win I wanna talk about is just leveraging the Google My Business page.

And here's the story I wanna wanna share. Pretty much, a podiatrist just in a suburban area, they would update their Google profile, new photos, different posts, and they were doing that on a regular basis. They also kept it top of mind about asking for Google reviews. They just had a process in place. So within months of moving to that particular area, they went from an area that had a number of podiatrists there, pretty much moved up to ranked two or three in the local searches.

Anytime someone was looking for a podiatrist near me, bang, they're right up there. And they were the newest business actually in that town, There were a lot more that had been there a lot longer. However, as a lot have done, our reputation speaks for itself. We don't need to go out there and do all this fancy marketing stuff. So the simple lesson is your Google Business profile, and we've spoken about this on the podcast a number of times.

You're an expert when it comes to that side of things, Jim. It's free. It's low cost, but it has a it has a high impact. And optimizing your online presence can quickly bring in new patients, and Google loves podiatry businesses that actively use Google. So now I'm gonna move on to mistake number two, is inconsistent branding.

I see I've seen this a lot, and this is a story I wanna share. There there was a particular clinic. Their website, signage, all the brochures, everything that they produced, every single time they produced something, it looked different. The colors were slightly off. The fonts were a little bit different.

They had multiple taglines on different things, different tagline of the business to what they put everywhere else. So therefore, their messaging that they were putting out at the community was really inconsistent. And inconsistency to the public creates confusion. And patients thought they had they had multiple locations, but patients actually thought they were owned by different people because certain things about them look so different. So the big lesson here is consistency builds trust, and your brand identity should be uniform across every touch point.

And when I've mentioned this podiatrist, some have got, oh, but if I had different locations and this signage is bit different, that one could use a different sign. Right? No. I'm I don't think it would really matter. And I I said, well, imagine if McDonald's, the Golden arches, the m was a slightly different orange or yellow color.

The font was a little bit different. One had an m in running writing. The other one used just bold letters. Someone did a little m. If you saw that, and next thing, there was a blue m, I don't think you would ever link them together.

You would actually just think they were slightly different businesses. I remember a business on the Gold Coast. They were called Wishbones, and they took the McDonald's m and just turned it upside down. Identical. They got sued and lost, but don't so don't try it.

Did you ever see the did you ever see the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America?

Oh, yes. Yeah. That's McDougalls.

Used that. No. Mick I think it's McDowell's, but

Was it McDowell's?

Yeah. Think

Sure was McDowell's or McDougall's? Anyway, it was something like that. But yeah. And they had the so the big mac it was a big Mick or something, wasn't it?

Yeah. They have they have the golden arcs, not the golden arches.

But what would be yeah. What would be funny about that is they would have gone to McDonald's and said, hey, we're doing a movie. This is what we're thinking you're doing. Can we they would have had to get permission to do that, I think.

Probably. Yeah.

Because I've I've used McDonald's in a couple of my marketing workshops, and I actually wrote to them to get permission if I could use their their logo in some of my talks. And they actually wrote back to me and said, thank you for asking, and, yes, you can. Okay. They they didn't say no. So I would assume coming to America did the same thing.

Okay. Winning oh, win number two, hosting a community event, which I used to love doing community events. Here's the story I wanna share. So there's a a podiatry clinic partnered with a local running club, and they were doing, like, an information evening. You know, foot health for runners night.

Short talk and a little bit of a a a q and a. Approximately 30 people attended. Yeah. The reason I know this one so well is because this is a this is I'm talking about myself again. This was a real life example.

Had about 30 people there. Pretty much three people booked in, I reckon, before the end of the night, but it was that week, they had made an appointment for a biomechanical assessment, MSK appointment. Two of them, straight away, got orthotics. But over the next month, another three booked in. So I had six people from that 30 people that were there that eventually came in as patients.

A number of them got orthotics. And he talked for about maybe twenty minutes and did maybe ten minute q and a, and maybe hung around for another half hour afterwards. So for an hour's work, I attracted six patients and made really good money from it. So the lesson from that is community engagement builds relationships, builds trust, credibility, and with that 30 people in the room, even if the other 24 didn't come and see me, they still would've looked at me that I was the expert in that space compared to other podiatry clinics. So even though they may not have come in, I don't know how many of those people would have spoken to someone that next day, the next week.

So I knew whenever we did some form of community talk, we always the clinic had this little little boost. We did the same thing. This the one that I'm talking to there was, like, at a personal trainers meeting. We did them for independent retirees association, rotary. Every time you do a talk, guaranteed, you will get patients from it.

Yeah. It's one of those things where it's much easier to build trust in person, I think. I think, obviously, we we talk a lot since we're on the other side of the planet online, but you can't just stay in your office. You can't just stay online and give webinars. You need to go out and meet people, and those community events are a great way to to build trust in person.

Well, I've done the same thing when I could do a number of webinars. I've done a a number of webinars, and I know there's been same people that have attended some of our webinars, and they've asked questions, that's been great. Then I've been at a podiatry conference, and I will bump into certain people. I meet them face to face, and then those people end up working with me because they've got, oh, actually, they touch you. Oh, you are human.

You're real. You're not just just an online presence. Yep. Mistake number three, ignoring the follow-up. K.

The money is in the follow-up. But, anyway, here's the story I wanna share. There's a clinic, had no recall system or any form of, like, follow-up system in place. Patients were treated once and never contacted again for any form of treatment. The podiatrist would say things like, and I've heard this so many times, and it just makes me cringe.

When the patient is ready, they will contact us. Have you heard that before, Jim?

I have. I have.

You just said shaking your head. Yeah. And that is incorrect. Because while you're waiting for them, they're out in the community. They're talking to friends.

They're talking to family. They're talking to work colleagues, talking to people they play sport with. They're chatting to the person that owns a gym, and and these people are telling them about their podiatrist. Oh, you had the foot problem. Yeah.

I I saw a podiatrist here, and when I did this, and then now I go back every six or twelve months to review it and see how it's going. And they go, oh, I saw my podiatrist three years ago. They've never got back in touch with me. Maybe I should see your podiatrist. And that's why while you're waiting for them to come and see you, they're having contact and talking with other people, and you're basically you're losing them.

It's missed opportunities for ongoing care that you could provide for years. You're continually gonna be losing patients. And in their head, they go, oh, no. I must be fixing everyone because no one comes back. Patients you fix up do come back with other problems.

Patients you ignore will never come back because they talk to other people who are being looked after better by by other clinics. And I always use physio as an example. Who's ever been to a physio, had treatment, may have had really positive treatment, and then had an injury, had a problem, and went and saw a different physio because somebody told you about their physio. I reckon everybody listening to this has done that. So if it happens to physios, it's happening to you as well.

So you need to have a follow-up systems. Or patient retention is much cheaper than trying to acquire new patients. That's the lesson. Having a simple follow-up process will increase your return visits. And if you don't know how to do it, reach out to Jim.

Reach out to me. We will train you. We will teach you how to do this and how to put it in place.

Another thing that's super important. Right? If if you have someone that's had a great experience with you and maybe, like, they they came in for an ingrown toenail, but they didn't know that you did, you know, orthotics and other types of care. You have to, like, be constantly letting them know who you are, that you're still there, and then all the different types of care you provide, and you're much more likely to get that kind of follow-up care. But like you said, if you just kinda, like, not necessarily ignore them, but just don't make them aware that you're still there, you know, they're probably gonna be lost to some other clinic or to some other provider.

Yeah. Like, I use motels as an example all the time. Every time you go there, usually, you'll stay at a different place. The reason you or majority of the time, you'll stay at a different place. You haven't been back for a couple of years, you'll stay somewhere else.

Because that hotel, you go there, you might spend $56,000 in accommodation, and not once do they even send you thanks for staying with us. Or or you'll get us at one email saying, hey. Can you do this survey? It'll only take you fifteen minutes to be alive, we're give you nothing in return. And then the next time you go into town, could be two or three years later, you go, where'd we stay last time?

I don't know because they've never stayed in touch with me. They just don't give her rats. So I'll I'll stay somewhere else. Whereas, we're not being in service paradise on the Gold Coast. Mantra legends, I love staying there.

Great place. In case anyone they're not a sponsor of the podcast.

Not yet.

No. So number three, the the third win I wanna share is just about repurposing content. So, basically, the story is a podiatrist could record or recorded a short ninety second video on heel pain. Nice and simple. We could all do that.

I think majority podiatrist would know ninety seconds of content when it comes to heel pain.

You'd hope so.

Jeez. You would hope so, wouldn't you? What they did, they turned the video into a blog post on the website, then they added it to their monthly newsletter. So done the video, put it on YouTube, put it on the website, did a blog article around it, then also put it in the newsletter, which would drive people back to the website. They uploaded it to their social media channels.

Other people could see it there. They added links in the notes in YouTube and on social media that linked back to the website, but also, it says some other videos. Hey. Here's a strapping video that we have as well. But here's the best part.

Here's the kicker. They uploaded the social media two or more times over the year. When you it's what people don't realize. When you create something and you post it, you don't have to just post it and go, oh, I can never post that again. Three or four months later, just post it again.

There's gonna be more people that are maybe following your pages or following different things you're doing online. So by reposting it, it's it's gonna be a new set of eyes will actually see it. And this is the other part that's great. By doing this, local journalists came across it and then contacted them about doing a media article on heel pain or something around that particular topic leading up to foot health month. So this one topic brought in multiple bookings in the first few weeks, but it continued to do so for years.

So the lesson, repurposing content saves time, and it actually maximizes your reach.

Exactly. Just do do something once, and then you're able to chop it up and really get that visibility across different channels. That's a great great plan.

I love repurposing. I do it all the time. I'll shoot a video put on YouTube. A year later, I might reshoot it. Just give me a different title, but I'll add there'd just be a little twist.

Just something that you change slowly. So I'll just move through these last two. Mistake number four, copying what other podiatrists are doing, and therefore, not having any strategy in mind. Here's the sad story. A podiatrist simply copied what another podiatrist doing on a social media campaign, almost word for word, hoping to get the similar results.

Problem, they didn't target to the right patients. They just thought, oh, this is what they do. Boom. Dumped it in there. And their campaign flopped.

Did nothing. Just nada. Zero. Tumbleweeds. There was just there was just nothing there.

Even the mother didn't like it. That's how bad it was.

That's pretty bad.

That's pretty bad. When you don't get the thumbs up from your mom, you know you've you've done something wrong. The simple takeaway, what works for one clinic may not work for your clinic. That's the simplest message from that. So always know your strategy before you jump into a tactic.

You need to know what is the goal of your clinic. What are what are you trying to achieve? And when you achieve that or when you know what that is, then you can put tactics in place, but there needs to be a strategy first.

Absolutely. Like like we talked about, there's so many shiny objects out there when it comes to marketing, what's hot, you know, what's at the moment, what are people putting a lot of money behind to market to podiatrists or to to different marketing agencies. So you really have to understand who you are and who you're going after before you make these decisions about where to spend your budget on these different marketing channels.

Definitely. So the last one I want about to is just win number four, which is building a patient referral program. The story goes, a clinic implemented a very, very simple referral program. Patients were thanked for referring friends, family, and workmates, their colleagues, people they worked with, and within three months, their patient referrals had increased by twenty percent. Just by making a concentrated effort, whenever a patient came in, instead of just accepting what they wrote down on the sheet of paper or they filled it on the computer screen, they said, oh, by way, you wrote this.

What did you mean by that? And then when they went through, they found out it was another patient that referred them. And when they found who it was, they then made an effort to make sure that patient knew that we appreciate the referral. And then by doing that, the referrals just automatically went up. The lesson is encouraging and rewarding referrals turns happy patients into raving fans of your clinic.

And I tell you, once you get a raving fan, they will they will talk about your clinic all over the place. So think about think about the business you the businesses you often refer to and why do you do it. Yeah. Many times someone will just say, oh, I'm going for dinner tonight, you get banged straight out. You'll tell them, this is where you should go.

Or I need a massage. Bang. You tell them where they should get a massage. Why do you do that? There'll be a reason why you do it.

So you've got to think about that and try and implement the same sort of systems.

No. That's a great example. You know, it it it's one of those things where when you make a referral to someone, you can you can see how powerful it is and kinda thanking those people. And I think we talked about it in the previous podcast about, you know, a a thank you isn't you know, just saying thanks on a review isn't enough. You know, make sure you kind of reach out to them when they do come to the clinic.

Just make them feel special, and it's gonna lead to a lot of great stuff in your

I agree. So just in summary, to to wrap this up, is every marketing mistake is an opportunity to learn. So if you are if you have made mistakes, don't kick yourself and bum over it or go, oh, geez. Yeah. I've lost so much time.

Just learn from it and and move on. The key is to spot what's not working quickly and just adjust it. You need to know the numbers of your business where patients come from and other aspects of your business. And by when you look at those numbers and you understand them, you can tell straight away whether something's working or something's not. And when something isn't working, stop doing it.

It's it's it may I never say how people go, wow. Wow. That's I never thought about that. Just stop doing what doesn't work. Then double down on what's delivering results.

So if you're doing five different marketing things, three aren't working, stop doing them. The two that do work, double down on them, and you'll get even better results. Learn from others, but don't copy them. Watch what other podiatrists do. You see them do

something, that was a great idea. I like that. Now who are

they marketing it towards? What's their business all about? How does it relate to mine? Just learn from it, but don't copy them. And the last part is just to wrap this all up, get assistance.

If you need help with this, reach out to Jim or myself. Like, I've said that a number of times, is if you're sitting in your clinic and you go, oh, yeah. This is all great. I know I can just do it all myself. Sometimes just talking through with somebody else just gives you more clarity and definitely gives you more direction.

I couldn't put it any better. That's exactly how I feel on the topic there, Tyson.

Okay, Jim. I got nothing else to say on this topic. I hope some of these everyone's learned something from this. And, yeah, any questions, reach out to us.

Alright. Sounds great, guys. I'll talk to you next week.

Okay. See you later. Bye.

Bye now.

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.