Marketing the Practice, Not the 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 McDannald. Joined as always are my trusty cohost, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's going on today?

Oh, fantastic day. Big Jim, how are you doing?

Doing well. Doing well. Winter is kind of eking its way towards springtime, so all good here in Montreal.

Yeah. And as usual, we are hot. There's only two temperatures in Cairns, hot and hotter. Actually, we're hotter at the moment. Yeah.

Hot and humid, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Just means you can get in the pool and enjoy yourself. Enjoy a corona and nice hot weather.

That sounds delicious.

So let's dive straight into this. I'm excited about this particular topic, and it is marketing the practice not the podiatrist. People go, oh, what's this mean? Yeah. And it's a common question.

I've I've been asked this multiple times by people over the years that I've done coaching with, and they say, oh, I've got a new podiatrist that started with me. How should I how should I market them? Or I've been on Facebook groups, and I've seen the same thing. I've a new podiatrist. Can someone tell me how I can market them to the community?

And my overriding answer or response is usually, you should only market the practice, never the individual podiatrist. Because the practice will always be there, but you can't guarantee that the podiatrist will be. They come and go over the years.

They do. I remember when I joined the the practice that I was with, and I had a, like, a half page spread in the the local newspaper and welcome me to the community and stuff, which was interesting. But I don't know how effective that was for the for the practice itself.

Yeah. Well, there's there's different ways of looking at it. Like, with your internal marketing, which is like, say say your newsletter, for example, and on your social media pages, you can use those, and you probably should use those and take a little bit of time to actually introduce them to your existing community. But I don't think you should ever market them having a specific skill set or something that they're really, really good at or making them out to be more awesome than anybody else that is already actually in your practice.

Yeah. I guess that could cause ruffle some feathers if there's other people that are kind of in that specific niche within the practice. But I guess the question I have is what if there's a it's a brand new service that the clinic is providing? Like, let's say it's a, you know, a podiatry clinic and they bring on a physio. Would you is that a bit would be that'd be a different case?

Oh, that'd probably be a little bit different, but I would be promoting the physio service, or you might employ a chiropractor. I know a podiatrist has employed a chiropractor recently. I wouldn't promote the individual chiropractor. I would promote the service of chiropractic. Or you might have someone that comes in who may have done a PhD in podiatrist or something like Just they're brilliant in that area.

Promote that service as part of the practice, but don't necessarily promote that person as the person who's got that skill set. Because if you over time too, that person, by working with everybody else, everybody else will pick up their skills as well. You hope that if they've got a certain skill set, that they will share that skill set with the rest of your team. So if they did eventually leave, then you know there's gonna be other people there that can sort of take out the site. May not have the same expertise or qualification on paper, but you just know if you only promote them and and the reason I don't there's two reasons why I don't think you should really promote them individually.

One, if you promote that specific skill set, does it mean that that skill set or service isn't there if that person leaves? So if you say, hey. We've got John here or we've got Big Jim Mac, and he is an expert when it comes to marathon running. He is he he's just absolutely brilliant in that area, And you really promote that heavily. Big Jim Mac is the marathon podiatrist, and Big Jim Mac leaves.

Does that mean we don't have that skill set anymore? The other part, if you're telling the community how awesome they are or great at a particular thing, and you do that over an extended period of time, you keep doing that, if they eventually leave and go set up down the road, you've done all the marketing for them. I've pretty much said, hey, Big Jim Mac is awesome in this area. Do that for years. You're gonna have them down the road for me, then I'm those patients or or people that I've been telling everyone how good you are are gonna go, well, Jim's down the road now.

So that's where I need to go for that particular service.

I see.

And I also say, never use paid advertising, which is like external marketing, to promote them because but, yeah, I realize, when you're doing external marketing, you're you're marketing to potential patients. They're not patient yet in your clinic. They haven't experienced how good your practice is. They haven't walked through the doors and got, wow. You got a fantastic clinic setup.

You've got great support staff. Everybody there seems to get on really well. And if they've if they've never met anybody in that practice before, and they've they've been sitting on the fence, should I go to this practice or shouldn't I? Oh, they've got this person who's got this certain skill set. And that person then goes and sets up their own practice.

They're gonna go, oh, well, they're not there anymore. And then that person can do some simple marketing. People go, oh, I've seen that person's face 50 times before in different marketing. That is the person I'm gonna go to. So you've done it 50 times, they do it once, and all of sudden, they attract all all your potential patients that were actually thinking about coming to your clinic.

Yeah. It's a tricky thing. Right? I think I can see why, you know, promoting the service makes sense there. Definitely wanted to have them see the patients they wanna see, but, yeah, when you when you're the practice owner and bring on associate, you have to be probably a little bit careful.

Yeah. And and the and the difference between internal marketing, external marketing is when you're using internal marketing like your newsletter, your social media pages, you actually control them. You can control the information really easily, but you're giving it to people or patients who have already walked into your clinic. So because they've walked into your clinic, they already know how good the practice is. Even if you promote them internally to your existing patients and they leave, those patients are really going, but I'm already part of this practice.

Even if they go down the road, they'll go, well, that's fine, but I'm really happy with this particular practice. It'll be much harder for them to actually leave if they have that connection. Whereas external marketing, they don't know who you are yet. You're just a podiatry clinic that has a certain service that you're offering, but now that service has moved down the road, so therefore, you could actually lose those patients.

Yeah. You have that patient loyalty, because there's gonna be that switching costs if they're gonna try to go to a different practice. They may not know what they're gonna get there, but if they've had an excellent if they've received excellent care and you provided, you know, a great patient experience, then there's not really a need for them to fill the need to switch even if the that podiatrist moves down the road potentially.

Yeah. And it's really tempting. You have a new person come and join your business, and they do have a certain skill set and you're very excited about it. You really want people to know that, but I I I still think it's it's the service. So when we introduced laser for fungal nails, we really heavily promoted the service.

And even though I was the person that probably used it more than anybody else, so I was the person that had the skill set initially, and eventually, everybody learnt that same skill set. But if I'd brought in an external podiatrist and then really promoted, they were the fungal nail person, and they went and set up down the road, and they and they might even set up a clinic called the fungal nail clinic, then all that work that you've done, you've really put that hard work in to promote somebody else who you don't know long term if you're gonna be there. That's why I always say promote the practice. Don't promote the individual podiatrist. And I did that through my whole career.

No. It makes a lot of sense. I think you as a business owner, you wanna make sure that you kind of keep that competitive edge and even you know, you're you're you're kind enough to bring in that podiatrist in the office to provide some service and the care in your office, but at the same time, it is it is a business. And you wanna make sure that, you know, you're not kind of giving away a part of your practice if they if they choose to leave.

Yeah. And the other part, even with your, say, professional referrers, if you have a really good relationship with professional referrers that if you bumped into an event and they said your name, they know you by name. They know you by face. They know your practice. You've worked with them for a while.

I don't think that's too much of a problem to actually give them more information about the podiatrist that's working with you. Because you could say, hey. Yeah. We've got big Jim Mac who's joined at practice. He specializes in marathon running.

And you may even be there and you might be at an event. Hey. This is Jim, and they get to meet you, and that's great. But you've got this, like, more of a personal relationship with them. I think that's okay to sort of feed more information about how good this person is.

Because even if that person leaves, they've still got the relationship with you, not so much with the other person. I think all your other professional referrers, if they're really just you know who they are, but if you bumped into them, yeah, walking down the street, you you wouldn't know it was them. So to me, you sort of treat them like your patients or like your potential patients. You let them know that, yes, I have a new podiatrist on board, and that's all they really need to know. It's still, I think, with your professional referrers, majority of them, except the ones you have a really good relationship with, you're always promoting the practice.

You might say, hey. These are the podiatrists that are now on board with us as part of our team, but you don't try to elevate them above anybody else that's already in the practice.

Yeah. I can see that where that would be important. Those relationships you have and, you know, when you we're tightly connected with somebody else, you know, giving them some additional information about the qual qualifications and the kind of training that that person had will could, you know, help build additional trust in your practice while that person is there. So, you know, that definitely makes sense to kinda share additional information with people you're close with.

And and when it comes to your website, I think as soon as somebody joins your team, get them on your website as soon as possible. I have seen some websites where I know they've got a new podiatrist that's been there six months. And you go to the website, and they're not even there. And I'm thinking for a patient that may have actually seen them, then goes to the website later, looks up the team, and can't find that person, we sort of go, oh, have they left? Yeah.

What what happened? So I think it's important to have them on your website, but the information that you provide about them, keep it fairly general. Yeah. That yeah. Where did they where did they do the study?

Where are they from? They might have a a couple of interests in certain areas. Did they play a particular sport? But just keep it fairly general. Same thing.

Just don't try to elevate them above anybody else in the practice. And I've seen it where a practice might have four podiatrists there. And when you read the bios, it seems to be all four of them have a specialty in one particular area. And I sometimes think patients can just read through that. You've really just written a bit of fodder there just to make it look like everybody everybody is actually different.

You see this person for this thing and this person for that thing. Whereas I would prefer, and this is how I did my practice, that we are all trained fairly the same. We all have the same skill set. So therefore, it doesn't matter who you see in the business, you're gonna get the same quality care.

Yeah. I could do that to be helpful. I mean, I think one thing I think about too is if that person is from the local area, right, they might already have kind of a referral network of folks. And when they're searching online for that specific provider, you know, with somebody that's in their family or if they're from that area, like I said, the longer you wait to get them onto your website and the less kind of visible they are on through things like online search, they'll probably still, if they're motivated enough, they'll still find you. But, you know, people that heard that, you know, doctor Anderson is back in town or something, know, getting them soon up on your website will mean that the SEO juice and the Google juice to your website will kind of happen a lot faster than like you said, if you wait three to six months to get them on the website, then they won't be visible in search.

And, yeah, that's definitely could be detrimental to practice.

Yeah. And to take a little side step outside of this subject I'm talking about right now, when you are putting them on your website, this is an episode we did just recently. It was about, you know, setting up and taking quality photos. And we were talking about photos of patients. I also think whenever you're putting someone on your website, try and have a standard place where you're taking the photographs and try and note down at what angle you're taking the photograph, what the lighting is.

So even if someone was added today and the next person's added in two years' time, it all looks very uniform with all the clinic photos. I've seen staff photos where someone's got a photo of them, and the beach is behind them. The next person, they're wearing a a t shirt and they're standing in the bush, and you you have a look at four photos, and they and they're all pointing. They're looking different ways. Yeah.

Some of it's a left profile, there's a right profile, and they're all over the place. Whereas if you can just if you're gonna put a photo on the website of that team member, it just make sure you've got the same background. You try to set it up in the same angle so it all looks very uniform with the photos. Now, I'll dive back. Oh, no.

What were you gonna say?

No. I was gonna say I totally agree with the the the importance of consistency and uniformity in any kind of photos that you take because like if it's a new person to come into your practice right in, like you said, if they have a completely different background or they're, you know, wearing a polo instead of a a white coat or something, it's gonna it's not gonna help build trust. So the more you can keep them uniform and consistent, that's really where it's at.

Yeah. And it looks like all the photos are taken on the same day. Even if that was separated months or or years apart, it does like I said, when I've gone to websites and I've seen different staff photos, and they are all over the place. And you can see where the uniform may have changed over the years because everyone's wearing something a little bit different. But, anyway, to dive back onto the subject we're talking about, marketing the practice, not the podiatrist.

The last part I just want to touch on is public speaking. And I think the practice owner should always be the face of the clinic at all times. They think about the clinic, they think about the practice owner. And, yes, everybody else that's there is part of the team, but the practice owner should always be the face of the business. So if you don't like public speaking, and you've employed someone, and that's one of their skill sets, they're really good at public speaking, organize talks for them, but as the business owner, you should always go along with them.

Even if you're not gonna talk, you walk in and go, hi. I'm big Jim Mac. Yeah. This is my off sider, Tyson, and he's gonna be doing the presentation today. So they know that you're the business owner.

It's your business. I work for Big Jim Mac, and I'm doing the presentation. But that way, it's also you get to talk to whoever the organizers are of that actual event or that talk, and they know to contact you if they need you back again the following year or if they wanna organize something else with you. So the business owner should always be the face of the clinic. So business owner, practice.

They're the only two things that you should be promoting externally quite heavily. Everybody that's been in your practice, you can just do that internally.

And I like that tag team approach. I think that makes a lot of sense, especially when you're going out to another clinic or to a community event, having two people there and you kind of being the face of the practice. You know, it definitely can kind of divide and conquer a little bit better. Obviously, you can kind of make make deals or just kind of show people in the community that you're involved and be open to potential partnerships or just getting that visibility for you and your for your practice. I think that's a really effective way to approach it.

Yeah. Well, I know sometimes we provided podiatry services in some of the medical tents at sporting events, you know, some of the running marathons. And when we turn up, I would always go along. I was probably the laziest person out of everybody because I was more I was more the social butterfly. I'll letting them do the hands on work, and I was walking around more sort of talking with the other doctors over there, the other physios, figuring out what sort of problems we're having, doing more the managerial behind it, not so much the the hands on work.

Because I knew two years' time, if those podiatrists had left and they were thinking about bringing somebody in, they'd be contacting me, the practice first, asking for me, and then I would be providing the podiatrist. So I think it's really important for the business owner to just really be involved in that aspect of your business. Don't encourage your team members to organize talks. But before it's locked in, make sure that you can actually attend as well. I just think it's just really good for your practice.

I agree there.

So that was all I really wanted to talk about in this subject. Market the practice, not the podiatrist.

No, liked it. I thought it was pretty informative and obviously for people that are out there that own their private practice, think they can take a lot away from today's talk. Know, I think sometimes, know, when I was in practice I was primarily an associate. So I I saw some of these things from, you know, a non decision maker role, but I think, you know, your perspective as a business owner in the past and a podiatric clinic owner in the past is really valuable. So thanks for sharing that information today, Tyson.

Yeah. Well, I've heard or just to finish off, I've heard people where they've had somebody with them, and they they have heavily promoted them over a couple of years, and the person has set up down the road from them. And then they get all upset that, oh, they've lost all these patients. I go, that's why you lost them. It's because you'd you overly promoted them and not the practice.

So I hope somebody I hope everybody gets something from this. And remember, if you have any questions, please reach out to Jim or myself and check out the podiatry marketing website.

Alright. Sounds good, Tyson.

Okay. I will talk to you again next week, Jim. Bye, Tyson. Okay. Bye.

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