Referral Marketing - More Than Just Asking for Patients

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDonnell. Welcome back to podiatry marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Us always my trusty host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going today?

I'm fantastic today. Big Jim, and I love being trusty. Trusty Tyson. So that's you know, he always said we've got we've

got to

come up with a name. It's TT. Big Jim and trusty Tyson. TT. Yeah.

I actually don't. I always reckon that when somebody whenever somebody says, oh, but you can trust me, I don't trust them.

You don't trust them? I know.

If someone says you can trust them, it means you can't trust them because they shouldn't have to tell you that you can trust them to trust them.

But I'm saying that you are trusty and like it's kinda like the like back in the seventies and eighties like that trusty sidekick or the trusty co host that's like, you know.

But it's different if it's coming from somebody else. If somebody else said

Yeah.

Oh, he's a very trustworthy guy, and it's coming from a third person, and you you respect that person, then you assume, yep. Okay. I was listening to a podcast yesterday, and I gotta get this book. It was really interesting. It was about '14 it's called The Anatomy of a Conman.

Okay.

Yeah. Anatomy of a Conman. Conman, con person. And I didn't realize that when someone's a con this is this is with shows always educational. I did not realize that con man, you know, it's it's an abbreviation of?

Confidence.

Yes. Yes. I did not know that. I had no idea that when someone's a con man, con person, con woman, the con is for confidence. Yep.

Incredible. Everybody else is listening. It's going, Tyson, thank you for coming to the party late. You are totally unaware of that.

Better late than never.

I know. Okay. We better get on. We've had a couple of minutes of banter. Today's topic, before you even ask me, Jim, is about referral marketing, and it's more than just asking for patients.

I like it. I think that's gonna be a good tip.

We have spoken about referrals before. We've spoken about word-of-mouth. It's just taking a little one step further. So why referral marketing works is, like, in podiatry itself, word-of-mouth is gold. If you get people, you get patients, or other people just say, hey.

You should go and see this podiatry clinic. Everybody knows that that's a good thing. So when it whether it's a patient, could be a local doctor, physio, chiropractor, or even if another podiatrist, if they are sending patients your your way, there's automatic built in trust. And I know for a fact, when I used to get certain referrals from certain doctors and physios, almost guaranteed 99.9% of the time, that patient would follow my treatment plan, because the other person had already given that trust to you, or they wouldn't have recommended them, and they trust that person. So it's always gonna be beneficial.

Yeah. The fact that they have the confidence in you to to send that referral and to make that referral, it's gonna help transfer that trust. You know, if they if they trust their primary care doctor and your primary care doctor, their primary care doctor says basically, Tyson Franklin's the greatest podiatrist ever. He's gonna be able to help you out. If they talk you up in a positive way

Yeah.

And then send you that referral, they're gonna come kind of almost, I I trust my doctor. So they say, my doctor says you're great, so I'm gonna give you the benefit of doubt. And so you kind of have that goodwill's already been kind of kind of relayed to you. So it's now it's your chance to kind of make that come true in a way.

Well, it's one of those things. And that's why it's really important to have like a system that you create. So when you're talking to people, they know how you would like the referrals to come. It's not like you're just talking to few and go, oh, look, if you have any patients, please send them my way. That sort of it's so vague.

Like, okay. Yeah. Not a problem. I think if there's specific problems or you have a certain interest in something, is talk to the physio, the chiropractor, doctor, or even your other patients, and let them know. If you wanna refer someone to me, this is the process on how to do it.

This is the best way to do it. I used to always like it's great if a physio referred somebody, but if a physio referred someone, but also gave them, like, a cover note, even if it was just a a small note, just with a little bit of a scribble, this is John, big problems are here, I know you can help them. To me, the patient walking with that little piece of paper is better. So if that's how you would like it and you know that's gonna build up more trust, then try and create a system and everybody knows how you would actually like that done.

I think it's a great point. I think it's also one of those things about the way the patient sees themselves. Right? I know that when I'm having an injury or I you know, while I'm in my late forties, I still see myself as like kinda like an athlete in a way. Yeah.

I I work out, I run, I do things. But if I'm if like the doctor goes out of the way to refer me to someone that treats athletes or you know, has some athletic background, I could feel like there's a connection there. And the fact that my doctor referred me to someone like that, like a physio or a physical therapist that specializes in that, if it's something they could help out with, obviously, it's it's a connection that makes me feel like I was listened to in a way. So sometimes the way they refer patients to you is because you are a little bit different. Maybe you do your sports medicine podiatrist, right?

So that that physio or that primary care doctor, by kind of relating you to that patient in a way that they can have that connection with you can make a big difference.

Yeah. So like you said, if you like sports, and you know the doctors or GPs or chiropractors know that that's what you're into, if they said to, hey, Jim, you used see Tyson. He's really good at that area of sports, better than anybody else in Cairns. Why would you go anywhere else? You just you wouldn't do it.

So that's the thing. But it's also the second part to this is building strong relationships with your referral partners and having consistent communication with them, whether they're a professional referrer, what I talked about once just earlier on about being semi professional referrers or a nonprofessional referrer, is you need to have that consistent communication. Don't think that a one time visit with them is going to change years of a habit they may have of referring somewhere else. So I think the first part of it is identify potential partners. That's really important, your GPs, your physios, your chiropractors, whether it's orthopedic specialists, sports trainers, coaches.

When I talked about semi professional, I was talking about accountants and lawyers. But you've got your gym owners, local hairdressers, the florist down the road. Every person you bump into that has a business or who connects with other people is a potential referrer to you. And I know in the end, before I saw my podiatric clinic, I was probably getting more referrals from a local butcher down the Road. And I'm not talking about an orthopedic surgeon, I'm talking about a butcher with meat than I was from probably the local physiotherapist.

I had such a good relationship with my nonprofessional referrers because they just they wanna help people. Like, if you go to and the thing is, picture a butcher, for example. Most butchers are pretty funny. They have a lot of customers coming and going all the time. And most butchers, they have a regular clientele that go everyone has a favorite butcher that they go to.

There's a lot of banter that goes on between the butcher and their their customers, a lot of laughter. So that person will very openly say, hey, how's your day going? Oh, yeah. Great. Jeez.

My feet have been killing me. And next thing, bang. The butcher go, well, I have a podiatrist that comes in here, doesn't mind a bit of meat, and and that's just how how it goes for me. So I was getting more referrals from florist shops, butchers, hairdressing salons. Not that I'd get any from a hairdressing salon now, but I'll say, to me, not all referrals are equal, but you wanna sit there and spend a bit of time working and going through a list of who are all the people that potentially could partner up with in one way or another.

Yeah. Some folks are just really good connectors. Right? They they just the way they're outgoing or just the kind of nature of their job, the number of people that come in and out of their place of business or where they work at. So, you know, the kinda getting in these good connections.

And then, like you said, just taking the time to write out a list to see, you know, who's already in that network do you have. And then if you don't have some of these ones you mentioned previously, how you know, who are some people that you can maybe connect with in the future?

Yeah. To me, it's it's the groundwork that you do earlier on, not just taking it by chance at, oh, maybe we might get some referrers somewhere or some referrals somewhere. It's make a conscious effort to actually do it. And there's certain people you wanna add a little bit of value, so you might share useful resources that you've created. If it's a professional referrer, you may offer to do a presentation at their clinic to whether it's to some of their patients or just to their team and staff.

Because if they can understand more of what you do, the more chance you've got of multiple people in a business referring to you. Or just providing over a period of time just educate yeah. Educational material that could be useful for their patients, but also for your potential patients.

That's like I talked about in some of our other podcasts. It's really, you know, sometimes people only know that you're a podiatrist, right? But what does that really mean?

Yeah.

So the more they can know about the services you provide, obviously, like I talked about previously, we're in we're in our clinics all the time, so we know what we do. But if there's opportunities for them to let them know that, you know, oh, you're in the OR, you're doing something else today, like, just kinda getting that out in the open. Can you kinda open the minds like, well, I didn't know a podiatrist did that. So like you said, educating kind of those around you about all the services provided, you know, an organic and a, you know, talkative and social manner is is great. You don't have to beat them over the head of the stuff.

But I think it is one of those things where it can be helpful because, you know, maybe they don't know all the type of care you can provide.

No. You might have to beat them around the head occasionally, but easier way easier way

Violence is not the answer.

No. Never. Violence is never the answer. I had someone yesterday this is a funny story, side story, that it was 05:30 in the morning. I'm driving to the Muay Thai gym.

Driving along, getting all psyched up. Anyway, I don't know what I did, but there was a guy who had sort of slowed down, so I I I went around him and cut in front because he was just going too slow. I mean, mister road rage kicked off in him. It's 05:30 in the morning. This guy is zooming right up the bottom of my car, and he's got one of those, yeah, pig hunting sort of trucks, big spotlights everywhere.

And he just got these on full beam just right in, and then he'd slow down, then he'd zoom straight up my ass again, just missed me. This went all the way, followed me all the way, and until I pulled out the front of the Muay Thai gym. And then he pulls up at the front too, and then I think he realized where he had just pulled up at the front of. And I get out of the car, and I got my gear on, and there's about 12 guys sitting at the front. And I think he's realized, I think I've bit off more than I can chew here.

And he quickly just took off again. But anyway, that had nothing to do with what we're talking about.

No. It's about violence. And Oh, yeah. The person chose the smart route of not choosing violence that time.

If he hadn't got out of his car, he he would've just got swarmed on by everybody. Especially if he didn't come out waving. Anyway, never do that. Road rage, it's the silliest thing. But what I was gonna say is you wanna stay top of mind with your referrers.

This is how you keep getting them. It's send occasional updates of what service you're doing, success stories with your patients. And any any time you've gone done training, introduced a new service, new piece of equipment, Don't keep it a secret. It's let everybody know that you have it. This is why, yeah, newsletters are are so important.

And never rest on your past reputation. If you think you are the shit, you think you are the top dog in your town and you can't be touched because you are so good, someone else will come along and they will eat your lunch. Because if they get out there and they put in the work and they make connections with these people, they're going to win. It's just just the way it's gonna be. Especially as you get older, the younger people coming through, if the other health professionals in town are younger as well, you may find that they're playing touch football together.

There'll be certain sports that they're they're coming across each other on a regular basis. It's really important to just maintain those relationships, but also accept that sometimes you're going to lose some of them, and don't feel bad about it. That's just life.

Relationships kind of ebb and flow. Right? There's kind of a natural kind of nature to some of these relationships. So maybe you're building new ones that replace some of the old ones. You know, you're kind of trying to build upon the old ones to kind of keep them around.

But it's something that has to be an active process. Doesn't just happen by sitting back in your clinic office and treating patients. You have to get out there and be active.

Yeah. And that's what I mean. Clinic, and there'll be certain referrers that you will have a relationship with, and you will grow together over the over time, over decades. But as the younger ones are coming through, it's just important to realize there's new people, there's new businesses coming in. If you don't reach out to them, the new person who's moved into town will.

So it's and this is why it's really important to get your team involved to be aware of what new businesses are opening up. We we always would be searching online or reaching out to places, and even when we're driving out, we saw a new business open up, we thought, well, we could have a partnership with them. We would reach out to them really quickly. Initially, sometimes we used to send an envelope with a information pack about our clinic. We'd say, hey.

We just noticed you moved into town or you've just opened this clinic. We'd address it. We'd find out who the owner was, send something to them, and then we'd follow-up with an email to make sure they got it. And then we'd follow-up with another one. Hey.

I'd love to come in and and have a coffee. And we we just had this step process. So it was very structured on how we used to do it.

No. That makes sense to do it that way. Like, if you can have a process, you're gonna be able to repeat it, and prove it, and revise it, and just improve from there.

Okay. But keep moving on because I tell too many stories and therefore we talk too long. Third thing is just turn your patients into just raving fans and advocates. I've spoken about your past patients as well, but you you wanna just make it easy and worthwhile for them to actually refer people to you. I think the first part is if you deliver exceptional service every single time, every time a patient comes into your clinic, you just go above and beyond because people only refer people that they are confident with and make them look good.

If you're good some days, you're bit off the next, you're okay the next one, you're a bit off that time. Yeah. You weren't at your best because were tired. You had a big day. And you win, you complain to your patient about how busy you've been and how you're overworked.

That's not gonna instill confidence in them. And when they're talking to their friends, I guess, you should come and see Tyson. He's good, I said, don't see him on a Friday. He's horrible on a Friday. He's just he's tired.

He's fatigued, and he yeah. He he just doesn't really care. So you wanna every time, it's just deliver great service. They'll feel confident in them referring somebody else. And then give them a reason to to share and let them know, you know, to tell people about you.

You can give them referral cards, absurd. Some people do bring a friend promotion or just small thank you gifts. When somebody does somebody someone to you or just out of the blue, just thanking your patients for being patients. And I just say that my patients lot, we'd finish treatment, and I would say, hey, Jim. Yeah.

I may not have said this too far, but I really appreciate you being a patient, a long term patient. Love it every time that you come in. If I had someone say that to me, I'd be going, yeah, I'm a good patient. Or a good customer or a good client. It's people love being appreciated.

When they are, It makes them feel good. More chance they're gonna send people to you.

Now when you kind of express those the positive emotions to somebody, they're obviously gonna feel feel special and probably wanna reciprocate it in some way. So it's a great way to, you know, you know, let patients know that you do care and appreciate that they come to you for their care.

Yeah. Whether it's little thank you notes every now and then just out of blue. Like, I have a drawer, and I've shown it before, I think, on this podcast where I have a drawer here where I keep every thank you note, every card, anything I've received from someone who said, hey, Tyson. Thank you for helping me with this, or I listened to this podcast episode and it changed this. Well, maybe I've got a file on the computer.

I put emails. And every now and then when you're feeling a little bit, yeah. Does anyone really care? You just pull them out and you have a read and remind you. Your patients, professional referrers, nonprofessionals, semi referrers, they'll appreciate the same thing.

Little thank you cards of appreciation or a phone call is just the the way that you should be doing it. Keep moving on. The fourth thing I just want to do is create referral friendly clinic culture. So your team should really be a big part of your everyday practice, not your team should really be thinking about these relationships, not as an afterthought, not like, oh, man, maybe I should have told them, yeah, spoken more about it. They need to just be aware that your clinic survives on referrals.

They want this to be top of mind, and which is why you always need to be talking about it at whenever you're getting together, your communication and repeatedly getting referral sources is something you should be top of mind always.

Yeah. I mean, if you're not, you know, if they're not kind of actively being the face of your clinic or really kind of helping you kind of extend what you can do by kind of showing that positivity, by kind of kind of showing what the clinic can be all about. You know, no person can do it by themselves, you need to make sure that your staff is on board with that as well for sure.

Yeah. And it's yeah. Train your staff to recognize referral opportunities when they're there, both inside and outside the clinic. So you might have someone that comes into the clinic where you want them thinking about it, but if they're out and about somewhere or they're at another business and they go, this would be a great partnership for the clinic that I work at, You want them thinking that instead of just buying a hot dog. You wanna think, is this hot dog vendor someone that we could actually have a a relationship with?

And celebrate referrals of teams, yeah, with your team at when you have your team meetings. So when you've got some referrals, every team meeting, just remind everyone, hey. We got six referrals this week. This is where they came from. If you're doing that on a regular basis, then you're training your staff to be to recognize and look for them.

And and make it easy whether you have templates on how to do it, QR codes, something that's readily easy to share so people know how they can they can actually refer people.

Yeah. And when you invite your staff and maybe other physicians in your group to kind of think about this, you're kind of seeing these opportunities from a different perspective, right? I think we all kind of we see the world in our own ways and sometimes we get into ruts or we just don't always, you know, see those opportunities in front of us. But by having other people bring those things up to us, by, you know, thinking about it, having discussions about it, sometimes you can really kind of figure things out in a way that that makes sense that beforehand maybe you wouldn't have thought of.

The last point I wanna talk about is just tracking and recording these referrals. This is really important. Just keep a simple record. I don't care if you have a sheet of paper and you're writing it with a crayon. It's just keep track of where your referrals are coming from and acknowledge them and thank them, including your team members.

So if you know you've had a team member and you've got those referrals purely because the podiatrist went out and did a talk without you asking them to do it, is really acknowledge it and make sure they feel appreciated for that referral. Nothing worse than giving a referral to someone. You know that person's used that service. You then bump into that service, and that service doesn't even recognize that you did it. And it's because they have no systems in place.

Record them and have a way of of thanking people. When you know which referrals are working the best, double down on them. Lean into it. Whether it's whether you're giving referral gifts not at Christmas time. I don't believe in giving gifts at Christmas time.

People get so much stuff at Christmas time. Give it to them at another time of the year when nobody else is doing it. We used to celebrate, you know, like, April 14, and we would send stuff out to doctors and all that. Go, yeah. We just wanna let you know that we're just celebrating the April 14.

Why? Because nobody else does. And at Parash Podiatry, we like to do things a little bit different. We used to celebrate Australia Day because nobody else celebrate Australia Day. In Australia, Australia Day is January 26, so it's one month after Christmas.

So the whole Christmas thing has all died off. Everyone's forgotten about that. Then boom, we pop up out of the blue celebrating Australia Day and thanking people and dropping in bottles of wine to our best referrers. That was actually noticed instead of 1,500 boxes of chocolates and stuff that gets still in gift baskets that gets still a bit of Christmas time. Identify your really good referrers and lean into it.

Double down on those ones. Like I said before, not all referrers are equal. So when you're looking at them all, if there is a non referrer professional, nonprofessional who's referring people to you is really let them know that you appreciate those referrals, and that's how you get more referrals.

Yeah. I think that's a great point. I think one point you touched on there as well is that, you know, when you're having systems to kinda remind you of these things, so you can send out a thank you card or just give a, you know, maybe a a phone call as a thanks. People when people aren't expecting it, like, it it just means a lot to them. Right?

Like, it's gonna be it's gonna be a way to kinda separate yourselves from other people by those actions, but you have to have those systems in place. If you're gonna tell yourself, oh, I'll do that in two weeks from now. I'll write it down on this piece of paper I'm gonna throw away tomorrow. You know, like, it is not gonna happen. So you've yet to have some systems in place to make that happen.

Yeah. And it's one of these things too. Like, I don't believe in somebody sends you a referral and you go, oh, here's a bottle of rum for that referral. To me, that's then makes them think, oh, every time I refer someone to you, I will definitely get something in return. I don't necessarily believe in that.

I believe you should acknowledge it. Thank you card, an email, phone call. But if that person's referring people on a regular basis, you know that they're a great referrer, then send them a gift, but just don't do it when everybody else is doing it. And just say, hey. This is just for your continued support.

Therefore, it's not directly related to any particular patient, so you don't think it's like you're buying referrals. It's just you're thanking them for liking your business. Your business is thanking their business or thanking that person individually. Referral marketing, just to wrap up, is about relationships, reliability, and recognition. When you combine excellent patient care with a system that makes giving referrals, receiving them easily, that's when you're gonna get more referrals, more high quality referrals, and you're gonna get them on a regular basis.

And you won't be chasing them all the time. That's the main thing. When you've got these systems set in place, the referrals just start to flow and saves you a lot of money. Saves you a lot of money and a lot of time. And if you want ideas for building a referral program that's that's tailored to your podiatry clinic, just reach out to Jim or myself.

We are masters at this. We've done this for so long. So if you need help setting up some form of referral system, thank you system, just reach out to us.

That was a great episode, Tyson. Definitely a lot of valuable information for people to to consider, the the importance of those referrals and how to go about getting them and kind of building those relationships. That was a great episode.

Okay, Jim. I look forward to talking to you next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay. See you later. Bye.

Bye now. 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.