Run, Rest & Repeat Your Marketing Campaigns

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing. Conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

And we're back on podiatry marketing. Tyson, what's been going on my man?

Oh, to keep you busy as usual, it's it's that time of the year where that first quarter of the year, I think it takes people a little while to sort of just get their momentum up to sort of get up to speed. January is one of those months that I don't call it a wasted month, but it's one of those months where everyone's trying to get over the excitement of Christmas. Then you move into February, then it's into March. So that first quarter, I think it takes a while to get momentum, and then you just start pushing on towards the middle part of the year.

No. For sure. I think everyone, you know, it's just everyone's got big goals and big aspirations at the beginning of the year. There's lots of planning that goes on.

Yeah.

And now you kinda get into the time of the year, you know, later on that first quarter where you're executing on plans and, you know, looking forward to the rest of the year for sure.

So today, I wanted to touch on something which I think is is really really important. And it's all about it's what I call run, rest, and repeat your marketing.

I'm looking forward to this because I think there's some really good stuff to get into. I think the the repeat thing might catch people a little bit off guard. You know? It's like we always gotta be original. There's always something new, but the the tried and true aspects of marketing is something to not be overlooked.

Yeah. And it's not just that. It's not just, you know, about true and tested methods of doing things. It's more about the way they look at it. What worked today doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work tomorrow.

It's gonna work next week. And it's not that what you're doing is wrong and it's it's garbage and you should throw it out. It just means it's not working right now. And there's a certain time when you you should be running something, some form of marketing. At a particular time, you need to give it a rest because even the best marketing in the world after a period of time can get a little bit tired.

And then if it's been successful in the past, more than likely, it's probably going to be successful in the future, but you just got a time when you're actually doing it. So I always equate it very, similar to a racehorse. There was a racehorse when I wrote my first book, I I had a a chapter called Looking for Black Caviar. And Black Caviar was a racehorse that I think had 21 races in a row, never lost a race. And but even Black Cabot, even though it just it flogged everybody and it won so well, at a certain point, it still needed to have a rest.

It had to have a spell. It gave a bit of a break, and then at a certain time, they would bring it back out and bang, it would win again. So I look at marketing being very similar that you run it, you rest it, you repeat it. And then when you find something that every single time you run it, I call that a black caviar ad. It's like it's your racehorse that when you need a win, you pull that racehorse out, you put it out there, and and it pays dividends every single time.

Well, it's nice to have that in your your back pocket for those those times you need to kinda spruce things up a little bit or juice up the practice a bit. I'm really interested to hear more about some of your black caviar wins from back in the day and how some of our audience members might be able to put them to use in their practice.

Okay. So what you should be doing, it's it's really important to test and measure everything that you're doing. So every time you you run and let's just stick with the newspaper ad or some sort of printed media, or it could be online. Doesn't matter how you're doing it. But whatever you're doing, you should be testing it.

Testing and measuring it. What results are you getting? And it's not just how many times does the phone ring. If that's your only metric, then you could be feeling yourself that something you're running is actually working better than what it really is. So you might run one particular form of marketing and the phone rings 20 times, and you go, wow.

That was that was a that must work really well. But they had the 20 phone calls, only one person books in, and they then they spend any money with you after that first visit. So on the surface, you might go, wow, 20 phone calls, but really, it didn't equate to too much. You might run something else. You only get five phone calls, but other five phone calls, five book in, and those five patients become high paying patients.

So if you only look at phone calls as a metric, it's not really the best metric. You gotta dig into a little bit deeper. So I always believe testing, measuring, all your marketing is one thing. And then if you're going to change something, just change one thing at a time. Don't make all these massive changes.

Because if you change the headline, the the text, the photo, the color, the position, what the days of the week it's running, if you make all those changes and all of sudden it works, which one worked? It's it's almost impossible to tell. You you would have found this even with and this applies to online as well.

Yeah. You just don't want you wanna make sure that whatever you're creating, you know, you you don't change too many variables. Because if you change the variables, it's almost like running something brand new and you're almost starting from scratch as opposed to just, you know, incrementally, you know, changing one thing at a time, trying to dial in either that audience or the message or the headline or exactly what you're talking about at. There there's definitely carriers over to the digital world as well.

Yeah. Well, I had a a newspaper ad that I created in 1998. So it was a long time ago. This ad may be well over a million dollars over my career. And it was a really, really simple ad, and I repeated it.

I re I'd run it. Bang. It got automatically great results. But one change that I did, I had a really good headline for it and it went really well. So then I thought it got clever and I changed the headline and all of sudden it didn't go too well.

So I went back to the original headline, worked great. Then I added a a certain diagram or a photo to it or an image and went even better. I went, holy crap. Good headline, good image. And then I messed around with the the text until I got it just how I wanted it.

Every time I ran it, it went really well. But over a period of time, it would start to just their phone wouldn't ring as much. People were getting tired. They'd see the same thing, became familiar with it, so it'd get a rest. Like a racehorse, bring it back out.

Boom. It would take off again. And I did this for like, yeah, twenty years with this ad. And it just went so well.

That's a pretty good track record, but I I definitely can understand that. Right? You know, if if you're looking at the same thing every single day or the same publication, if the newspaper ad for example, if you see it in the paper for months at a time, it's just gonna kinda blend into the background like anything else. So it is good, like you said, to either to give it a rest or take one of those variables and maybe it's the image or the headline and and mix it up for sure.

Well, it's no different to you meet your partner, for example. And when you first meet them, and it's not it's not that you you neglect them or that you take for granted in years to come, but then somebody might come up to you and say, oh, geez, your wife's beautiful. And you go, yeah. She's beautiful, ain't she? And but it's just that familiarity.

When you when you see something all the time, you you don't see what's right in front of you. And I think your marketing works exactly the same way. If you keep running the same thing constantly and you never change it, people become very familiar with it and become become boring. But if you run it, rest it, repeat it, you get it. You're getting a total different audience.

You'll get people who may have seen it last time we're going to do some, then we got familiar, didn't. And it's no like you say, like my wife. I see her all the time. I know she's beautiful. But then if all of sudden she goes away somewhere for a week and then comes back, when I'm picking her up at the airport and she's walking towards me and haven't seen her for a week, it's like, I know how beautiful she is.

No. That's definitely a good a good good kind of comparison there. I I run into that as well. I think it I think you brought up a good point as well is that, like, just because you're running something in a newspaper or, let's say, an online ad, not every single person's gonna see that every single day. So it you might know in your head that you're running the same thing for a period of time, but that doesn't mean the person on the receiving end of that is seeing it every single day.

So it is it is one of those things like how you talk to your patients about you feel like you maybe repeating the same message in the you know, about heel pain or plantar fasciitis multiple times during a visit. Maybe they just heard you, like, one or two times very well. So it's a matter of, like, say it, say it again, say it one more time, and then, like you said, maybe it's time to take a little rest after they've seen it multiple times. But this this kind of theory or way of applying things, you know, it's both in your marketing and even in your practice.

Yeah. Well, what I in my book, I mentioned be creative and then be boring. People go, hey. Isn't that contradictory? Yeah.

You're you're contradicting what you're saying. Be creative and then be boring. But the idea is be creative with what you're doing, like, with your headlines. And and sometimes just a different image can make such a huge difference to actually capturing people's attention. But once you figure out what works, like I did with my, yeah, ad in 1998 with a radio commercial that I did, you know, ten or fifteen years ago, and they just I was very creative putting them together.

And once we figured out what was working, we went, okay. Run, rest, repeat. Run, rest, repeat. And I remember one of my sale a sales rep coming up to me and saying, when are you going to change that radio ad? And I remember it's clear as day, and I said to her, I will change it when it stops working.

And she couldn't understand it. She goes, but you've been using the same radio ad for ten years. And I went, yeah. And it works. Every time I run it, it works.

I said, so why would I change it? And earlier on in my career, I was influenced by that. Oh, I've been told that my ads gotten boring. They've seen it. It's been running for too long.

So I would change it, spend the same amount of money, and just not get the return on it. I'm thinking, what was I doing? I had a black caviar ad there that I knew worked. So I'd go back. Like I said, I was really creative, but I was also really, really boring.

Well, I I think that creative creativity part is important as far as like, know, kinda catching that initial attention and awareness. Right? Like, it's just like if it's if it's black and white, if it's the same thing as what's on that either that web page or on that newspaper page that looks exactly like everything else and it doesn't stand out a little bit, then you're not gonna get that initial tension. But when you want to have them, like, you wanna make kind of a clear call to action, whether that's like, you know, what is your value proposition or what what is that kind of next action where you can kind of, like, get them into your clinic or have them make an appointment. You want that next step to be very simple and very actionable because if you make that part too creative or too complex or just all over the place, then then they're left thinking like, cool looking ad.

Yeah. Like, what what what do I even do here? Right? Like so it's like you said, pairing that that creativity with something simple in different in different types of ways, you can be simple with that. But that's one example that kinda comes to mind when I think about it.

Well, have you ever seen an ad on TV where you go, oh, that was a great ad. That was really funny. And then the the ad finishes and you go, what what was that even about? Yeah. It could have been on TV or you may have heard an ad in the radio and you go, oh, that was really funny.

Or you may have seen an an ad on TV five, ten, 15. You may have seen it 20 times and all of a sudden you go, you know what? I have actually no idea what that ad is even about. And so the next time it comes on, you go, I'm gonna pay attention. So you actually watch the ad, and you go, oh, they're selling beer.

Or they're selling biscuits. I didn't realize what it was about. And then when you see the ad afterward, you go, okay. Now it makes sense. But how much money was spent before they got before it actually started making sense?

So I think with all marketing is don't try and be too clever. Just keep it really simple. Get the message out there. Test and measure what works. And there was a good quote that I read, and it said, doing marketing without measuring results is like driving with your eyes closed.

So if you're not if you're not testing and measuring what you're doing to get the results and then recording that down, keeping a record of what results you're getting. So when you because you might find there might be some form of marketing that you're doing, and you run it in January. It goes gangbusters in January. You give it a spell, you bring it back out again in April, and it flops. Why did it flop?

It worked in January. So then you might try it again in September, flops. But it worked in January, but then you run it again in January and you go, holy crap. It goes gangbusters again. So there's something about that ad that relates to January but doesn't relate to the rest of the year.

What's the message that you're saying, and why is it not working? So then you might then go, okay. In September, I'm gonna tweak it. Well, say, April, you tweak it, and all of sudden it works. You do that in September, it doesn't work.

But you now know what works in January, you know what works in April, you gotta figure out, but why doesn't it work in September? And you'll only know this by measuring results every time you're doing something.

I think that's a good a great point because there is seasonality in some of the cases and types of things that we can provide to patients. I think the biggest example that pops in my head is fungal nails.

Yeah.

At least, you know, in the wintertime in Canada and The US, everyone's got boots on or wearing shoes all the time. So, but it's that, you know, that lead into summer, which provides a great opportunity, to kind of tailor the message to that seasonality and test it then. Right? Is it, Like I said, it's not guaranteed it's going to work. But looking for those different types of procedures or different types of diagnosis, are kind of on top of mind for potential patients leading into summer or other types of things.

So I think that's that's a great point you bring up.

Yeah. And it's not just measuring the results each time. I think that's really important to do, but it's also daily. Have a record of what was the weather like. Yeah.

Like, in your part of the world, did it snow? My part of the was there torrential rain? Was it extremely hot? Did we have a, yeah, a really hot spell over a period of time and people just weren't out and about doing the same sort of things? Or when we have a wet season here, when it rains, I mean, it it can just rain constantly all day and go for a week.

So if you were running something that worked the year before, but it didn't work this year, you think, oh, well, this ad doesn't isn't any good anymore. Did it rain last year? And you have a look at, oh, no. It didn't. Oh, it was great weather.

So I think taking into account the whole the season, what the weather conditions were, like, the last couple of years with COVID, that has totally changed the way that people approach things in their thinking. So what worked three or four years ago, and it may not be working right now the same way, however, COVID will end. And when it does end and people start getting back into the way of doing things, go back to some of the stuff you were doing a few years ago that, you know, worked if you were testing and measuring, and start reintroducing them. You've given them a big spill.

No. For sure, there's gonna be little parts or, like, you know, principles from each of those ads or, you know, mix and match up some of those different ads or even just an ad itself that could be pretty beneficial moving forward. You don't wanna like let our current times totally shade our perspective and of kind of what the patients want and how they're gonna interact with us moving forward.

But with your online marketing that you do with that you help people with, is I'm sure you take because I I was at a conference once and they talked about how you split up your marketing dollars. And there's a certain amount that you spend on on what you're doing now and and future stuff, but you should really be taking a certain percentage of your marketing budget and trying to predict what might happen in the future or trying something that's completely outlandish that you wouldn't normally do just to see what sort of results you get. Have you have you done that with the online or with your online marketing as well?

Yeah. I mean, there's different ways to approach that. Right? Like, the the kind of we'll talk a little bit about that in a future podcast Yeah. Maybe about some Google Ads and things.

But there's definitely different platforms that you know, that different technology platforms that that provide advertising that can be explored. There's def you know, there's ways of different making new or kind of different campaigns within some of the kind of, you know, tried and true and tested platforms like either Facebook or Google. But definitely, you know, allocating a certain portion of of budget to go after those kind of high value patients or the ones that you think could really be beneficial, not only for your own kind of professional satisfaction, but are a little bit kind of cutting edge, whether that's something like swift laser, trying to get more wart treatment. It can be difficult in some of those bigger diagnosis based campaigns because there is a lot of competition, whether it be places like bunion surgery and other things where there's health care equipment manufacturers bidding on some of those key terms. But to have it in your mind as far as if you're going after younger demographic, a lot of these younger channels or younger social media platforms might be a good fit for you or something to test or try.

Because like you said, this kind of there's gonna be some tried and truth, like, you know, headlines or ways of marketing things that are always gonna kind of work. But the the platforms are always changing, technology changing, and trying to stay on the forefront of that is an active process. It's not a set it and forget it kind of process.

Yeah. Well, that ad I was talking about that I created in 1998, that was originally created as a newspaper ad. Went really well. Then we incorporated it into some of their newsletters. Went really well.

Then we converted it to and originally, it was a black and white ad. Then we moved it over to, like, a full color magazine. It went really well. Then when the whole Facebook advertising started, we went, will this work on Facebook? Works everywhere else.

It's, like, quite visual at the time. So we ran it on Facebook, and it worked really well. So and we made little tweaks to it and changes as the time went time went on. But like I said, each time, one little change measured what was happening, worked at what worked, repeated it. As it started to drop off, give it a bit of a rest, and then basically bring it back out again.

So it's it's almost it's the run, rest, repeat. That's pretty much what it is.

Now, that's that's a perfect example. Like you said, like, the the bones or the structure of what you were doing was working. Yeah. So it's so it's a matter of just kinda tailoring it to each of those different platforms in a way that makes sense based on the kind of parameters or the limitations sometimes that you have there. But it sounds like it sounds like a good recipe to kind of create that different opportunities on different platforms.

Well, I took that same ad, the concept of the ad, and I was doing a presentation somewhere to a to a group. And I went, I wonder if I can turn that ad just into a fifteen minute presentation. So I looked at the ad, and then I got up. I had the ad up on the screen. It's the only slide I put up there, and then that's what I spoke about for fifteen minutes was the information that was in that ad, but gave it a bit more detail.

And, oh my god, it went really, really well. So but the thing is and I did that for a number of talks. I did that over a whole number of talks over a period of time, then I gave it a rest. And then I brought it out a couple years later, and I repeated it again. So it's amazing.

Once once you connect with certain marketing ideas that work, is don't limit it to just, you know, one marketing pillar or one platform. Is look at how else can I actually use that that same information, whether it's written online, verbal, it's it's that's when the creative creativity comes in? And then once you've found your black caviar, your, you know, your amazing racehorse, then get really boring. Don't change your racehorse. Just keep using the same racehorse when you need to.

No. That makes sense. I think I think you also bring up a good point that sometimes, you know, you're getting the right headline, even a short amount of copy, while it may be as, you know, three or four sentences, and it may not look like, oh, it's how long would that take? But sometimes, distilling ideas and, like, value and then having a patient, you know, act on something, it takes longer maybe for those shorter types of copywriting than it would be if you were just to try to, like, just spew out, like, two pages of things. It's it's trying to, like, really get to the core needs of that patient, you know, provide show them you're providing them something and have them take that action.

So I I definitely I I relate to that black caviar idea because I think when you find something that works, you know, finding ways to either improve it gradually or just, you know, kind of syndicating on different platforms is a huge opportunity for any practice that's listening here today.

Yeah. And I think in a future episode, I'm gonna talk about creating headlines, the the best way to create headlines. I did a a ninety minute presentation just on creating headlines to a dental group, and it went really great. And then I've done it in, you know, slightly varied sort of talk. So I think that would be a great episode in the future.

So if people are enjoying this, stay tuned. It will be coming up soon. So I I think I've covered this topic today, Jim. I've I've talked myself out.

No. I've I've enjoyed it. I learned a little bit about what Australian horse racing, I learned a little bit about some black caviar. So, yeah. No.

I think there's some valuable stuff with, like you said, kind of, you know, what's what's take us through the three things one more time.

Run, rest, and repeat. That's all you gotta remember is run your ad when it's once you know what's working, give it a rest every now and then, and then bring it out like a damn good racehorse and repeat the process. Run it again.

Well, me being a me me being a track runner in my university days, I should have, you know, that should be pretty easy for me because that's what I basically did for four years of my life. So

It's exactly the same thing. Yeah. Instead of thinking racehorses, think just athletes in general. They can't compete at the top the whole time. They have to taper off, rest, and then bang, get back into competition.

Exactly. Now, has been a pleasure, Tyson, and I can't wait for headlines and some more podcasts in the near future.

Yep. Talk to you next week, Jim.

Alright, Tyson. Bye now.

Okay. Bye. Thanks for

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