Strategy Before Tactics When Marketing Your Podiatry Clinic

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome back to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me is normal is Big Jim Mac. How are you doing today, Big Jim?

Feeling very normal today. Feeling good. Happy to be back chatting with you as always, Tyson.

Yeah. I wonder why I said normal and not usual.

It's all good.

I don't know. That was weird. Even after I said it, I went, was a little bit odd. But anyway, normal, Jim. How you doing?

No. Things are good. As you can see, I'm in a remote location. Obviously, we talked a little bit about it. We've released some podcasts since I've been, you know, kind of back in Montreal.

But this is actually the first one recorded here in my mother in law's spare bedroom. The bunker. Yeah. I'm in the bunker trying to avoid any noise from the kids, my mother-in-law, my wife. So hopefully, we can get through today without any major technical or audio difficulties.

Undisclosed location. But we just tell everybody that you're in you're in witness protection, and this is just how the podcast is gonna be from now on.

Yeah. Maybe that's it, or maybe I'm just four doors down from my my actual house here in Montreal. But one or the other, probably the undisclosed location sounds sexier for sure.

Oh, definitely. So what are we talking about today?

Yeah. So today, we're gonna jump into discussing, you know, why it's important to have you kinda know, think about strategy before we jump into tactics. The real kind of a marketing mindset that some podiatrists just don't completely understand, you know, when you're looking to get started and promote your practice. Sometimes it's really easy to just jump into doing tactics right away. But today, I think it's really important that we spend a little bit of time discussing why, you know, podiatric clinic owners shouldn't just jump straight into the tactics.

You know, hopefully, today, I'll provide some kind of actionable steps that will maybe help you kind of shift your approach to more of a long term strategic thinking because that's really what's gonna help your clinic kind of achieve its practice goals in the long term. So that's what we're gonna jump into today.

Yeah. Well, what I've done by marketing master classes, this is the one thing I really push home is about strategy always comes before tactics. And the biggest mistake is seeing another podiatrist doing something and go, oh, I'm gonna do that without any thought because what they're doing is just a tactic. You don't know what their strategy is behind it, and it may be a different strategy to what you're trying to achieve.

No. Absolutely. Everybody's got a little bit different of a plan or what what they wanna see in their clinic, you know, what they hope to do. They wanna have multiple locations, or they wanna have multiple associates, or they just wanna have a solo practice. You have to drill down to what you want before you can really come together with a marketing strategy and then implement those tactics.

So, you know, one of the kind of marketing folks that I like, who's not necessarily in medical marketing, but is this kind of there's a book about it. It's called duct tape marketing. Oh, yeah. And this is basically kind of their I'm I'm kinda ripping them off a little bit, but I'll give them credit for this kind of principle. I mean, everyone kinda knows this, but this the phrase, you know, strategy before Texas is really kind of a core concept you know, popularized by John Jantz and the duct tape marketing system.

And it really emphasized we've talked about before you get started, before you run into Google Ads, before you start posting on every social network, before you start sending email newsletters, you you really first have to kind of develop a clear strategy that defines, you know, what what you want. Right? You know, who is your ideal patient? What problems are you hoping to solve for them? And then how does your clinic uniquely position itself to help?

Right? You just don't wanna be like everybody else. So those are kinda like the three areas that I think, you know, people need to spend some time on. It's not just, oh, I got five minutes. I'm gonna figure out my ideal patient, and then which problems I like solving, and then, you know, what makes me unique.

You need to spend a bit of time really figuring those things out so you can develop that strategy.

Well, everyone would have heard that I go to an event in Arizona every year called Business Black Ops. We spend every year for the last decade I've been doing this, one and a half to two hours talking about and thinking about our ideal patient. And a lot of people are like, have you done that before? But but you need to constantly keep doing it because as your clinic grows and changes, so does your ideal patient. Therefore, your strategy might slightly change, and then you look at what tactic is going to be the best.

But I've had people come over and say, oh, I need more patients. You go, okay. What what type of patient are you after? I don't care. Any of them.

And I actually said to someone, why don't you just get put on a chicken suit? Just dance at the front of your clinic. If you don't really care what you get, then it doesn't really matter what tactic you use because you've gotta put some thought into it.

Yeah. And if you don't have a strategy, you're gonna be like, not only gonna be wasting time, you're but gonna be wasting money because, you know, a lot of whether you're hiring an agency, you're hiring a consultant, you're doing Google Ads, you know, if you're just kind of spending money on these things without clearly understanding who you are and what you wanna do, A bunch of reigning marketing activities can be really, really expensive. And then you're gonna do that for three to six months and feel like it doesn't work, feel frustrated, feel upset. You know, like, maybe you're gonna think that that person didn't know what they were doing. But, you know, it's one of those things you may have to make sure whoever you're working with and yours you yourself know that this strategy is first and foremost because, you know, all your tactics are gonna be based around that.

So in order to kinda have long term growth, you need to really focus on that. It's it's basically this it's not too dissimilar from, a you lot of surgical podiatrists in The US or maybe even someone who, you know, prescribes orthotics. There's a million different ways to to fix a bunion or to you know, there's a lot of different materials you could use to to build an orthotic. But before you worry about, you know, what surgical technique or, you know, the exact kinda, you know, way to build that orthotic, you need to understand, you know, what you're trying to do for that patient. Right?

Do they have a pes cavus? Do have a pes planus? Just kind of coming up with a plan with that patient to to make sure that they have a great result. And no one would you know, it's something that people get used to doing over time, but when we were students or we were just getting into you know, out of residency, we learned how to do these things. And we know we learn how to implement them, but we have a plan before we do the implementation.

The same thing kinda happens in marketing. You have to have a plan before you just jump in and try to do all the things.

Yeah. Well, the best way I describe to people is think of diagnosis before treatment. A patient walks in, I've got heel pain. You don't just give them treatment. You will do a diagnosis first, which is your strategy, and your treatment is the tactic.

Once you've worked out your diagnosis or the strategy with that patient, you will then try different different tactics or different treatments to get the result that you're after. So I think if podiatrists can think that way, think of it, what is it your clinic needs? Diagnose your clinic, and then what treatment or tactics you're gonna use to get the result.

No, absolutely. And it's one of those things too, where, you know, one of the first things I hear from people when they contact me, or they want it they're curious about hear about my services is like, how do I get more patients? How do I get more patients? I wanna have more patients. But, you know, it's not you really gotta step back a little bit.

It's like, patients do you actually want? You know, which type of care do you wanna provide? So when you have a strong strategy and you kinda speak to that specific type of patient through the visuals on your website, the type of marketing you're running, the connections you're making in the community, it's easier to have a sports medicine practice or a surgical practice or a strong orthotic practice when you know exactly the type of care you wanna provide. When you do it in a consistent manner, and you're doing it in a kind of predictable way that will attract those people to the practice.

Yeah. There's a guy I had on my old podcast called Patrick McFadden, and I give use a quote of his in my workshops all the time. And he says, marketing just amplifies what you already have. So if you got a clinic full of patients you don't like, if you keep doing the marketing that you're doing, you're just gonna get more of what it is that you don't want. And it usually happens just because you're just dumping one tactic on top of another, and you're not taking a step back to figure out, well, what patients do I like?

Okay. Well, how did I get them? What patients don't like, and how how the hell did I end up with them? And then start changing the strategies to get more of what you want and less of what you don't want.

Now that that leads perfectly into the second point is like, why do, you know, podiatry jump into these tactics right away? Number one, we're getting bombarded all the time. Right? You know, we're on social media for our personal in our personal lives. You know, we've seen Google Ads in our personal lives.

We've seen all these types of things, and it seems like, oh, I gotta be doing all of these things. But, you know, we have this kind of urgency to fill schedules. You know, maybe you're starting a practice or maybe things have slowed down a little bit in your clinic and you're like, I just gotta do these things to to make these things happen before kind of, you know, shoring up the foundations of actually what you wanna have. And sometimes you see something or you hear from a a colleague that like, oh, I did this one magic bullet thing and it just worked. Right?

And that that's not always the case. Right? It's attribution and really figuring out what works takes time when it comes to marketing. So if you don't have a plan, you're just gonna be jumping from rock to rock without really knowing and and analyzing results of what you've been doing. Also, like, sometimes can people confuse staying busy with marketing activity as far as something that's actually effective.

Just because you're doing a lot of things doesn't necessarily do makes doesn't necessarily mean you're doing effective marketing. So it's one of those things where just because you're doing all the things doesn't mean you're kinda hitting that right demographic. And then like you said, like, sometimes you hear so and so is doing Google Ads or so and so is doing something, and you're just trying to basically kind of mimic or you think they're successful, so you're trying to do something similar. But if you don't have those goals and objectives in place with a solid strategy and foundation, you know, you're never gonna know for sure. Maybe they're wasting a ton of money on ads.

I see that all the time. People are running Google Ads, but it's going to their homepage. You know, like, that's you know, it's it's not going to a a very specific page. You know, we've talked about this in the past, but I love doing these Aries We serve pages where it's like someone from a local town goes you know, they click on a link and they actually learn about the podiatrist, how far are they away from that town, are they in the same town they are. It's much more relevant.

But if you're just kinda jumping around from tactics to tactics, like, oh, I think that person's growing on Google Ads, so I'm gonna run some as well. You know, it's much more important to to to focus on that foundation strategy.

Yeah. Which is the thought just crossed my mind about mental calories and always talking to people about. You've got so many mental calories that you gotta make all these decisions from the time you wake up in the morning till the time you get bit. It is decision after decision. How you drive to work, what time you leave, what clothes you wear, all the way through.

And I think when somebody has a problem and when you're mentioning the Google Ads, sometimes someone will do a Google Ads, spend all this money, and it sends them to a home page. But the person was searching, you know, why have I got heel pain? It comes to your home page, and nowhere on the home page does it say anything about heel pain, and then they've got to try and search for it. As soon as they start to burn up mental calories, which I don't have many left, they will just get they'll go back and get who's next on the list, and they'll click on them. So all that work you did to be seen just gets gets totally missed because you haven't thought about the strategy and what it is you're trying to do with that Google Ad.

Yeah. You really have to make sure those touch points really, like, make sense from the patient's perspective. Right? Yeah. Like, to you, it makes sense that they go to your homepage because you want them to make that, you know, appoint make appointment button or click to call the clinic.

But they're looking for something very specific. And you have to deliver on that specificity because you said, you know, after are they even willing to to make another click? Are they willing to make two more clicks? You know, you're asking doesn't sound like a lot, but people's time, is you something that's really, really important. And most people will, like you said, Tyson, abandon, go back to Google, find something that's a better, more relevant search finding and a page for them.

Oh, I had to fill something out on one of the tax office sites the other day. Here, click on this form. All you do is step one, two, three, four. One, two, three, click on this link, and I get I didn't know where it was, so I went back. And eventually, it's the fourth time I've gone on there to fill in this form.

I just haven't got it done yet. I just I just lose it. I I get on there and I just get it it keeps going into circles, and I'll go, maybe I've gotta try doing it at the beginning of the day when I still have a lot of mental calories left to burn. Don't do it at the end of the day.

No. It's tricky like that for sure.

So what's next? So next

is like, we'll kinda go over a little bit, you know, not every marketing strategy has to be some, you know, long multi page document that, you know, that's gonna take forever to figure out. Right? So we'll kind of like talk a little bit about what is a simple marketing strategy? What's gonna send you kind of in the right direction? Something you can take home from this podcast to really kind of make sure that you have a strategy that aligns with the type of care you wanna provide.

Now first and foremost, like we talked about, who is your ideal patient? You know, how old are they? What condition do they have? Where do they live? You know, what is gonna kinda put them over the top to make them want to come into your practice?

So kind of understanding that patient and their perspective, I think, is super, super important. Number two would be like, what's the problem that you're trying to solve for them? You know, are you really into surgery? Do you like doing orthotics? Are you, like, doing nonoperative care?

Are you doing shockwave? What type of things can you offer that patient to solve their problem? Because, you know, it's great to have them come into the clinic, but if you're not able to provide a service that's gonna be, you know, solving their problem, this leads to, you know, negative reviews, negative word-of-mouth. It it can lead to bad things. Right?

So you'll make sure that you have the solutions they're looking for. Also, you know, you know, why should they choose you over someone else? You know, what about your website or the way you market yourself or the way you position yourself in your local market makes you different? And try to figure out is that, you know, do you are you a runner that does sports medicine now? Are you you know, what is the way you can kind of separate yourselves from others in your local community?

And, you know, what does that journey of the patient look like? How do they go from I have foot pain to booking with your clinic? Right? So like we talked about with that landing page, you know, they click on a Google ad, you know, what, you know, what are they actually searching for when they found you? You know, what do they find when they clicked on that?

Is it they could go to relevant web page on your on your website that answered a part of their question or gave them some information or resources or, you know, told them about what how you basically attack different problems, how do you solve certain problems so that they feel compelled to make that appointment button, you know, push that appointment button. So those are kind of things that I think you've got to stop and think about, but it just, you know, it doesn't your kind of overall, a general strategy doesn't have to be overly complex. It just has to be based on the patient's needs and what you can provide for them.

I think it's interesting talking about the ideal patient. I know we've hopped on about it so many times. Every workshop I do, I talk about the ideal patient. If I'm talking to a coaching client, I about the ideal patient. And so many people are scared to do it.

They don't comprehend the the power of knowing exactly who you wanna talk to. And just as you were talking about it, I had this idea this thought popped into my head. Anyway, say for example, you had a group of people there, big group, and you said, who would like a Coca Cola? So Coca Cola is your ideal patient. Who wants a Coca Cola?

You got a pile of people standing there, and there would be a couple of people that go, yeah, want a Coke, and they'll take that Coca Cola. But you have a couple of other people who didn't really want a Coke, They would have preferred a Fanta, but they're thirsty. So even though you weren't talking to them because you were talking to the Coke people, the people who are still thirsty, know what? I'd rather have that Coke than not have anything at all at the moment. Or they might be going, oh, I'm healthy.

I'll only just drink water. But after a period of time, they're gonna drink that Coke if they're dying of thirst. And to me, that's what your ideal patient is like. It's you talk to one group, but people just outside of that group might get okay. I'm not exactly that person, but that's what I need right now.

And that's her. It was just an analogy that popped into my head.

No. I like that analogy. I think that's that it kind of addresses a real real fear that podiatrists have. Like you said, when you're trying to niche down or talk to your ideal client or ideal patient is that, well, I'm gonna alienate all of these people. Right?

Like, it's just not gonna you know, it's I'm gonna I'm in a smaller and medium sized community. I if I talk about being a running specialist and people that play basketball or tennis and those those folks are just not gonna listen to me, which is not the case.

No. And if

you can build up if you can build up a reputation for that, you you you you can treat other people as well and they'll, you know yeah. You're not alienating anybody when you do that.

But we used to do a lot of marketing. A lot of our marketing was all towards heel pain. And I have a patient that come in that had shin splints. I'd ask me, how'd you find it? I saw your ad on TV.

Never done an ad on TV about shin splints. It was about heel pain. But when they see that you treat heel pain, that might have been the ideal patient. People just outside of that, the Fanta drinkers who had shin splints, they go, okay. But I don't have heel pain.

However, if these guys can fix heel pain, more than likely, they can probably fix shin splints as well. And that's why they come in. And that's where I think with some people, they blast the message out where, oh, we do heel pain, shin pain, knee pain, orthotics, kids problems, veteran effect. They blurt out all these different problems, and the person sitting there with shin machine paint, it just goes over their head because it's it's so beige. It didn't actually talk to anybody, so so it misses everybody.

No. Exactly. You have to be specific about what you want and what you don't want.

Oh, I forgot. And we also do routine foot care. We treat marathon runners, we also clip your toenails. To me, that is a confusing message to certain groups of people. Not saying there's anything wrong with flipping toenails.

No. There's nothing wrong with it. But like you said, if you don't own the message and kind of develop your kind of expertise in an area, then yeah, you're just you're gonna appeal to nobody.

So what's the next point?

Yeah. So the next point is, you know, so what happens when you lead with tactics? Right?

Oh, yeah. Tell me.

Number one, you're gonna have inconsistency, right, you know, with your branding and your messaging. If you haven't developed your brand, you know, what do you talk about? Who are you talking to? Like we just talked about in this last point. Right?

You know, if you're saying you clip toenails and you're also the, like, sports medicine doctor, like, you're gonna have people confused. The the consistency is gonna breed confusion, and they're not gonna trust you. You're gonna waste money. You're gonna have ineffective campaigns because you're just kinda like, you're not really sure. You you saw this other clinic that did this one type of campaign.

You think it worked. So you don't have to you know, before you you can kinda dip jump into those tactics, know that you'd be wasting money if you're just kinda doing, like, all the things. Also, it's difficult to track success and kinda analyze what's working, what's not working. You know, if you're just kinda jumping around from different tactics, you know, you're not really sure. Like, you know, is there enough of a market for sports medicine if you just kind of, you know, you're you're changing who you are or, you know, you're kinda changing your message all the time?

Also, you're gonna burn out. Right? You're gonna feel like this doesn't work. You're gonna feel, you know, frustrated with when you're not getting results and you don't know why. So those are some of the things that really, you know, let's say, for example, like, clinics are investing in pricey Instagram, you know, you know, tactics.

But if you're kinda doing making messages that don't really appeal to anybody and those people are actually searching on Google, you know, you're you're kind of you're you're just not really kind of keeping your tactics, you know, grounded in the foundation of your strategy. So you really wanna make sure that the strategy is down tight before you start wasting money, get burnt out, and just have difficulty tracking stuff.

And definitely the burnout, I think, is important because I've heard some podiatrists say, oh, yeah. No. Marketing doesn't work. Just go there's a whole industry based on it, so it must it must work. But it I'd like you said, it won't work if your tactic is being aimed or targeted towards the wrong people.

So if you have a routine foot care clinic and and it is extremely successful, are your routine foot care patients on Instagram? And just because you may see another podiatrist doing some really clever things on there doesn't mean that that's where your patients are gonna come from. So you need to take a step back, talk to your patients. What are their likes and dislikes? What do they do?

Learn more about your favorite patients because they are your ideal patients, and that's part of the strategy. Then you know where to what the best tactics is gonna be.

Absolutely. You just have to know your patients. And this is kinda leads into the last point of of of tonight. I'd say that, you know, you gotta really start thinking strategically, and here's a couple practical take takeaways to do that. Say number one is to, like I said, list out those three ideal patient types or those high value conditions.

You know, maybe you don't know who exactly that patient type is, but you know the things you wanna see. So what are those three high value conditions for your practice? Number two, review your homepage and your Google Business profile. When you look at that from the the lens and the perspective of your ideal patient or someone who has those conditions, you know, does it appeal to them? You know, if you're wanting to be the orthotic guy or a gal and you don't mention anything on your home page, you know, it's two clicks deep, there's nothing under Google Business Profile about, you know, you building out the best orthotics or having the best you know, the quickest turnaround for orthotics, you know, in in your local area, then something is wrong there.

Right? So that's a way just to have a quick win to change things around. Number three, I'd say is, you know, pause, you know, one marketing effort you're doing right now and ask, does that fit into this kind of overall strategy you're trying to create? You know you know, if you're if you're wanting to do more orthotics, but you're really pushing hard on, you know, chip and clip or, you know, routine foot care or, you know, you're you're doing something more in the surgical realm or you're just gonna spread too thin, pause one of those types of campaigns until you can kinda really understand what your strategy is. Also, you know, consider, you know, talking with your with your fellow associates, maybe there's other people in your practice, and just kind of refocus on the big picture, you know, about before you launch that next new marketing effort.

You need to have that strategy in place.

Yeah. It's funny when you talked about the the homepage on the website and the Google business profile. And yesterday, I was thinking about our accountant we've had for years. Great great accountant. I've been really happy with him.

But for some reason, I went to his website. I don't know why. It was one of the most atrocious train wrecks I have ever seen. I looked at I would be embarrassed to even give that website out to anybody. Competitiveaccounting.com.au, if anyone has had a look at it.

And but it was it was just awful. So I could say something, oh, he's really good at doing this. If they'd gone to his website and had a look, they would look at his website and just go, oh, Tyson, I don't know what but you were smoking today, but that's this is not the place I I wanna go to. So I think your your homepage, your business profile is really it's got to align with who who you want more of. And if you're getting referrals from other people for specific conditions, your website's gonna screen that.

No. Absolutely. And I'd say, like, the key takeaway today is really that, you know, tactics without strategies is nothing but noise. Mhmm. It's not gonna connect anybody.

You know, you're you're kinda wasting your time and your money. We don't have a clear strategy as far as what you're trying to do. So, you know, when guided by strategy, your marketing is become gonna become more predictable in a positive way, more purposeful, and more profitable. So, you know, I really encourage the folks that own in their own practice or kind of in or have it and would dabble in marketing for their maybe a larger practice to take, you know, fifteen minutes a day and really map out your ideal patient in, like, maybe that primary service. It's that real first step you need to do in order to really kind of improve your clinic's marketing.

So, you this know, is something that I do as a service for people as well. I work with clinics, number one, just to develop a strategy. I kinda call it an online x-ray where I, you know, spend time, you know, developing strategy in concert with, you know, either one podiatrist or a group of podiatrists. So definitely something I'm happy to help you with. If you just want some, you know, free advice, I'm always Tyson and are always here to do that as well.

So this doesn't have to be, like, a hard sell, but, you know, know that you're not alone. A lot of people just jump into marketing without truly understanding, you know, what the purpose of it is. But now is a better time than ever to kinda step back a little bit, understand, you know, who you are, what you wanna treat, and how you can move forward with, you know, solid marketing that's gonna really speak to that and help you be seen as that local expert.

Yeah. Well, the final thing I just wanna say on this particular subject is when you when you know your strategy, then when a tactic is presented to you, you know whether it's a good deal or not a good deal. And a perfect example I just wanna finish on was I knew what my clinic was all about. We we targeted active active patients, weekend warriors, those type of patients. And I remember a lady from the radio station walked into my clinic and said, Tyson, I've got this amazing proposal for you that I think is gonna be fantastic for your for your patients.

I said, it's great. I had a look through it. And she goes, it is awesome. Said, well, is good. Yeah.

It's all good. I said, but by the way, this thing you've put together for me, who is my ideal patient? Who who is it that I treat? She went, well, of course, you treat old people and you cut their toenails and and take hard skin off their feet. And I went, well, no.

It's not actually yeah. 80% of my clinic is sports biomechanics orthotics. That's what we do. And she turned and said, oh, this proposal would be perfect for them. And I went I I said to her, you need to leave.

You you need to go away and just think about that because how could it possibly be a great deal for both those groups of patients? And yeah. So we didn't sign a contract that day. So when you know who your ideal patient is, when you know the strategy behind it and what you wanna do, as soon as the technique is put in front of you, you can say yay or nay to it and just move on very quickly.

Absolutely.

Okay. Big Jim, got anything else to wrap up or you're done?

No. I'm all good. That was a good way to wrap it up.

Great topic. I love strategy and tactics. I look forward to talking to you next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay. See you. 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.