The 5 Most Important Podiatry Marketing Rules

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. Join us always with my trusty cohost, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's going on today?

I am fantastic today, big Jim, and I love the way when you do your opening, you are so calm. It's just a it's such a calm introduction. And now everything's good here in Cairns at the moment. We're sort of not far off heading into winter, which means it'll just be warm instead of extremely hot. Yeah.

So it's a great time of the year to be up in in the to live in the tropics. Best time of the year.

Yeah. We're heading away from winter into construction season. So those are the two the seasons here in in Montreal. So excited to see all those orange pylons out in the road as they try to fix everything over the next six months.

I suppose they call it construction season.

Well, it's like the the joke is, right, there's two seasons in in in Montreal and in Canada. Winter and construction. So that's just

That's fine. I've never heard that before.

Yeah. That's good one.

Okay. So shall we get on to today's topic? We'll dive straight in. We'll we'll reduce the amount of banter today.

What are we gonna jump into today?

Okay. Today, I wanna talk about five marketing rules. These are rules that everybody should live by when it comes to marketing. And the first rule, all marketing should be designed to attract or repel people. It's got everyone thinking.

Thinking about that one.

Yeah. But but it should always be done in a positive way, never in a negative way. And give me an example. It could be you've done an ad. It could be online.

It could be in a local paper, it could be magazine, or put something on Facebook. Even just a headline and different words can either attract or repel people. So perfect example would be if you use the word premium, there's going to be certain people that will see that word premium go, yes. That's me because I like a premium service. And there'll be other people that will see so they they're the ones you're attracting.

There'll be other people. When they see the word premium, they're like, oh, no. That's not for me because I'm a discounted minded person. So they see the word discount, and they'll get, yeah, that's definitely what I want. Whereas other people will see the word discount and go, oh, I don't really want a discount podiatry service.

I want a premium podiatry service. So that's what I'm talking about when you use your marketing to attract or repel certain patients.

Yeah. Certain word selection, it can be huge. Right? I you know, definitely, whether it's an action word or in some ways signifying status or a better service, You know, a word here and word there can really make a big difference between who you're attracting and who you're repelling. So I definitely I'm on board with that.

Yeah. And and that's what I'm saying. It should always be done in a positive way. It's not you're never being mean, you're never being nasty. If you're doing that, then that's it's not being, yeah, attracting a repellent.

It's just being silly. You don't wanna be doing that. But I think car manufacturers do it really well. So you might think of a, like, say BMW, for example, Mercedes Benz, or Porsche. And when they when you see their ads, it's everything visually about their ad.

The words they use, the speed that they talk. They everything is based around because they're trying to attract a certain person. It'll be the countryside they're driving through. It'll be the press yeah. The nice house that pulls up at the front of.

So other people will see that without even knowing what the price of the car is. They'll go, that car is not for me. Whereas other people will go, that car is for me. You can bear BMW or Mercedes to a Kia, and the Kia will just show the average family at the front of an average house having a bit of fun piling a surfboard and the the boogie boards and the blah. Oh, yeah.

All the toys and everything in the back of the car and a bit of sand on their feet, and the dog in the back shaking his fur and throwing stuff everywhere. And there'll be certain people I see that go, my god. This is not the car for me That's not how I live my life. But there'll be other people who go, that's exactly my life. I love having the dog in the car with me.

I love having the kids in there. I don't care if they spill an ice cream. It's just a Kia, even though Kia do make some nice cars. So car companies do it, and I think beer companies do it as well in in a different way. Corona, for example.

Whenever you see a Corona ad, it's always beach, sunshine, good times, and it's also targeted towards younger people. They'll always be you don't see middle aged people. I'm past middle aged now. You don't see people like me, people in their fifties sitting around drinking Kronas. That's that's not the ad because that's not who they're trying to attract even though Corona's still one of my favorite beers.

Yeah. You're right. Like I I when I think of Corona, think about, you know, feet in the sand Mhmm. You know, like a parasol, some some limes, you know, in a bottle, and yeah, a blue water, blue sky.

And it puts a smile on your face.

Oh, for sure. Would makes you wanna be there. Right? It makes you wanna go to that place right away. So definitely, I'm I'm not young either, but I'd definitely be up for hanging out on the beach and having a couple beers.

Yeah. Compared to, like, in America, Budweiser, I think is like the average beer. I'm I'm not really sure about in America. But in Australia, we have a beer called VB. It's the tradies beer.

When they show their ad, some sweaty overweight dude with a flannel shirt with his with his plumbers crack hanging out, and and it's targeted towards the hardworking tradie. That's who it's targeted towards. Even though I know there's some people that are not tradies who are, you know, white collar who like VB. And that's what I mean. So I'm gonna get on to, you know, bet your ideal person or ideal patient a little bit later on.

But this is all about the attracting and repelling. You're really trying to use words, use visual images, and and even age groups. Things in your marketing that are either gonna attract people or repel people. And even though when we mentioned the corona, you and I are both attracted to that corona. And I think it's because we can still see ourselves when we're in our twenties and had heaps of hair being at the beach and enjoying a corona.

So to me, I think of corona. It just just always brings back happy memories.

Yeah. It's an aspirational thing. Right? It's it's it's both in the nostalgic thing, but also aspirational because, you know, I don't wanna be stuck in cold Montreal. I'd like to get to somewhere warm every once in a while.

It, you know, it kinda it kinda puts you in that situation when you're seeing one of those ads and they're they're, you know, they're warm and on the beach.

Yeah. I just now the so that's the first one. The second one is you must be in the game. And when I'm talking about being the game, you need to be in the marketing game. You can't sit on the sidelines and just expect everything to happen and put in zero effort.

And I've seen people do that where they'll just hand all the marking over to someone and go, you just do everything for me. You do it all. I don't need to know anything about it. And they wouldn't know whether they're being ripped off or whether they're not. So I think, yeah, like, you do a lot of marketing for people, Jim.

So I know that it's part of the market you're doing for them. It's also educating them on what it is that you do. And I think it's really important for me to take an interest in what you're doing for them. And when you're giving them reports, it's taking some interest in what's happening so they know when things are working, if things aren't working. Because then they may have a suggestion on, oh, Jim, what about if we did this?

And you can have that conversation. But if you're just being super passive and you're sitting back thinking, this is all going to happen for you, I just don't think it's the right attitude. You've got to like your podiatry degree, you spent so many years getting that. You must put some time out of it just to at least understand some of the concepts. And one of the concepts and this is where you can get totally gypped by unscrupulous salespeople.

Well, they'll come to you and they'll be talking about frequency and reach. And they'll and a lot of times, they say, oh, if you do this here, it reaches 60,000 people. And you go, oh, that's good. But if you only do this over here, you're only gonna reach five. But what they don't realize is sometimes reaching those five more often with frequency, you're gonna get better impact than reaching 60,000 once.

So what's your thoughts on that?

It's a good point. I think when it comes to the clients I work with it's there's really two two main aspects of it is, like you said, education. Letting people understand, you know, what are those different channels and what are the potential ROI just so they have a general sense of what's happening. And the second part is communication. You know, that's the one I talk about communications more, it's not just daily feedback or quarterly feedback, it's really sitting down with with podiatry clinic owners and understanding what their goals and aspirations are.

And then having kind of a set plan with them to kind of walk down that path together. Because sometimes you're gonna do some experimentation, sometimes you have some tried and true methods that are gonna work, but it's building that bond through education and communication, which is really really important. Like you said, it's not always about you know, getting the biggest reach. Right? Like if you you know, if you if you wanna be known by people, sometimes you have to be seen more frequently and you wanna go after that target demographic.

You know, you don't necessarily wanna have to be known by everybody. So you know, kind of picking and choosing where that visibility is is really really important. But working with a partner and working with someone that will really help you have that consistency to get that visibility of your marketing out there is hugely important.

Yeah. Well, it's even when I do business coaching with clients. I can give them the advice on what to do, but it is it works so much better when they understand why I'm doing it. Don't just hear. This is how you this is how you set up a a brilliant recall system.

It's why do you want a recall system in the first place? What is it you're trying to recall and and understand the process? And once they do it and they understand it, then they can repeat it time and time again. So I just think that if you're sitting on the sideline just expecting everything to be done for you, and this is where I think sometimes where people they'll this is a different subject. I I was, you know, I said I was gonna try and stay on track.

I wasn't gonna get sidetracked. I'm sidetracked now. When some people say, oh, I can never let go of my receptionist. She's a complete cow because if she wasn't here, I'd have no idea how the clinic runs. And I'm like, and that is going back into the silly mode.

To have one person in your business who knows everything runs, and you're scared to let them go, and they could be treating you like dirt, but you won't let them go, To me, it's sitting on the sidelines and not being in the game. That's the game of your business as well.

No. A %. You have to own your business, you have to own the operations that are happening inside your business so you can make good decisions not only for the betterment of your your patients, but also for the betterment of your business.

Mhmm. Number three is you must be consistent with your marketing message. Whatever the message is you're putting here there. You don't change your marketing words online or offline every three or four days or every week. Just this week, we're talking about fungi.

This week, we're talking about heel pain. If you keep doing that, it gets really, really confusing. And it and it takes time, like you said before. It takes time to get a message across, and this relates back to what we're just talking about with frequency. Is if you just keep putting the same message out there and you're repeating it over a period of time, eventually, people will start hearing that message.

If you only send it out there once, and the next week, it's a different message, and next week's is a different message, they never really grasp the message. And in Cairns, there's this company here that make mango mango wine. And there wouldn't be anybody in Cairns when you mention the name of their company that wouldn't know who they are. Everybody knows who they are because they used to advertise on TV only from 10PM till about 2AM in the morning because that's when the drunks were coming home. You come home, you sit in front of the TV, I was gonna watch a bit of Rage, which is a music show, which we always should do when we got home.

And nearly every second ad was this golden mango golden drop mango wine. Everybody up here in North Queensland would know who they are. I said, when did you see their ad? And they go, oh, I can't remember where I saw it. I knew they only advertised from 10PM till 2AM because it was, like, $15 a spot.

It was cheap as. And they just smashed the frequency was just there, and it was seven days a week, same spot, just consistently. That's that's what frequency does.

Yeah. Consistency is huge. And when I talk to some of the people I work with, right, it even in my own market when I'm trying to get the name of my services out there and what I do, sometimes you you will feel like you're repeating yourself and it may feel uncomfortable like you, oh, I've been saying the same thing for the last month or three months or six months. And you you feel like you wanna say something different. But like you like like you talked about though, if you wanna be associated with something, like associated with a certain type of service, associated with a certain type of expertise with your clinic, You have to be not afraid to continue to harp, know.

There's different ways of saying those things. You don't have to say the exact same thing. You can change up the imagery or the words that you use sometimes, but the message should try to remain as similar or on point as possible because as humans we like new things. Right? We're oh, I'm gonna go and do this completely other direction.

And when you do that, you lose all that momentum you've been building by being known for that specific thing. So, yeah, you can experiment in different areas, but once you have something that works and you're known and you want to be known for something, don't be afraid, like you said, to be consistent about it and have that, you know, repeat what you're saying and maybe different imagery, words, but it is important to drive home those things and repeat them because that's how your your clinic and you'll be associated with the type of patients you wanna see or different type of procedures that you wanna

So I remember a sales rep coming to me and just saying, oh, Tyson, when are you gonna change this particular marketing we were doing? They said, it's getting really boring. You've been doing the same thing for so long now. And I said, well, I'll stop it when it stops working. And that's when I realized that we get bored with our own marketing much faster than our patients get bored with it.

And you don't realize that everybody in patients don't see every bit of marketing you put out there. They will see it they might see it once, but they might see it until it's been out there the twentieth time before they actually see it the next time because it's just depending on where you're actually doing it. But the the other part with the consistency is even when you think of BMW and Corona. They might change their ads, which you mentioned. You can change the type of ad that you're doing, but the message is still the same, and they still BMW will still use the same imagery.

Corona be 15 different beaches they've used, but the basic message is the same. Fun, sun, surf, younger people, good times, limes in there, and everyone enjoying themselves. So I just think that's that's the important part for this. It's just you must be consistent with your marketing message and basically keep repeating it.

Absolutely. I I definitely think that's, like we mentioned, it's it's about just driving home that message, and you're gonna be much more tired of your own message more quickly than your patients are.

Oh, definitely. So this leads on to number four, which is don't try to please everyone, which a lot of people when they're doing the marketing, that's what they they basically do. You're better off to be a sniper and pick one particular message for a particular group of people, that's what you're targeting, than trying to get have the shotgun approach. And they always say, if you try and please everyone, you will you will actually hit no one because nobody will really feel a really beige marketing message. If it's dull and sort of go, hey, we treat feet, People are gonna go, what do you do?

But if they just say, hey. Do you have heel pain? Then someone's gonna go, yeah. I have heel pain. And that's basically what we do.

That's being a sniper. But just say, hey. I'm a podiatrist, and I'm great. That's being very broad. Or, hey.

I treat heel pain and fungal nails and warts and and bunions, and people go, okay. Then the message is basically lost. What you wanna do is instead of trying to please everyone, just think about what do you want more of and try and push your marketing towards that particular area.

Yeah. Once you know what you want more of or what you want less of, it's it's much more easy to kinda crystallize what your marketing message will be, you know, what kind of website you'll have, you know, what channels or what types of creative should you show on ads or like on your social channels. It just makes everything much more simple. When you're trying to be everything to everybody, you're kind of being like I said, no you're being no one to nobody. Right?

You're just you're just like everybody else. There's no way to differentiate you between you and local other local competitors. You're just that other foot clinic. And but when you're able to spend the time to know what you want, what you don't want, you can really differentiate yourself, set yourself apart, and really be seen as a local expert in that very specific type of care that you wanna provide.

Yeah. Because some people they do. They they they just and they feel like, oh, but if I if I don't talk to everybody, I'm gonna miss everybody. Now if you try to talk to everybody, you're going to miss everybody. It go I know it the hardest part is it goes against the logic of what you actually think, that I must tell everyone everything.

It's no different having a patient in the clinic and you feel that you wanna give them all the information on that first visit and show them how smart you are and how you can help them in so many ways, and they walk out totally confused. Whereas you're better to give them less, You know, they say less less is more, which leads on to number five. And number five is you must know your ideal patient. And we've spoken about the ideal patient so many times before. And I wanna point out, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but your ideal patient and your best patient are not necessarily the same people.

Your best patient might be the person that comes in and orders couple of pairs of orthotics, they get shoes, and they do all this, and they want they're like an extreme patient. And sometimes patients I wanna market towards the best patients. You go, but you may not make a living off the best patients. What you wanna do is look at your ideal patient that covers a broader area, a broader group of people, and that's what you should be marketing towards. But you need to learn more about them.

It's really important to identify the ideal patient and then dig deep and just just learn more. Like, find out where where do they hang out? What are what are they doing on on weekends? What social platforms do they actually use? Because I know some podiatrists that they are heavily into Instagram.

But when I talk to them about who their patients are, and I've actually got them to go through and go, yeah, go through the ages, and all of sudden they're going, oh, I didn't realize my ideal patients were twenty years older than what I thought because they were focusing on their best patients. But when they actually look at who their ideal patient were, the ones that were actually spending adequate amount of money on a regular period of time, they were, like, twenty years older than they thought. And I went, oh my god. Said, now I'm gonna ask those people what platforms to use, and none of them said Instagram. I said, but you're putting all this time and effort into doing these amazing videos and all this content for Instagram, and they weren't putting it anywhere else.

That's why you need to you really need to know who they are.

Yeah. You have to pick those channels. Right? Maybe it's the local the free local paper or the senior the senior magazine or something. Right?

Where, you know, if if that's the demographic you're going after, you gotta know where they're at. Because like you said, otherwise, you're kind of, you know, wasting money in a way because yeah. It just it it only makes sense just to kinda get into knowing that demographic, knowing what they do, and being present there. Whether it's, you know, giving talks to local organizations that include that patient demographic. Just being seen and being visible to those folks will give you, you know, a great opportunity to kinda be seen as that local expert for them.

Yeah. And that's what what you said then. It's not just about the online platforms. What are the offline platforms that that your ideal patients are connecting with? There could be a we used to have a a local magazine here called Cairns Eye, and it's not doesn't exist anymore.

COVID killed it. And plus, nobody's really reading newspapers anymore either. But going back even five, ten years ago, this magazine was just a winner. It had the TV guide in there. It had a a number of local stories.

So it had the weekly TV guide. So we used to advertise in there because we knew that magazine, Lift Out, would hang around for a whole week before it was actually discarded compared to a newspaper that was just there for the one day. So we we had worked out that whenever we did advertising in that magazine, we got about five times more patients than when we did the ad in the paper. So we didn't need advertising in the paper anymore. Everything went into the magazine.

Magazine died. You gotta find another channel. But it's you know your patients, if they're not looking at the magazine, they've moved on to something else. They're getting their information from somewhere. So you've gotta tag into that.

And the other thing I just wanna finish on this particular topic about yeah. Must know where you're about more about your ideal patient is who else has your ideal patients? Is it a chiropractor? Is it a physio? Is it local doctor?

But is it the local car yard, coffee shops, hairdressing salons? There's other businesses out there that your ideal patients will be hanging out at. And if they hang out there, there's a chance there's a lot more of them there that you can actually tap into.

Yeah. I think that's huge is utilizing that network of both professional and nonprofessional referrers, you know, the the business the local businesses, the other health care providers that are, know, I feel like like I've talked about multiple times previously, like, loved treating runners and active people. Right? So going to the running shoe stores, you know, going to the the physios, going to the health clubs, places like that where you're gonna have that target demographic where they're already, you know, there and sometimes even a captive. Right?

You know, if they're running on treadmills or something, there's a way to show advertising to those folks or, you know, just kind of maybe doing some co marketing with some of these different local businesses can be a huge win for your practice.

Yeah. I remember having a few patients coming in in a row who were at the time, like, you know, sort of mid to mid forties to mid fifties. All had their own businesses, had all done quite well in business, and I noticed that were all part of Rotary. And I went, so I'm sort of checking this out a little bit more. And then when I dug into it a little bit deeper, I'm thinking, yep.

More and more of them are in Rotary. So I'm gonna join Rotary. And I was only in my early thirties at the time, so I joined Rotary, which was a bit unusual to have someone my age in Rotary. But the amount of patients because there were seven Rotary clubs in Cairns. They would have meetings where they all got together and do functions together, so I got to meet all these people.

I then was able to speak at every rotary club about podiatry every year during foot health week. The amount of patients that I got, not just the members, but then the people that they knew, Because Rotarians are usually part of other organizations. So that is that's the power of understanding your ideal patient and then tapping into that.

Yeah. I think one one of the big opportunities I see these days, and I just talked a lot about one of the conferences I went to is the cut the onslaught of the amount of injuries happening with pickleball players. So no. I'm yeah. So like kind of finding these pickleball venues where there'd be some of them are, you know, public and parks and things, but there are some private, you know, groups and facilities and, you know, partnering with those folks about, you know, injure injury prevention or, you know, having some talks at some of those different facilities could be a huge opportunity because the number of injuries that people are sustaining during pickleball has just been kinda mind boggling from some of the colleagues I've talked to.

Yeah. And and you mentioned I think you mentioned pickleball last week when I mentioned netball.

It's all kind of pickleball. All kind of ball talk here on the the podiatry marketing podcast.

What what do I do finish up on? We're finishing on ball talk. Anyway, so that was the that was the five. Just to to rehash the ball, all marketing should be designed to attract or repel your your patients. You must be in the game, so you gotta have your head in the game and and want to know more about the whole the whole marketing side of things.

You need to be more consistent with your message and and frequency and and just keep repeating it. Don't try and please everyone. Same as us with this podcast. We're talking to podiatrists who were interested in marketing. We're not talking to podiatrists who wanna know more about Achilles tendonitis.

They're not gonna listen to this podcast unless they like marketing as well. And number five is you must know your your ideal patient. So that's what I'm gonna finish up on, Jim.

I think it's a great topic. You know, there's definitely a lot that people could take from this to kinda implement into their own clinic. So, you know, if they don't know how to do it themselves, know, you and I are available. You provide a great coaching service and they can reach out to us, via our website podiatry.marketing. I provide marketing services.

So yeah, they can reach out to us if they have questions, they can send us an email and we're happy to get in touch.

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

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay, see you. Bye. Bye now.

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.