The Importance of Local Visibility

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

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome back to this week's episode of Podiatry Marketing. I am joined by my cohost, big Jim Mac. So, Jim, how are you doing today?

Feeling huge today, Tyson. Got got a good lift and feeling the burn today. You know, this hundred and fifty pound frame is just you know, I'm feeling good, looking good. You know, if you could if you're watching the video of the podcast, you could see that, but I guess you'll have to take my my word at it if you're listening to the podcast on the audio you know, on iTunes or Spotify, wherever we're at right now.

So what did you say the burn? What were you doing? What were you burning?

Oh, you know, I was, you know, squats, you know, all all all kinds of stuff like that. You know, just the muscle burn, the fatigue. So yeah.

Wouldn't it be great if exercise was just fun? Like, you did it. Like, even though it is, like, you do exercise, and everyone knows they they've gotta exercise and stay active. But it's just when you're doing it, it's not one of those things that people wake up in the morning and go, oh, I can't wait to do my run. I can't wait to go to the gym.

It's it's a weird thing because even when I go to Muay Thai, I love it when I finish. Like, when I finish, I'm on such a high that and I enjoy it so much, but you just know the pain and suffering you're gonna go through. You go, it's supposed to be good for me.

I mean, you know, I've been a runner based based in my entire life. My dad was a coach, and it's kind of been kind of a cultural thing for me. They were, like, you know, the runners of lifestyles. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a bit of weirdo.

It's okay. But I would say, you know, after you run something like a marathon, you know, twenty minutes or thirty minutes of a run really feels like nothing. And honestly, I probably do some of my best thinking. I don't listen to AirPods. I I don't listen I don't listen to our podcast or your Yeah.

You know, Podiatry Legends podcast on the run. I just let myself let my mind take me over once ago. It's almost like a form of meditation and one of the few times during the day where I'm away from work and family and kids, and it's a little bit of, you know, selfishly, a little bit of me time. So, yeah, not everyone has that relationship with running. I don't expect that to be everybody, but it definitely provides me, you know, a a lot of kind of a time to think, but also time to get away from things, which is nice.

Yeah. I wish I did. I I see runners. Yeah. You'll be walking the streets or doing something.

You see someone just go past you and all you hear is Yeah. They did like a gazelle. Just running and you go and they look so graceful. And when I ran, I looked like a a wounded elephant. I was terrible.

Just you could hear me coming. It was just awful. So yeah. So I think some people just designed to run and some people I've decided to run away if something was happening. I'd run fast.

Sprinter. For sure. So so now that we've got all our running habits and exercise out of the way, everyone's enthused now. They're probably putting on their running shoes. What are we talking about today, Jim?

Yes. So today, we're gonna talk a little bit about the importance of local visibility and some really specific ways to kinda go about attaining that local visibility. You know, in a in a previous podcast, we kinda talked, you know, 13 different things that you can do. Yeah. And today, we'll dig into a few of those and maybe introduce a couple other ones and, you know, how to execute on some of those ideas to really kind of be seen as that local expert.

Because I think that's really what it's all about. For most people who listen to this podcast, you have a private practice. You're trying to, you know, gain patient appointments in a very specific niche. Hopefully, you have that area that a practice you love to do. So you kind of have that, you understand what you want, and these are some ways you can kind of go after the patients in your local area to really provide them a valuable amount of care doing that, but also gain a lot of professional and personal satisfaction by providing that that care to your patients.

So it's like an extension of last week's episode when we talked about, you know, 13 things you do if somebody opened up across the road. We sort of went through them all. This is like taking it like, going probably a little bit deeper, but just in a in your local community area.

Yeah. Exactly. I think it's a matter of just, you know, kind of putting some ways to execute or some some tactics that can be utilized by by people listening to this podcast so they can get some you know, they understood what we talked about last week, but now they say, okay. Like, what's that next step and how do I kind of make make that come true?

Okay. So where do we start? What do you got? What do you got on your list? How many are on your list?

You got 13?

I think I've only got six. Five or six on this list. So it's not

Listed to be.

As lucky number 13, but we'll do we'll have a shorter list, but maybe give a little bit more bang for the buck on this one. We'll see.

Okay. Here's number one.

So number one is optimizing your website for local search. So, when you're working with a marketing provider or building out a website, it's really, really important that there are these kind of local location and relevant keywords that are baked into your website. So, you know, that means, you know, if you're gonna if you're in a suburban area or you're in a small town or a big city, you need to make sure that your building pages that, you know, reflect those different neighborhoods or those different suburbs or those nearby towns to make sure that you draw people from. So let's say I'm a podiatrist in the West Suburbs Of Chicago, maybe it's near Naperville. So maybe I want to, you know, obviously I want to have a page about Naperville, but I also want to have a page about podiatrists serving different surrounding communities.

So that's one way to really kind of build up that local client base or that patient base.

How how do you include suburbs? Let's say, for example, I'm in Cairns. Just on the outskirt of Cairns is, you know, like, say, Irville's like the southern suburb, but the suburb just outside of Kansas called Warree, which technically is almost like its own town. So it it used to be you drive in, and you say welcome to Warree, and then a hundred meters later, it's like welcome to Cairns. And my original clinic was in Warree.

And the reason I moved from Warree to Irville because Irville was actually in Cairns, then I was actually found. This is going back in the old days.

There's lots of stories like that, honestly. Like, if you're not if you're just, like, on the wrong side of, let's say, you know, like, Chicago, for example. If you're just I'd set out this the, you know, the the kind of the line

Yeah.

The city line, you won't show up in the searches for like Chicago Podiatrist or something. But, you know, one way to kind of get around that somewhat is, like I said, so if you had a page that said podiatrist serving Wahrie or podiatrist serving cans, you could basically have an opportunity to show up kind of more in the organic section of the search results. You're not gonna actually show up in the maps, but by kind of building out these, what I call areas we serve pages, you can have some of that, those local patients kinda come to your practice and be you'll be visible on things like internet search on Google, Bing, and other places that, it just makes you more locally relevant. Another aspect too is to make sure that you create a Google Business profile, not only for yourself, but also for your clinic. Yeah.

Obviously, those will be in the town where your clinic is physically located. You wanna make sure that that's optimized, it has all the services. You know, that that's what's gonna make you show up in those maps that show up at the top of

Are you saying to do one for yourself personally? So it'd be the Jim Mac Big Jim Mac profile and Big Jim Mac's podiatry clinic as two two separate profiles.

Yeah. So I would say, you know, if you're a solo provider, you probably wanna focus on one to begin with, and that would be something like, let's say, it's ProArch Podiatry, Tyson Franklin Podiatrist would be one listing initially. Let's say you get three or 400 reviews or a significant amount more than like your local competition, then you can kind of break it off or, you you can have two at the beginning, but you really wanna make sure that you're sending reviews just to one of them to begin with if you do that. So that's kind of that first step is kind of your online presence. Your website has that local relevance, and also that Google business profile is super important.

Okay. So pop once people have got that the local search sorted out, is there what's the next step after that to be locally more visible?

Yeah. The next step is really to kinda encourage those online reviews. I think local patients wanna see people either that they know or people that they trust, you know, kinda sing your praises. It's one thing for you to put on your website, like how great of a surgeon you are. You went to three year surgical residency or you did a fellowship.

Patients don't really care about that.

They don't care. You're not in prison. You obviously know what you're doing.

So, exactly. So they want to see other people in the local community talking about you. So whether that's testimonials, if you can have them on your website, online reviews that are kind of moved over from like Google reviews over onto your website can be helpful. But really, would say, like I mentioned there, Google reviews are kind of the top dog. So you really want to go after Google reviews and try to get people to fill them out.

But also in your own clinic, you need to have a system to gently and kindly ask for reviews from your patients with either it's you or your staff. You really need to develop a system to have that happen. Obviously, places like Yelp, there's a lot of medical type of review websites like RateMDs and Vitals and some other places can be beneficial, but you really wanna focus on Google reviews. If you get a super negative review in one of those other sites, you can always recommend that. Some tools will allow you to kind of shift some reviews over to that to kind of help negate that negative review.

Yeah. But that's something you should really do along with responding to reviews. Whether it be negative or positive, you really wanna go out of your way to show that you are interacting with these local patients because that that really speaks volumes.

Yeah. I think the reviews part I still think podiatrists underestimate the power of reviews. Yet the same people that underestimate it will use reviews to check into a motel, to go to a restaurant, if they're thinking about seeing a show or a comedian. So we're all looking at reviews and and using those reviews to help us make a decision. So it's surprising that some podi and there's some podiatrists who just I mean, they kill it with reviews.

But, like, I've mentioned to you that, yeah, I injured my ankle, and there's been ongoing injuries over number of years. I, at some stage, need to get my right ankle tidied up a little bit. But here in Australia, you think I can find any reviews on whether it's pediatric surgeons or orthopedic surgeons that have got some positive reviews about someone that's had ankle surgery and had a positive result. And that's that's the thing that holds me off of actually getting it done is I wanna know some other people have had it done and gone, yeah. We were really happy with them.

Well, every everyone's that, like, niche specialist that is the best in that specific area or the problem they have. Right? And, you know, until there's a way to, you know, like like reviews will sometimes you can tease that out. And that's why we you want someone to give you a review, not just a rating. Because if you have these keywords in there, if you're the best, you know, ingrown toenail specialist in Chicago or Naperville or whatever, you want that to be seen in the reviews.

So someone that has that problem will search, find you, and then come see you. So, you know, as much as there's some kind of, I think, trepidation a little bit with, oh, no. Like, I'm not a normal business. I'm a medical practice, or the fear of a negative review. It is really beneficial to patients, and it's also beneficial to the provider because you're gonna get more of what you want if they're willing to write a review saying, you know, Jim McDaniel is the ankle specialist that Tyson Franklin went to go see to take care of his ankle or something, right?

So it means a lot more when these are specific reviews, there's ways of teasing that out or requesting that from patients in ways that really benefit both the patient and the practice and the podiatrist.

Yeah. And if you think of something that's quite common, somebody that had orthotics made and had a really positive response, or you've done nail surgery, all podiatrists do nail surgery, if you've done that and you've had a great response, it's encourage those patients to do a review for you because there's gonna be other patients out there that need orthotics or have ingrown toenails, like I have an ankle problem, who are looking for someone where all of a sudden, there was a dozen positive reviews about someone who'd had nail yeah, from different people having nail surgery reformed, and I needed nail surgery, I know exactly where I'd be going. The one that is specifically mentioning a certain problem or something that's been fixed up.

No. I mean, seems simple, but it is it is a pretty powerful aspect of reviews that to have that ability to kind of narrow down on those those providers.

So what's what's the next one that we need to focus on?

The next one to be locally visible is to participate in local events.

Oh,

yeah. And that's whether, you know, whenever I was in practice, I was going to local running events, to marathons, volunteering, but basically being seen and providing value to people that, you you want to treat or, you know, really helping, whether it be kind of local health fairs or different types of community events. Working with, sponsoring local sports teams, another way if you don't necessarily wanna kind of be out there, you're too busy in your practice, but by kind of showing value and providing value to the local community, either through helping educate them about your services or foot and ankle care related things, or putting up some money to sponsor either events or some sports teams is a great way to raise some awareness about your clinic and really develop long term relationships with potential patients.

Yeah. We went to locally, there was the Crocs Triathlon Club. We went and spoke to them, and we said, hey, we're prepared to give you do you have prizes for people that win the different categories? And they said, oh, yeah. We said, well, we'd like to offer, yeah, six free biomechanical examinations for what whoever you wanna give them out.

So we would give it to them, and they had a thirty day expiry date on it. So they'll hand it out to the window the day, and they had thirty days to actually use it. 50% of them were used every event. Out of the 50% that we used, probably about eight, yeah, about eighty percent of those ended up being long term patients and having some form of treatment, whether it was orthotics or or something else. But we were we were noted down as we were a sponsor of the club.

And every time they had an event, all we were really doing was donating our time for those initial visits. But for them, that was a a a $600,000 sponsorship that we were doing every event. It was just time for us. But long term, eventually, we just became the podiatry clinic you went to for triathlons, which then attracted cyclists into us as well. And then from the cyclists, we end up getting guys that were in the Tour de France.

So it's sort of it's it's putting us it's really is putting yourself out there for local events are great.

No. For sure.

Did you do any? Did you participate, like, marathons or, like, other than you're running them yourself?

Yeah. I definitely spent some time, like I said, kind of volunteering and doing some work with the the medical medical tent at the local marathon I was at, which was great because, you know, kind of builds into what we talked about last week. You also have those it's a kind of a mix of non professional referrers and professional referrers because you're gonna have, you know, the doctors, other nurses, sometimes other healthcare specialties, but sometimes, you know, the medical supply people. You just make connections in your local area when you're out there in the community as opposed to, you know, not participating in these local events.

Yeah. They're like I always find participating in local events and all the stuff you've spoken about so far, they they just they have an accumulative effect. You might do one event and you go, oh, well, that doesn't seem worthwhile. You have one person came in from it. But then the next time you do another event, the people that saw you at the last one will see you at the next one.

And then they'll see you at the next one until eventually you go to some simple event, and next thing you have a dozen people came in from you. You go, oh, wow. We're do that one again next year. No. It was all the work you've done leading up to it.

Yeah. It's that consistency. It's almost like a snowball effect. Right? Like, maybe first time you go volunteer at the marathon, like you're the new doc in town, they don't know you, they don't necessarily trust you there, but you know, after year three, four, five, you've been there, they've sent you a couple of patients or they know that you're consistently treating this type of patient.

It just takes off after time. I think this kind of relates to point number four, and this is not only these local events, but it's also partnering with other local businesses. So having an opportunity to kind of like go to gyms or nutrition stores or running shoe stores or athletic stores or wellness centers. It's a great way to really kind of develop these kind of win win relationships. Maybe it's providing a clinic when you're talking to their They're gonna promote you talking about running injuries.

Are you talking about proper foot care or why you should wear certain types of shoe gear or what are orthotics and those types of things. But these little maybe half an hours that seem like nothing to you on a Saturday or a Sunday or an evening, you do enough of these over time. You get to know the owner, you get to know the staff, you get to know some of their regulars that come in that each running shoe store or each center kind of has their kind of regulars. And these people can kind of become advocates for you and for your practice over time. Like you said, it's not gonna happen that first time.

If you're expecting the gates to kind of like to your office or doors to your office to like fly open and there's gonna be a tidal wave of patients, you're gonna be disappointed. But it is this consistency over a long period of time when you have those kind of win win relationships with people in your local community. That's not only gonna create that, you know, that local visibility that you need to, you know, sustainably grow your practice.

Yeah. And it's even attending local networking events is about being seen in the community. If you're at the Chamber of Commerce or you're at the Cairns Business Women's Group or the Young Entrepreneurs event, being seen at each of those events, they've probably seen you at some of the sporting events. They may have seen you giving up your time at the local gym. People love seeing people giving back because it's so easy to sit in your clinic and they see you see them just handing money over to you and they're like, okay.

Yeah. That's going towards your next holiday or BMW. But to see you out and about doing something for and they know you're doing it for free, I always say it's it's almost like that I've said before, digging the well before you need the water. When you're making all these connections with people, that eventually, that water just comes flowing into you. You don't need the water right now and you're trying to build your business up, but eventually, when it starts flowing, it flows really well.

And I've even found it with business places that once you make these connections, if all of a sudden they go, oh, we need someone to come in and talk about such and such. They've seen you at three or four things. You're gonna be the first person they'll call.

Yeah. I mean, it's a consistent proactive approach. It's really gonna win the day. Right? It's like it's like running a marathon versus a sprint.

You know, if you're expecting to be Usain Bolt and, you know, you know, win that first race out of the blocks, you're gonna be super disappointed. But if you see this as building relationships and providing long term value for not only for your patients, but also for other people in the local community, that's really when you're gonna see the benefits down the road. So that's really what it's all about.

Be nice to run like Usain Bolt.

Wouldn't be bad. No. He had some bad he had some bad investments recently, so you don't want to invest like Usain Bolt.

No, no. I would run more like his bad cousin Rusty Bolt. I just got Okay. Let's move on to number five.

Yeah. Number five is to leverage local search ads. So, online ads are a great way to really kind of develop that local visibility. There's kind of two different types and two different ways of utilizing them. One would be these local search ads.

So whether it be Google search ads is probably the most prevalent, there's also Bing, but this is if someone types in podiatrist, Naperville, you're gonna show up at the very, very top. Because right now the very, very top is paid ads, then it's those maps like we talked about, and then it's organic ads. So Okay. When kind of, you know, basically creating local search ads for these really relevant topics, you'll get patients that, you know, you're gonna drive patient visits as opposed to trying to advertise on terms like plantar fasciitis doctor or something like that, which will you you'll be competing against Doctor. Scholes and other people and people just looking for information and not ready to make appointments.

So looking for these ways to, you know, kind of do ads for more people that are kind of ready to make appointments can be a huge benefit when you're trying to be locally visible and locally relevant.

Okay. And then that takes us on to number six.

Well, just one more quick one. Oh, yeah.

Is this like five and a half?

Yeah. Five and a half for, you know, this is an extra bonus for number five is the whether it be Facebook ads or display ads, there are ways to, you know, you can even do this with search ads. It's only searching in a specific local area, but I would say for Facebook and display, if you have a new type of procedure or a new type of device that really provides a great level of care, people aren't searching for its name on Google, it's a great way to kind of introduce this form of treatment to your patients. So like I said, you can control it. It's your own zip code.

Maybe it's those five towns surrounding you. But you can make a video ad or a photo ad or an image ad in those or a search ad in those local areas. So there gets there is some visibility for this kind of new type of procedure that people aren't aware of. So that that's that's number five and a half.

Okay. I'll just I've a side question because I'm sure I just heard you say the word Bing when you said about Google Ads or you mentioned Bing. Just as a side question, somebody told me recently that Microsoft bought a huge chunk of ChatGPT, and Microsoft search engine is Bing, isn't it?

It is. Yeah. So Microsoft search is Bing, and that's a great point you bring up.

So does that mean there's a there's a chance that Bing we could talk about this on a different episode so we could both dig into it a little bit more, but there's a chance that Bing could end up bouncing back.

Yeah. It could be return of Microsoft and Bing, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see the way that they incorporate that chat GPT into the search and see what kind of have it effect it has. You know, right now, for example, it's mostly kind of generic, I wouldn't say generic queries, but it's more informational queries that ChatGPT is really good at. Like what is plantar fasciitis?

Yeah.

You know, what are some ways to treat plantar fasciitis? You know, what actually is plantar fasciitis? Those are like, I would say it's really good at ChatGPT and even the Bing version of ChatGPT. And I think Microsoft gave, I like invested, I think, up to like $1,000,000,000 or something in this technology. So they're kind of the ones that are They

chase it.

Yeah, exactly. But right now, it's pretty much contained currently to these informational queries or searches. But I think over time, it'll get smarter and maybe it'll incorporate some of this local relevance and visibility in there. But also you you can't, you know Google is a, you know, a billion dollar a year industry or, you know, like company. So they have their own version called Bard that they're working on.

I know it's like the worst name ever. It's probably

worth the change. It? Yeah.

But they're working on that behind the scenes as well.

So you're

just gonna see these battles of the AI, you know, search and the battles of the AI writers and and all that kind of stuff. AI is gonna become a bigger part of search in the future. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. I remember when they had the big beer wars in Australia, and the only people that really benefit from it were the consumers. So it's good. It's good.

Fosters versus who?

No one drinks Fosters. It was like each state each state used to have, like, their beer, and then all of a sudden, there was a a strike in Queensland, and our beer, Forex, went on strike. What are you gonna do? So they had to start bringing beer in from down south, But then all of sudden, gave everyone the taste of, oh, the beer down south isn't too bad. And then all the beer wars happened after that when Forex came back.

It was a long dirty story. It's actually before I think all that happened before I was even drinking. So that's how long ago it was. Let's get on to number six. Jeez.

I get up with some irrelevant stuff sometimes.

No. It's fun stuff to hear about what's going on in Australia.

I enjoy it. Number six. Yep.

Number six is offering some free educational opportunities for the community. So, we talked about previously about businesses and supporting local teams and kind of being out in the community, but this is really, maybe this is bringing people into your practice, right? So this is things like having an open house just to show people your clinic and what you're doing. I think it's also an opportunity to maybe have fifteen or twenty minute lecture or talk to specifically the patients you wanna treat. So if it's runners, maybe you wanna talk about plantar fasciitis or common running injuries within your clinic, or maybe there's a big sports medicine conference or a conference in the niche you enjoy doing where you're participating that to the benefit of the community.

So this isn't really about getting paid speaking gigs or really kind of utilizing that as a revenue outlet. Maybe you can at some point get some speaking gigs, paid speaking gigs, that would be interesting as well. But this is really about, like I talked about, kind of long term play. You really want to be doing things for your community. I mean, you live there, they're your neighbors, you want to provide some value to them.

And by kind of giving them into your practice or you kind of taking part with other healthcare professionals on some of these you know, community talks or or conferences, it can really, you know, not only improve the health and wellness of your community, but also bolster bolster your reputation and provide you more visibility with with your peers.

Yeah. We used to do a, like, an information note where we do, like I say, a talk at our clinic and you might bring somebody else and a few patients come along. And then I remember I was at a chiropractor with yeah. The reciprocate and I spoke at the chiropractor's clinic to a few of his patients, but then one of the people that one of the people that attended worked in accounting firm. They came up to me afterwards and said, hey.

Would you be prepared to do that talk you did tonight for our accounting firm? And we'll pay you to do it. Yeah. We're done for free. I went I got paid to do the talk.

There's about 30 or 40 people there, and about 10 of those people end up becoming patients. So it was a very but it all came about just by doing a free educational talk as part of a seminar.

Yeah. It's it's like you talked about the rest we've talked about this previously in other shows. It's about reciprocity. Right? If people see you giving away this information and your expertise for free, they they they know that you're not necessarily just in it for yourself, and they're gonna want to know that that's gonna build your reputation with them.

It's gonna build trust. Because like we've talked about previously, you know, maybe the first time you see somebody, it's like, who is that person? Kinda getting to know them. But if they see you multiple times, oh, that's that's Tyson Franklin. Like he talked at this thing, or I I saw him in the community.

He was wearing his pro arch podiatry shirt, you know, when he came into my bank or something.

Yeah. On a Sunday.

So it's most hopefully, not the ski

mask on

and doing that.

Yeah. You got you got your pro arch podiatry shirt over the ski mask. Yeah. What was I thinking?

But I mean, those multiple touch points really are opportunities to build trust with people. And when you do that, and you live in a small area, you're gonna be really locally visible and it's gonna benefit the patients you treat, but it's also gonna benefit your practice.

Yeah. I think well, I think this episode really complements last week's episode about 30 things you do if somebody opened up across the road from you. You tag these six on this and now you've got another now you get 19. 19 things that you can work on if your opposition if your opposition don't have to cross the road, but you should just do them anyway.

Totally agree.

Okay. You got anything else to finish on or you're done?

Like like I said at the end of last show, I really would appreciate if anyone's getting some value from what we're talking about here to subscribe on either Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You know, leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. You know, five stars would be appreciated, but not not necessarily necessary.

Oh, no. It's necessary. It's well, I talk to people all the time and I the amount of people told me that they're now listening that found this podcast and they're listening to it. I just didn't carry all you lazy buggers that while you're listening to it, grab your phone, go to Apple iTunes or whatever program you're on, and write a review. It's not really that hard.

And then and it'll make a big smile on our face, and we'll get all pumped up, And we might even read a few out.

Yeah. It sounds like a plan.

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

Sounds great, Tyson.

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.