The Marketing You Can't Track (And Why It Still Works)

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

Welcome back to this week's episode of Podiatry Marketing Podcast. With me as usual is big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim? I'm good there, Tyson.

I thought you were gonna have to pause to remember who I was there for a second. I wasn't sure where that was going.

Now I told you I was gonna do a massive big intro, and then I just heard. Yeah. My brain just went dead. And I went, let's just stick with what I normally do.

That was solid enough. That I'm sure the listeners appreciate it.

How you been anyway?

Things are good. Just, you know, before we jumped on the podcast here, watched Star Wars with the kids. So it was a it was a fun time to watch the rebel alliance take on the the evil empire. So the rebels won again, so it's all good as with universe in and the galaxy, I guess.

Yeah. Told you I can't watch those shows because everyone's such a bad shot. Couldn't get the side of a barn. I don't understand how you can have one person like say Luke Skywalker for example, can do three shots and kill six people. Yet, they can he can have 60 people chasing and shooting at him and every one of them ricochets off the wall.

That in fact, they're that weak. They don't even damage the wall. They're just ricochets.

Well, I think it's what they call suspension of disbelief. And it's funny that the accuracy of the laser guns is the gotcha instead of like the fact that Darth Vader like choked somebody with just like using his fingers like this. Right? So I mean, you know, it's it's yeah. It's not it's not a perfect movie, but the kids enjoyed it.

It's plausible.

So what are we talking about today anyway?

Yeah. So today is about the marketing you can't track and why it still works and why it still matters. I think, you know, it's great that we have attribution. We can sometimes determine via clicks, things like Google Ads, and see exactly potentially what, you know, what are the cost per conversion or new patient can be. But there's definitely some things out there when it comes to marketing, advertising, where it's not really measurable, but you still need to do that to be to generate awareness of who you are and what you do in ways that you're not going to see a dashboard, you're not going to see it's going to be a little less attributable, treatable, you know, on a spreadsheet or on a report.

So we're going to kind of go over what those things are today and why they still matter even if you can't measure them.

Yeah. Think this is a good topic because a lot of people, they've always gone a bit like vanity numbers. Where just because something gets a 100 clicks doesn't mean that those 100 clicks converted to a 100 people coming into your clinic. Whereas some of these other things you're gonna talk about, you can't count the clicks, but they actually attract a lot of patients.

Absolutely. Like the ads are kind of like only one part of the marketing budget that has like a pretty clear dashboard. So they get a lot of the credit, the budget, and attention. Meanwhile, the thing that actually, you know, makes the person click on your ad instead of the practice listed above you is that, you know, have they heard of you before? Whether they recognize your name?

Does it mean anything to them or anyone they know? That's not really gonna show up on a report. Most practices skip kind of the brand, quote unquote brand marketing entirely, and they go straight to ads. Then they kinda wonder why that cost per patient kinda keeps climbing because they're just so focused on the kind of conversion or the the metrics when getting your name out there and being visible to more of your patients can in some ways that are like I said are less measurable, but can be an effective way to supplement what you're doing with things like your Google Ads.

And then if you've got three or four competitors in your area who are all just focused on Google Ads, the cost is gonna constantly keep going up.

No, absolutely. Like you said, more people that are in there bidding on those keywords, the more difficult it is gonna be. And as as you know, the the competitors come into your market, gonna get more expensive. And that maybe it's not even in other clinics, sometimes it's other brands, sometimes it's medical device manufacturers, orthotic device manufacturers, or even over the counter ones that would jump in something like orthotics keywords. So it's important to consider that.

So today we're gonna be talking about why ads, so they get a lot of the credit, but what brand marketing can actually mean to a practice and how to tell if it's working when you can't necessarily maybe measure it quite as easily as you can other forms of marketing.

Okay. So where are we gonna start? We're talk what are you gonna talk about first thing?

Yeah. So first we're gonna start off by, you know, why Google Ads get credit for work it didn't do. Your ad report says that, you know, a patient came from Google Ads. It's not always that way. The ad was the last thing that they touched, so they call it kinda last click attribution, but it's not necessarily the reason they picked you.

Think about how it works, you know, kind of a patient journey in general. Someone has heel pain for three weeks, they've seen your name on a sign, heard it from a coworker, maybe watched a video you posted. Then one night they're finally at home, they search for a heel pain doctor near me and there you are. So they click on it. Google's gonna try to take full credit for that decision, but it might have been kind of created and kind of generated a week, you know, weeks earlier than that.

You know, ads are good at catching demand. They're terrible at creating preference. So two practices bid on the same exact keyword, and the one people recognize is gonna be the one that they click on.

Yeah. It reminds me when I was talking to a patient once, and I said, how did you find us? They said, oh, through Google. I went, oh, alright. Okay.

So it's you sitting there at home and all a sudden you went, I'm gonna Google podiatrist. And I went, oh, no. There's no. I was at work, and I'd hurt my foot. So I went to the GP.

When I was at the GP, the GP said to me, you should see a podiatrist. So I said, who would you recommend? And he said, oh, there's guys down here on such and such road. I don't have the details on me right now, but that's where you should go. He said, so then I went online.

I found you, and that's where I clicked. Google got the recognition. That's what he said when he filled the forms Google, but had nothing to do with Google. And then it also reminded us that we had need to tell that doctor where we were because it was a new GP.

Yeah. It's it's like it's exactly like you said, like that last click attribution is kind of how Google is gonna like takes a little bit more more credit than they really deserve. Right? So where the patient gets touched last gets the credit, and everything else is kind of invisible when it comes to digital attribution on those things. So, you know, like I said, it's competitive in markets and cost per patient generally goes up and up as time goes on.

So knowing that, you know, it's not, it's the patient journey to you is multi touch. It's not just, oh they saw one Google ad and they did that, right? Maybe they talk to their relatives, talk to a PCP, talk to another specialist, They saw an ad for you, maybe you sponsor a local soccer team or a baseball team that their kid was on. So those things are more difficult to measure, right, because they're part of that path and not the kind of the ending portion of the path. It's a little bit easily easier to to measure, especially when it comes to digital forms and digital channels.

Yeah. So you're saying they might even overheard someone mention your business and they talk to somebody else and they mention your business, then they're kids game and you've sponsored you're a sponsor of local junior basketball and they see a sign above there, then Google shows them your name. They go, I already know this one. That's where I'm going.

Absolutely. And people don't like we know what our, you know, URLs or website addresses are, but like people generally at public aren't going to. So the one place they're gonna look for it in general is, you know, is online and generally through search engines. So it makes sense that Google and search engines use that last click. But, you know, that kind of leads into this the the next area where I wanted to get jump into too is that like Yeah.

Your brand is your brand is not just your logo. It's basically five or six different things. When podiatrists hear brand, they think logo, colors, and maybe a sign, but that's not it. Your brand is the short list of things that come to mind when someone hears the name of your practice. You know, five or six things are kind of maximum.

So, you know, will you see someone within forty eight hours? Do you do surgery either like at a surgery center in your clinic? Or do you get sent somewhere else? You know, maybe you're the ones that explain what's actually wrong and take time with patients. If you ever written down a list for a patient, You don't have a brand.

You have sometimes like a logo and hope when you're counting on those things to be your brand. And here's a test that really stings. Ask three or four of your staff what the practice is known for. If you can get three, you know, three different answers, patients are probably getting none. So it's a matter of what are those things you want to stand out for and making sure not only does the community know, but also that your staff knows.

Yeah. That's a harsh question to ask your staff too. But you'd hope if you've got a number of staff, some of them are saying the same thing. If it's all over the place, and if your staff work there day in day, if they don't know what you stand for, then how's the public gonna understand that?

Absolutely. And those things, they need to be true specific. Your brain has to be repeatable. So we talked about previously like, you know, trust, you know, like the podiatrist that people trust or saying that on your website or compassionate care is not one of them. Every practice is saying that in your zip code, so you really have to have that niche identity so you can really stand out, you know, on these different channels and be known for something special.

So, yes, like I said, sometimes it's speed of access, sometimes it's what you do in the clinic yourselves instead of sending people out. You know, maybe it's a condition that you're known for, maybe it's a specific demographic you're known to treat runners or soccer players or athletes or people with diabetic wounds, those kinds of things. And how do you communicate? Like are you rushed? Are you seeing 50 to 60 patients a day?

Are you willing to see 15 to 20 and really spend time with people to make sure that they feel heard? So you gotta figure out that's what your brand is, and that's what people are gonna be talking about. It's not just, like I said, the colors, your logo, what your sign looks like. Those things are important, but like your brand is is much much more than that.

Yeah. It's so true because you can you can put in as much effort as you want into having a flash logo. Thinking about your colors, you can have a beautiful clinic, new furniture, well trained staff. But then you can have a podiatrist who has got no bedside manner, is rude, doesn't listen to patients, and they realize all that other stuff that's going out there, that is still part of their brand. And if it's being destroyed, everything else you do isn't gonna make things any better.

No, exactly. We've talked about this in the past, but you can't be known for everything. Right? So memory needs like a hook or a spark. Nobody remembers the practice that does a little of everything because there is nothing to hang kind of a memory on.

This is where most podiatrists get nervous, and we've talked about this in the past a little bit as well. If you say I'm the sports foot and ankle guy, do you lose the diabetic patients? Not necessarily. You still treat everyone that walks in the door. You just have to be choosing a little bit more what you want your first line of treatment to be.

The practice known for one thing gets referred for that thing by name. The practice known for nothing gets referred as if they're the same podiatrist everywhere in town. So it's one of those things where it's worth the money to really focus on that niche and be known for at least one thing. Pick based on what you want more of, the cases you enjoy, the ones that you know are financially beneficial to the practice, the ones that you generally can make patients better with is the really the kind of the focus on that kind of niching down and kind of creating that identity for yourself and for the practice.

And like you said, this is something that Google's measuring clicks, but Google will never measure the conversation people have at a party. And then somebody mentions, oh, I've had foot troubles. Yeah. And they go, oh, when's that happened? Oh, when I'm running.

Oh, have you seen this clinic over here? I know that they do a lot they do a lot with runners. I've seen them at running events. Once again, it's not a click. I've had friends of mine who run who have been there, so that's word-of-mouth, and then they're talking about it right there and then because you've built that niche like you're talking about.

So these are these are all really powerful powerful messages that people need to understand.

Yeah. And when you have that powerful message, it's really about consistency beating kind of being clever. Recognition comes from repetition. Like I said, not necessarily just from being clever. I think there's you know, you can be clever in the type of promotional things you give out like we talked in the previous podcast.

I think there's some benefit of being seen as a clever clinic, but it's really what are your key messages and just making sure you're consistent with it. And that's something that nobody tells you about, right? You have the same colors, the same logo, the same photos, the same way the phone gets answered. You know, your website, your Google Business profile, the sign out front, intake forms, scrubs, there should be some consistency throughout all of those things in your practice. Most practices maybe have like three or four versions of their logo, they're not really sure what what shade of purple their clinic is.

You know, every mismatch makes someone start over trying to recognize you. So every time a practice rebrands because the owner got bored, they reset the clock on everything that they've built. So boring and consistent beats fresh and scattered any day.

Yeah. I've seen businesses do that where they I've seen businesses do two things. One, they'll rebrand, but they keep all the colors. So the colors haven't changed so that you could sort of recognize it. Business name's the same.

Colors are the same. Just the the logo might be different. But I've seen other ones where the business name's the same, but the colors are completely different. The logo is completely different, and then they don't update everything. So if you go onto the website, they've got their old logo because they forgot about that.

But on Instagram or social media, they've got their new logo. On the stationary, it might be new, and it's there's a real mismatch. And it and it actually gets confusing.

Yeah. That visual consistency is huge. Right? Like like I said, whether it's the logo or the color, know, sometimes it's the font that people use or the way that the imagery looks. Having the real photos of the actual office and actual team, you know, that that that goes a long way.

And there's also verbal consistency. Like you talked about like, you know, what are the five or six things you want the clinic to be known at. So, you know, those that consistency is super important. So, you know, people can do things like, you know, pull up your website, you know, look at your Google Business profile, look at the photos on your site, look at the stationary on your clinic. How consistent are those things right now?

Right? Like are they multiple different colors, multiple different logos, are fonts similar? You know, trying to have a singular visual and verbal consistency and identity is hugely important, think, when it becomes when we want people to recognize you. Right? You wanna be recognized so that you're building that brand over time.

Like you said, you're gonna occasionally have a a rebrand with a logo or or or some way to kinda like update things over time. That's normal. But you wanna make sure that it's consistent throughout the entire clinic and through your both real world and online presence.

Yeah. And I think if you're listening to this and you're going, oh, yeah. I've got a lot of work to do. There's so many things here that I'm not doing. It's just pick the ones that have got the biggest impact to start on that first and just work your way through the list to get everything consistent.

And and I think someone was talking to me recently and they had taken over somebody's they bought into somebody's business and they said it just really needed to be modernized. Everything needed to be rebranded and and brought up to the twenty first century. And the first thing I started with was just looking at everybody's uniforms. Everybody was turning with mismatched clothing. Some receptionists just wearing tracky decks, a singlet, and just so that was where he started.

Uniforms first. Let's get a really professional uniform. And then they that was the starting point, and then this went from there to make everything far more professional, far more consistent.

No. I like that. I like that stepwise approach. I think, like you said, you know, I'm not telling people to go blow up, you know, their brand and and do something brand new and and and get a new color scheme. I guess I think your your step by step and your stepwise way to approach it makes a lot of sense because you do want to, like, have a gradual evolution of what's happening there if you feel like you need a significant rebrand.

But a lot of people just need consistency. Right? Like I said, like, you can take from your current website. Maybe it's, you know, implementing, like I said, in the uniforms. Maybe it's implementing your referral forms or or your stationary or some of the promotional materials you have.

Just making sure that there's it's recognizable and that you're building that on a consistent basis by making some of those small changes like you mentioned.

Yeah. If you wanna see other things, think that that it's subtle, but it makes a huge difference. If you have a look at the most, I think, most successful clinics, the most successful businesses, you walk in there. And even when you look at the furnishings, there's a color that is usually related to the logo and the station and everything else they're doing, and you'll see that consistently throughout the business as well. So it just feels like everything belongs and everything has been thought out, but I'm not saying that's what you're rushing to do straight away.

But just think about that over a period of if you've got pictures hanging on the walls, are the framing? Is it consistent frame that you're using? You've wood here, black there, white frame over here, and everything's all over the place. It it might it might not seem like much, but everything just flows and leads to professionalism.

Absolutely. When you have that consistency, builds trust with patience. Like I said, we've talked about in the past, if the website looks like the Google Business profile, you have similar colors with your branding. It's gonna make them feel more trusting of who you are and what you're doing, and that's gonna benefit the clinic as a whole.

If you walk into any any I think burger places do it really well. They will have a color that's in their logo, and you normally find that is consistent through the whole decor and everything else they do.

Yeah. I think a lot of top brands, right, like that all all all top brands and consumer brands, you know, have a consistent logo, consistent branding, and just a consistent messaging that, you know, obviously it changes over time, but same time they're trying to, you know, build that trust with a consumer to build to want to buy their products. As as much as we are a little bit different, think we want to build trust with patients and and one way doing that is that can that brand consistency.

But in the end, it all comes down to the taste of the burger. Doesn't matter how good the branding everything else is and that's why no matter everything else you're doing, the service that they get in the end is really important.

Yeah. It's like we talked about on previous podcast like the consist you know, all the marketing and the advertising in the world is not gonna be helpful unless you're providing excellent care to your patients. Right? It's just gonna, you know, allow you to do more of it if you're doing the right things. But if you're not not doing well by your patients, it's there's no amount of marketing or advertising that's gonna help there.

Yeah. That's why I find it funny sometimes when I've heard podiatrists over the years and they've said, yeah, like, I can't care more about my patients than money. Okay? It's a good cop out. But and I know what they mean.

They think if I just care about my patients, that's the most important thing. But then it realizes it's all these other things that we're talking about that are just as important to the patient. Right. Plus, you still also wanna care about the patient and and provide really good quality care. And if you can put them both together, then I think you've mastered it.

Yeah. It's it's building that trust within the relationship. Right? And it has like I talked about, with a patient journey it's not just one thing. It's not just that minute or two or that first interaction they have with you in the clinic.

That's super important, but like there's a lead up to all of these things where you're they're building trust and seeing if you're the right person for them before they even choose you. So if you can if you can find ways of doing that before they get into your clinic and obviously providing great care, like we talked about, is super important, but like you need to take care of the whole patient experience to make that happen.

Okay. So what's next?

Yeah. So we'll kind of wrap up saying, know, like how do you know it's you know, people are probably concerned a little bit. Well, this this brand marketing sounds great. Right? Like this is fantastic.

Like how do I know it's without a dashboard or just analytics to go over with? And you know you can't track brand the same way you track a click, but you are not kind of flying blind. There are signals. You know how many people search your practice name directly instead of podiatrist near me? So like sometimes brand mentions on things like your SEO reporting or sometimes even your Google Ads if you're running a brand campaign.

You know how many new patients say some version of I've heard of you, whether family doctors referred to you by name or by street, whether your cost per new patient is drifting down over time while your ad spend stays flat. The last one is a big tells, you know, when ads get cheaper without you changing anything in the account, that's probably branding doing some of the work. So it just takes, you know, twelve to eighteen months to do that. Right? You're not gonna build a reputation and a brand over sixty days.

But, you know, by being consistent about being, you know, doing real world ways of brand marketing and also online ways of brand marketing, you can really make a big difference as far as the visibility and awareness people have about you, and help lead down that path of the patient visit, you know, before they get into the clinic, of building trust with you and your clinic.

And I think the most telling sign to know that branding and all those other things you do outside of trying to get a Google click is important is just have a look what the biggest companies in the world do. It's exactly what we're talking about. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't an important part of it. If Coca Cola didn't care about their brand or anything else, they would just have ads all the time. They just have online ads.

Constantly, that's all they do. But they put so much into everything else about the company and how they're perceived and whether it's through sponsorship and other things that they probably can't always measure. But they know if they stop doing it, when can actually measure a drop in business. So you can't measure what it's bringing in, but you can measure what you lose when you stop doing it all.

And one of the things you can do too is ask some questions of the patient when they come in of new patients, right? Like we talked about, it can it's not not necessarily should be like, how did you hear about us? That can be a helpful question, but sometimes you can nuance it a little bit. You can say something like, you know, what made you choose us over another clinic in town? And that can give you a lot of information, right?

They could say, well, I heard you're the running podiatrist, or I heard you're the expert when it comes to diabetic wounds. So, you know, asking some more, you know, kind of nuanced questions can sometimes give you a better idea of how people outside the clinic perceive you in the community, right? If you're just asking like, how did you find us? Like it's probably they're probably going to say Google. Because that's going be like the last they searched and like, I found you on Google.

But like if you can ask in a way, like I said, you know, what made you choose us over another podiatry clinic in town? That's something that's more actionable. And if you get a lot of either positive or negative response, you know, depending on what you want to do, right? If you're wanting to see runners and then they're saying, well, my grandmother at the nursing home said you were the best or something like, well that maybe a sign that like you need to focus a little bit of awareness in the brand marketing maybe towards more the people you want to have come to the practice. It's great that you treated you took good care of grandma, but like maybe there's ways of shifting some of the brand marketing that you're doing.

But like you talked about, you know, how do you build that reputation in your community? How do you build trust? Like I said, you know, ads get credit for decisions that brand makes based off of the way digital attribution happens. But your brand is really those five or six things that you want to associate with your name. You don't want to be known for everything.

We talked about it's all about having consistent visual and verbal marketing. And then also what are those signals and where to look at. So this week write down maybe five or six things you want people to associate with your practice. And then like I said, you can ask your staff members about, do you know what I like to treat or what do you think our clinic is known for? And then utilizing some of those nuanced questions for new patients to see, what is your brand known for?

And if it's not known for the right things, there's ways to adjust the way you're getting awareness with the different types of right fit patients to come into your practice.

That question you mentioned though that they should ask, because a lot of times you would say to people, and even I would have said to patients, oh, by the way, how did you find us? And like you said, they're gonna say Google. Then I used to dig deeper. Oh, so when you say Google, what do you mean? You just wake up.

And I'd taken through these silly stories, and they go, oh, no. And then they tell me the process they went through. But I love that question. I'm actually gonna write it down in my brain book so that I remember to mention it to coaching clients on a regular basis. It's actually ask them, why did they choose us over another podiatrist in town?

Because that that just totally changes so much. Because they might say, oh, I hear you're the best running clinic. You go, okay. That's what we wanna be known as. That's great.

If they say, oh, we hear you're the best toenail cutter in town. Oh, shit. Shit. It's not what I want. I don't wanna hear that.

You might be thinking and then you get that on a regular basis. You're start looking at all your stuff and wondering why are people saying that. Then that's not what we're that's not the niche we're chasing.

Also, think it opens up an opportunity to continue, you know, another sentence or two with the patient. You know, like you said, if it is someone that said, oh, like, I heard you're the best person to treat nails. Right? And you can like have a a kind rebuttal to that. So, like I I do treat cut nails or I do to treat nails, But you know what I'm what I was trained to do or what I did in residency or what did in, you know, like in fellowship or what I enjoy doing professionally is like I also really like to take care of x y z.

Right? And that is a good way to kind of reframe it a little bit. And then then they know you're not necessarily leaving the clinic because, oh, know, Tyson's the best nail trimmer in all of cans. Right? So like, that's not what you want.

So you can take what their branding of you is and then maybe help reframe it in ways that could be beneficial for your brand long term. So like I said, these things are sometimes difficult to measure. There's no dashboard that's gonna show you, you know, after asking those questions, you know, how many minds you've changed and how people they've told. But at the same time, you know, your branding is super super important. And the more you can make it make time and effort to know what you want what you want more of or less of, then you can move in the right direction to get the awareness out there.

Yeah. But that fits in, like, back to that question, and then the person saying about nails, and you start telling them other things. That fits in with how the branding and the messages you're actually saying about your clinic. When I had my clinic on the Gold Coast many moons ago, decades ago, but I had a big poster of Ben Johnson when he held the world record when he was wearing Dior Dora shoes. I had this big poster in the background.

Patients would come in, and a lot of them would come in for routine foot care. But the amount of conversations that poster started because I wanted more sporting patients. And the biggest question was, wasn't he a drug cheat? And I go, he was, but not when that photo was taken. Back then, he was clean, so they thought.

But it goes back to your branding, if you want more runners, your clinic is going to say that you want more runners. So having running pictures or those type of images on your walls, Someone comes in to get printing their own toenail and they're looking around and they see pictures of Usain Bolt or some marathon runners, some shoes you may have won in the auction that's in a little box there sitting in the reception area. That is telling. That is that is sharing the message of what you want without even saying anything.

And when I went to my sports medicine podiatrist when I was in high school, right, there was the picture of the Olympic champion in the 1,500 meter Sebastian Co autographed with the doctor there. You know, like the book that the podiatrist had written with the dad of Sebastian Coe, you know, as a foreword and stuff. So, like, there's ways of branding even inside the clinic that, like, builds that reputation and communicates to the patient in ways that even if you you don't have to tell them. Right? Like, they'll know if they're in the right place.

Yeah. I used to have a volleyball that sat on my desk that was signed by the gold medalist that won the two thousand Olympic females beach volleyball comp. And that used sit to on my desk in a little glass box. I used to ask questions about it all the time. Yeah.

So that that's They're the they're the messages you wanna put out there. So anything else before we

wrap up? No. That's kinda what I wanna get out today. I think, like I said, you can't measure branding, so sometimes it can be this kinda feel like a dark art, or oh, I don't need to do that. I'll need to go after the things that I can see in a dashboard.

But, you know, you don't want to give up on awareness because getting awareness allows Google and other kind of higher attribution platforms to function well. So don't don't sleep on brand marketing.

Straight that down. It's a dark art. I like it. Yeah. That's been fantastic, Jim.

Thank you.

No problem. Looking forward to talking to next week, Tyson.

Yeah. See you next week.

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