The Power of Patient Webinars

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 to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me today, as usual, my partner in crime, it is Big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?

Tyson, I'm doing well. Doing well. Trying not to commit any crimes here in the holidays, but Merry Christmas to you and to to your crew down there in in Australia. Happy holidays.

Yes. It's nice here at the moment. Warm as per usual, and you were probably up to your elbows in snow, I assume.

Yeah. It's definitely cold here, but something I've gotten used to in my last twelve years of living in Canada, enjoying the ice skating, getting out in the snow, and the cold weather. So just gotta bundle up. It's what you gotta do.

Yeah. So there'd be people listening to this at the moment that it could be it might be Christmas day they're listening to it. It might be a few days after Christmas. But wherever you are in the world, we hope you've enjoying a bit of time off with your family. And if you're in the warmer weather, you're probably in this in the pool, eating burgers and having a great time.

And if you're in one of the colder colder climates, you're probably all rugged up around a fire, drinking a bit of eggnog. Yeah. And what's good fly. Is rum and whiskey is good for all weather conditions.

Yeah. Multi multi use beverages there with the the rum and whiskey.

Yeah, I know. So what are we talking about today, Jim?

Yeah. So today, we're gonna jump into the the power of patient webinars. On a previous podcast, you know, Tyson, we had talked a bit about repurposing of content. And this is one of the types of content that we kind of touched on a little bit, but I wanted to dig into it a little bit more because I think the webinar has a lot of different opportunities, not only for repurposing, but to really help a podiatrist kind of stamp their authority and their expertise in a certain area to the local patient. So I thought we would kind of go over some of the best practices when it comes to webinars, some of the benefits, and maybe some of the things that we've seen that don't always work well so people can avoid some of the mistakes of other people that have done these.

But I would say one of the biggest mistakes maybe is that people don't even consider doing them. Because I think they are a really powerful way to, like I said, get your expertise in front of more people. And it's something where you record once and it can kind of live on forever and it can kind of be in a lot of different places for people to find it without you having to basically do this webinar over again. There's lots of different ways to utilize it on different channels, like I said, to get in front of your patients and to help educate them about the specific types of care that you provide in your practice.

Yeah. That's a really good it's a really good point about reusing it because you might do a live webinar for patients, or you could even do an automated webinar where patients could then log in at some time and watch it. But, yeah, posting it in other areas just it's just gonna help you get found more often. Or even taking the webinar, you might take a little snippet of it that will then link them through to where the main webinar might be, especially if it's automated.

Yeah, there's a lot of different opportunities here in webinars. So to kind of get started, you know, one of the benefits, number one, is to kind of the think about you're kind of enhancing patient education, right? So maybe people have been onto your website, maybe they're gathering some information, but they don't really know what a podiatrist does or what kind of podiatry you like to practice. So these webinars, by scheduling them, and it's not something I would say you have to like, you don't have to have one a week or once a month. But if you're just getting started, at least once a quarter could be a good kind of rhythm to get into.

Yeah. You you probably have your own ways of treating patients, your own kind of guidelines you kind of walk people through. So this is something where you can provide kind of, it's an effective platform for podiatrists to educate their patients about foot health, common foot problems, preventative care, just whatever your niche is in the profession, help them kind of see that that's the care you provide. And then it can kind of empower patients to make better informed decisions about the care they provide and to know who the expert is in that kind of care. It helps you be seen as the expert, but also kind of fosters trust, know they're not having to come in and initially pay you just to like you know explain what plantar fasciitis is or some running injury, you're kind of explaining in a digital sense so they can kind of educate themselves a little bit before they decide to go in and kind of make that decision about who they want to be their health care provider in their local area.

And this is not something that's gonna go viral. This is not something you should expect, you know, thousands or millions of people to watch. If those are your expectations, you should really temper them.

Depends on the topic though. Like sometimes you can you can just just happen to hit on a topic that people love yeah. People wanna know more about.

No. Yeah. That's true. That is true. I'm not trying to say that you can't maybe hit on a topic.

But as far as, you know, it having a true impact on your clinic unless you're Yeah. You know, in New York City and you're just a worldwide expert, right? So maybe if you get 50 to 100 people in your local area watching that, that's a very powerful thing. And it may not like I said, it's not going to be the millions of numbers in your local area, but if you get a small portion, 50 to maybe even 500 people to watch in your local area or share it with other folks, it's definitely something to consider.

Yeah. I remember there was a chiropractor in town here locally who used to do a lot of live presentations in his clinic. Every week, I think was like every Wednesday, he used to do it. Yeah. For whoever patients that were coming through, he'd go, oh, on Wednesday after work at 06:30, we're doing this.

He ended up switching over to doing webinars as well. And I've seen a number of chiropractors doing it, but I haven't seen many podiatrists doing it.

Yeah, there's a few podiatrists that I've seen do them. I mean, most kind of prolific person that I've seen most from is Don Pelto.

Oh, Don Thornton, yes, Don does really well.

John does a really good job with patient webinars. And like he does a great job as well as online information for his patients to really educate themselves. So, you know, shout out to Don Pelto. And I think it's his clinic there in Massachusetts. You know another opportunity besides just telling patients about what you do is that this is a great way to kind of build up your kind of professional development and networking.

Hosting webinars can serve as a form of professional development and networking for podiatrists as well. It offers an opportunity to stay updated with the latest research treatment techniques and industry trends. So if you're talking about it's like swift for warts or you're talking about shockwave therapy in office or something, It can really kind of help you be seen as the leader not only to patients but also to other healthcare providers and kind of educate other healthcare providers of what you do. Because some, you know, you're not just the podiatrist that trims toenails, right? You're the podiatrist that's treating sports medicine athletes.

It really helps you, they can better understand who you are in profession. So additionally webinars just really facilitate this networking with other healthcare professionals, know potentially leading to referrals and maybe opportunities to collaborate in the future. Let's say you're doing a lot of sports medicine type stuff but the local sports medicine group or the local orthopedic group doesn't know that you do those things and maybe it's different from what they provide, it could be an opportunity to kind of, you know and you do things that, they do things that you don't do as well, it could be a really kind of fulfilling way to incorporate some collaboration between different practices and different providers.

Yeah. But that was the one of the notes when you were talking, I actually wrote it down. A little post it note here, and I said that if you are doing webinars, when I have seen other people do it well, like I said, have seen some podiatrists do it, but I've seen a lot of chiropractors do it. And they will bring in a guest speaker sometimes, so they'll collaborate with somebody else. So they'll have their audience there, say, hey, we've got this person coming here who's gonna talk on this topic, what it gives them credibility as well.

And then vice versa, then you can basically do them for each other.

No, exactly. It's a great way to kind of cross promote or cross pollinate people's audience or group of patients so they can say, hey, like maybe you're a diabetic foot specialist, right? And you work with an endocrinologist, you have them come on and talk on your, it's something you promote to your patients and they can get in front of them. And then in the opposite way, you can have a webinar with their patients or just or a combined with both of your patients together, if that's something that you want to do. Like I said, also sports medicine, maybe there's a sports, I know non surgical sports medicine physician who just kind of sees mostly knees, but is curious about the foot and just kind of finding those ways to collaborate.

There's a lot of opportunity as a webinar and it's a relatively inexpensive technology, You can, I know Tyson use Zoom a lot, there's different platforms you can use to make these things happen? And like I said, that's just a way to increase your network and kind of build your reputation with other health care providers locally. It's a really great opportunity.

Yeah. And it's not just health care providers. It could be health food stores. It could be a footwear store. It could be a sporting store.

Yep. Having a having someone from a footwear store coming in or a footwear rep just happens you you know they're gonna be in town at a certain time. And we did this when we had the clinic, we didn't do a webinar, but when we knew the shoe rep was coming in, there'd be certain patients we'd say to hey, the shoe rep for this company is coming in. If anyone's interested, drop in and he's gonna do a bit of a quick presentation. Now that was a live version of it, but there's nothing saying you couldn't get that shoe rep to come on your webinars talk about a certain type of footwear that you know there's a certain group of your patients that would love to know more about, you know, what's what's the latest thing that Hoka is doing?

Especially if you're a if you're a person that wears Hoka, you have patients that wear Hoka footwear, they'd wanna know.

Yeah. So that in in American, that's HOKA. HOKA. HOKA. HOKA.

All the same thing. I'm sure that but that that's a great point. I think kind of blending those kind of medical network with the nonmedical providers is a great opportunity to really kind of expand your network and get in front of those different customer bases or patient bases and really kind of drive what I call it kind of and the next point is really trying to increase your visibility and your reputation. You know it's really important that we build a reputation and basically be visible for the type of care we want to provide and these webinars can do that. You know, it's like I said, this is something you record once and it could go on to a bunch of different channels.

So it's not something, you know, it's it can be cross promoted and seen by the medical community and the non medical community. And, you know, this can really let you be seen in front of potential patients in ways that just aren't possible doing on a one on one session or doing in kind of in real life sometimes.

Yeah.

You know, this can really enhance your reputation because you're seen as that expert, right? If you're talking about specific sports medicine injuries or running injuries and there you know people in your local area looking at this and watching it, it can be a great way to attract more of these types of patients and really open up those professional opportunities.

If someone's never done a webinar before, cause there might be some people who've gone onto webinars, but they've never actually done a webinar. Would you have a tip for them? What they should be doing?

Yeah. So I I would guess the first step would be number one is that this can be great to be promoted inside of your newsletter, number And maybe if you have some different social channels or obviously even maybe having some things in and around the clinic that talk about we're having this upcoming webinar, talk to patients about it as they're leaving just kind of just so they're aware of it. That's probably the tip number one is to like promote it in those ways. But keep it simple. I think for most people Zoom is going to be enough.

Tyson and I played with a lot of different video platforms and we still feel like Zoom is probably the most easy for not only the operator to use, but also for, you know, if you have an older demographic, they just wanna click a couple buttons and then maybe see you. They don't necessarily wanna have to like figure out a link that's too complicated or, you know, go through too many steps because there's probably gonna be some drop off there if it's too difficult. You know, sometimes the different platforms, it can be streamed to places like YouTube. I'm not sure if if Zoom has that capability currently, but, you know, definitely reach out to to me or to Tyson and we can, you know, help you out as far as some of the specifics around, you know, webinar information. But I think that's the first step is, like, promote it well, but also kinda try to keep it as simple as possible, especially the first one.

It's really about getting that information out there, recording it and having that kind of in a repository because it is these webinars do offer they are an accessible way that's a really convenient way to disseminate information to a wide audience without the constraints of kind of being the specific location. Participants can join from their house, from their cell phone, wherever they're at. It just makes it easy for busy individuals to be, know, come to kind of call in or kind of show up remotely to watch this instead of having to be in a certain place at a certain time. So, you know, whether it's that time freedom that you have, you know, obviously when the webinar is over, you'd wanna re promote it in your email and other places that we have this recording, you should go watch it. So it is something where the convenient factor of it and accessibility of, you know, recording the webinar and having the webinar streamed is something that can be really helpful for patients.

Yeah. And just to go back a step what you said, if you haven't done a webinar before, you probably know another podiatrist that has. And just get a get a few tips wrong. I remember the first webinar I did, I was packing my decks. I was very nervous.

I was so frightened on what to do. So I had a friend who had done webinars before, and I said, will you come on? And he he same thing. He just joined in remotely. I said, you push all the buttons.

Just let me talk. I'll talk, share my slides, and all that. And that's exactly what we did. And when we finished, I went, well, that was bloody easy, wasn't it? It was so simple.

So now I just I do them all myself. I use Zoom initially for doing my webinars, but now I use Webinar Ninja. I just found it. It's just just an easier platform. But for some people, if you've got a Zoom account, you can still just do a meeting as a webinar.

So you don't actually have to have a webinar program. Zoom meetings will work exactly the same way, except you will see the whites of their eyes if they have their cameras on.

Well, they're just like, Zoom's gonna try to, like, you know, upgrade you to whatever higher price package they can do. Right? So the basic plan with Zoom meetings, you definitely wanna have probably the the a paid plan because I think the the free calls, like, cut off after, was it thirty minutes now or something? So Yeah. Something wanna have a paid plan, but it's not very expensive.

No. I don't think it's expensive. And then if you wanna do webinars, if wanna do, like, automated, then you have to have the webinar package so that you can automate them if you wanna just run it at certain times. Anyway, what's next?

Yeah. But last but not least is kind of a like, getting more into what we talked about, you know, a couple weeks ago as far as the repurposing go. You know, once you have this this kind of asset, this, you know, this video that you've recorded this webinar, you know, this is gonna be a perfect thing to, you know, you're probably even maybe when you made the webinar, you you made an outline, right? You made slides, you did all of these things. So now it's time to take those slides or that outline in this video and repurpose into a bunch of different content.

You know, number one this is gonna make a great opportunity to put this onto your website. You can embed you can embed the video, you can write kind of a blog about what you talked about. There's different software like I utilize a software called Descript that will actually almost create your own blog post for you after the fact. Something where you can put it into the the newsletter like I talked about afterwards saying, even if you have certain sections, you maybe did an hour webinar and you don't naturally want to have it show a patient the hour webinar, maybe talk about symptomatology, treatment, maybe the section about who you are and the type of patients you want to treat, you can chop those up into smaller segments and kind of drip that out over a few months or a few newsletters. So also there's opportunity even chop it down shorter if you have, if you do utilize social media channels or someone you're working with does social media, you know getting some stuff into sixty or ninety second sound bites and putting it onto places like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, maybe have your own YouTube channel.

These are just ways to kind of help gain that visibility but also distribute something. So you know part of the webinar thing is that if you do it on a quarterly basis and let's say you get 15 or 20 pieces of content from that, it could be a helpful thing to kind of you know facilitate use in these other channels. So you're you're continuing to gain visibility or continue to get utilize this one piece of content in a lot of different ways. So I think a quarterly, I probably wouldn't say monthly webinar, but every two or three months if you're doing a webinar it's going to give you a lot of material to repurpose to help educate your patients, also to mark your practice and let people know the exact type of care you provide and be seen as that local expert. So that's the kind of the exciting thing about doing webinars and I think that's why some podiatrists really should consider it, the tools are inexpensive and it really helps you gain distribution online and build trust with people without having to actually be there in person.

And it's true, you said too. A lot of these apps and programs are cheap. Yeah. It might be $280 here and 300 there, but in the big scheme of things, what you can actually do with them, even if you had Zoom and you paid for the meetings and the webinar, I think Australian dollars, it used to be like $550 or something for the year. And then if you had these other programs, even if it cost you $2,000 for a year, have have they have the ducks nuts on everything that you needed.

Like, you keep do you know what the ducks nuts, they say that in Canada?

I like the bee's knees,

like Bee's

I don't know,

like Yeah. Bee's knees, ducks nuts.

Yep. The even if they're, like, the the top of the line. Yeah.

Yeah. But even if you have you spend $2 a year on this, what you can do with all those applications and programs and how they can help grow your business and market your business in so many different ways using the orthotic economy. It's for orthotics. And I'll tell you right now, if you if you do these webinars like you're suggesting and you connect with your patients that way, you will become the expert, and your patients will be telling all their friends about what you do, what was on the webinar, and I tell you, you'll get a lot more than four orthotics back.

No, I totally agree. I think it's a huge opportunity and you know, if you're not doing it or if you're feeling, know, I think in a previous episode we talked about that kind of confidence or not feeling sure that if you can do it or not. Tyson and I are here to help, right? Like this is obviously first and foremost, we're trying to help educate you guys about what's happening in podiatry, but also how you can take action. I think that's what's really, really important.

We could talk about all these different marketing you know, techniques and strategies and those things, but what's really going to help you move for the needle move the needle in your practice is utilizing some of the things we say and taking action on them. I think these patient webinars is one of those ways. Like I said, the collaboration with other local providers, whether it's with the commercial side stores, other health food stores or with it's a vascular surgeon or sports medicine doctor in your local area, there's a ton of opportunities here. So I really would you know, don't hesitate to contact one of us if you want a little bit more help in this area, but I think it's something that could be a huge opportunity to help grow not only your expertise and your authority, but really get patients in the door because people are looking for the expert in certain things. And if you're that, you know, foot and ankle specialist that does sports medicine in, you know, Kokomo, Indiana for example, and you're you have you know, you're putting out information, know, webinar is that kind of pillar piece of content that can really help, you know, expand your visibility and your reach in your local community.

So I think it's a it's a huge opportunity.

Okay. Well, I said, I'm a huge fan of webinars myself. I do them myself. I know you do webinars. And most people I know who have a business at a certain level who then want to take it to that next level, most of them are doing webinars.

All different professions.

Yeah, for sure. It definitely is a popular way to kinda get your message out there and build your expertise in front of our ideal patients.

Yeah. And I think if you look around, like, if there's podiatrists listening to this now, the thousands of people that listen to every episode, we thank you. But if you're listening to this right, have a look around at all the podiatrists in your area. How many of them at the moment are utilizing webinars? And if none of them are doing it, then what's that tell you?

There there's a huge opening there to be the the podiatrist that actually provides information, and through providing information, your trust level will go through the roof.

That's what it's all about. It's building trust and building good relationships with the patient, and webinars help you do that.

Yeah. Okay, Jim. I think we've anything else you wanna say before we wrap up?

No. I think that's a good spot to leave it.

Okay. So I look forward to seeing you next week, which will probably be in the new year. So it should be fun. Have a have a good Christmas, and see you next year. See you in 2024.

Merry Christmas, Tyson.

Okay. See you. Bye now.

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