The Value of a Patient & Community Relations Manager

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, joined always by Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going?

Oh, I'm great today, big Jim. How are you doing?

Things are good. Things are good. Glad that winter is finally moving away from Quebec and from Canada, and I can almost hear the birds singing and the flowers blooming. So so things are good.

We were only talking about this over the weekend that Australia I'm not sure about other countries, but Australia has definite times when our seasons are. So summer, for example, is first of the December till the February 28. And then the fall or autumn, but we call it, is March 1 through to the May 30, and then June 1 is winter, and so on, and then September 1. In North America, though, it's not exact dates, like, from the first to the end of a certain month. Is sort of midway?

Yeah. Usually, it's, like, around, like, the twenty first of certain months. So, like, December 21 is the first the first official day of winter, and then I think it goes until March 21. It's it's kind of the twenty firsts or around the the summer or winter solstice and those kind of things.

So Yeah. So there you go. There's the educational section of the podcast today.

Well, now that the meteorological and the calendar based, you know, information has been shared, what are we gonna jump into today?

Well, today's topic was a request. Somebody actually sent me an email. Yes. It was a request. Somebody sent me an email and they went, oh, I don't know if you've ever done a podcast on this on the podiatry legends, but I have heard you mention it that you used to have that you a marketing director work with you.

Or what I used to call them was the patient and community relations manager. And the reason we we you changed that title was because I think if you're a patient, you oh, I have a marketing director. You go, oh, it just sounds a little bit weird to be in a a medical business, you know, in a allied health. So being a a community and patient relations manager or patient and community relations manager, whichever way you wanna twist that around, just makes it sound better that they're there to improve the relationship with your patients and also with your community. And that's pretty much what what their role is is all about.

And I will point out, this is not a term that I came up with. I didn't invent this. I was at a top practices conference, and this term came up. They were talking about, yeah, patient and community relations managers or marketing directors. At the conference, they were referring to me as marketing directors.

And when I was sitting there, they're they're asking different people, oh, stand up if your business does this, stand up if your business does that. Also, I realized that there were about 20 people that were still standing up after all these questions, and they said, put your hand up if you have a marketing director or patient community relations manager. And everyone of this 20 that was still standing put their hand up. And I went, wow. Doesn't that prove something that everybody else that sat down didn't have one, but the people that were still standing did.

And I went, therefore, this is an important role that every podiatric clinic should have in their business.

That's pretty powerful. Yeah, that's a I'm interested to hear more about kind of the roles and responsibilities. I have ideas in my mind of what they would do, and how they would kind of function in practice. But, you know, what are those kind of top tasks or top priorities for a person in that role?

Well, the the part the thing is interesting to point out first. If you're gonna put somebody in this role, they need to be a like a bubbly outgoing sort of person. You you don't want someone who's a stick in the mud, weaned on vinegar. Yeah. That sort of like it's really stickler for dotting every I and crossing every t.

Yes. Being detailed is important, but they can't be they they need to have that personality. They need to be very outgoing. The other part to point out before I get into what they actually do is they can be part time and casual. So you might have someone you don't have to make this a full time position.

The Sam, who worked with me, who I know listens to this podcast every now and then. Hello, Sam, if you're listening. She was the perfect person for the role. She was one of my receptionists. She was the senior receptionist.

Outgoing personality. Loved talking to the patients. She was just a chatterbox, but it she was just perfect. And I said to her, would you like to move out of reception and become my patient and community relations manager? And she went, oh, yeah.

Okay. What's that involve? She had no idea what we were talking about. So that's how she was given the role. So for me, I had her working twenty hours a week, casual, just doing this particular role.

But you could start it five hours a week. You might have a receptionist that does part reception and does this for ten hours a week. But I do think it's a role that you need to create within your business. Then I'll I'll get on to soon what she actually does.

No. That's helpful. I think I think, like you said, having the right personality, having the person's gonna they're gonna gonna be a face for the practice. Right?

Obviously That's

the physician. Yeah. Mean, the physician is the the kind of person in the clinic being the face of the practice and probably, you know, on any kind of advertising websites and those things. But if you're you know, there's definitely roles and tasks that this person, if they are a stick in the mud, it's gonna reflect, you know, poorly on your practice. And if they're a happy, well connected, sociable person, that's gonna reflect, you know, positively on the clinic.

So that finding the right person for that role is is pretty crucial.

Yeah. And that's why it takes time to find the right person. And, ideally, it's it'd be great if hopefully, if, like, if you're a really boring podiatrist, you get dull, got no personality, you probably find your clinic doesn't have any personality either, and you may find the people you've employed have no personality. So this you'll never find this person. It's just the way it is.

It's over. Just give up now.

It's over. No. But it's just creating this type of position may never suit that particular clinic. However, you can be a boring podiatrist, but then realize, you know what? I'm a bit boring.

I think my clinic needs a little bit more life. I need to go and find this person. But I I think there's been very, very few podiatrists I've ever been in where there has been somebody that already works there at the front desk who who was a nice person, who could probably do this role whether it's a few hours a week or you make this now their their main role. And I think it's it's great if you can get someone from within the business already because they they then understand you. They understand what your business is about.

They understand the patients. If you just what you don't want, and this was really important. This is something that I noticed whenever I put their hand up and said that head of marketing director. None of these people actually have a marketing background. So you're not wanting to employ someone who is, oh, I have a marketing degree.

That's not what you're after. You want someone who is there to support you and your marketing ideas and the things that you wanna actually work on. You said a really important thing, Jim, where the business owner or owners are the face of the business, but the marketing director or patient community relations manager is the go between between the business owner and the community and the patients. Yeah. That's something really important to just point out.

I also like this, the kind of way you phrased it, because I think it helps provide, you know, maybe an incentive for someone that, like you said, has been like a good steward of the practice. Someone who's been talking with patients, understands not only your patients, but how you practice, understand kind of shared goals. Because they know things about you and the practice that it would take you years potentially to instill in somebody. So having that kind of stepping stone for somebody that already knows the practice, I think a lot of those, you know, kinda community outreach skills and, you know, talking to other clinics or however, you know, we'll get into these tasks. We're gonna you know, I don't wanna steal all your thunder, but, you know, some of these tasks and some of these opportunities, those can be kinda taught.

And they can learn on the fly with some of those things. But they have those soft skills and those interpersonal skills already developed, and they have that knowledge of your practice. You know, whatever you're gonna have them do either out in the community or some of these tasks and roles seem like a a natural progression to really add value to to your practice.

Yeah. And they're gonna be someone who you is very trustworthy because there's a lot of role a lot of things they're gonna be doing unsupervised. So you gotta trust when they're not in your clinic that they are doing the right thing. When they're working in the backroom that they're doing the right thing, they're not on their phone playing or just messing around on Facebook. It it's it's a very, very trusted role, which is probably why some podiatrists may find it hard to actually give this role to somebody.

But and I think the the important part too with the title itself, patient and community relations manager, they are the go between between the business owner, the business, the patients, and the community. So we had it that if there was if there was an inquiry from the community to our clinic wanting to know something, would we be involved in this event? Would we like to do marketing here? It had to go through her first before it ever came to me. If there was a patient complaint if there was a patient complaint about something, the receptionist and everybody knew you direct it to Sam first.

Sam will address the problem. She may resolve the problem, and then she will determine whether I needed to know about it or whether I didn't, which I tell you, it makes your life takes away a lot of stress because a lot of the time, she can just she can address the problem, fix the problem, and you never know anything about it.

No. I think that's huge. I think, like, talked about delegating some of these tasks to your staff, empowering them with the ability to make decisions on your behalf. You know, then someone that knows the clinic that is working in your best interest, frees you up to do more of the work that you wanna do. And, you know, when you have someone like that in your practice, it it can be a huge value add because you don't have to spend time doing those those, you know, tasks that you would rather not do.

Later down the road once they're trained up and have the skills to really provide, you know, value to the patients and solve some of those pending problems that might, you know, crop up from time to time.

Yeah. Like, people have asked me before. Yeah. If I if I had another podiatry business tomorrow, what are some of the key things I'd put in place? One, I'd have a podcast for various reasons.

Great marketing tool if you use it the right way, if you know what you're doing. I would also have a marketing director. I would have a patient community relations manager even if I employ him ten hours a week just to be doing certain tasks for me, and I'll get onto that now. But before I talk about the actual tasks or some of the tasks, people are sitting there going, my god. Such a tease.

Such a tease.

Yes. Tell us.

It's important when you have this role in in place that we used to have a meeting at least once a week for about an hour, hour and a half. We would we would block it out. And at that meeting, we would review all the activities she did the week before and what results and what took place, and then what her plans were for the rest of the week. Yeah. What she was planning on doing the rest of week.

So that gave me a good overview of what's been done, what sort of results we got, and then what she was gonna do this week. Because it might be something else where I've got another idea or, oh, you're gonna go and see these doctors. Great. While you're there, can you do this? So it gave us an opportunity to do that.

A friend of mine, Jerry Green, who's probably he's a marketing director for Indiana Podiatry Group, and they've got about 11 practices. He's like the the gold standard of patient and community relations managers. Just he's been doing it for so long. He's just awesome at doing it. That's if he's still doing it now.

He might be retired now. I haven't spoken to him for a while. And but he used to, at the beginning of his day, send an email to the practice owner saying, this is what I'm doing today and where I'm going. This is my whole day planned out. And he would give it to them so they could look at it, not so that they were like big brother keeping an eye on him, but just so that, hey.

If I'm gonna be in this part of town, is there anything else you that pops to mind that you would like me to do? Now, move on to the roles. There we go. Tease. Tease.

Tease.

Drum drum roll.

One of the things we used to do was we hand delivered every single professional referrer's report. We never posted anything. Once a week, because in Kansas, most of the referrals, if you were getting them, it is within about a a 10 kilometer radius of our practice. So we would hand deliver every report. Walk in there, see me go in and go, oh, here are here's a report for such and such and and all that.

While she was there, she would then spark a conversation with the receptionist, with the practice managers. And then throughout the year, from those meetings on a regular basis when she did this, she would then organize talks for us to then talk to the physios, the doctors at different times. Because we always know that they would have times allocated to have people come in and speak. So that was our opportunity of doing that. The other thing we also did was we had a whole pile of bottles done up.

They look like prescription bottles, but they're full of M and M's. So when we went into the doctor's surgery and once again, this is something that I saw somebody else doing. It wasn't an original idea. I just adapted it to myself, and we got labels printed on there. And I had one sitting around here that I could've shown you for the video, but I don't have it here anyway.

And we went to every practice in Cairns, gave them gave every staff member their own m and m prescription bottle full of m and m's with a little label on there to, you know, take eat whenever you're stressed, refills unlimited. And so every time Sam went in to drop reports, she also had a big bucket full of m and m's in a scoop. I mean, so anyone here need the bottle topped up. Everyone would turn it all of a sudden. There'd be be, like, eight, ten, 12, sometimes 15 bottles from all the people that worked there, and she'd go and fill up all the bottles.

They knew Sam got known as the M and M lady. This was just something and she knew that if they don't refer anyone, they don't get any reports, then Sam's not walking in. Your M and M's are not getting topped up. But it doesn't have to be chocolate. It could be anything.

It could be mints. Could be sugar free mints. It could be whatever you want. The idea was a reason to keep walking back in there. Sometimes if there was a practice we hadn't seen for a while, but Sam's in the area dropping off reports of us, should we just duck a head in and say, hey, ladies.

Just I was in the area. Just thought I'd say hello. Oh, by the way, anyone need the M and M's topped up? And she would top them up. So that that was one role that she did.

She would organize talks for us with shoe stores in any other community place, whether it was rotary lines. She would be sending out the fields going, hey. Do you need a podiatrist to come and talk on this subject this year? And she'd line up all the talks for us. She made sure our recalls happened.

She made sure all their reactivations happened and happened on time exactly when they were planned out to do. It wasn't like, oh, yeah. No. We didn't get our recalls done this month because, yeah, we were really busy, and there was a podiatrist away and and also the receptionist. No.

That was her job to make sure that role was done. I got I got more if you wanna hear.

I just I'm getting hungry. Listen to all these M and M comments on on I know.

I've had one of the bottles close by, I'd be able to show you. Anyway, I've got it in the cupboard somewhere in my marketing. Oh, actually. And here's one I prepared earlier. I do I do have one here, actually.

So this is what the bottles look like. You can see that? So ProArch podiatry. You just see yeah. Take two when you're when you're feeling what is it?

When you're feeling stressed. Quantity, not sure. Didn't count them. And refills unlimited and have the phone number. And they've also had a QR code on there.

If they clicked on the QR code, it went through and they could reorder. We just say, hey, we're running low of M and M's. We'd mind a bit of a top up. And it just became a lot of fun. And like I said, I had seen other people doing this, and I saw other people doing it successfully.

And there's nothing wrong with seeing other ideas and then just adapting them and making them your own. And the amount of people have said to me, oh, Tyson, man, that's that's a great idea. How did you come up with it? I saw it somewhere else. So we just adapted it and and made it our own.

So other things that that if you just think of any type of marketing that could potentially be done in your podiatry business, your marketing director or patient community relations manager is the person to help you do it. So like I said, community talks, dropping off reports, you know, doing the m and m run. Any type of internal marketing that that was required, whether it was doing it, making sure a monthly newsletter was done and getting all the content for it. The other thing Sam was great with was she loved to cook, and she was a good cook. So she used to do the recipe every month that went into our newsletter, which was probably the most popular article in our newsletter month in, month in.

People would always comment on it. So it's it's really and and we also too, any external marketers tried to approach me or my business, They couldn't get to me unless they went through Sam, and that is a big time saver. So it could be a local media outlet or whatever it was. They ring the clinic. Oh, we wanna talk to business owner.

Not a problem. We'll put you in touch with Sam. Sam would go, yeah. What do you want? She was pretty ruthless too at times.

But she would gather all the information, and then when we had a weekly meeting, she would say, oh, and by the way, this has been presented to me. We'd look through it. What do you think? We would talk about it, the fours, against. We had a big whiteboard.

We'd draw out a bit of a plan, and we go, nah. Don't like it. So then she would go and tell them, no. Sorry. Don't like it.

Get back in or or get back in touch within six months. Or, yes. We like that. Can we get more information on this? Massive time saver as a business owner.

I could concentrate on doing what I did best that was either with patients or running my business, and I had Sam doing everything else that helped me with my marketing. That's awesome. So I almost wore myself out then. But I do think it's just a I I it's just it's a role that if you're not sure whether you could use one, then you can you can. It's it's a I think it's a vital position that most podiatric clinics should try and work up towards.

There's a lot of other things that that role can actually entail. If you go through the six pillars of marketing, whether it's your professional referrers, your nonprofessional referrers, Sam would always be out there just making contact with health food shops and masseuses and shoe stores and anything that you know, she organized talks at accounting firms. It was just anywhere we could potentially be seen and heard. Triathlon clubs, then she would organize it. Bike stores.

It's just endless. So there was never a time when Sam was ever sitting there going, I'm bored. I have nothing to do. It was more like, my god, Tyson. Can you just settle down and let me catch up with what I've got?

And then sometimes and then when we were really busy, if she was available, I would get her in more hours. And then if she wanted to go away for a couple of weeks, she could go away. We would just make sure everything was in place.

No. That makes sense. I think we have that kinda go getter personality, someone that's, you know, energetic, really gonna, like you said, reflect well upon your practice in your clinic. And you can't be you're only we're only one person, right? If you're the sole practice owner, maybe you have a couple of partners, you're gonna be making you know, money in your practice by by being there and treating patients.

But if you can have, you know, someone out there, you know, along with you setting some of these things up, saving you time, kind of being your eyes and your ears and maybe your mouth in the, you know, kind of a representative of the clinic and what you're trying to do, It just really helps, you know, multiply the number of connections you make. And the the more you're out there and visible in the public, in your local community with this person, which is reflecting, you know, well upon you and kind of, you know, really kind of accept gaining that visibility for practice in ways that just you know, sometimes it's impossible if you're, you know, managing your practice, treating patients, you know, kinda running the business side. It kinda frees you up to do more things you want to do or are good at and letting this person really help promote and, you know, shine a light on the services you provide in your in your clinic.

Yeah. It's just it's a vital role. The amount of times and you've probably had this as well, Jim. You'll talk to a podiatrist, and you might be talking about social media or some form of social media platform. Oh, and I'm too busy to post.

The last time we posted was a couple of weeks ago, we keep forgetting. Sam looked after all that. Reading different articles too, what are other people posting? What is popular at the moment? What should we be posting?

How can we connect with the patients better? If somebody made a comment online, she would always respond to to us like the eyes and ears of of the business. And if you run through to, like, Sam, once a month, we go to the Cairns. So for example, the Cairns business women's lunch. It might cost me $50 for her to go to that and her time, but while she was there, she was wearing a pro arch podiatry shirt.

She's talking to all the ladies. Oh, Sam, what's your role? Oh, I'm the patient community relations manager. Oh, that's different. It'd spark a whole conversation.

She would collect business cards, and we would get more contacts. Yeah. It it is a I think it's a vital role that like I said, when I was at the top practices event, all the top performers at top practices had a patient and community relations manager. And I think it's not a coincidence.

That that's yeah. I don't think it's a coincidence either. I think it's one of those things too where, like we talked about, maybe it's maybe a practice owner doesn't have a huge desire to want to do marketing. Right? They don't it's it's something that's changing all the time, like we said.

Like, Google is a moving target. You know, these things are not static. So if you don't necessarily have time in your own practice to kinda be on top of things, or you don't necessarily want to be, you know, that kind of direct connection with outside vendors. You wanna have someone that you know is, you know, there for the practice, is, you know, something you've trusted for many years to kind of service that either go between or can take on some of those those marketing tasks. I think this is a good model for some people that are in practice that are wanting to, you know, kind of delegate some of those responsibilities or some of those activities within the practice.

Yeah. And I think just start small. You might have someone that's being is your receptionist and say, hey. Would you like to do this five hours a week or half a day? And just have them start doing certain tasks.

And as they're enjoying and you see the results that you get from it, then you can slowly build it up from there. Like I said, Sam was never full time. I never had a full time patient community relations manager, but I know some podiatry clinics that they had not only did they have a full time person doing it, that full time person had two assistants. That's how big their practice got by doing this. It goes to prove that the bigger the business comes, eventually, you get to a point where it's too much work for them, and that your your marketing assistant needs an assistant, which is a great position to be in.

A good problem to have.

I know. So I think I've covered that. Whoever I can't remember exactly who asked me to talk about this, but I hope I have talked about it enough, encouraged you to actually think about a marketing director or a patient community relations manager. And if you do get one and you're not sure on how to train them, reach out to me and I will be able to help.

That sounds like a plan, Tyson.

Okay, Jim. I will talk to you next week.

Sounds good, Tyson.

Bye now. Bye.

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