Understanding Your Patients Search Behaviour Beats Fancy Marketing

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

Welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Join us always my trusty cohost, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going today?

I am absolutely fantastic today, big gym. Just got back from the gym, and that's weights gym. I went to Muay Thai this morning, earlier on this morning, did that. And, yeah, then did weights afterwards. And, yeah, my lower back is still sore.

So it's just it's just life.

Yeah. I can totally understand that that kinda getting back into the gym is can always be, some you rough times and some some sore muscles afterwards.

But it's better than sitting I I have I have three Tysons that we have this conversation. And I have Fit Tyson, fat Tyson, and future Tyson. So whenever I'm making a decision on something, I might be looking at, do I eat that or don't I eat that? Should I go to the gym or shouldn't I go to the gym? And fit Tyson and fat Tyson have a lot of arguments on what I should and shouldn't do.

It's a constant. It's just an ever going battle. But when future Tyson steps in and just says, hey, guys. I don't know what you're doing, but in the end, it's all gonna come down to my it's all gonna fall under my shoulders, whatever decisions you make. So make the right one.

I like that framing. It's good. Definitely, hopefully, you know, puts you into a mindset where you can make those good decisions.

Well, I think it's one of those things where people yeah. Should I, shouldn't I do something? And if you always got yeah. It's almost like you got the the two people on your shoulder having that argument. But if you take them out of the equation and look at your future self, what what is your future self gonna thank you for doing?

Eating that or not eating that? Drinking that or not drinking that. So, yeah, that's just how I try to do it. Yeah. Fat Tyson wins often though.

Well, Fat Tyson has to have his time in the sun every once in a while. Right? So it's all it's always fair. It's only fair.

Yeah. Every every now and this, this future Tyson, you'll you'll thank me. We're gonna have a good evening. Anyway, we should get into this. So the the topic is

not about fat Tyson today. It's about something else you're you're telling me?

It is completely different. Yes. It's about understanding your patient's search behaviours, and if you can understand that, that will beat any sort of fancy marketing. That's pretty much what we're talking about. What what it's all basically about, it's important to understand that patients have not changed over the decades.

You know, like I graduated in 1998. Patients have not changed. But the tools they use to search have. So years ago, patients would grab the yellow pages, and it was one of those things. Remember, Jim?

If you weren't in the yellow pages, you didn't have a business. These days, younger people go, yellow what? They don't really understand what that's all about. But today, they they use Google. Increasingly, they're using AI tools like like ChatGTP Claude.

So the technology has changed, but human behaviour has basically stayed the same. Patients still ask, who can help me? Can I trust them? Are they close enough to me? Because I wanna know where we are location wise.

And can they solve my problem? Podiatry business that understand this will win regardless of the platform that they're basically using.

Yeah. The only thing that's constant in this whole scenario is, you know, that the things are changing. Right? It's always a different platform. Some of the basic things are are similar on the background.

That's how people are looking for things, but those different tools and platforms out there are something that's always kind of influx, you know, from from year to year.

So patients don't want a podiatrist. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, oh, oh, I really want to see a podiatrist today. It's not don't think they even think about it. What they do think is my heel hurts, my toenail looks terrible, whether it's affected or just discolored, I can't run anymore. Or or if they're a parent, might be going, why is my child all of sudden, you know, walking like a weirdo?

They're walking strangely. That's not how they were walking a couple of weeks ago. They seem to be limping. Or even if it's back to them, my feet hurt after I I stand up all day. So the patient isn't really searching for podiatry.

They're searching for relief. Therefore, the marketing lesson from this is lead with problems and outcomes, not your professional titles or your qualifications. That's not what people are actually searching for.

Absolutely. I think that's along the long lines when I'm building websites for people. You need to be able to speak to patients' problems and like what the outcomes are and understanding what questions they're answering or asking so you can answer them in their own language. Right? So I I definitely agree with that line of thinking.

Yeah. And if people have listened to a number of our episodes, the last 200, then some of the things I'm gonna mention here are bits and pieces that we've talked about probably in the most recent, I'd say, year. We we spoke about search engines and different things a little bit more often. So this is sort of just taking it just to another level. The second thing is the Yellow Pages is where search began.

People need to remember. That was the original search engine. It was all that Yellow Page book. Google is really just a more advanced digital version of the Yellow Pages. It's nothing more than that.

So years ago, when someone would actually open up the Yellow Pages, this is the important part, they already knew what service they wanted. It was a podiatrist. They didn't open the yellow pages and just start scanning, so no one was searching for a plumber and go, oh, podiatrist. I might go and suss them out. When they were doing their searching, they had intent.

They were actively looking for a podiatrist. The same thing happens on Google. When someone types in a podiatrist near me, they've already decided that they need to seek help. So the marketing lesson from this is at this point, you're not creating demand, you're actually competing for attention. Because when they do the data at Google, just like they used to get the other pages that opened up, and there would have been eight podiatry clinics there.

They're looking at these different ads trying to decide which one are they gonna go for. Google's pretty much doing the same thing. It throws a number of options there and people are gonna look through these options and say, you're competing against everybody else.

Yeah. You're trying to capture that kind of demand that's already in the market. Right? I think that's when we talk about search or search ads. You know, there's a certain volume of people, you know, in your small community, in your big city that are actively looking for your services.

And there's ways to get in front of those people that are ready to make an appointment. And like you said there, you're not creating that demand, it's already there. You're just trying to compete and show people that you are the trustworthy expert in the local area so they choose you instead of somebody else.

It's no different to when someone walks into a barbecue shop and they're walking in there. They're they're actually searching for a barbecue. And the people who own that barbecue should realize that every person that's walked in there, especially if they're a barbecue store that is off the grid a little bit, where someone's really gone out of the way to go into their store, these people are searching. Podiatry patients looking for a podiatrist online is pretty similar. The third point I want to mention is intent matters more than traffic.

So not all website visitors are going to be equal. So a person searching heel pain treatment in cans is completely different to someone who's just searching what causes heel pain. And one is researching the problem, The other one is actually is really looking for a solution. So the marketing lesson here is focus on attracting people with buying or solution intent because quality visitors will beat quantity every time. A 100 visitors with intent is worth far more than a thousand random visitors.

And this is where and I think we spoke about this the last couple of weeks. A marketing company pointing out that they've increased your visitor numbers is far less important than how many times your phone rings, how many times people walk into your clinic, and how many times people send you an email asking questions.

Absolutely. That intent from local patients is super super important. I run into this a lot of times with some of the clinics I've worked with that, you know, they've got amazing traffic to their website. They're blogging every week or every two weeks on some interesting topics. But the problem is that 99.9% of the traffic that's going to their website is from somebody in California or Alaska or Hawaii that's looking for some solution or some information.

It's not a, you know, it's not a it's it's looking for a solution to a problem, but like they're nowhere in that local area. So if you can make things more specific about local intent, local events, you know, mentioning, you know, where you're at within the article or within the pages you build, you're much more likely to get that kind of the right type of traffic or the right type of patients reading those and then make an appointment for your clinic.

Remember I shot a video once, can't remember which one it was. And the first day we released it within that week, it had 5,000 views on this video. When I went through the analytics of it, about 4,900 were from India. Now, the 4,900 people in India, I appreciate them looking at the video, but they were never coming into my podiatry clinic. Unless, I don't know, there was a trip planned over in India that there was a lot of Indians coming to my clinic.

But, yeah, that was never the case. So I would much rather do some form of campaign or do something where the right people have found my website. And I'd rather have 50 phone calls from whatever I'm doing than 10,000 people visiting my website, not one of them picking up the telephone. Absolutely. So the fourth point I want to talk about is what patients see shapes their decision.

So when patients choose a podiatrist, their decision is based on these tiny little differences. So imagine you've got clinics that appear in a Google search. Clinic A, and it lists all their podiatry services on the home page. And we've all seen this. You go to a podiatry homepage, and it's got so much on there.

There used to be one. You used to go to their website. It was atrocious. It's no good now, but it used to be atrocious. It had so much information on it.

Clinic b apparently says foot care professionals. And then you've got clinic c that says helping active people overcome heel pain, foot pain, and sport injuries. Which one feels more relevant to the patient that is searching for someone who's got heel pain? It's a very, very simple marketing lesson. Patients don't choose the best clinic.

They'll choose the clinic that appears the most relevant to the problem that they're actually searching for.

Absolutely with that. The copy really speaks to them. Obviously sometimes you can also speak with images or videos on web pages as well. And when someone sees themselves in that treatment chair and that you are that expert that's taking care of people like them, that's where you can really win and get more of those kind of right fit patients for your practice.

Yeah. Always think a really good example of this outside of podiatry is you smash the window in your house, and also you're looking for someone who can repair that window. If there were three window places there, and one of them mentioned all the different types of windows that they can fix. But but another one is mentioning same day service to fix a broken window in your house. I know straight away you're gonna ring that one before you actually ring the other one.

With with without a doubt. So patients are doing exactly the same thing. So the fifth point is podiatrists often market treatments instead of problems. And patients are searching for solutions to their symptoms. They are not searching treatments for their solutions.

Most people don't search shockwave therapy, even though they may. I'm not saying that nobody does, but very few people when they've got, say, heel pain, for example, I'm going search for shockwave. That's not what they're looking for. They're not looking for orthotics, and they're not searching gait analysis. Instead, they're searching heel pain, arch pain.

It could be running injuries, or it might just be sore feet in general. So the marketing lesson from this is to market the problem first and explain the treatment second. And this relates to my previous episode two thirty three when we were talking about external internal marketing. And we were saying, yeah, external marketing is talking about problems and solutions to those problems. The internal marketing is when you're talking about the specific treatment that can actually help those problems.

So go back and listen to that episode if you missed it.

Yeah, we also talked a little bit about, you know, I think we talked about marketing a $50,000 piece of equipment that you might buy and Yeah. You know, people don't know what they don't know, right? So they're not The majority of people are not gonna be searching these different types of treatments or modalities. So to put it out there with something they don't know, like a swift machine or a shockwave, it's really gonna not get very much search volume. And probably the only people searching for those things are podiatrists or other healthcare specialists looking to buy those items, right?

Which you, like I said, what you would really want to focus in on, and I think it's okay to show some of those different items like in a Instagram video or if you're doing taking pictures of the clinic and you're treating people. The images are gonna be helpful on the web page as far as different treatment options, you definitely wanna lead with that problem like you mentioned.

Yeah. And I think it is important to if you have a shockwave machine that you have an article written on it and it is on your website that that can be found through a search engine. Because I might be talking to a friend who, say, is in Brisbane, and I'll say, oh, I have a heel pain here, saw the podiatrist, they're fantastic, and they use this equipment called shockwave. Have you heard of it? No.

I wonder who's got shockwave in my area. Then they may be searching for that equipment, but it's not the usual conversation that is happening with people. It's not what people are normally searching for. So have the information, just don't lead with that information on the front of your website. Point number six is AI search is changing the rules again.

Patients are starting to ask AI direct questions instead of typing into Google. So an example would be, who should I see for heel pain in Cairns? Anyone listening to this should realise I live in Cairns, that's why I'm saying that. And that's Cairns North Queensland, not Cairns where they held a big film festival. Can you recommend a podiatrist near me that treats fungal nails?

So instead of showing 10 blue links, AI will actually give recommendations. So the marketing lesson from this is your online presence, your website home yeah. Your website homepages, blogs, articles now needs to help AI understand who you are, what you do, how you can help, and basically where you're located.

Now I think that's a great point. What's happening even these days is changing search behavior overall. It's not they're just staying on the clot or the chat GPT and then just necessarily going to the clinic from there. They might get the information they want from there and they've done a little bit of research on these chatbots and some of them, some people will say, oh maybe there's like two or three options that the chatbot are recommended. Sometimes they're going back to Google and then googling to look at the Google business profile, maybe to look at the website.

Because people are still more familiar with the kind of the output. And people do like the Google business profile to look at those things. So it's a way of kind of testing to see whether because I think people feel that Claude and ChatGPT and Jim and I from Google are still kind of new. So like they don't can I really can they really trust the recommendation? So some people are actually still going back to Google after that initial AI chatbot search.

So it's it's definitely interesting to see the the different ways that these things are changing the the patterns of searching and looking for a podiatrist.

Well, admit I I do both. I would probably I'd probably search more on Google because my computer is right in front of me and I'm I have a habit of just typing, so I'll just type something in. But when I'm out and about and have my phone with me, I couldn't have bothered typing on my phone, I will speak it into existence. But same thing, I usually go straight to Google first. And then if I get a bit information, I'll go back to call to chat.

We'll dig into it a bit deeper, and then I may go back to Google again just to have a look at those final business just as you explained it. But their habits are different. I'm sure there's some younger people now that do it a completely different way.

Yeah. Definitely things are gonna change to the younger generation. But it's interesting to see how people that have had these tools in the past are kind of adapting them for their own needs.

Okay. So the point number seven I wanted to mention is AI rewards websites that have clarity. Confusing websites are going to struggle. And this is why some corporate websites are absolutely no threat to you whatsoever. In Australia, there's a say, for example, a My Foot Doctor near you.

Go and have a look at their website, and there's no threat to it. Because if you type in podiatry in cancer has my foot doctor, you look on that, then all it does is head for this page there and then it starts telling you which clinic would you like. There's not a lot of clarity on what website actually represents. AI systems, though, they're looking for clear information. If your website clearly says, we treat heel pain, we help runners, we help children, we help diabetic patients, AI can actually understand this and will make that information available to the patients.

Whereas if your website is really vague, say something like providing comprehensive, proprietary solutions or we have five locations in North Queensland, AI doesn't know really what does that mean and it doesn't provide any solution to the patient who's doing the searching. So the marketing lesson here is write for humans first and the AI benefits will just naturally flow on from there.

Now that you're right about the lack of vagueness, you wanna make sure you're as to the point and clear about the types of patients that you treat, your expertise, the things you do in clinic that can be interpreted by these AI chatbots. Because, yeah, like you said, any kind of vague terminology is gonna like any human, kind of the AI is kind of eyes will glaze over a bit and you won't get those people coming to the practice that you really hope to. I always find in

front of me, you go to someone's homepage and their prime real estate and it says, we're the most trusted podiatrist in whatever place they're in. And you're like, okay. And then the first couple of paragraphs is all about why they are awesome, but it doesn't actually explain anything. So I think that's a missed opportunity. Eight.

Huge. Or the eighth point I want to share is authority and credibility matter more than ever. AI doesn't just look at websites. It looks for evidence that you are the best fit. Things that help: reviews, which we've mentioned before testimonials educational content if you've got videos and articles that relate to what people are looking for community involvement and a consistent online presence.

Once again, corporate podiatry do this really poorly. A lot of times, the social media posts, especially if they're in multiple states, the social media posts are to try and make everybody happy in different states. They're a lot of what they post is extremely vague because they're just trying to please everybody. And what do always say? When you're trying to please everyone, you actually please no one.

That's what basically goes on.

No. You've got to speak to those patients like they're in the room with you in at a level they would under understand. Like otherwise, like you said, it's if it's a lot of medical or corporate jargon, like it's just not gonna be attractive and that's not what the way people search. So AIs aren't gonna surface that kind of information.

Yeah. So the marketing lesson for this is the clinics creating useful content today are actually digging the well for the water that they're actually gonna need tomorrow. And that's episode two thirty seven. We're talking about dig the well before you need the water. For sure.

The ninth thing is the best marketing question. Before creating any ad, ask, what is the patient actually trying to achieve? So Instead of asking what service do I want to promote, ask what problem is the patient trying to solve? And that single shift, it changes the website copy. It will change the type of Google Ads that you're doing.

It will change your social media posts if you think that way, your videos, your newsletter, and it will change your AI discoverability. You just gotta keep that top of mind is what problem is a patient actually trying to solve?

Yeah, and then you probably have had patients ask you questions about plantar fasciitis or heel pain so many times in your clinic and you've kind of gone over that and you've probably developed your own kind of clinical spiel about certain things. And that's some of the answers or the insights you can provide in like an FAQ on your webpage or on your website, you know, on making a video about commonly asked questions about plantar fasciitis and giving them some basic answers. Obviously each case is gonna vary, but at the same time getting that information out there shows that you're the expert and was more gonna make make you more discoverable on these AI channels. So why why not build up the content with those specific goals in mind?

Nearly every coaching client I've worked with or if I run a marketing workshop, I'm just chatting with people afterwards. And I'll say, what's the number one problem that comes into your clinic? Like say, MS carrier lad. And everyone says the same thing, heel pain. We're going to have look at their website.

When you have a look at their website, they'll have one article on it and it's somewhere tucked away. So that's the most common problem that comes in, yet you hardly write anything about it. Do know how many more of those patients would come in if you actually wrote about it? And they go, oh, yeah. I'd like more heel pain patients because that's what I enjoy doing.

Well, that's what you basically talk about. Sure. So I'm move on to point number 10, is the final point. The future is not about online platforms, which is sort of what you mentioned right at the beginning, Jim. The platforms will keep changing.

We went from yellow pages to everybody having to have a website, Google, social media, and then an AI search. So something else and I can't wait to see what it's going to be. I really can't wait to see what it's going be. But something else will come. The practitioners who succeed won't be those that master every single platform.

They'll be the ones that actually understand how the patients think, what the patient's intent is. If you always understand what the patient's intent is, then you'll use the appropriate platform basically the right way.

Absolutely. I think it's it's it's trying to get improving communication between the patient and the podiatrist. Right? Like kind of when you can kind of be aligned with what they want to get out of the encounter in a way that provides an information to help us build trust. That's what some of these different platforms can hopefully help deliver, but you have to give it that information about yourself, the type of care you provide, you know, what differentiates you from others.

We provide that level of information, then you can allow these AI chatbots and platforms to to recommend you more and you can become more visible.

Yep. And you will kick butt. That's what you want. If your marketing is feeling harder than it should, it may not be a marketing problem at all. It might just be a messaging problem.

And the clinics I work and spend a lot of time the people I work with, basically, I sit down and I help them run through this. So if anyone wants any help or information from me, just go to my website, tysonfranklin.com. And Big Jim, what are your details? And remind people what it is that you do.

Yeah. So if anyone has any questions about, you know, website related things, Google Ads, how to be more visible online, they can go to podiatrygrowth.com and, you know, reach out to me. I'm always happy to have conversations with podiatrists around the world. Also, Tyson and I provide a free practice visibility scorecard at podiatry.marketing, our website. That's podiatry.marketing is the the URL.

So head on over there if you wanna grab one of those for free. We're always happy to have, you know, conversations about, you know, how to help you grow your practice in the way that is bringing you professional satisfaction. So either it's Tyson's website, my website, or just go to podiatry.marketing and connect with us there.

Okay. Big Jim, I think I've finished everything I wanted to say on this topic. Do you have anything else to close with?

I would say like this is a nice lead in. We're gonna get into some additional technical details, a little bit more specifics around, you know, you you provide a great outline as far as the type of content which is gonna help you be visible on AI chatbots and just regular Google stuff. But next week we're gonna dive in a little bit more into AI. So more little more technical details that people will be able to understand. But no, I think it was a great topic today and looking forward to speak with you next week about

that topic. Okay, big Jim. I look forward to seeing you next week.

Alright. Talk to you soon now. Okay. Bye. Bye.

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