What Private Podiatry Practices Can Do That Big Systems Can't

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 as usual is my good friend, Jim McDannald, aka big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?

I just know I'm doing great. Things are fantastic here in the great country of Canada, in the wonderful French province of Quebec. I'm loving life, so no complaints.

Yeah. No. Can't's good. Nice and warm as I usually tell everybody every week. Fifty two weeks a year, it's actually warm.

So yeah. So what are we doing today? What what's the topic? What's your topic of discussion?

Yeah. So I've been hearing a lot lately these days about the growing number of hospital practices, multi specialty clinics that are incorporating podiatry and private equity buying up practice and kind of making these mega groups. These are things I've been hearing from podiatrists and people kind of come to me and ask, you know, got this hospital system I'm competing against down the road. They just opened a podiatry department three miles from me. What can I do about that?

I think there's a little bit of fear associated with some of these larger groups, these larger systems bringing in podiatrists or competing against general practice podiatrists in The US. People have this fear. The hospital systems, obviously, they have larger marketing budgets that dwarf those of any single private practice. They have brand recognition, you know, that they can buy billboards, TV ads. There's a built in kind of referral network from these these kind of primary care doctors in these medical groups.

So people are a little afraid, you know, how can they compete against these larger entities.

Okay. So this is a very American problem. I'm just pointing that out.

Yeah. And No. For sure. It's prob

Well, that's it. Like you say, it's American problem, but I used to say years ago, Gus used read all the American podiatry magazines, and I said, whatever happens in America in relation to podiatry, just give it ten or fifteen years, and we tend to follow the same sort of issues that they're having. So I and I can see there's a lot of podiatrists at the who were, say, working at the back of doctor surgeries. And some of these bigger medical centers have got multiple locations, and they're doing the same thing. So I I see how this is still this still applies.

Definitely. And even though I live in Canada, a place that has kind of, you know, universal health care available, podiatry is primarily, at least in this country, in Canada, is more of a private cap and a fee for service thing where maybe it's gonna be covered by some of your insurances, maybe can get some orthotics or some shoes and things covered. But it's kind of counterintuitive because I think a lot of American podiatrists, when I tell them, oh, I practice in Canada. Sometimes I, you know, live up here. What they ask me what podiatry is like, and I tell them it's this kind of private fee for service kind of a situation.

And I think it's getting more into the kind of mainstream health care, but some podiatrists here like kind of being separate from the main health care system. But, you know, what today we're gonna do really is to kinda go into the things that I've learned working with private private podiatry practices that are competing against these larger hospital systems. You know? You're not gonna kinda win by doing the exact kind of tactics and strategies that these larger entities are doing.

Yeah.

You're gonna win by playing the game that, you know, they can't play. So today, we're gonna cover these five advantages you'd have over hospital systems, large multi specialty systems. They can never match just because of their size. And I'll tell you exactly how to build your own marketing around, you know, each one of these kind of advantages that you have.

Yeah. And so and this also applies just if you've got a like, in Australia, we have a a corporate podiatry company that's got, like, a 100 clinics, and some people get a little bit nervous. Oh, they've they've bought somebody out in town. I go, don't worry about it. And I'm sure we're gonna touch on some of that.

If not, I'll I'll get a couple of ideas anyway, but I'm pretty sure you'll touch on it. Okay. Rip in, Jim.

Yeah. So point one is that, you know, you are the brand and that they can't be like, you know they're gonna try to be everything to everyone, but you can be, you know, kinda specialized in a way. So when a hospital podiatrist, they're kind of interchangeable parts and ways to patients. They're going to that provider most likely because that's the big name. You know, that's kinda like that's where their maybe their insurance told them to go or their primary care doctor to go.

They might see doctor Smith today. Maybe it's gonna be doctor Jones in three months from now.

Okay.

It's they don't the doctors there don't actually have the kind of name recognition as you do when you're kinda outside of a larger hospital system. So the hospital is that brand, not the doctor. So in your practice, you are that brand. Right? You get to make the choices and decisions.

So patients will choose you specifically. They build a relationship with you. They refer their friends to you. The hospital system can never really match that because, you know, there's gonna be people that move locations. Maybe they were in one part of town for a while, but then the hospital system moved them to a different part of town.

And now it's not convenient for somebody, but it was not really that doctor's decision. That inconvenience happened or people retire. It's just not the kind of same kind of point of care or kind of touch points that you have in a clinic like yours. So, you know, they can't build their market around individual providers, but you as being the part you know, the practice owner yourself, that's something that you can do.

Yeah. I think that's a major part too because you can really build your reputation or there might be a certain part about your business that makes you really unique, and you can build your whole brand around that, around you and the the clinic. And these bigger corporate entities, yeah, they don't like you said, the podiatrists at work there, they're just moving parts. They'll take that one from there, get rid of them, just bring in somebody else. And and you never know the quality of the podiatrist that's coming in either.

So I I I think, yeah, the brand thing is a huge huge part of it.

Yeah. The huge part of it too is that, like we talked about in previous podcast as well, kind of when they're kind of this big entity and they're trying to be everyone's to all fit, you know, everything to everyone, they kinda lose that niche or that kind of specialization act area where you can really shine. Because, you know, if you wanna see sports medicine doc you know, if you're in a large group or you're getting referrals from internal doctors, they're feeling pressured to have to see everything that they're, you know, referring PCPs are are sending their way because that's kind of the stuff they're supposed to see because it's this kind of internal system. But, you know, when you're able to kind of brand yourself and you're the sports medicine doctor, you're the diabetic foot doc, you can get more of the kind of care that you wanna see, and that's gonna give you advantage because the more you can see those types of patients and provide great results for them, you're gonna have a more of a personal connection with the patient than this kind of, you know, everybody gets treated for whatever they come into the the the they're kinda hospital based or their multi specialty based clinic for.

So that could be a real huge thing. So it was really concentrate on, you know, putting your face and your name and your story upfront and center in your marketing. You know, people will relate to that. You know, other business owners will relate to that. You know, so on your web website homepage, you know, it should feature you like we talked about in past stock images.

Yeah.

Your Google business profile should show authentic photos of you and your office, your team. Just showing the human sides of who you are. Like you talked about previously on social media, it has to be and I we we don't recommend it, like, make appointment, make appointment, blah blah blah. Like, it should show some personality and show that you're kind of a real person. And that's not something that you're ever gonna see, you know, in a large hospital system or a multi specialty center.

That just it just can't play in that same kind of area of kind of personalized or kind of human to human marketing if that makes sense. They have to have more general messages to kind of appeal to everyone.

Yeah. But that was one of the things we noticed when I sold my clinic to a big corporate. And then we watched what they were doing even just on social media, and where we used to post things from a clinic, it would have us in the photos, and it'd be us and the team at an event doing certain things, and it was most of photos were always around Cairns where we lived. When they took it over, they were still posting things every day, the most generic rubbish that it would have a photo and it'd be, you know, like, somewhere in some snowy mountain area. You go, yeah.

That's really relevant to the tropics. Just nothing match. It felt really corporate and did not connect with the the people in the community.

Yeah. That's a great point. And I think you're you're touching on something as well as that. There will be a tendency sometimes for small practices to see the type of marketing the hospital or multi specialty group is doing and feel like they need to do something very similar.

Yeah.

I think it's really, really important that you don't copycat what these large entities are doing because number one, you'll never match their budget. You'll never be able to to do the kind of those kind of premier, like, ad placements like they're gonna be able to do. So just take a step back and realize who you are, the type of patients you wanna see, you know, what value you bring to the community, focus on those things. Because, yeah, like like we talked about, you there's no reason to kind of try to be like that because they're trying to be everything to everyone, and as a small practice, that's not something you have to be.

Yeah. And I think the other part too is when you're your your own clinic and you're the own brand. If you wanna do something, you have an idea, you talk to your team, hey, we should do this. Let's do it. Boom.

Done. Some of these hospitals and corporate people, it's like, hey, we got this idea. Oh, it's gonna go through the channels. By the time they eventually agreed to it, the event was gone. It finished two months ago.

Speed is important.

No. That that that's a perfect lead into the second point is that that you can move fast and they can't, you know. So if you wanna run a promotion, if you wanted to, you know, decide to to shift course, you wanna change a little bit of your website messaging, you can do it today or tomorrow. Yeah. It's not something that has to go through a committee.

It's not something you have to get, you know, hundreds of thousand dollars of marketing budget around. You know, hospital marketing is that they have all these compliance reviews, legal approvals. There's so many steps they have to do so they, you know, they can't set up a simple social media marketing plan or run some Instagram ads. That's a test to see if they can get more views or more visibility for a certain type of maybe swift work therapy or a type of surgical procedure that they just kind of got trained on. That's something that's gonna take them months, if not years.

But you being a small practice, you can move fast and see and do things that that just they just definitely can't do.

Yeah. And I I witnessed that firsthand when I saw my clinic. And because I was still in touch with everyone that was working there. But when I first sold it, they said, oh, can you hang around for a few months to just help us with some of the marketing? Not a problem.

I would come up with an idea, and I would just start doing it. Next thing I'd be getting emails going, oh, hang on. You can't just do that without first ticking all these boxes and we have to have meetings and and by the time oh, okay. I'll stop. So I stopped.

By the time they got around to give me, yeah, you can do it now, went, oh, no. It's passed. It doesn't apply anymore. That was so slow. And and I learned from that telling a lot of coaching clients.

You're gonna be corporate in your town. Have no fear. You you will run around them so quickly. Before they know what happened, you you've already moved ahead.

Oh, that's a perfect example. Also, you know, marketing rewards speed and relevance. So if you see a relevant event that's happening a month from now or two weeks from now, you have an opportunity to be a sponsor or give a talk to that to that group that's a relevant group. Maybe it's kind of the ideal patients you wanna have come to the practice. You don't have to go through steps as far as, oh, who do I get authorization from to have permission to go talk to those people.

Right? It's like, you know it's a good opportunity. You know it's your target audience. You can just go do that. Right?

So, you know, whether it's local events or, you know, we talked about marketing channels sometimes changing. Google being, like, kind of a black box. You're never sure what's what's working from quarter to quarter or, you know, from year to year. It's not even feels like month to month. You have to be able to adapt, and and a larger organization just can't adapt as fast or so you'll be able to kind of you're able to outperform these slower moving, you know, bureaucracies, whether it be a multi specialty clinic over a large hospital system.

So, you know, if a podiatrist, you know, I work with notice, like, a local high school track team, you know, is having a great season. You know, maybe he's, you know, asking about, you know, the the coach of, you know, as far as are there any injuries on the team or things I could do. You can have this quick personalized interaction with someone after you realize some important information. Right? Maybe you wanna see runners in sports medicine.

So that for a hospital system to set something up like that, it would take, like I said, you know, a contract and months and years of that kind of developing that relationship before you you could kind of really set set in stone and make a difference. But when you're, you know, a smaller practice, you have a faster runway to get a lot of these things done.

Yeah. It's even when you mentioned too about who's your patient, about how your ideal patient, you can make that decision and just run with it. Usually, these bigger companies, if they've got multiple locations, they I found most of them, they get very broad. They don't have an ideal patient. They just wanna take everybody because that's all they're chasing is volume, not less numbers with a higher fee.

They just want they'll they'll charge less just to get the volume to make the numbers up.

Well, it's just kind of that internal system. Right? Like, they have primary care doctors that are, you know, referring these patients to you, and it becomes uncomfortable to, like they don't literally set up referral path turns in a way or pathways in a way that they don't they don't always know who likes to see sports medicine, who doesn't. You're you're the foot and ankle guy in that group. Right?

So I'm gonna send you that stuff. So you're gonna see diabetic wounds and sports medicine, and and maybe you wanna have a well rounded practice and, like, that's something that you enjoy doing. But once you find out the kind of patients you wanna treat and the kind of care you like to do, don't you have a lot of those podiatrists don't have a lot of choice that you being the private practice do. So it's a huge opportunity to set yourself apart from them and kind of, you know, let people see that. And this this kinda comes to another point.

Point three is that your your patient experience is better, and you need to tell people about that. So in the hospital practices often have longer wait times for appointments. You know, these multi specialty clinics as well. You know, urgency clinics will just refer people to specialists. They not really treat anyone when some so people can have a better experience with you than an urgency care clinic.

You know, there's kinda less continuity of care when when those things happen. So you probably offer, you know, faster appointments, direct access, a consistent relationship. They're not gonna jump through the primary care doctor and then, you know, another referral, and then then to you it's it's a direct relationship. So, you know, the problem is that the patients don't know until they've had that experience sometimes that you were that option. So in order to be seen as an option, you need to tell them, you know, in your marketing, replying to reviews, you know, sending out newsletters.

Don't assume that patients understand the difference between you being a podiatrist in a private practice and a podiatrist that's working in a large monthly specialty or a a large group that's, you know, private equity finance. It's like multiple occasions, but they're just not kind of a well oiled machine.

Yeah. The other part too with the patient experience, you may have a patient come in and sit in front of you. They tell you something. And when they tell you something, it might be something they experience walking into the building or it could be the car park. It might be a smell of something in the clinic, or they have the like or dislike.

As soon as you hear that, you can go, oh, okay. I'm unaware of that. Especially, say for example, this happened to us. It was a a patient walked in and said, I can't stand that glue smell. What glue smell?

We couldn't smell it because we were so used to it. Then when some other patients came in, we said, do you smell glue in here? They went, yeah. Yeah. You smell it all the time.

I said, do you like it? They went, no. Not particularly. But it was just something we were totally unaware. As soon as we knew that, we set the gluing up in a different area.

Pretty much started the next day. Got someone onto it, had a builder come in, moved things around, put an air vent in, bang, glue smell gone, and then we made sure there was other air freshener things to make the air smell more pleasant. That decision was made within twenty four hours. Action within about forty eight became the whole new system within, yeah, thirty six hours, seventy two hours. It was it was so fast.

And that would never happen in a a corporate or hospital setting.

That that feedback and and kind of improvement loop is super short. Right?

It was Yeah.

Patients saying something to your staff. It came to you. You're the decision maker, you can make things happen, and you can put it into into motion. Like we talked about, you know, there's there's so much bureaucracy in red tape. If that were to be a a well based practice or in a multi specialty clinic, this it just wouldn't move as fast.

Yeah. That's just the way it works. So and when we're talking about like, you know, telling your patients, you know, telling people about it, you know, we're not saying you know, definitely, there's lots of great hospital podiatrists out there or multi specialty podiatrists. I'm not trying to attack what they're doing, but

Yeah.

It's important to point out the differences between yourself and kind of what they offer. So they're using certain terminology in your marketing on your website. Things like, you'll see the same doctor every visit, you know, appointments available this week, you know, locally owned and personally managed, direct access to your podiatrist. Now your your decisions made by your doctor and not a committee. So I mean, these things people relate to, you know, there there's power in being this the little guy.

And so you need to make sure you're taking advantage of those opportunities and those kind of marketing angles when you're doing it because, you know, patients will connect with docs, you know, without kind of naming names. But, you know, putting this message kinda on your website, your homepage, Google business profile, you know, different places are gonna make you viable before they even click anything. They're gonna they're gonna notice that difference between you and the bigger, you know, multi specialty clinic or hospital based group.

Yeah. I think, like you said, sometimes you must point out the differences. Can't just assume that people will notice the difference. Sometimes the things that are most obvious, you need to just remind them of what's actually happening.

For sure. And then leading into, like, the next point is that, you know, your reviews are about you and your staff, and theirs are kind of bit they're they're larger organizations, so they're gonna have a larger surface area of of things that are not necessarily about the doctor and the staff so much. When you're in a small practice, I mean, you're gonna get occasional thing about a waiting room or, you know, parking lot or something. But for the most part, it's it's their they get in to see you so quickly. Their experiences with you and your staff that it makes sense that they're gonna write about that.

But, you know, there's a lot more if you have a you know, you're you're in a big group or a big hospital who get lost in those larger buildings. There there's lots of other ways that their reviews can go. So hospital systems usually have mixed reviews because patients are reviewed dozen of departments or hundreds of providers, you know, under one listing. Maybe they're told to give, you know, either they kinda get a not initially generic review request, but it's from that entity. Right?

And that's that's where their primary care doctor is. That's where their physical therapist is. Or, you know, there's multiple doctors that are at that large group. So maybe they're not totally sure about where it's supposed where it's to be funneled. Right?

So, you know, a 3.8 average that includes kind of bad you know, emergency room experiences, billing disputes, parking complaints. You know, a lot of that is kind of weeded out when it comes to podiatry clinic. Sometimes you do have similar things pop up, but a lot I find a lot more in smaller practice. It's it's primarily on, you know, patient care, doctor patient interaction, the kind of the direct kind of result they got from that foot and ankle procedure. But when you're a larger group, there's kind of more room for confusion or for less straightforward reviews.

Well, you can see that happening because if you were at a large hospital and you had a a good experience with the physio, but a terrible experience with a primary care doctor, and then you get somebody in the hospital, hey. Do wanna write us a review? You could be bagging that over a hospital, but the the physio gets dragged into that that bad review, or the podiatrist gets dragged into that that bad experience.

Absolutely. And what happens too sometimes is that, you know, people look at reviews before they come in, and they know they're going to that large multi specialty group for the hospital system, and they may not search for the podiatry department or the name of the doctor. They just, know, look at that little system. Hospital reviews are are basically really noisy.

Yeah.

There's not really, like there there's not the same keywords. There's not the same, like it doesn't give them a clear idea of what they're gonna get. So, you your your reviews are more of a signal because it's talking about foot and neck or the things or the care or the doctor or the staff. You know? So I really recommend that, you know, people make reviews a consistent part of the of your practice because when you every satisfied patient correspond with their view, you're gonna get you know, when you ask every patient, you're gonna get some positive and negative ones.

Right? But, you know, when you respond to the you know, every every review that you get, it's gonna show a certain level of human connection. People are gonna see that you're actively engaged. You know, when you ask, you know, coach patients slightly, you know, say, hey. If you're comfortable, you know, would it be possible for you to leave a review about the care you received here?

A lot of other patients in name of your hometown would love to to know where to get great foot and ankle care. So when reviews mention these specific conditions, if they're willing to to do them, you can't ask them to do that. But it's gonna really help them The the future patients that are looking for information about these services, they really feel well informed before they even decide where to make an appointment.

Yeah. The well, you've talked about reviews a few times in a couple of the previous episodes, but I think this is even more important to just make sure you're doing that, especially if you've got well, I'm not quite sure. Say in America, for example, last year, the Christian gym, because people driving in their car might be thinking about this. But do most towns, we've got the private podiatrist, most hospitals will have a podiatrist on staff that is going to be a competitor. Is that, like, the is that the norm?

I would say in medium sized towns, like towns over in the kind of the 80 to a 100,000 a person range

Yeah.

And and higher, those those types of towns are gonna have probably will have a podiatrist or a few podiatrists in either the hospital system or it'll be a large multi specialty clinic that will hire podiatrists as well.

Okay. So it is it is a common thing. So this is why it's even more common when it comes to reviews.

Yeah. For sure.

Okay. What's next?

Last point is something we kind of already touched on a little bit, I think, but I just wanna kinda nail it home is that, you know, you can specialize and these larger, you know, entities have to generalize. So hospitals offer everything. They have to. You know, their podiatry department is one of 50 service lines.

Yeah.

You can go deep on everything specific, you know, sports podiatry, pediatric foot care, diabetic limb salvage, you know, MIS bunion surgery. Whatever your strength is, you can own that niche in ways a hospital department never will. So when someone searches sports podiatrist or diabetic foot doctor, you are the answer. So the hospital is, you know, just one of the answers potentially, but like I said, they have so many departments that it just gets their message gets diluted while yours could be very strong.

And you can also reject certain things if you don't wanna do it. So if you don't wanna do ulcers, you can go, sorry, don't do ulcers. But hospital can't do that. They must do that. So as you said, you you can take away things you don't wanna do, focus on the things you do wanna do, and become far more specialized in those particular areas.

Especially if the areas that you really enjoy and they're also well paying areas.

So you can pick, you know, one, two, three different kind of specialties within podiatry and kinda build your marketing around that, you know, by creating kinda dedicated pages on our website. You know, list the you can list those specific services on your Google business profile, creating content about those conditions. There's a lot of different things you can do to become seen as that local expert. So, you know, when patients have specific problems, they wanna see that specialist. They don't wanna see kind of a a generalized podiatrist necessarily.

I mean, when you specialize, you become the obvious first choice. Like you said, I'm I'm happy there are hospitals. I'm not trying to, like I said, downgrade on the the great care that they provide. But as a private practice, you have to find those areas where you can shine and you can show your expertise, and this is one way of doing it is to to show what you specialize as opposed to just kind of being a general podiatrist.

The other part too is we know the hospitals aren't listening to this podcast, but the private podiatrists are. So they're the ones that that's the same thing. They get this information. It's up to them to listen to this and go, I'm gonna take action on it straight away, or they can act like a hospital and do nothing. Have a committee meeting about it.

So it's a big difference.

Hopefully, it'd be the the first one.

Yeah. I think so. So how do we wrap this episode up?

Yeah. Let me just recap. I would say first, just know that you are your clinic's brand, so put yourself front and center. Second, you can move fast. Don't move fast and break things, but you can move faster than they can.

Yeah.

Third, your patient experience is better. So you need to make sure you tell people about it. That's not being immodest. It's it's okay to let, you know, let people know who you are, what you treat, and kind of how they can receive great care from you. Fourth is that your reviews, you know, are focused and powerful compared to their kinda more diluted reviews.

And fifth is that, you you can specialize in ways that hospitals can't. So that's really kind of a superpower in a way. So I'd really recommend that people stop, you know you know, stop thinking like that you're an underdog. I think there's a little bit of maybe hungry dog runs fast, but, you know, yes, hospitals, they have more money. But money doesn't automatically kinda win this game.

Right? So, you know, while, you know, Blockbuster had a a much larger empire than Netflix did. And over time, you know, Netflix kinda came and disrupted them. So know that you have some some advantages that they can buy. I would say the actual step that I would recommend for this week is that, you know, take one of these advantages and build, you know, one piece of marketing around this advantage.

You know, update your website maybe with a feature that you wanna have more prominently. Post something that a hospital couldn't necessarily post, and emphasize your patient experience and your messaging. That's just kinda one thing you can do. So, you know, if you're not sure where to start, you know, you can check out you know, you can get in touch with myself or Tyson. I'm jim at podiatry growth dot com.

And Tyson, what how can people reach out to you?

If you just go to my website, t f oh, email's tf@tysonfranklin.com, or just go to my website, tyson franklin dot com. And like what you said about I just wrote this down in in my brain book. Be a disruptor. There's actually be a disruptor. Be it be like Netflix.

Just disrupt the what people expect podiatry is always going to be, and be a little bit different.

Absolutely. I think there's definitely a little bit of hospital competition in in these different areas we're talking about. So it's real, but it's not unbeatable. So like I said, don't try to be a smaller version of the hospital. It it kinda copycat their marketing.

That's the worst thing you could do. Just try to be something that they can never be, and I think you'll be very happy with with your results.

Okay. Anything else you wanna say before we

wrap up? No. I think we're good.

Nailed it. Okay, Big Jim. I will see you next week.

Have a great, Tyson.

Okay. See you. Bye.

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