Why Building Credibility is Better than Paying for Advertising

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 as always by my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's going today?

I am fantastic today, big Jim. My life is just good. That's all I can say. Life is good. Can't complain.

It's a good way to go through life with that positive mental attitude.

You know what they always say? If When when you complain to other people, if you come out and you complain, they reckon 50 of people don't care, and the other 50% are happy that you've got problems because they have them as well.

That's a pretty funny statistic.

It's it is. It's one of those things. Have you ever you've been somewhere and you'll have some note and you'll ask them, oh, how's your day going? And then they tell you, and you're like, I really didn't need to know that much about it. It was just give me a happy it's good, and just move on to something else.

Anyway, today, we are talking about here's my topic. It is why building credibility is better than paying for advertising. Good topic.

Yes. As someone who advertises for my clients, I'm I'm curious to hear hear what you have to say today.

Well, it's one of those things. It's not saying that this is the only way to do it. It's it's probably by the time I finish this, you then combine it with paid advertising and you're gonna get absolutely fantastic results. But basically, this episode is less about spending money and more about spending intention. So thinking about more about what you're doing.

It's about how trust moves in the real world, not just results that you see on a, like, a dashboard in your Facebook ads manager or something like that. First thing is Sure. This is what normally happens. Most podiatrists are trying to buy trust. So they'll read they'll run an ad and it'll say, yeah, how great they are or it'll say how experienced they are.

Patients don't care. How many years they've been practicing? Oh, I've been practicing for twenty five years. And and then they wait for the phone to ring or their online bookings to absolutely come flowing in. But the uncomfortable truth is advertising doesn't create trust.

It only rents attention. Something to ponder and think Yeah.

No. I'm just thinking like no. It's yeah. We live in an attention economy, but definitely you can't you can't buy trust in the way that you can buy attention.

Yeah. So credibility on the other hand, it it's basically traveling through people, not through online platforms. And I think when podiatrists can actually understand this, your whole marketing strategy will will change. Because it's not saying don't run ads. It's just remembering that you've got paid advertising here, but but trust and credibility is on the other side.

You therefore, when you understand that, you stop just jumping onto whatever the next hot thing is. You see the podiatrist down the road doing some clever things on Instagram. Don't just jump on that because that's what everybody else is doing. Or when you see an example of, hey. This is John the podiatrist here in an extra $40,000 last month last month using our single email campaign.

But what I'm always curious about, I I wanna see John again. What did you do the month after that, John? And then the month after that, and the month after that. If it brought in an extra $40 this month, did it keep doing that every month with that one single email campaign? Probably not.

Yeah. Unlikely. Right? That you get a lot of those kind of people hooked with the the 40 new patients or let you know, the give I'll give you the secret and you'll your doors will swing wide open forever, and yeah, that's probably a lot a lot of hype and not much substance behind it.

Well, especially the beginning part of 2026, there are a couple of particular companies I have never seen them advertise. I could not go into a single online platform without seeing them promoting what they were doing. Their their email campaign, their their program that's gonna make your 2026 better. They were everywhere. Now it's either two things happening.

Either they're making a ton of money from it, which is why they keep doing or it used to work in the past running it, so it's up. But now everyone realizes it doesn't necessarily always work, and they're doing it more because they actually need to get more clients.

Yeah. I guess we'll never know. They they kinda keep those secrets to themselves, I think.

Yeah. I have to ask them. So so let's look at paid advertising versus building credibility. Advertising, as I said before, is basically paid attention, and you're actually saying, look at me, whereas credibility is trust that's earned over time. That someone you trust has already checked them out for you.

That's what the the credibility is all about. So there's a big difference. Paid advertising is one that interrupts. The other arrives preapproved. And that's why referrals almost always convert faster than ads.

And here's the important thing to note. The same people that promote their amazing email campaign will also tell you that referral marketing is dead, and they're so wrong. And this was the big thing that was spruced in 2025 when they were saying, oh, referral marketing is dead. You need to use these email campaigns. And I'm like, no.

Referral marketing has never been dead because I know that it works.

You know, it's powerful to have the trust of other physicians and when they refer to you, that that trust is transferred. So it yeah. It's a lot more maybe hard earned over the years, but it's one of those things like a snowball rolling downhill, the more momentum and trust you build with other local health care and non health care providers, the the better things are gonna be for you and for practice.

Oh, definitely. So the third thing I want to mention is just why referrals convert faster than ads. And when I say convert, I'm talking about a patient going from not knowing you to trusting you quickly. And when a patient walks into your clinic because another health provider, say it was a physio, for example, sent them, it says that they trust you. There used to be a doctor in Cairns, doctor Tony Turner, and whenever he referred a patient to my clinic, he used to refer maybe half a dozen every month.

Guaranteed 100%. As soon as they walked through the door, they'll say, here's a referral from doctor Turner. He said, weave your magic. He'd already told them, you need to go and see Tyson. Need to go to this clinic.

Well, you need to go to this clinic. Ask the Tyson if you can't see Tyson. See somebody else, but you don't need to go anywhere else. This is the clinic you need to go to. Almost a 100%, no matter what treatment plan we put in front of them, they would follow it because the trust was already built.

No different to if your your child's football club recommends you or recommends you to another person. That is actually that trust is built. Or you've got a a friend or or a mother says to one of their friends, oh, you should go and do this podiatry because they are absolutely amazing. Once again, the trust has already been built for you. So you're not starting from zero, which when you when you pay for advertising and that person walks through your door, there's no trust.

You're starting pretty much right down the bottom of the trust letter. Instead of referrals, you're almost starting halfway up the trust letter. Then it's up to you to take them up those steps as you go on. So there's there's no skepticism. They're not comparing you to another provider down the road, or they're not price shopping.

So if a friend says to you, you should go and see this provider, you're not gonna go, oh, okay. I'm just gonna check out some other friends and see which provider they recommend. If you trust your friend, you're actually gonna trust that recommendation.

That's huge to have that that transfer of trust because like you said, you're not starting from zero. You've already got some goodwill you know when someone refers you a patient, they're with a doctor. You know if Tyson Franklin you know preferred to Jim then he must be the best thing you know of all time.

Has to be.

You know joking aside, is a super powerful way to to to kind of to build a practice. And like I said, it's not it doesn't scale as much you know at least at the beginning. But you know as you get better known in the community, you make more of these connections, you're networking, people trust you, you're referring back to people. It's a self reinforcing habit that can really help a practice not only maintain, but but grow strongly.

Oh, definitely. And it it's the the next thing I wanna talk about is just borrowed credibility versus self proclaimed expertise. Where a lot of clinics get stuck, they'll declare that that they are the leading clinic in town or they're experts in foot pain. And then when people read that, they go, yeah. Sure.

Yeah. Of course you are. Yeah. Now you might be. You might be the the best thing going around.

But if you keep going out and just shouting it out to people, they're like, yeah. Well, the guy down the road said he was the best. I don't know who to trust. And and to me, it's no different to, like, say, my coaching services. I could tell everyone listening here right now that I am the best podiatry business coach on the planet with proven results.

K? Read the testimonials on my website. There's the proof. And it may be true, but I'll guarantee my inbox is not full of podiatrists messaging me, yeah, every week wanting to work with me because I haven't built any trust with them. But if a podiatrist that I had worked with was friendly with somebody else and they said, hey.

We've seen your clinic grow really well. Who would you recommend I talk to? And if they said, Ayesha Guncy Tyson, straight away, the trust level is a lot higher, and therefore, people are more inclined to actually follow it. So borrower credibility is you're getting the credibility from somebody else. If my GP said I had to see somebody or a friend said, hey.

You should work with this podiatrist, their friends are actually gonna follow that advice. If your physio said they only refer to you or only refer to your clinic, then patients are gonna go, well, if that's the only clinic you work with, and I like you, therefore, that podiatry clinic must be okay. And or if there was a running club that you're part of, and you were talking to someone at that running club, and you said, who would you recommend? They said, all our running members go to this podiatry clinic Straight away, it's a no brainer. So you can you can see the obvious difference between you yelling going in and say, I'm the expert, or other people saying, no.

These are the people you should see. They're the experts.

That's a perfect example of, you know, you talking about yourself or is other people talking about you? And when other people talk about you it's it's much more substantiated. People are gonna believe it more than they would just you talking about yourself and saying how great you are. Because anybody can say that, These are unsubstantiated claims. You know you can put that on your website, you can tell everyone that you're the best thing ever, but until someone is willing to put their reputation on the line for you in that way, yeah it's just it's it's kinda night and day there.

Well, if you think about a friend came to you and they said, we're going out for dinner for our wedding anniversary. Where would you recommend we go for dinner? If they were a really close friend of yours and you said, well, this is where I would go, I'm putting my reputation on the line at the same time when I'm telling them to go to that restaurant. Because if they go there and have a really bad experience, they're never gonna listen to me again. So you're be very cautious on where you send them.

You're gonna send them somewhere where you know consistently it's always good. There might be somewhere that's been absolutely spectacular, and other times it's been okay. You may not go there. And I think health care is exactly the same. When somebody says they should come and see you, that person that has said that, whether it's a health provider or somebody else, they're putting their reputation on the line, which is that's why the trust level is built up so much quicker.

That totally makes sense.

So if you think about it, who actually lends credibility to podiatrists? Google doesn't. Instagram doesn't. Facebook doesn't. Your flashy business name or even your logo does not necessarily give you credibility.

Real credibility comes from people who have already earned trust with your ideal patients. Your GPs, physios, and other allied health professionals. If they have your ideal client and they've built trust with them, you need to tap into that. Sporting clubs and coaches. It could be even schools and teachers.

I used to go to my daughter's primary school, and they used to have a health day. And the school had asked me to come in and do a talk to a lot of the other parents. Having that school recommending me to all those kids' parents, that actually built all the credibility and trust for us. So there's other parents, other athletes. If you have an athlete in your clinic, that athlete will be telling other athletes about you, especially if they got a positive result.

But even your existing patients, you want your existing patients to become raving fans. These people influence other people's decisions.

Now these are people what we I would call like practice multipliers. Right? You know, it's it's one person that talks to three people. And if you do that multiple times across many days, many weeks, many months, many years, you just get that positive word-of-mouth. And that's why people you know value word-of-mouth as much as they do.

But it's one of those things where you know advertising is like kind of a one to one to many. There's a specific message, it's not really customized, it's not really you know, meant for that one person. But you know, when you make these relationships in front of you know, a running club that has 50 members, or you know, a coach that has you know, 30 people that are coaching, or an athlete that has you know, 15 other people on their team that want them to be back on the court or back on the field, and and you make a difference for those people and they speak about you, you know, that those are, you know, it's not you're not you're not scaling instantly, but you're building up scale with these practice multipliers.

Yeah. I I know back in the day when TV advertising was popular and advertising and the newspaper was popular, we did all that. But at the same time, we really worked in our referral network. And then as the years went on and the decades went past and TV dropped and newspapers dropped, our referral, like I said, it was a slow burn over a period of time. It kept growing.

So no matter what else was popular, whether it was Google Ads or any form of online advertising or offline, our referral network kept growing. It it gave us such a solid base. And even up until I remember the one of the last days I was in my clinic before I sold it, and a patient came in to see me that I had met a networking event, and he'd been a patient for twenty five years. And we were laughing about how we first met at one of the earliest networking events I went to and how he became a raving fan of my clinic and how many people he had referred to me over decades. It was just you you couldn't put a price on that actual relationship.

Absolutely. That those human those one to one relationships are are invaluable.

So the last thing I wanna talk about is just why ads stop a credibility compound. So here's the brutal mathematical truth. When you stop paying for ads, the attention stops immediately. It may surprise people. But there's no online or old school advertiser that will keep letting you talk to their audience if you stop paying.

They never have, never will. It's just just the way it works. You may have been advertising in a particular spot. Just say, for example, you were it was local magazine, a monthly publication in your area, and you've been advertising there every month for ten years. The day you stop advertising with them, they won't say, you know what, Jim?

You've been so good to us over the last decade and spent mega bucks with us. We're gonna let you just run your ads for the next six months for free because we like it. Now, you stop paying them, it stops. But your credibility through networking referrals, it stacks up layer on top of layer on top of layer long term. Every relationship you build keeps working long after you've had that coffee meeting, that networking event, or you've done a presentation somewhere.

Credibility compounds while ads just expire. As soon as you stop, thud. The advertising stops. The the the audience stops as well.

Yeah. It's it's immediate uptick and immediate downturn. Right? So that's that's the the downsides of, you know, advertising, the advertising world.

And that's why you should be doing both. You should be doing online marketing. You should be doing paid ads. But at the same time, you should be trying to build trust and credibility in networking over a period of time. So here's an action step to build your credibility map.

Here's a couple of things I'm gonna get people to actually do. A practical thing you can actually do this week. I'm gonna go over this in detail in my upcoming Podiatry Marketing Masterclasses. So if you happen to be going to it, you're gonna get the big scale of this, but here's the short version. Here's the brief explanation.

And if you're listening to this after I've done a marketing masterclass, you missed out. You missed out. You should've gone to it. Anyway, first thing is who is your ideal patient? We talked about this before.

Describe them in detail. Who who is your ideal patient? Who would you love to see more of in your clinic? And now, the second thing is who already has your ideal patient's trust? So think about who you'd really like, but who already has the trust of those people?

And think beyond health care. Just think within your community and other areas. Where are these people actually hanging out? And this this is on the third thing. Where do these people gather?

Are they is there certain clinics or these clubs? Are there schools? Are there certain meetings they go to? Are there online groups that they hang out on? And then the fourth thing is how can you add value first?

Think about education. Think about how can you support these groups. So we used to do a lot of work with some of the sporting clubs here that we provided money so that they could get equipment. We were supporting that club. We didn't ask for anything.

Every now and then, they'd ask us to come in to do a a talk. It might have been a strapping demonstration. Didn't ask for anything for that, but it built credibility over a period of time. Yeah. Are there any collaborations that you can do?

The main part about this is when you're building adding value first is you're not trying to sell anything. You're just giving value for the sake of giving value, knowing that it's actually gonna help people. The final tip is don't just ask for referrals. Instead, earn trust and relevance from your potential referrers.

I think that's great. The value first thing really resonates with me. I know that you know, a lot of times when the the people that I'm working with, it wasn't that they did a Google search and just found me or I ran ads and they found me. Either they you know, they either heard that I was good, but then also they they see that I'm giving away a lot of information that sometimes other providers you know want them to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for. So yeah, if you can find ways to provide value first to these referral sources, it's gonna be a long term win for you and for them as well.

Well, what are we up to? Episode 200 and something at the moment. Don't know. This is two sixteen, two seventeen.

And Two seventeen, I think.

Yeah. Two seventeen. If you look at the the amount of information we have given away over 217 episodes, if every podiatrist went back and just took notes from every one of those things, it's the amount of information there is incredible. But it's still we'll have another 217 episodes in this. Because the marketing is ongoing.

It's always changing and it's evolving, which is why people need to keep listening.

I mean, we probably have over a hundred hours of of content for people to to sift through. So maybe at some point, we should write a book together and and put that out there. So Oh,

yeah. We are writing a book, Jim. I think we mentioned that earlier. I think we mentioned that in early episode. We are writing a book, and it is coming out very soon.

So stay tuned for that.

For

sure. Okay, Jim. That's pretty well covered what I wanna talk about today. Do you wanna say anything else before we wrap up?

No. That was fantastic, Tazeen. I thought know, really touch on some good stuff there, and I always enjoy hearing your take on you know, the ways of building trust, getting referrals, and you know, whether that's better than advertising.

Okay. Okay, Jim. I will see you next week.

Sounds great, Tyson. Okay.

See you later. Bye.

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