Will Marketing Actually Work for My Podiatry Practice?

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, my good friend all the way over in Canada, it is big Jim Mac, also known as Jim McDannald. How are doing today, Jim?

I assume I'm doing well. We're it's always snowy here in Canada, and this winter is no different. So I'm just bunkering down, working hard about these podcasts with you, but also just, yeah, working hard for the clients that I've to my marketing business now. So things are good here in Montreal.

It's funny. When we were in North America, December, January, and we kept saying, oh, because we're there for for Christmas, nice and cold, and we're thinking, jeez, I hope we get snow. And we had one day where it sort of snowed and wet rain type thing. Everything was really icy. The roads closed down.

Everything was chaos, and we're thinking, we are so glad we only got it that one day. And since then, because I'm always watching the weather reports from where we were, like, even places in Texas where we were, that was 25 degrees while we were there, that's Celsius. All of sudden, it's all snow snow everywhere. So I'm glad we missed it.

Yeah. It's been an interesting start to 2026. You know, the the winter has definitely been one to remember for sure.

Yeah. And I know, but I I did a photo for Australia Day, and I'd posted it. And there's us palm trees, blue sky, sun is shining, and friends overseas are going, oh, if you I've just been shoveling for two and a half hours, and they reckon they shovel their driveways. And then just as they got all shoveled, the council or something comes past with the big trucks doing the roads, and it pushes all the snow back into their driveway again.

You get plowed in. They call that being plowed in. So, yeah, it's not uncommon occurrence in more, I guess, more suburban areas. It doesn't really happen here in Montreal because they they don't plow people in here. We have, basically, these, like, snow blowers that blow snow directly into semi trucks.

Yeah. And the semi trucks take the snow away. So it's not yeah. We don't have the the same issues that some of those suburban places do.

Okay. Well, there's the weather report for this this part of the episode. So what are we talking about today?

Yeah. So it's a common question we're gonna address today that I get from a lot of people either that, you know, read my LinkedIn stuff or some of the people on my email newsletter. Sometimes people that email into our show is here is really like, will marketing actually work for my podiatry practice? I think people have been burned in the past. Yeah.

I think people have been burned in the past a little bit by what they think is marketing. You know? Oh, I do a website. I must I'm doing marketing. Like, and it's a piece of it, but, like, you know, if you're spending $500 a month on a website, are you really doing marketing?

Do you have a strategy? Is there you know, are there multi multiple facets? Are you measuring it? So that that's what we're gonna jump in today. And, you know, it's kinda that, you know, the 2026.

So, you know, people are thinking like, oh, I'm gonna market this. You know, this sounds good, but is it actually gonna work for my practice? Because, you know, there's a big hospital system down the road that's got a massive budget. People are seeing that these private equity backed groups are, you know, running ads, and they're just, incorporating a bunch of doctors clinics. And people are wondering if there's even room for private practice doctors to, you know, utilize marketing in an efficient way.

Yeah. I think what you said early on though just about they've done marketing in the past, and they may have done it themselves and weren't quite sure what they're doing, or they had a company that sold them on something and it didn't work. And all of sudden, they just they build up this barrier that, oh, their marketing doesn't work in podiatry. But it does because there's so many people that do it successfully.

Absolutely. And like you said, this isn't about whether marketing works. Like, it does work. It just this is about whether you believe it'll work for you. And that doubt is kind of keeping a lot of people from doing anything at all.

I talked to podiatrists every week who've convinced themselves that they're they're too small, they're too rural, they're too late in their career, or they're just too much of a generalist to really like have marketing work for them. So there's kind of, like you said, wall it off. They don't think it's something that that they should consider. But today, we're addressing kind of five real reasons, you know, why people's doubt that marketing will work and kind of what the data actually shows about practices, you know, that size or those types of practices.

So you're almost almost like myth busting.

Well, there's certain, you know, excuses or reasons why people will say, oh, I don't need to do that or those kinds of things and maybe a little bit of myth busting or just, you know, some wrong assumptions busting maybe. That's not quite as sexy as saying myth busting. But, yeah, that's what we're gonna jump into today.

Wrong assumption busting. I like that. Okay. So what's what's the wrong assumption? What's the first one we're gonna bust?

So the first one we're gonna bust in we might have talked about this on a previous show, but it's worth repeat repeating is that, you know, I'm competing against hospital systems. So therefore, any, you know, any money I spend on marketing is just awaits because there's these huge hospital systems. And, you know, you're right. You are competing against hospital systems, you're going to beat them because you they have a fatal weakness that you don't have, and that's that you can be specific and they can't. Their marketing has to work for their orthopedics department, their podiatry department, their vascular department, dermatology.

They have to do everything. Right? They say trusted care because they can't say best heel pain treatment in Portland. You know, you can. When someone searches, you know, ingrown toenail specialist near me, you don't need to have the biggest ad.

You just need to have the most relevant ad for that person. So, you know, I'm watching solo podiatrist outrank hospital systems for, I'd say, like, these high intense searches where, you know, patients are gonna make an appointment because they've optimized for exactly what people are searching for. You know, hospitals spend $50,000 a month, you know, on a Google search campaign, but a solo doc can spend, you know, $1,200 and that specificity can beat the size of the budget.

Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more because they do. The big hospitals, they do have they have massive budgets. But he said, when they're marketing, they they're also very beige with what they're doing. Whereas Yep.

A smaller clinic is, well, what is it what do you want more of in your clinic? You can you can sort of talk about that more more than what the actual big hospitals can.

It's just more that, you know, they have such large websites in so many departments. There's so many like kind of hoops that people have to jump through, you know, with kind of that website experience. So, you know, it's just not as very it's not as specific. So when you own search terms like, know, name of your town and podiatrist, name of your town and specific type of condition, it's a real game changer. And I'd say that, like, you know, solo and small practices, you know, average, you know, somewhere in the ballpark of eight to 12% on, like, click through conversion rate to make an appointment.

But, you know, hospital system, their podiatry page is only three to 5% because it just it just doesn't you know, they have the scale, but they're not as precise when it comes to their marketing that you you can do that.

Yeah. Well, it makes sense. Because I know if I was a consumer and I was looking for something specific, if you've got a small business that is when you're searching comes up in there on their website is talking exactly what you were searching for compared to going to a hospital website. You're gonna flick through piles of pages just to find the information that you're after.

No. Absolutely. And I've seen examples of some of the clinics that I've worked with it. You know, they're ranking for things like sports podiatrists like name of city. You know, while hospitals rank much much lower because they they don't have the the opportunity or the the scale to make specific types of pages on the website.

So whether you're building it, you know, you're running ads to certain things or you're just doing, you know, basic kind of SEO or optimizing, you know, your website for things like ChatGPT and those things, they're gonna be way way behind you because it's the amount of topics that they have to cover compared to what you can cover in a foot and ankle clinic is just it's it's scales of a massive scale difference.

Yeah. And what would you say the conversion rate? So so the conversion rate for a small practice is a lot better than the conversion rate for a hospital?

No. Absolutely. Like I said, the kind of the the kind of industry standard is somewhere between eight to 12%, you know, people that click through that are gonna make an appointment at your your clinic. When it comes to hospitals or larger health systems, it's somewhere generally three to 5% because, you know, even though the running ads, like I said, there's sometimes not that initial that nice path to making the appointment that's quite as clear when you have, you know, bit of a smaller website that's a little bit more navigable than, like, a big hospital based website.

Well, I hope anyone who's listening to this now who is in a smaller practice and does have a larger hospital nearby that may have a number of podiatrists or orthopedic people in there, I hope they take note of that and start and start actually what we gotta say, we have people listen to this podcast, actually apply what they hear.

That'd be fantastic if they do that.

So what's what's the second thing you're gonna bust?

Yes. So the next kind of excuse that we hear every once in a while is, you know, I'm in a small market. Small market podiatrists have the best marketing ROI that I've ever seen when it comes to, you know, their abilities to kinda dominate a market. Here's why. If there's lower competition plus higher trust, you know, the town of 40,000 people, you don't need to rank nationally.

You just need to rank locally. And there's probably one, maybe two other podiatry practice competing for the same searches. I I compare that to, like, Phoenix or Miami, you know, where you're fighting against 40 practices. Small market means you can dominate your Google business profile in, like, sixty to ninety days of basic optimization and getting some consistent reviews as well. I've seen practices in towns, you know, under 50,000 people get 80% or sometimes up to a 100% of the, like, Google Map visibility.

Right? So every time someone searches podiatrist name of town, this this one clinic is coming up almost a 100% of time in this top three. And, you know, it's a it's a smaller community, there's obviously less people there. But if you're you're seen by more of them, it can be very, very powerful. So your market size isn't a weakness.

It can be actually be an advantage or a moat sometimes.

Well, reckon smaller towns that have got podiatrists in there, they have such a great opportunity to almost own that town, to become the the big player in a small town. And I think if you don't get in there and market yourself now and and own that market, you know, the the the the overall market, if you sit on your bum and do nothing, somebody else will come along at some stage and they will do it. Do you have the perfect opportunity? You're in this small town. If nobody else is marketing, get in there and market yourself and become the leader for whatever it is that you wanna promote more of before the new guy, the younger guy who comes in who actually understands us, who listens to our podcast as well, and decides to actually do something.

Because there's a lot of podiatrists I know that they'll usually leave a smaller town and go to the big city to do their education. They may work in the bigger cities initially. There's a lot of them who are eager to go back to their hometowns if they can. So you gotta be aware of that and ready for it.

No. Absolutely. I've I've seen some of the the clients in the the clinics I've worked with. Right? There was just no organized marketing presence from any clinic in the entire, you know, greater, you know, metro area.

Maybe it's a a town in a metro area of, 50,000 to a 100,000, but there was no one that was really had a a website that converts or, you pages that were really specific to not only that town, but maybe it's different neighborhoods within town or the nearby communities. More of those great patients, you know, with the type of patients people wanted to treat. And when they see kind of a website that talks to them, you know, that's relevant to them, relevant to their location, the type of care they wanna receive, it's gonna be, you know, like a a beacon of light for them. And, know, you don't need a thousand patients a week. Right?

You just need, like, you know, 50 good new patients a month, and you're gonna have a a great great clinic. And that's why, you know, being in some these smaller communities, know, online reputation spreads faster and matters more. You know, we talked about whether it be reviews or online reputation, it's digital word-of-mouth. And obviously, you want real word-of-mouth, and you're able to do that in a smaller community by, you know, sponsoring different local events or teams, and there's ways to really be a important part of the fabric of that community. But when you're visible online plus doing some of that on the ground stuff, it's a it's a one two punch that's really, really tough to beat.

Yeah. I've got a couple of coaching clients who are in some are in really small towns and some slightly larger, and there may only be well, one of them, they're the only podiatrist in town, and they do. They they market themselves. They do all this because they know they want everybody in the town to know who they are. The other person, there's another podiatrist in town who's been there longer, but they have never done any marketing.

And so I got my client to do that marketing, and their business just grew so fast because having that small town, it's not difficult to for word-of-mouth to start spreading there.

Absolutely. And it's not only just like, you know, practice versus practice competition or who's who's, you know, ranking on Google and that's what those kind of things. Small markets often kind of have higher average patient value because there's kind of less competing on price for certain types of modalities and certain types of treatments. If you go somewhere where no one has ever done shop with there before, like, it's a bit of an open market in a way. Obviously, you have to charge a reasonable rate for something that people are willing to pay for, but, you know, if people are not price shopping, you know, like this person does, you know, six visits of Shopway for $1,200 versus this one does six visits for a thousand.

If there's less competition in those types of, you know, fee for service or different types of modalities, it could be a really important way or an interesting way to consider, you know, having a higher patient value with some of those different modalities you can provide.

I I do I like you said, I I I love small towns, and I think anyone who is a practitioner of small town, enjoy it, but build your business up the right way. Don't don't just think because you're in a small town and you might only be one or two there that everyone's just gonna know about you. You they're still gonna be searching because you need to show them why they wanna get the service from you in that small town and not jump on a train or jump in the car and drive an hour or two hours to a bigger city where it's time they're spend, it's money they're gonna spend to get there, And then they may they may end up paying the same amount that you could be doing in your own hometown.

That's an excellent point. Yeah. Just the convenient factor of being present locally is a a huge competitive advantage.

Yeah. When I moved to Cairns, the population at the time was eighty hundred thousand maybe. So it wasn't a huge place. And it was surprising when we started marketing ourselves, the amount of people that were coming to say, didn't know there was a podiatrist in town. Otherwise, they were fine here for thirty years before we got here.

And and then also the amount of people that come in and get orthotics or get other type of treatment from us, and they go, we are so glad that you're here. We used to fly to Brisbane to get this treatment done. They would jump on a plane or they drive four hours down to Townsville to get the same service that we were marketing that we did. But I know the other podiatrist that was here prior to me being here were providing the same services, but no one even knew they existed, which is why we kicked their butt. Oh, we kicked their butt in the end.

They don't they don't exist anymore. They're gone. History. Yeah. So what's what's next?

Guess what's next is the excuse that I don't have enough time to post every day.

Yep.

There's good news about that. You don't have to. The whole post daily on three platforms thing is advice for people trying to build, you know you know, a following or to be an influencer. And that's not the game you're playing or that's not the objective you have. You're trying to get patients.

Those are different goals, know. Most podiatry patients will find you through Google. You know, there's not gonna be that many people dying to be a follower on your Instagram following, you know. There can be some benefit of social when it comes to paid ads and getting visibility for your services. I think that's very valuable, from an organic perspective, no one's just gonna follow on Instagram.

They're in pain right now. They're searching for solutions right now. This means your marketing priority is showing up in search results and having a clear next step when they find you. One practice I work with, you know, post on social maybe once a month, literally once. They're trying to also post on Google business profile, which can be helpful as far as local rankings, but it's very deliberate and very kinda strategic in a way.

It's not just just random posts or happy birthday post or fourth of July or Australia Day posts. These are posts that, you know, like, type of post people should be doing, ones that, you know, show the personality of the clinic that can be beneficial and how you're involved within community. So really important that people spend time on the important things. Like I said, Google Business Profile, doing something weekly there, responding to reviews within twenty four hours. That could be a great way to add new patients.

So search, in my opinion, beats social for patient acquisition, especially on the organic side. It's just one of those things to consider.

Yeah. That is a really good point that you bring up because I know podiatrists will oh, they'll put something on TikTok and they might have something on YouTube, and then they're putting something on Instagram. Yeah. I do think your Google business profile page, that's the thing. When people are searching for a particular problem, they they they are the posts that they're gonna find.

They're not gonna be suddenly, I'm looking for someone to help me with my heel pain. Oh, here's someone on TikTok explaining something. Oh, here's someone on Instagram. Because they they go to those places for different reasons. So like you said, if if you're after patients, Google is where you need to be posting.

Yeah. I'd say that's the the majority of where your money needs to go. I think there is, you know, with the AI things coming up and and the fact that it's been kind of like the last ten years has been kind of the death of what we call brand marketing. You know, just kinda getting your name out there for awareness, but I think that's starting to kinda make a bit of a comeback. So, you know because really, even on Google, as much as it can be a great thing, if you're in a smaller area, you know, maybe 3% of the people in your in your town or your local area are looking for your services.

There can be some benefit, I think, to getting your name out there, whether it be in the community, whether it be through digital advertising. But when you're just get getting started and you're not sure that that that marketing works, or that you're just you're not really sure where to put your kind of first level of getting ROI on your marketing dollar, Google to me is still that place that you can just start off and experiment there and see if that's a channel that can drive those relevant prospective patients to your practice. Because for a long time, it's been that. Maybe things will change in the next five or ten years with AI, but right now, still, Google is that place to get people that are relevant local patients to come into your practice.

I definitely think with AI, things are going to change because, you know, you do searches now, and and what gets shown to you is different to what it was five years ago. But there there's still, like there's still basically a patient acquisition hierarchy, isn't there?

Yeah. So patient acquisition hierarchy, I'd say, number one, Google search. Number two, Google business profile, then reviews, your website, paid ads, and then social ads, I think, is kind of the the normal way of going about things. If you have someone in your office that loves to do social media organically, I'm not totally against it, but it should not be the main priority when it comes to, you know, where you're spending your time and money.

Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Makes makes total sense. I think if you've someone in your team who loves it, and it's not taking away from what they're employed really to be there for, if it was another podiatrist.

But if they really enjoy it, they're probably gonna they will post more often because they enjoy doing the put things together really fast. But, yeah, if you don't have anyone, you gotta you gotta put your time where you're gonna get the best return for your effort.

Absolutely. And you need to also be consistent. Like I said, on some of those channels, it's really really important. Like, Google Business Profile is not really a social channel. It's more to, like, show Google that you're being in interacting with their properties because they wanna keep people on Google, you know, in Google search, in Google AI mode.

And if you make those Google Business posts, they see that you're kinda playing the game with them, they're probably willing to give you more visibility than someone that's not posting on Google business profile, making those posts. And then, like I said, responding reviews is huge because then they see you're interacting with another Google property. And then, you know, having your yourself or someone you work with, you know, monitor your Google Ads from from a campaign perspective to make sure that it's spinning at the right rate and that you're optimizing each campaign in a way that, you know, maximize the amount of new patients that come into the clinic.

So how much time per week do you reckon people should be spending on this?

I I would say, like, from a Google Business profile thing, you know, when I do those posts, it just can be weekly things. So maybe it's just, you know, utilizing some of the topics you enjoy doing or the types of patients you wanna come in practice and bringing just a short post that should take less than, you know, five or ten minutes to post that. It's pretty simple. You know, because I use different kinds of monitoring software for when when reviews come in. So, you know, checking that at the end of the day just to see if there's been a new review that came in so you can respond to it away.

And then usually, like I said, Google Ads, you know, monitoring the campaigns is something where, you know, monitoring on a weekly basis to make sure that ad spend is going well, the the campaign the campaigns are optimized. But, yeah, that that's kind of the what I recommend.

Okay. So what's next? What's number four?

Number four is one of my favorites. It's I've tried marketing before and it didn't work.

Oh, but you should

get let me guess.

Give it up then. Just stop. You should just stop marketing then.

Yeah. Let me guess what happened. You spend money on something. Maybe it was a website redesign, maybe some Facebook ads, maybe a local magazine ad, and you didn't see results results, so you stopped. You know, here's what probably went wrong.

You just did one thing in isolation without a complete kind of patient journey or a complete strategy to kinda implement. You know, great website doesn't work if your Google business profile sends people to the wrong hours. Google Ads don't work if your landing pages, you know, take eight seconds to load and aren't relevant to them. And Facebook Ads don't work for podiatry because, you know, sometimes people aren't aren't scrolling around on Facebook looking for their foot doctor. And they are they're doing it on Google.

I think there is some benefit to paid ads to get that visibility and that brand marketing. But most marketing that quote unquote didn't work was the right tactic in the wrong sequence or the wrong tactic entirely. So the question is, does market it's it's not, you know, does marketing work? It's did you do the right marketing in the right order?

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a really good point because I I I would say, it wouldn't matter what marketing tactic I've used in the past whether it's been online or offline. It's always failed when I've done it at the wrong time. A perfect example would be beginning of the year.

Say it's it's January, February, for example, and we still have this campaign. The party's over, and it's time to exercise. But a sore feet hurting, if so, come see the foot doctors or pro arch podiatry. It was all one of the spills that we used to have. Running that same ad in September would not work because it wouldn't make any sense.

That's totally the wrong time. So sometimes you can have a great campaign, great visuals, everything about it, but if you put it in the wrong place at the wrong time and you're talking to the wrong audience, then it's never going to work. And sometimes, think someone will see another podiatrist do something and they go, oh, this seems to work for them. I'm gonna use that, not realizing there may be a different strategy behind what they're doing. If you don't have a strategy, just copying them, it's going to be a failure every time.

Those it's also setting kind of expectations. Right? You know, like we talked about Google search ads being very relevant for people that are ready to make an appointment. If you're expecting the same kind of ROI out of more general awareness, you know, whether it be Instagram post being paid for or, you know, a Facebook post or maybe you're putting something in print, you know, that's gonna take that's kinda like keeping you top of mind with people. That's like an email newsletter.

Like, don't think you need to have, like, for example, the best email newsletter in the business, but you need to have a really great headline. You really need to show people, you know, all the care you provide. Know, people giving you social proof that you're a great doctor and then giving them a way to transact and interact with you and make an appointment. Those things are important, but you have to make sure you have to do these awareness things, but also realize that each channel has its own kind of return on investment and having realistic expectation about what it does. So maybe start the most relevant things like Google search ads and knowing that you're not gonna be able to convert people quite as well onto the other channels, but having more of a a full funnel or a full kind of complement of different types of marketing strategies that will work and complement, like you said, at the right time together as opposed to, you know, if you're hoping to immediately get a lot of, you know, new patient visits from from Facebook or Instagram ads.

I think you're gonna be pretty pretty upset because it's gonna take a while for them to kind of work their way towards you from that kind of stuff. So knowing how to use these channels will help kind of eliminate some of the, you know, the, oh, this doesn't work for me kind of mentality.

No matter what strategy you use or you have, and then the tactics you're using, there's always gonna be that lag time between implementing it and then getting that return. Sometimes, you can just nail something. Yeah. It just happens to be perfect timing. Bit of luck involved, and you may do something, and straight away, you get this massive return that just happens to be perfect.

But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes there's that lag. You do something, you gotta wait before you get the return, which is why I always tell them once you start doing some form of campaign, don't do it and then just stop thinking, oh, it's not working. Just keep doing it and eventually, over time, it compounds and then you once the returns start coming in, you can ease off a little bit, but you've you've created the momentum in the community.

I'd say it's, you know, it's pretty similar what I hear from some people like, oh, I heard Google Ads work, so I'm gonna go make this campaign. I'm gonna run it back to the homepage of my website, And then they wonder why it doesn't convert. Right? There's there's so many off ramps and exits for people to basically, when they land on your homepage to go other places without making an appointment. So when you run Google search ads, for example, you need to have what we call a landing page, which is a page meant to convert the person into becoming a patient.

So there's clear calls to actions, the buttons are the right color, the text is the right kind of copywriting. It's, you know, I've been in a long enough, so I understand this and it it's like second nature to me, but for someone that just thinks Google Ads work, I'm gonna go pay Google a thousand dollars this month, send them to my homepage, and then magic is gonna happen. There has to be a lot of things set up in the right order for that to be successful.

Yeah. I was telling you off air that a friend of mine is podiatry. He's got a website. And I remember when the website was first done, and it was pretty schmick. It looked great.

Everything seemed to just seemed to just work. It looked fantastic. But over time, they must I don't know who they've got looking after or what changes they've made, but I look at their website now and they've got stock images that as soon as you look at them, you go, you know, who when do we get a a stethoscope out and put it on someone's heel? We I've I've never done that. Just weird photos.

As I'm thinking, it doesn't make any sense to to what it is that they're actually talking about. So I think sometimes, too, people can just they keep making changes to things for the hell they're making changes, and it's not always a good change.

I think there's a difference between, you know, being busy doing busy work and doing things that actually kind of move the needle or move your practice forward. And sometimes people get stuff on, oh, I gotta do all these things. Like, I gotta put out 10 blog posts this month. I gotta do these things to stay busy. There's a little bit difference between being busy and making progress.

And I think that's something that can happen in marketing as well.

Okay. So what's what's the next point? Point number five.

Yeah. So the final point is I hear I hear this kind of, you know, excuse that, oh, I'm too specialized or I'm too general.

And One extreme.

I hear this from both. You know, exactly. I I hear from both ends, know. I only do sports medicine. Is my market too narrow?

Or I'm a I'm a generalist podiatrist. You know, how do I stand out? You know, both work. You can just market differently. You know, if you're specialized, you're marketing to a smaller audience with a much higher intent and willingness to pay.

So you're not trying to rank for just podiatrist near me necessarily. You're trying to rank for the big kind of keywords, you know, maybe it's like running injury podiatrist or running podiatrist, you know, like soccer or football podiatrist. You know, sometimes people are searching for those, you know, kinda niche specialists and, you know, that can be worthy to to bid on some of those types of keywords. You know, there's a smaller pool, but a higher value patient there. You know, if you're general, you're optimizing for volume and convenience.

So, you know, you're the open Saturday, accepts most insurance, fast appointments practice. So different value propositions, both potentially profitable, but the practices struggle are the ones trying to be both or being neither. So you gotta kinda pick your lane and own it and kinda move forward from there.

Yeah. No. That's that's really good point. Especially, like, if you are specialized, say sports for example, or you are general. If you're a general podiatrist, there's not one particular thing you you wanna hone in on, then, yeah, you've gotta talk about the other things that make you a viable prospect to the to the actual patient.

When they look at it, they go, see you. Saturday mornings means I don't have to take time off of work or later later appointments or you've got better parking, which means I don't have to drive around for fifteen minutes to try and find a park. Time is money to a lot of people, which is why people will pay more for convenience.

That's a great point. You have to find a way to differentiate yourself from the other clinics and other providers in the area. In one way, it's not actually just the care you provide, but the other services or the convenience you provide to the patient. You know, I've said this a million times on the show, you know, a lot of websites out there that top 50 diagnosis and top 50 treatments. A template of website without authentic photos and patients see past that now.

Like, they don't it just doesn't kind of resonate with them and they're ready to go check out another website that maybe talks to who they are. So, you know, if you're gonna be the sports medicine podiatrist, make sure your website speaks to those patients. You know, you're still gonna get the occasional, like, grandma with thick toenails or the ingrown toenail that comes in that you don't have it on your website, but

Yeah.

You know, that's still gonna come your way. But if you do have more of a generalist website, I would really recommend that you highlight those, you know, six, eight, 10 services that you love to do, that you know generate good revenue from practice, and really highlight those on your website. You know, if you don't like to do wound care or diabetic care, don't put it as, like, one of your menu items, like, near the top because by by you know, you may say out loud to me that you don't wanna do that stuff, then I go to your website and I see that as, like, the second option, you know, on your website and underneath the conditions that are treated. Like, you gotta just, you know, be okay with not appealing to everybody like we've talked about in the past. You know, know what you wanna do.

Make sure that that's front and center. You know, if, you know, like you said, if you're this is one of my favorite quotes from you, Tyson. It's like, you know, if I was an inspector, you know, trying to figure out what you did, you know, as your career and I went to your website and I don't see it, you know, like, that's like a is it like a dead giveaway? Right? You gotta like, show what you wanna treat more of, you know, guy convict you of, you know, being a sports medicine podiatrist?

It was a crime.

Evidence that I see there. Yeah. Exactly.

Well, yeah. I know. Because I get some people, they say, oh, yeah. I wanna be, like, known as the marathon running podiatrist. I just I love marathon running.

I wanna treat more marathon runners. And I say that to him, we go, well, if it was illegal to be a podiatrist who treated marathon runners, I've gone to your website, and I wouldn't be able to convict you because I can find no evidence that that's what you actually do. So it's gotta be littered with evidence so that I could convict you. That's what they should be doing. But

That's a little like that.

I know. As you say, coaching client a past one, we were taught taught me some stuff and they sent me some stats on how the year went. And it was really interesting. When I first started working with them, their routine foot care was like 60%, and all the other stuff, biomechanical, MSK, all that was about 40%. As the times go on, they sent me some stats, they said, well, our new patient that a routine now is down to seventeen percent, and everything else is, like, forty, fifty percent.

Yeah. It's so much higher. And they said, what's great? We're still getting seventeen percent of our new patients' routine. Nowhere on our website doesn't even mention that we do that anymore.

Yet we still keep getting them, but at least it's not over 60% anymore.

Now that's a perfect example where you just have to show what you want more of. And I'd say, you know, special ed practices like to say the advantages there are, you know, higher revenue per patient, potentially longer patient relationships. It's easier to differentiate, and you can market more specific activities and conditions. But on the flip side, you know, general practices, potentially higher volume, you know, you can optimize for things like convenience, accessibility, insurance acceptance in The US, you know, kind of market in a way that is a little bit more broad, but at the same time isn't vague. Because I think that's the real problem that people make mistake is that, you know, they're they're vague about who they are or who they service.

And, you know, when you can be more specific about you providing the type of care you want to the specific type of patient, it's gonna speak volumes compared to just like, you know, copy paste, you know, cookie cutter images and website templates, photos that don't speak to anybody. We've gone over that in the past, but, you know, specialized marketing, you will have to condition you know, target condition specific and activity specific keywords. Like I said, generalists can get away with more emphasis on some of these other ways of adding convenience to the patient visit.

We should do a quick recap before we wrap up.

Yeah. Sure. I'm happy to do that. So I'd say first, hospital systems, you know, have a budget that you have specificity and different advantages. The second, you know, small markets mean less competition and easier dominance.

Third, you don't need daily social posts. You can get away with week weekly kind of Google optimization. Or I'd say is, you know, past marketing failure where usually the wrong tactics or the wrong sequence, not proves that marketing doesn't work. And fifth, you know, both specialized and general practice can win. Just people just need to pick a lane and be committed to that.

So, you know, for action stuff, would say, write down one specific doubt you have about whether marketing will work on your practice, and then find an example or practice similar to yours that's exceeding maybe online.

Oh,

yeah. These do exist. You can reach you can reach out to Tyson and I. You know, if you go to podiatry.marketing, we're always happy to answer, you know, listener questions. If you don't feel like marketing works or you tried something and wanna know maybe another way to approach it, we're always open to help.

So, you know, definitely, if you wanna see exactly, you know, where your practice is at, you know, we've got a a free online visibility scan now on our website at the very top. So we're happy to kind of create kind of a scorecard for you to show you, you know, where you're ranking locally and maybe where there's some improvements kinda on your online presence to, you know, to help you along this this path and on this journey to, you know, seeing more of the patients you love and having a thriving practice.

This has been a fantastic topic because I know there's people everything you've said, I've heard people say. And if you hear one person say it, then you know there's a lot of people that are also saying it and probably even more that are thinking it. So I think this has been a fantastic topic to cover.

It's been a lot of fun, Tyson.

Okay. Big Jim. I look forward to talking again next week.

Great, Tyson.

Okay. See you later.

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