Your Market Is Telling You What It Wants — Are You Listening?

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 Jim McDannald, aka Big Jim Mac. How are doing this morning, Jim?

Things are good. Things are good here. It's evening in in beautiful Montreal, but Bless happy to be with you no matter what time of day it is.

It's funny. Every every time I talk to someone on other side of the world it was only the other day I was talking to someone in The UK, and we spoke my morning to do something with one of their shows that we're doing. Then later that afternoon, I was talking to them again, and they they were laughing going, you haven't gone to bed yet, have you? I went, no. I said, because it was early morning for me, now it's evening.

So it's funny. I love time zones. It confuses some people, but I have this I have this app. If anybody is looking for a cool app to always know what is in this app is not sponsoring the podcast, it is just called Time Buddy. It's a couple of dollars.

You can put in all the different time zones in there, and you never get confused.

I'll take a look at that.

It is cool. So what are we talking about today?

So today, we're gonna talk about you know, I don't think enough podiatrists know about kind of the market demographics in their local areas. So the the the title of today's podcast is your market is telling you what it wants, but are you listening? Because, like I said, most podiatrists are sitting on additional revenue they don't even know exists. Not because they can't offer services, but because they never looked at the data to tell them exactly what their market wants and what they're willing to pay out of pocket. So, you know, the majority of marketing companies kind of manage an online presence, you know, that aren't kinda doing their homework either.

So they're running the same kind of generic playbook for, let's say, a practice in Downtown Miami as they are for a practice in rural Ohio. So demographics, local demand, income levels, these are things that can really change the way that people market their practice. And I think it's something that clinics need to be more aware of when you're working with someone that's, you know, promoting and marketing your practice.

Yeah. Demographics are really important. I've seen a lot of businesses, especially we're in cans up in the tropics. So how our lifestyle here is completely different, and sometimes you'll see companies from down south might be wintertime. They're promoting or doing something, yet they're running those same campaigns up here.

And we're going, yeah. It's it's hot. It's hotter than me. Yes. It's winter, but it's still hot.

We don't put on big jumpers in in hoodies or anything like that. And so I think it's really important for companies to be aware of where they are, how how you market one area. And that's why you shouldn't just copy what somebody else is doing either.

No. Absolutely. Like each location has its own kind of the way they they refer to their town, they refer to certain things, the the neighborhoods. Those, you know, the way you're gonna market in one place is significantly the different than another. So like you said, you don't wanna copy paste your strategy from one place to the other.

You know, even if you're a clinic owner in two different places, there's gonna be maybe two different ways that you approach those local areas. So today we're gonna cover, you know, how to use data that's already accessible. I don't know what it's like in Australia or even in Canada, it's a little bit more restricted. But in The US, every ten years they have a census. So like Yeah.

You get a lot of rich demographic information that some people never really even look at, you know, and marketers really should look at it. Podiatric clinic owners should look at it because it's gonna under uncover and help you capture demand that's maybe hiding in that local market. So that that's that's kinda what we're gonna jump into today.

Yeah. No. I I can't remember when our census comes out. I think every five years. Maybe it's every ten years.

Could be ten years. I don't pay enough attention to it. But I do recall using that information when I set up my first clinic on the Gold Coast. I went and got all the latest data, whatever was available, and I went right through it. And that was how I picked my locations and the type of services I was gonna use.

That's super super important. So where do you start? Well, what where should people listen to this? Where should they start?

Yeah. So they should start to to by knowing their market demographics because like I said, some marketing companies, they're not really interested in kinda digging that deep and being that tactical. So most marketing companies will build you a nice website, run some ads, never once look at actually who lives in your zip code. So, you know, they don't know the medium household income around your practice. They don't know the age distribution.

They don't know whether your area has high percentage of active retirees willing to spend, you know, money on maybe laser therapy or shockwave, or maybe you're in an area with a lot of young professionals searching for custom orthotics because they're really into marathon training. When you actually can pull the census data and cross reference it with, you know, the high paying services you have in your clinic, you might find some gaps you never knew existed. So that's really kind of where additional revenue and where additional kind of some additional freedom might be lurking there inside the practice.

Yeah. You might find you've set your practice up in the wrong place too.

Yeah. You might be up for a rude awakening. Kinda like, oh my gosh. I should have been one mile over in this zip code or this postal code as opposed to where I am now. But, yeah, that that could be definitely a rude awakening.

Yeah. But that's really important because when I first set up in Cairns, I originally set up in this road called Tugard Road, and it was in a suburb called Warri. Well, I thought it was a suburb called Warree of Cairns, but no. Warree and Cairns are two distinct different areas. So when people would search podiatrists in Cairns, I would never appear because I was 500 meters away from the Cairns, And it didn't click to me till I was driving down the road and saw, welcome to Cairns.

And I went, this is why I'm not appearing. So I I deliberately ended up moving my clinic, yeah, about a kilometer into the Cairns area. And where I moved my clinic was a terrible location. Oh, it's a great location to be found, but demographic wise, it was not a great location. But Cairns overall demographics is.

So I think this is where you're talking about where you need to understand your area and and the community.

No. Absolutely. I think you're on the on point there. Right? If there's a a smaller suburb or maybe maybe it's a maybe it's even a nicer demographic, but it doesn't have the same pull as, like, you know, name a big city podiatrist.

Like you wouldn't show up for it because you're not actually physically located in that zip code or in that town. So it's really really important. Like I mentioned, one of the benefits of at least in The US is that there's a website called census.gov that gives income, age, insurance coverage by zip code, and this is free data for most practices and their marketing companies don't always touch it. So that stuff is not only is it available on those websites, but now utilizing things like ChatGPT or Claude, you can really, like, say, I am located in let's say it's let's say we're in Webster Groves, Missouri. That's where I'm located.

And then you can say, what are the what are the demographics in the higher, you know, income households with within ten or fifteen minutes of Webster Groves? And you can get a list of that stuff and kinda get a sense of, like, well, if I'm trying to do some fee for service, you know, types of procedures or treatments, you know, you have a better sense of maybe where you're gonna wanna put some of your marketing spend as opposed to 10 mile radius around your clinic and just hope people show up at your door.

Did you say the service was free in The States, or did you have to pay for that information?

Yeah. That's what's crazy about The States. So like things like census data is totally free.

Okay.

Also like in The US, you can figure out what someone paid for a house like on your street and you can see the the the purchase price of homes. One of the things that's been frustrating here in Canada, they don't that stuff is something you have to pay a realtor for. That's kind of hidden behind different, you know, pay walls, which is, you know, when you're looking for a house and wondering what the how much your house or houses in your neighborhood have gone up in price, You basically have to either ask somebody or pay a realtor to find out that information.

Yeah. I think we I know we can. We can find out the purchase price of different properties. The history of every time it's been sold, you can readily get that information.

That's good. That's good that it happens in Australia. Like said, it's a little bit trickier here in Canada for that. And one of the things that's important about it is, you know, cross referencing these demographics. Right?

So knowing which of your different treatment modalities, you know, really appeal to 55, know, whether that's maybe shockwave or some laser, they're they're candidates for that or, you your young professionals. Like, how are you gonna market to make sure that if they have sports injuries, if they're training for marathons, if they need orthotics, are is your marketing fitting the demographics of your local area? That's super important because your current patients reflect kind of your current marketing, not necessarily your actual market opportunity. So if you wanna know what that market opportunity is, you have to do a little bit of diligence, you or the marketing provider you're working with.

Yeah. And this is why going way back, and you've said this numerous times why you need to really investigate your if you're working with a monkey a marketing company, you really need to do your homework on them, and and probably give examples of work that they've done before because that'll just give you an idea whether they're tailoring things to different areas, or are they just dumping the same images and the same ads for multiple podiatrists in different areas.

Absolutely. Are they your marketing partner, or they're gonna like really try to go into a strategy and tactics with you to do something that's custom in a way that's gonna be effective, or they just like, here's another number to them where they're gonna give you a $500 website and a thousand dollars worth of Google Ads and just call it a day. Right? So you really need to know that. And, you know, another thing that we talked about previously that that kind of builds into this is that website should have local pages that match kind of the search intent of these patients in the local area.

If someone in your area Googles, you know, laser toenail fungus treatment near me or custom orthotics in the name of your city, does your website have a dedicated page for that service in that location? For most practices, the answer is no. You might have a generic services page that mentions laser therapy in a bullet point, but that's not gonna rank. Google wants to see specific relevant pages, and the real kicker is these kinda higher revenues searches that people are doing often have less competition than things like podiatrist near me, which is a bit more general, because big hospital systems aren't kinda building pages for these, you know, more specific terms. That's a big opening for private practices to to build those things out and to attract those patients.

And when you're saying a dedicated page, you're talking about somebody searching something, they click on it, it goes to a page in your website, and the only thing that's on that page that you're really talking about is that service that they look for. You haven't got things flashing on the side that's totally distracting or 15 different other topics. It's really, I wanna know about nail fungus. That page is nail fungus.

Absolutely. I think it's it's 2026 and I still see some websites that were built in a way that where there's about 20 or 30 different diagnosis and treatments on the same web page. And that is confusing to Google. Like if they're trying to get bunion patients, or you're trying to get orthotic patients, that's on the same page, those two diagnosis and treatments are on the same page. It doesn't see you as an expert.

It's easy as a jumble of text where you have those 20 or 30 different diagnosis and treatments. You really need to be specific and include plain language descriptions that are written in the language that a patient will understand and knowing who it's for, right, and what they can expect. Know, pricing is becoming even more of a thing. I think the more people can be more transparent about pricing, especially when it comes to cash pay, you know, related stuff, or even, you know, if the people decide that they would prefer not to utilize their deductible, knowing what a office visit would cost, and different types of treatments for different types of diagnoses can be a real benefit to the patient. And I think a lot of web searches you know, can benefit because it's it's it's helpful information for patients potentially.

And there's it is nothing more frustrating when you click on a link, it goes through to a page that you're expecting the information to be right in front of you. And also, you're gonna start searching through that page. Hang on. I'm looking for nail fungus. And you gotta look, and and all a sudden, you can't find it.

And it just puts you off of that business almost immediately, and then you go back to that link, you just click on the next one. And if it takes you straight to a page, you know that's what you're gonna do. Well, that's where you're gonna follow.

Yeah. People wanna get information immediately later. They don't wanna play hide and seek. They don't wanna have to search for five minutes to try to find out that information. They're just gonna back out.

But if you they start they find you, they wanna find the solution to their problem. Right? And if you can't do that for them, they're gonna go somewhere else. And like we talked about, you know, these specific pages are really important as well because the bigger groups and bigger hospital systems, it's gonna be very rare that they have pages built out for these more elective or high revenue potential, you know, treatments to be done. So there's gonna be less competition.

You can rank faster for these things. So it's a real opening for private practices.

No. That's great. So what's next?

I'd say, you know, what you wanna do is you wanna mine your own patient data for these different opportunities that are already kind of, you know, in your chair. So you don't always need to go find new patients for kind of cash pay or you know, fee for service revenue. The opportunity is already sitting kind of in your exam room. You know? How do patients come to for diabetic foot exam or routine nail care?

And they have no idea that you do these other types of services. Right? Like, they have orthotics, they have shockwave, they maybe have diabetic shoes in your practice. If your answer is most of them, then, you know, that's not a patient problem. That's probably more of a systems problem in your clinic.

So your intake forms, your EMR data, and your follow-up workflow should be feeding your information about which patients are candidates for these additional services in your clinic, providing them just better care. So most practices never set these things up, unfortunately.

Yeah. And when you're saying mine your own patient data, that's m I n e, not m I n d. Not mined your own patient data. It's mined.

As as a digging digging down into the earth.

Yeah. Because when you first said those, it mined, and then I realized because I have the notes in front of me or some of your dot points, I saw the mining, and I'm thinking, people understood what you're talking about. They dig down into the patient data that you have there, and get to learn more about them and what other services they use. And I've told you before, I've had patients that would used to come to my clinic, we would do orthotics for them, then I would notice they had they need routine foot care. I would say, hey.

We can book you back in to get it looked after with one of the other people that work with us. Oh, no. That's okay. My podiatrist looks after that. And I'm like, got a podiatrist, but you came here for orthotics?

Oh, yeah. No. No. She she's not qualified to do these. And I'm thinking, oh, okay.

The person she was talking about was in my year at uni. I know she was well and truly qualified to make orthotics, but never told the patient that she did them. So it's if she had mined a little bit and sort of dug down and set we're looking at the patients who could have foot pain, who could benefit from orthotics. It's just money walking out the door.

Absolutely. It's about educating the patient at end of the day. Right? So, you know, whether you you see them in the chair or you just realize from some EMR EMR reports that you pull, there's there's other opportunities to treat the patient more fully. Know, You sometimes that's with shockwave, sometimes it's treating their fungal nails, sometimes it's, you know, orthotics.

You know, even like a 10 15%, you know, conversion on some of these in chair, you know, if you present them some opportunities to to get better more quickly, you know, you know, three yeses per per week at, $500 is potentially 6 k per month, you know, in patients that you're already seeing. So people should really track the full loop as far as, you know, what patients how are you treating patients currently? Are there different options and opportunities that you're missing out on? Not everyone's gonna say yes, and that's okay to some of these things, but the ones that are accepted can can really help generate some additional revenue for the practice that will kind of put you in better standing and and and help you provide better care.

Yeah. And that's part of find what funny when somebody's had a clinic that's been established for ten years, and they go, oh, we're really quiet at the moment. I'm like, if you've been around for ten years and you've got thousands of patients, you shouldn't really be quiet. You should be digging into your database and finding out what what services are my patients technically or potentially going somewhere else to get that treatment? And if you provide that, then you should be letting them know.

Even if you you might be quite patient numbers, you should be busy within your marketing towards your your patients. Do do the internal marketing.

No. Absolutely. And that kinda like goes into the next point I was gonna make is that not only do you have to have that flow with with the patients and their knowledge and being educated, but you need make sure your your your team has the systems in place to make it happen. You know, if you don't have good workflows in the clinic, you're gonna run into a lot of issues, This is where most practices can drop the ball. They add a service to their website, maybe they run a few ads, then a patient calls you know interested in it, but nobody on the team knows how to handle the call.

Yeah. There was no education of the staff, there's no script, There's no kind of easy payment workflow. There's no follow-up sequence. You know, some of these patients that are, you know, fee for service have different expectations than if they were to be an insurance patient. So they're spending their own money, and they want clarity, professionalism, and smooth experiences from the first phone call until the follow-up.

So if your front desk is fumbling that first call, you've lost them, and you probably won't even know it because they're not gonna tell you that.

Yeah. But I've seen people at the front desk, and so my podiatrist because I'll be paying attention. And the patient walk in, and if it was someone that they knew, it was a regular patient, and the girls at the front would actually say to them, hey, Mary. How are you doing today? How are your feet been?

And they go, oh, they've been really sore this morning. Oh, they've been really sore lately. When I heard that conversation, they came in the room and said, tell me more about what you what do you mean they've been really sore lately? I know you've got these corns here and callous in this area. Oh, when I get my ankles have been really painful.

And these are the sort of things that receptionist is greeting a patient anyway and ask asking how they're doing or how are their feet doing, just polite conversation, and the patient mentions anything, put it on a have a system. Put it on a post it note so the podiatrist knows to ask more questions about it.

That's a great point. It's that kind of continuity of information, right? Like if someone asked them three different times how they're doing and they're probably getting more frustrated by the third time they're, you know, being asked that question. So if there's a way to pass along a little bit, so you feel like you've heard what's going on a little bit, it's gonna make them feel like they've already been heard by those first two people and you're not just, you know, obviously they're they're happy you're the doctor, they're willing to talk to you. But if you have if you can ask them in a way where you feel like they feel like you already have a general sense of why they came in in the first place, You know, that that's huge because, you know, like I talked about, the communication and educating that front desk is, along with what you said, is hugely important about, you know, when it comes to pricing, describing what the first visit's gonna be like.

They need to have a general sense of, you know, feeling welcomed and and by getting additional information like you mentioned, you can really do that. You know, when it comes to like some of these patients as well, and patients in general, you know, we have Netflix now, we have Amazon Prime. So, you know, everyone's kind of a retail consumer. Even though they're patients, they have all these retail experiences now that they're really thinking about, you know, what is the experience like at the clinic? Not necessarily like, you know, what the type of care they provide.

That's an important part of it so they're getting better, but like what is the overall experience like? And this is where, you know, follow-up is something that, you know, sometimes practices disappear on, you know. A simple text two weeks post treatment can drive reviews. Like I said, like, you know, giving a text message or, you know, an email after a happy patient, this can lead to positive word-of-mouth and additional referrals. So, you know, you have to be aware that, like, the stakes are even higher when it comes to patient expectations these days, especially if it's some fee for service care.

So you wanna make sure that you're making things as a smooth and wow experience as possible, these folks.

Makes perfect sense. What's next?

I'd the last point is to develop kind of the clinical clinical confidence to present these different kind of treatment options. You know, when people are first getting into a cash pay or any kind of a fee for service types of things, you know, podiatrist went to school. A lot of them went to school just to to take care of people. And and anything that feels like kind of close to selling feels like, oh, I I don't wanna do that. That's not what I got into medicine for.

Do reckon do you reckon that's true today?

People better.

Do you reckon that's true? Do you reckon most podiatrists

that are still like that. Yeah.

Do reckon most podiatrists got in because I'm a caring person I want to help people. Do reckon that's why a lot got in?

I think a lot of people go to medicine that way but they don't really realize that the power of persuasion and the ability to like talk to people about what's best for them is is a skill that has to be developed over time. So this is you know, like I talked about, no one really likes to talk about that. It kills more kind of these fee for service revenue than anything else is that you know, marketing failure you know, is the kind of clinical confidence the doctor has. A lot of podiatrists feel uncomfortable presenting this because it feels like selling, like I said. But you know, when you believe in the treatment, you've seen it work, it's presenting it not selling.

Right? So it's good patient care. The patient's sitting in front of you with, know, chronic plantar fasciitis. They deserve to know that shockwave therapy exists, and that, you know, it might help. So, you know, if you don't tell them, you're either they're either gonna suffer, they're or gonna find someone else who's willing to treat them.

So yeah, I think it's different for every podiatrist, you know, and there's some people that are are more open to doing it and feel more comfortable doing it, but I I know a lot of podiatrists that, you know, I've done it this way for fifteen years, and now there's this new contraption out and I and I just don't it seemed like they're, you know, they they either they're unwilling to change the way they they they practice or they're finding kind of fault in the like selling the patient as they like to say.

Yeah. I don't think anyone unless you're a born salesman, I don't think people like when they feel like they're trying to sell something. But I actually think if you feel like you're trying to sell something, then you probably don't believe in what it is that you're explaining.

Yep.

Like, I got into podiatry, and I'll be perfectly honest. I got into podiatry because I knew it made money. That's why I did it. I I got in help my whole goal was I'm going to get into health care because I'll never be unemployed, and I know I'll make above average money. I have no problems telling it to people.

I didn't get into it because I'm a caring person. I might be. I don't know. I would never give something to a patient or explain something to a patient that I didn't think was gonna help them. And if I happen to make money off the back end of it, then so be it.

That's just just the way life is. I didn't have a problem with that. So I think if people are explaining something to a patient and they feel, oh, uncomfortable, I feel like I'm a salesman, do you believe in what it is you're about to explain? And if you don't, then you're you're not a salesman. You're a con artist.

If you do believe in what you're saying, then you're not a salesman. You're you're an educator, and you're actually helping the patient. And that's what you should be doing. So you're either an educator or a con artist depending on what the patient's needs are.

That's bit Absolutely. Like you said no. It's it's true. I think that's the way people see it. It's it's a kind of a polarizing thing at times.

Yeah. And like you said, you're not you're not upselling, you're informing. Right? Patients can't choose the options they don't know about. So track, know, if you need more confidence, track the outcomes you have, you know, with these different modalities.

You know, in your experience, you know, looking at the literature, talking to colleagues, there's ways to if you're still on the fence about something, there's ways to figure out if something is right for you or not for you, and kinda get off the fence. So you always wanna frame it as options and not pressure. Right? So now here's the conservative path. Here's a a slower path that that might work for you, and then here's another path that, you know, I've had 70 to 80% improvement at a at a quicker rate with.

So it's important to let them choose.

Yeah. I always remember a motivational speaker talking. I think it might have been Zig Ziglar back in the day. And he said the salesman came the salesperson came in to sell him shares. Oh, well, some stocks and something.

I should buy this, and was raving on a bit. They're great. You should do this. And it was a real precious sales thing. And Ziegler, you turn around and said, that sounds absolutely fantastic.

I'll have the same amount that you've got. I said, and the guy didn't have any, so he didn't sell any that day. That's a salesperson. But to me, if you wear orthotics yourself and you believe in orthotics and a patient needs orthotics, then you explain orthotics. If the patient says that they want them, you haven't sold it to them, you've just you've educated them.

If they say no, then they just move on to the next patient or give them another treatment option. Yeah. I don't know why people get hung up on it.

Yeah. It's it is one of those things, but you bring up some good points there. I think, you know, we we covered kind of these these five pieces of the, you know, fee for service puzzle that a lot of people sometimes are are curious about. And, you number one, like I said, is knowing your marketing demographics, so you're promoting the right services to the right people. Number two, you wanna build those dedicated local pages that match how patients are actually searching for you.

Number three is mining your existing patient data to kind of find some ideal candidates for some of the treatments that they maybe don't know about you having. And also number four, building systems and workflows that give cash pay patients the kind of smooth experience they expect, because expectations have never been higher from a consumer standpoint, and medicine is no different. So last but not least, want to develop those, that clinical confidence, present these options consistently, because no matter how much marketing you do, if the conversation never happens in the exam room, you know, they're never gonna know that they that's a potential option for them. So I would say, you know, this week, you know, pick out one newer service that you've thought about offering or introducing. You know, pulling up some, you know, census data about the maybe three or three or four other zip codes around your clinic, you know, look at the age and kinda income demographics of the people in your local area, and this might be a good chance to, like, you know, make some more tactical marketing decisions that are based off of more than just like, oh, I got a website.

Oh, I got Google Ads. Being a bit more tactical by knowing these demographics can be really, really helpful.

I love this topic today. This is good.

And if and if you wanna even dig deeper, you know, Tyson and I offer something for folks now called the practice visibility scorecard. So if you wanna see, you know, a five, ten mile radius of when where on where your clinic is at for different types of, you know, what's orthotics or bunion surgery or podiatrist, you know, go over to podiatry.marketing, our website. At the very top of the page, there's a way to get a free practice visibility scorecard, and we can really help you out there to to see, you know, which demographics you should be going after and where those opportunities lie in your local area.

That is fantastic, Jim. So if people need that, repeat the website one more time.

You have to go to podiatry.marketing. They can either just check out the top of the page. There's a link there, and they can, you know, get their own free practice visibility scorecard.

Okay. That is fantastic. Okay, Big Jim. I look forward to talking again next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay. See you later. Bye.

Bye now. 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.marketing.