Our Favorite Free and Low-Cost Doctor Marketing Strategies

Kathy Gaughran podcast transcript

Stewart Gandolf: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Healthcare Success Podcast. And today, we're going to do something very special. I'm interviewing my colleague, co-worker, friend of…

Kathy Gaughran: Long time!

Stewart Gandolf: Couple of decades!

Stewart Gandolf: For a while, and yeah, so I'm introducing Kathy Gaughran, our Senior Marketing Strategist for Healthcare Success. Welcome, Kathy, to our podcast.

Kathy Gaughran: Thank you. Excited to dig in today. This'll be fun.

Stewart Gandolf: So, yeah, I'd love to be. So, for those of you that don't know my origin story, it starts out kind of the same as Kathy's. So, Kathy and I, as it turns out, used to work together back in the ‘90s. Kathy, do you want to tell anybody what we did?

Kathy Gaughran: Yeah, so Stewart and I worked together at a previous healthcare ad agency, many moons ago, and our business model, how we met all of our new clients, was by teaching workshops, marketing workshops and seminars all over the country. So we worked in every major media market, with every single healthcare vertical, and we've done strategic planning just across the board, and it's been a lot of fun. We both really love what we do.

Stewart Gandolf: Great, that's awesome. And so, to expand upon that, back in the day, Kathy and I were working with, as she mentioned, all kinds of different healthcare organizations, including hospitals, but a whole bunch of individual private practices. And these days, you work on the practice side, typically with multi-location providers, much larger organizations.

And part of what we taught on all those seminars… by the way, I'm platinum for life on American Airlines. Kathy, somehow is gold, I don't know, you traveled as much as I did, maybe you spread your airlines more. Yeah, but I'm platinum for life, 2 million miles of flying, so we did hundreds of venues, and when we did our web… our seminars, this is content marketing in its earliest analog form.

We taught a lot of free things that people could do, and so the point of today's webinar is that, we get many requests from businesses that want help, that are not really a good fit for the stuff we do, but they still want our advice. So I thought, Kathy, let's do one on some of our favorite, dust off our chops from the olden days, and talk about how to market, you know, for either very low budget or even no budget, like, how can I market my practice or a small business in that regard? So today, it's for that. A lot of times we talk about these big, expensive marketing programs, but today it's really much more granular and grassroots, so it'll be fun. This is a topic that both Kathy and I like, and we don't get to… we're not doing seminars anymore, we stopped our seminars at COVID, and I just can't bring myself to do it again, so we'll be sharing some of our favorite stuff.

So, Kathy, first of all, let's talk about websites. I'll tee you up a little, and then you can share any additional insights on this one. So, for marketing today. I know there is some cost here, and you probably, hopefully, have a website by now, but I would argue one of the things you need to think about first is at least having a good, strong website, because it's the epicenter of everything you have.

People will check you out online, people will look at your website, they'll look at ratings, which I'll come back to, but that website is really the front door of your office. And so, Kathy, I don't know if you have any comments on that. You're, you know, closer to inbound inquiries we get. Are there still terrible websites out there?

Kathy Gaughran: Terrible websites out there. And, you know, with the landscape changing so rapidly, it's tough to know who to trust and where to turn. We see it all the time, where we've got websites for great big institutions that are built on a teeny little platform, or small practices that overbought on a website that isn't the right fit for them. So, it's really critical that you have a website presence.

There's a couple of things that really make you either appear as you have ownership of that market or not, and not having a website is a big problem. Not answering the phones, we're gonna get into…

Stewart Gandolf: We're gonna have that, we're gonna have that…

Kathy Gaughran: But just the presence of a website establishes you as a credible entity, making sure that that website addresses your unique value proposition.

If I'm deciding to choose you for my dental needs, obstetric needs, whatever that case is, why should I choose you, as opposed to the competitive options that are available in my area? So even if you just have, you know, a slight differentiation in your headline.

Back to the phones again, it's great if that is repeated, but working really hard to provide a reason to choose you, as opposed to just choosing you based on insurance and location.

Stewart Gandolf: Great, so it's some things that, we're going to cover a lot of ground today, so we'll touch on this one lightly, because most people probably have a website, but as Kathy said, having, content that explains why you, who you are, why I should trust you, why I should come to you. If an offer is appropriate, that's great. Having calls to action, having a good user interface. Hint, if your website is 10 years old, it looks like it, and it's embarrassing, because people could…

Kathy Gaughran: Go ahead, sorry, Sir.

Stewart Gandolf: Well, I was just gonna say, so, you know, there's a credibility factor that's hard to describe, and I know, yeah, you're double board-certified, and you have a fellowship. The consumer doesn't know what that means, they don't have a clue, they just know your website makes you… is outdated, which they assume you're outdated. I have more, but go ahead, Kathy.

Kathy Gaughran: Right, well, I was just going to say, and people evaluate what they can't see based on what they can see. So they start to assess your brand based upon your load time, your, you know, your site speed, your locations. Whether or not they can find your phone number, that experience starts to shape your brand. So it's just important that you recognize that, and recognize that most people, new patients who come to your practice are going to, at some point, touch that site.

Stewart Gandolf: All right, so for sure. And some of the functionality, you know, the ability to make an appointment, you know, Kathy and I, again, with all of our seminars, one of my jokes that I made back in the early, pre-pandemic, which seems like forever ago, was, and this is true. What are the two things that patients want most in terms of electronically dealing with their doctor? One is to be able to communicate with them online, and two is to schedule an appointment. What are two things that doctors are steadfastly against? Letting them communicate online and letting them set an appointment.

And that's still true for many practices, not all of them, but… a whole bunch. So the functionality of through the… obviously, a lot of people do have today a HIPAA-protected portal to communicate, that's crucial, but also online scheduling. I know it's hard to do, do it anyway. Consumers demand it, they want it, is really important.

And again, if you've got an outdated site that doesn't represent you well, you have an outdated site that doesn't represent you well. Oh, another thing that's really important to notice is that most websites that practitioners buy, first of all, you can… there's one big company out there where you never buy. You're really just leasing software as a service, and so you don't really own anything.

That's one model, and it's cheap in the short term, but 5 years later, at $500 a month is, what, $630,000. You could have had your own site, and a good one, instead of leasing somebody else's property.

Another thing, too, is to keep in mind that people just have no clue on. Everybody thinks of website as the design, and the design is like a tiny piece of it. So the design, plus the programming, plus the content, plus the SEO, plus the, user experience and the brand built into it, like, that's what a website is really about. So, for the sake of time, I'm going to move on, unless you have any other comments on that one. Kathy?

Kathy Gaughran: I think one thing that you can all look for, there's a tool called Copyscape. One of the things you also want to be very cautious of at this website build level is any sort of duplication.

We've seen some, you know, pretty bad multi-duplicated sites that, were just tweaked for different verticals, so just be sure that your site doesn't have a lot of content that's been duplicated from another site. And that Copyscape.com, that's a great tool for you to plug your site in and take a look.

Stewart Gandolf: So, the next topic I want to talk about is phones, and… ugh.

Kathy Gaughran: This sucks.

Stewart Gandolf: This problem, Kathy, is almost going to be solved. I've bitched about phones for over 20 years, about how terrible the experience is, and so, many of the people calling may recognize when you call your own providers, you call your own office, I get, typically, doctor's office, please hold, or no answer at all. Or a very polite but very confused answer, or a rudeness, or we're at lunch recording, or whatever, and all of that is killing your business. If there's one thing that you want to do to solve that's screwing up your business right now, it's solving the phones. Kathy, share some quick insights on that.

Kathy Gaughran: So I've… Stewart and I, as we mentioned, we have been all over the country teaching these workshops, and then also one of the ways we work with our clients is to go on onsite, and the phone challenges that I've seen across the country, across different business sizes, from single-location dental up to multi-location residential addiction, it doesn't matter. There's just been a lack of understanding for how vital those phones are, so one of the things I like to reference is we look at your practice like an upside-down pyramid, balancing on the end of the finger of the person answering your phone.

So we can drive qualified leads with a big, you know, multi-layered campaign, or you can just get simple phone calls that are coming in from local residents. That call is everything. It starts to shape your brand, it starts to create a level of comfort or not with that patient.

It's so critical that you're speaking to them as a consumer, as opposed to just somebody who's been referred in to schedule an appointment. And it's shocking, we've also done thousands of thousands of mystery calls

And you would be shocked, still today, at what we hear. We'll ask, “is the doctor good?” “I don't know, he's not my doctor.” Or “what do you expect me to say? I work here.” It's a big problem, and it's a problem across every healthcare vertical, every major media market.

We are seeing a lot of big businesses pull in AI phone bots to help facilitate a little bit of this problem, help with a little bit of this problem, but just making sure that you've got a really good phone protocol, that you have a strategy and a cheat sheet for your staff, because they get busy and they wear a lot of hats, and if the phones are busy, and they've got a lot of people in the practice, the phones are the thing that fall to the bottom of the priority list. And that really cuts off our opportunity to bring in new patients. So just making sure you've got the right people on the phones, that they like it, that they want to be on the phones.

Another thing to keep in mind is if you've got somebody answering the phone that's right against the waiting room to just have sensitivity around that.

But you want to have the right person. They are the backbone to your practice, so it's critical that you've got somebody you trust, and that somebody that understands their contribution in that role, and it's not just something they have to do. And Stewart and I see this in major hospitals, where they have an RN that had, you know free time in her schedule, and they put her in charge of the phones or admissions or marketing. It's important, it's a sales role, so they just need to recognize and be comfortable with that position.

Stewart Gandolf: So I would just add a couple comments. One is, typically, at the office level, we're talking today to smaller practices at the office level, usually it's one task out of a thousand the front desk person's supposed to do. Check them in, check them out, file paperwork, enter data into the computer, order pizza for the office party, and answer phone calls in the middle. And so, what happens when you have a thousand priorities to any individual task?

it gets dispatched with as quickly as possible. And if everything's important, nothing's important. And I would argue there's nothing more important in your new business, or in your business than a new patient inquiry, so you have to treat it that way. So that's the first thing, is it has to be a priority.

You have to train to it, manage it, and check it. These days, it's pretty easy to have, you know, with every marketing system we use, we record calls to go back and listen to calls, assuming you actually will do that, or there's other ways of recording your calls with appropriate notifications, but this is a disaster in 95% of businesses we work with at the beginning.

We've had companies where private equity refers us, a pilot where we start off with 4 of their offices, they insisted on sending all the calls to the offices instead of a call center, and the… out of 700 calls, I'm not sure they converted anybody. I'm not sure… most of them don’t reach a soul.

So, it's really, really, really, really important to make sure that we have the phone part handled. That's crucial.

Kathy Gaughran: So, yeah, one of the things, Stewart, I want to mention, and this comes up a lot, and I know that this is sort of an operation and logistics question, but try to avoid voicemail pickup. So, if you can get people to a live voice as quickly as possible, especially with a single or even a handful of locations.

We don't want them caught up in the maze of a voice recording. We worked with a group down here in Orange County, primary care and pediatric, and during open enrollment, we were trying to convince them to have another live body to answer the leads coming in.

And they wouldn't do it. And, you know, 60% of the calls that were coming in during open enrollment were ending up in hangups. People don't typically like to get through that phone system. I understand sometimes you’ve got to do it, but just be sensitive to that journey as patients are being introduced to you initially.

Stewart Gandolf: So, Kathy, I know that you've been a fan of internal, sort of. Well, actually, before I do that, just while I'm thinking about this, we will have some links in the podcast on our website, so if you're listening to this through a streaming service or on YouTube, you can also go to Healthcare Success and navigate to this blog through the search function. We do have some helpful links, and I'll include some webinars we have that were done about creating a good website, creating, answering the phone.

These are a little bit more enterprise than a lot of our practices listening today, but the concepts are all the same, so there are going to be some great resources for you as added bonus. But Kathy, what are some of the other sort of internal marketing ideas you like?

Kathy Gaughran: Well, I think it's important that you recognize who your ambassadors are. The 80-20 principle applies that 20% of your base will be responsible for the lion's share of your word-of-mouth referrals. The same thing is true for B2B.

So just identifying who those ambassadors are through initially asking, so it's important that everyone, particularly the providers, the clinical staff, be asking patients to refer others.

A very easy script into that is, “you know, we would love to see more patients like you,” just the very simple, straight at it, but also rewarding them with a compliment that you like them.

“Could you please refer us to anyone else who could benefit the same way you have?” It's a wonderful bonding tool. It gives them permission to go out and start thinking of people they can refer. You're looking for your advocates. I'm an A person, meaning I refer a lot when I get into a practice.

But this personality also can go on the flip side, so you want to make sure that you really recognize your ambassadors, and you encourage them to refer, reward when they do, and just really push at building a stronger referral population.

Stewart Gandolf: Right, so patients that refer, Kathy's referring to that, some people will just refer again and again with just a little bit of encouragement and love. We're not saying give them gifts, and, you know, inducements or anything like that, but just making them feel acknowledged, appreciating, let them know that you appreciate referrals.

Sometimes people say, hey, the greatest, you know, “did you have a good time here?” “Oh, you've been fantastic, doctor,” great. “And the best compliment we can receive is always referrals from your friends and family. We'd love to have more people like you.” So that's an old and timey referral, and it's.

Kathy Gaughran: One other thing I like to use as an example, because this kind of strikes to the emotion of it, is think of the last time somebody you really respected asked you for a favor, or asked you to do something for them, whether it was a school teacher asking you to move a desk, grading papers in college. I remember one of my professors asking me to grade papers, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff for quite a while.

Stewart Gandolf: You are hot stuff, Kathy.

Kathy Gaughran: People put you on a pedestal. You do things for them that change their life. So, if they have an opportunity to give back, they want to do that. So just look for those opportunities.

Stewart Gandolf: Yep, for sure. Another category, which should be basic, and we're talking today, by the way, not just to thinking of consumer-direct practices like dentistry or dermatology, but these things even work in things like oncology or gastroenterology with appropriate… and even addiction, but you just have to be careful how you put it, right? There's some sensitivities ethically and professionally, it could be a little weird. But still, for example, somebody who's a urologist, there's still ways of saying the same message. “Hey, you know, glad that we were able to help you, you know, you'd be surprised how many people have kidney stones, or, prostate cancer or need a vasectomy,” or whatever. Find a way to personalize the message. And then when you get to consumer-direct practices, it's even better.

Kathy Gaughran: Yeah, one more comment on that in the behavioral health space, which we work a lot in the behavioral health space, and I'm very open about my involvement in the recovery community. So, one of the things that we do in addiction, behavioral health is talk about how they can help others by just informing. So it's a very sensitive educational discussion, but when people are newly clean and sober, it's a big drive to help other people, and that's a very big part of the AA community, so…Encouraging with that language in the behavioral health space, we've also found to be really effective.

Stewart Gandolf: And it can even be things like anxiety or depression or whatever. Like, all of these things have their own nuances. We can't cover everything we know in this little podcast, but these… we're trying to get your thoughts started here. Another one that we, you know, we used to teach back in the day, which is really critical.

Back in the day, we would teach, you know, use a postcard, and you use this and that. Okay, no, we don't do that today. We use, software, but… if you're not doing recalls methodically, appropriately, you need to have software to do this appropriately today. But it's overlooked by a lot of businesses.

There's dermatology businesses out there so busy they don't know what to do with themselves, but they never send out recalls for skin cancer screenings, which is revenue right off the top. I mean, simple revenue, and it's to the patient's best interest. And you'd be shocked, there are businesses out there with many practice locations, and they don't do this most fundamental tactic. Now, clearly, some do.

There's dentists out there that, you know, buy whichever software platform, to do recalls appropriately, you know, reminders, text, email, those are all important. One thing that you can do that would really help, though, with this is to get the patient to commit to the treatment when you say. So not just send them a reminder for 6 months, but get them to actually commit to a specific date and help them understand why they should come back to get their teeth cleaned again. Anything else you want to say on that one, Kathy, before we go to the next one?

Kathy Gaughran: Well, I'm not sure if you were cucking this strategy, I don't think you were when you talked about recall postcards, but we do still find opportunity for postcards with new residents. There are still some tactics where we utilize some of the more old-timey strategies.

It’s just really important to maintain that human connection when you're reaching back out for reactivation and recall. And one of the things, and that's more really in the dental space, but just making sure you're staying on top of that, those routine visits and, in their space.

Stewart Gandolf: Yeah, and so, just to clarify, recall means getting someone to come back on time. Reactivation is once they've left.

Can you get them back? And those are all different, and you can read up about this on our site and others to go into more detail on ways to do that, but recalls, what I was referring to there, Kathy, was the days when they used to use patient postcards for recalls. New resident postcards is completely different, right? That's going out to new residents.

Kathy Gaughran: I just got a recall card at my doctor's appointment this morning.

Stewart Gandolf: Really? Oh my gosh, I can't believe it, that's crazy. They handed me a business card with a little date written in there, that's all. No, no email, that was it, that was what they gave me, so…

Stewart Gandolf: Wait, but you didn't get a postcard in the mail, though.

Kathy Gaughran: Not a postcard, just an email. They'll send later, but that's all.

Stewart Gandolf: Yeah, I'm talking about… I'm talking about the days we used to send postcards. Like, that was, like, a whole thing, trying to send out letters and postcards. So that's pretty much gone. That's not very cost-effective.

Let's talk about branding. You know, we've been jumping into some of the really guerrilla things, but getting a brand is vital. Now, back again in the day when Kathy and I started doing this, you know, nobody had a brand. It was all, I'm Dr. Schmindrick, or I'm Dr. Jones, or I'm Dr. Whomever.

And that's great, but today, it feels like most practices are picking up names that are more of a marketing name than they used to. It's like, certainly, for sure, more. And back in the day, I think Kathy and I individually named, I don't know, a few dozen each advanced dermatologies, right? Like, we really worked with a lot of businesses back in the day, but I'll share the big concept on this, Kath, and you can drill down just a little, but if you have budget, it really is helpful to build a brand, and to think through, like, when I say brand, I don't mean just your logo, or the practice name.

That's the starting point, but… and your colors, and your typography, and your brand guidelines, these are all things that, as marketing budget becomes available, you really should formalize, and ideally as soon as possible.

Stewart Gandolf: And then, the other part of it is brand messaging, really coming up with written guidelines from a visual standpoint and a copy or word standpoint. You know, what is your consistent messaging that's sort of like the compass going forward? And the metaphor I use a lot when I'm speaking live about this and in a live audience is It's kind of like driving from New York to Los Angeles. If you're a degree or two off, you're still going to be 50, 100 miles off. If you're 30% off, you're going to wind up in the ocean.

So, you really need to… if you're without having a brand guideline, that are written down, that are followed precisely, your messaging's going to be all over the place. And so.

I know that sounds a little advanced, but any business that we work with, Kathy, typically has that, but would you… any other recommendations on this from your standpoint, or just things you've seen that haven't worked?

Kathy Gaughran: Yeah, yeah, I think one of the really important factors is if you're not doing a lot of blogging, if you have a pretty basic website. Any blog that you put on there is going to impact the direction of the site, so I had… and I just think that this is a good example. If you happen to have somebody that's doing part-time blogging or contributing to content on your site.

We had a big urgent care group in another state that came to us, and one of their blog writers was writing a blog about ice baths as a therapeutic treatment. And it shoved all of their content into an ice bath category. So, it's important on your website that you are identified in your space and that you don't have anything on there that was topical or interesting, or a celebrity that you had a blog about 2 years ago, because that can impact the direction of your content. So just important to have, like Stewart said, on guidelines around your messaging, it's really important that your content is speaking to the right readers, the right searchers, and that you're representing your brand effectively.

Stewart Gandolf: Great. Okay, so let's talk about another one. Doctor referral building. So, if you're a specialist practice, and most of the medical practices we work with are, so if you're a dermatology, or gastroenterology, or oncology, or whatever, as you know, most of your business is from doctor referrals to patient referrals.

Kathy often talks about having about a third of the business coming from doctor referrals, a third from patients, and the other third from the marketing directly. But as we think about doctor referrals, I'll give you some quick tips, and again, I'll try to have some links that are relevant to some of this stuff on the blog that you can look up for more than we have time for today. But, you know, in the old days, Kathy and I would literally teach people how to go have lunch, and how to work with people.

And, to this day, by the way, doctors that are good at that tend to do a lot better than other doctors. Like, I have multi-location providers, if there's a hundred surgeons there, and there's one who's just always busy, we dig a little deeper, and a lot of times it turns out he is just a networker. He stops, you know, I've had them say to us, “I never drive on the way to work without stopping at somebody's office before I get into the office.” I mean, they make it a real commitment to be visible, you know, at the hospital, or in the cafeteria, or they set lunches, or dinners, or breakfast, or they drop by the office. They don't feel like a salesperson, they like it, they enjoy it, and I realize most people are going like, well, I just hate that idea.

But I'm just telling you that we've seen a whole lot of super successful practices who are doing that. Now, the other side of that is, years ago, we gave up on trying to teach this, because out of 100 doctors, one might go network, even if I taught them exactly what to do.

So, the better practices these days have a physician liaison. So, Kathy, what is a good physician liaison, and what is their job?

Kathy Gaughran: Good question. So, I think the best way to look at that physician liaison role. And ways to vet them in or vet them out is when we very first started talking about this, probably 8 years ago, there was a big shift in the pharmaceutical space. There's been a kind of a changing landscape.

A displaced pharmaceutical rep is not your candidate. You want someone who kind of falls in between, so we look at these representatives kind of in three different tiers. You've got your pharmaceutical rep that's used to a big, fat expense account with high expectations for them. I've met a lot of these representatives, and they're typically very good at what they do, but they're used to a higher level of income and less, expectation.

Then we've got, at the bottom level, Stewart used to call it what the “bagel girl” or the “cookie girl,” where that's really all they do, is they go by and drop off food, and that's better than nothing, honestly, but you want somebody who kind of falls right in the middle.

Somebody who is not afraid of doctors, that's a really interesting sort of precursor, is you can have some very effective sales reps, but they have not worked in the medical space, and doctors intimidate them, so it’s just important they understand medical.

And hire at the right level. You also want someone who has a level of productivity in their compensation. Depending on your state and your specialty, it's important that you work that out properly, but you want them to be motivated. Because you're going to basically have doctors who refer to you now, doctors who refer sometimes but not always, and then doctors who never refer. And they're just 3 different points of entry, making sure that they're well equipped and comfortable in those positions, and that they're providing you with digital tracking. Stay away from the spiral binder, because when that job completes, or if something happens with that representative, that binder typically goes with them. So make sure that all of their activity, productivity, data, contact records are all in your CRM, your database, so that there's no risk of that if anything changes in the status.

Stewart Gandolf: So, and, one of the articles I'll probably put in with the description is, “how to ruin a perfectly good physician liaison.”

And what I mean by that is, typically, and Kathy alluded to this, they hire the wrong person. This person… it's ideal if they have clinical skills too, but they have to look at themselves and feel like a salesperson. They have to be out in the field. Do not try to make your marketing person into a salesperson, or a salesperson into a marketing person.

They're entirely different skill sets, you need to manage them, compensate them appropriately. Hint, it's probably a lot more than you were hoping. You're not going to find somebody that can go out and work with doctors and, you know, motivate them to refer for minimum wage. Just get over it. You're not going to do it.

If you're going to do this, you are going to need to invest some money, and, if you're interested in this and you don't have somebody, we actually have trainers that we refer to that you can hire to bring you through that process and train up your team on that, because it's its own unique world. There's actually something called the American Academy of Physician Liaisons. Believe it or not, and now that's mostly for the hospital marketplace, but this idea of a physician liaison, even for a small practice, can really impact referrals. It's routine for the multi-location businesses we work with, but even at the private practice level.

And it could be, you know, and if you're asking somebody who doesn't want to do this, they'll prove to you it's a stupid idea. So, they'll never find time. When they do do it, they'll do a bad job at it.

Let's talk about… I told you we're gonna go fast here, organic social media. So, organic social is something that, everybody likes, I mean, it is free, it's hard to resist, and one of the challenges I find is, practices will focus way too much time on this.

Like, you know, now, there's a couple caveats here. One, yes. There are one out of a million doctors will do fantastic with organic social media and never spend a cent. There's a few out there… I'm sorry, but the thing is, they do spend a cent. They may have a publicist who tags along with them, and they spend hours and hours and hours, and they love doing this. I can think of one person who's a plastic surgeon who happens to be…

Kathy Gaughran: Yay.

Stewart Gandolf: Yeah, who happens to be beautiful and female. Gee, is that a benefit when you're trying to sell plastic surgery services?

Kathy Gaughran: She has a team of people posting that organic content.

Stewart Gandolf: Yes, a team, not one person, a team.

So, that's not you, right? That's not what… very few businesses can pull that off, or are willing to do what it takes to be an influencer on organic.

So we say with organic, yes, do it, but don't expect many patients from it. It's a good thing to do for prospective employees, for culture, to make patients, assuming you're doing it with HIPAA, feel good, cover your speeches you do, cover your community events.

Special days in the office, Halloween, all that stuff is great. It's a supplemental strategy. You know, but if you find yourself, instead of doing surgery, going and trying to record TikTok videos, I'm a little worried about you. Kathy, any comments on that?

Kathy Gaughran: Yes, we've seen a lot of self-posted content, and we've worked with a lot of groups that have augmented our videography with their self-created content, and there's just a significant difference. So, just keeping in mind that that first impression is everything, and we don't have a second chance at that, and these are humans making decisions.

One thing I did want to circle back on very quickly was Stewart’s comment about the liaisons is oftentimes, in a referral relationship, it's the staff that is handling that referral, not the provider. And they can also make or break that partnership. We've seen staff redirect referrals away from the doctor's typical referral partner.

And even sometimes their buddy, because the staff doesn't like him, or doesn't like her, and they're wanting to go in a different direction, so those nuances at that level do really matter.

Stewart Gandolf: Another thing we can talk about, I'm going to go through a few other categories before we wrap up here.

Another thing, if you're going to invest any money at all, and you're a consumer-direct pay… practice, right, consumer direct, and you have… you're in an area with some good traffic, car traffic, outdoor signage can be something very powerful. You pay for it once, oftentimes.

It can be a huge benefit. We've seen many very successful DSOs, dental groups that do nothing but build retail locations, so outdoor signage, especially signs that are lit, can be very, very powerful. Kathy, I don't know if you have any comments on that, it's such a…

Kathy Gaughran: Outdoor signage, but also indoor signage. Make sure that you utilize point-of-purchase advertising throughout the walls of your business. You have a captive audience, and if you offer more than one product or service, take that time and that value of their attention and educate them about other services that you offer.

Also, some of the localized signage opportunities, we've got a fantastic traditional media buyer who's worked with us for a decade, and one of the things that we look at when we have these big multi-location groups is local pharmacy signage, not the bags, but the signs, and we do see some great impact from that as well. And then, Stewart, I'm sure you're going to talk about Google Business Profile and local.

Stewart Gandolf: Yeah, let's talk about that next, I was getting there. So, Google Business Profile, this is something that we've saved some of the best stuff to the end.

If you're going to do a business for… I mean, if you have one thing you do outside of having a website and handling your phones, those are, like, sort of just table stakes, right up there with that is your Google Business Profile, and the Google Business Profile is critical.

This is its own thing, there's lots of things you can do. You can look up how to build out a good Google Business Profile, but basically, you want to make sure you want to have photos, ideally video.

Respond to reviews, respond to any patient comments, and fill out everything you possibly can. Make sure all your services are there, make sure you update it regularly, make sure all the details, like whether you accept credit cards, like, the more robust, better business profile you have, great professional photos of doctors, if that's appropriate for you, is really critical.

Kathy, any additional comments to that?

Kathy Gaughran: Yes, definitely. So, you look at your website like your front door, your Google Business Profile is like your private entrance, you know, so it's really targeting that local community and making them feel as though you're part of that community. So, it's important that you have that optimized.

Keeping in mind, also, that most people will touch your Google Business Profile to find your address, or to use it to call your location.

I had a dermatology appointment a couple of months ago, and I was driving down to Newport Beach, about 20 minutes from my house. And I looked at the address, and it said that the office closed at 4 o'clock, and my appointment was at 4.30.

Not a lot of people would have kept going. They would have turned around thinking that their appointment time was incorrect. So, there's phone number issues, your reviews are back there, as Stewart said, images and photos. It’s kind of funny, we see parking lots and driveways in the Google Business Profile because people don't see it as an entry point, but it very much is, especially with localized marketing.

Stewart Gandolf: So, on that note, a cousin of that topic is reviews, and you probably have heard that you should have… you should respond to reviews, which is true. Clearly, you want to make sure that you not get into… I'll say it. Pissing matches online, you know, you really want to be as professional as possible. Obviously, you won't share HIPAA. I would say that it's vital you find a platform, if you're going to take this seriously, to be able to manage your reviews, respond to reviews easily, solicit reviews to the extent that you can. Ideally, these days, the ones that are smart will build reviews by asking people immediately after they see you through various software tools. There's a bunch, I'm not going to name the ones we use on this call.

But to text patients, quickly after their appointment, everybody that sees you, asking for a review, texts out… wildly outperforms email, and urgency really matters. So, a text within an hour versus an email next month, the difference is, like, by a factor of 100 in terms of response rate.

I recommend highly you don't try to, what's called gating reviews, only send patients that are happy, and there used to be tricks, and there still are tricks to how to do that, but the FTC's come out and said it's just essentially not only unethical, but illegal.

Beware that each platform has its own quirks. So, for example, Yelp, in its terms of services, asks that you do not solicit reviews at all. They have to become 100% organic, even if you're not gating. But the review management is really vital, not just because… and there's all kinds of data on this. I just went through a meeting with Press Ganey at a conference that was out yesterday, Healthcare Internet Conference or Interactive Conference.

And my friend Aaron Clifford just shared data from Press Ganey that basically said anything below 3.5, people just won't go to you. So, 3.5 is the bare minimum, and a lot of people, their threshold is 4. So, if your reviews are lower, then you have… you need to fix this first, and then you need to… once you fix it, solicit the reviews.

Stewart Gandolf: Once you're performing well, though, if you do nothing, only the negative people will respond. But if you've got a good service then when you start asking for reviews, you'll get… the percentage of good reviews will rapidly increase. And this has been shown over and over and over again. Kathy, what comments would you like out of that on the review side?

Kathy Gaughran: I think just doubling down on what Stewart said, that those stars matter. And we like to see a larger volume of stars. I mean, it's always a little suspect if we've got one review with 5 stars, but, the volume of stars at first glance matters, so just recognize that that's part of your brand, and you need to address your own individual review strategy.

But Google Business Profiles, your reviews, all of the directory elements, are much more scrutinized than the average consumer, the average business owner recognizes, so we want to make sure all that's clean and optimized for you on the back end.

Stewart Gandolf: So if you're an individual practice, you can find these services online. They're out there for sure. If you've got multiple, it's a much bigger problem. That's the ones that we can serve and help with, because that's managing reviews at scale is its own thing. As we're about to wrap up here, a couple other thoughts. Let's talk about PR, and PR essentially is, in a very organized way, looking to get press. Both online and through traditional media services.

So when I say online, I mean blogs, local podcasts, radio, TV, if there's still a newspaper in your town. PR is a function that's become much more important. It's its own thing. You know, it's like…

Kathy Gaughran: It's more digital now. I think there's also a more… an old-school way of looking at PR, and PR has changed a lot.

Stewart Gandolf: And you can try to go get press for free if you have to, but there are services out there that, you know, do require some investment, but these are professionals that know how to get you press online and through traditional media channels, but, you know, the cost point there usually begins around $4,000 a month.

In the old days, we said skip it, but today, press can really help AI overviews, and is beginning to influence Google as well, so this can be a tool. And, so that's another thing to think about. And the last thing that I wanted to share with Kathy and I can talk about for 2 minutes Is, if you're going to do some advertising, for most businesses, we would start with paid search.

And we would start with paid social. Paid search means basically Google pay-per-click, you've probably heard of. People have intent, they're looking to buy. Very, very powerful. If you're looking to get people that are searching for the services in your community, paid social is completely different. Paid search is going after people looking, paid social is going after people and pushing the message at them. That's done at scale, and whereas organic social media doesn't really work to bring in patients, because it's like, it's really hard to get patients, from, you know, at a post of your organic homepage, maybe 10 of your own patients will see it, it's just not very effective. Whereas for a few hundred dollars, you're going to tens of thousands of prospective, people in your neighborhood that you're not… that are not following you. Kathy, any comments on any of these before we wrap up here?

Kathy Gaughran: Well, just making sure that if you do get into the paid media, that you get somebody who knows medical, that they understand healthcare, because you're selling something people don't want to have to buy. I'd much rather spend my time doing just about anything than sitting in a waiting room at my doctor's office.

So it's creating that desire and making sure that you're looking at push-pull marketing also. Are they coming to us because they already determined they have a need, or are we pushing at them based on, you know, what we want to sell more of? So there's also looking at push-pull marketing.

Stewart Gandolf: Great. Any final comments, Kathy, to wrap up here?

Kathy Gaughran: No, I don't think so. We've just seen thousands of individual practices over the years, Stewart and I, it's kind of an interesting history that we've had leading up to this. So, a lot of the tactics that we're sharing we've seen executed over and over and over again, so best of luck to you, and we've got lots of great content on the website. Feel free to peruse that.

Stewart Gandolf: Yeah, we just thought this would be fun to offer sort of a free resource, to people that can't afford to really work with us. They don't really… can't afford an agency, and so we thought, well, we're not doing our seminars anymore. We just condensed our two-day seminar down to about 45 minutes. Obviously, there was a lot more when we had two days to work with people, two to three days, but I hope this was helpful to you. Thank you so much for listening.

Kathy Gaughran: Thanks so much!