Pain Doctors - How to Make Your Life Easier in Your "Marketing"

Why do pain doctors continue to take the abuse? 

What abuse am I referring to?

The abuse of being battered around by overall 'marketing' and all of the complexities that come with it in 2019.

Time and time again, I speak with pain doctors and clinic coordinators that are dealing with a complex issue - going through 'marketing woes', that now, in this day and age, can be 100% avoided.

In 2019 we have all the resources at our fingertips, yet most of us fail to use them sufficiently for our businesses - even though when used correctly they can make your life so much easier.

But I feel sometimes doctors are missing the boat… not to a fault of their own, but I believe because of lack of exposure to new ideas regarding ‘what’s out there’.

A conversation with a potential client yesterday reminded me of this..

Loved talking to the guy, good and smart dude.

But if this is an indication of how things go in pain clinics across the US, I didn’t realize how frustrating, and counter-productive it can actually be… and how much doctors are leaving on the table because of it's ability to suck time out of your day, month and year.

The conversation with with a… let’s call him “Jim”.

I asked Jim how his marketing was going.

Jim sighed. Then started going deep.

Jim gave me incredible perspective.

Jim went on for 15 minutes on the story - to describe how 4 years ago (!) when he wanted to get started, he hired someone to do design on his facebook page that essentially ‘hi-jacked’ his facebook (literally held his login/password/admin access even to personal profile)

So Jim gave up for the first time.

Jim was literally inactive online for a year - and a critical year at that point.

But he knew how important an online presence was locally, so he decided to get back on the horse.

He decided to go internal and he hired one of his staff members who self-proclaimed herself to be ‘the queen’ at social media. Little did he know that posting does not qualify you as ‘the queen’.

Needless to say it didn’t work out.

So Jim took 6 months to learn social media himself.

He thought, “It can’t be that hard, right? Just post consistently and build my brand on FB”.

He started posting, didn’t get much feedback. He posted more, and more… Got a few likes but overall… crickets.

Then someone left a bad review on google (which was really not his fault), so he needed to figure out a way to improve his online reputation, which he bought a course on online reputation and went through the course.

It was a good course. But it took a good 2 weeks to get through it and try and clean up the bad review. He got some new good reviews to ‘come to the top’ but his goal was to get customers.

So this seemed like a waste of time.

Jim figured it would be good to get someone else to do it, since he didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

He asked one of his staff “who is good at social media?

A lab tech raised her hand, and is an active social media user. Jim said, ‘takeover the facebook and run the social media stuff.”

That was 2 years ago.

So, I asked “Jim”.

Me: “How many new patients have your brought in from your efforts online?”

Jim: “Not sure… maybe 50…” (it sounded like he was asking me and I didn’t know what to say

(PAUSE)

Me: “Jim, what do you want?”

Jim: “What do you mean”

Me: “What do you really want? WHY are you trying to market your clinic online”

Jim: “Because I want more patients to help that are in pain”.

Me: So why are you worried about anything else but marketing to new potential patients and tracking it to see if your marketing is ‘working’?

Jim: “No….I don’t know…there are too many moving pieces, I’m confused. That’s why we’re talking, right?”

Me: “Yes, okay, I understand. Let’s get to work.…”

It’s conversations like these that remind me how valuable it is to make sure you have a marketing ‘system’ - not just and idea of what you think will work - or someone who has posted a few videos on social media.

With a system you base your efforts on results. You determine what is working and you continue to grow through TRACKING.

When you only focus on RESULTS you the distractions out, and focuses only on getting what you want - New Patients walking in the door.

A system is built to be smart, and leverages technology to get results on autopilot.

A system allows you to completely eliminate the confusion and frustration and all of the headaches that come with online marketing.

A system allows you to free yourself up so you can have time for the things you love.

Without a system - Jim was lost.

Without a system - unless you are a doctor AND a marketing professional - your clinic is not getting the results you could be.

Do you have a system that focuses on RESULTS? Do you know where your patients are coming from and how many you are getting from your system?

If you’re ready to focus on results, build your system, employ your system, love your system - that is the truest path to make your life easier when it comes to your marketing, and growing your revenue and local impact in your clinic and practice.