Interview with Dr. David Touhill | Marketing Strategist for Dr. Axe | ChiroCEO | 10X Doctor

Hey, what's up everybody? And as promised, I am here with Dr. Dave. I am pumped. He is one of the most knowledgeable experts in the marketing realm within chiropractic and even expanding beyond that. So Dr. Dave, thanks for taking some time.

Awesome man. Thanks for having me on the show.

You got it. And your experience, for anybody that has not followed kind of what you've been up to, you've worked with one of the biggest healthcare brands out there and kind of what's tell a little bit of your backstory. What's the number one lesson that you learned? Then we'll get into some like nitty gritty that docs can use starting hopefully, hopefully today in their practices.

Yeah, man, awesome. Awesome to be here. Yeah. So I originally came into chiropractic through my brother in law. He kind of brought me through and I have my own chiropractic story that kind of brought me into the chiropractic space. When I started school, started my undergrad, I started a digital marketing agency kind of at the beginning of when Facebook ads really started to become a thing. 2007, 2008. And worked on the agency, actually driving leads into my brother in law's practice and then started driving leads into other doctor's practices even before I went into chiropractic school and then went through the chiropractic program. Loved it. Got out of practice and I was in practice for about a year, year and a half and then Dr. Axe pulled me, kind of grabbed me and said, hey, you know, I'd like to bring you on my team to work with my team. And then yeah, started working part time and quickly full time for him. Still adjusting, adjusting the staff at Dr. Axe, but working on his physician's line and some of their programs with 10x Dr. And Cairo CEO for a time there for about a year and a half. And yeah, it kind of led me into working with docs on driving leads into practices, working with docs on building their social audience and then not just chiropractors, but functional medicine doctors, orthopedic surgeons, and then even some influencers outside of the chiropractic space or the health space, but just more health based influencers that had large audiences in building their brand. So that's kind of the quick backstory and where we are at to get us today.

That's awesome. And I'll clarify, since you talked over it quickly, I was gonna let you tell the story, not me, but yes, you mean Dr. Josh Axe, the one that is all over the place. And you've been behind the scenes with him for quite a few years now, really working on a lot of his marketing strategy, how it's implemented, and kind of working hand in hand with him. So, you know, what's the number one is. It's really hard to distill probably the knowledge that you've gleaned over the course of years. What's the number one takeaway that you've gotten from working with, you know, seeing that brand just explode?

Yeah, I would say the number one thing is keeping it simple. Evan Tardy, as company president, would say, simplicity adds focus. So many people try to and bear with you here, but so many people try to kind of spread seeds everywhere. They try. They try to go all out on Instagram, all out on Facebook. They're doing Twitter, they're doing Facebook ads, they're doing a show, a course here. They're joining 20 different types of ads, and there's really no focus. Right. And so focusing on just one thing at a time, especially for Dr. Axe, focusing really on one thing at a time, making it great. And then once it's great and automated, yeah, we can add another thing, but really focusing on getting very clear and focusing on one thing. Because when you focus on, you know, if you have that guard and you have that, you know, you till the soil in that one spot and you're looking directly at it, and you're putting one seed in each spot, and you're watching it, right? And you're watching the rain, and you're adding the specific amount of water that it needs. Oftentimes, even for an example, you know, you start to post on social media, you're starting to post your videos, and you kind of just do it just to do it, and then you just take on something else just to do it, just to do it, just to do it. But when you make a post, number one, when you're making social media posts, when you make a post, you want to look at other people that have done a great job before you make your posts. And then after you make the post, after about a month or two of making your post, really look at the data on the post and saying, okay, which of these posts are people liking? Which of these videos are getting interactions? Jeff takes his shirt off. It's getting a lot of views he's got to keep. That means to keep your shirt off. And so I think keeping things simple, especially when it comes to digital marketing and social media, I believe is probably one of the keys that allowed them to be great is because they didn't try to bite off more than they can chew at the beginning. And now when you see it, I mean there's almost 300 employees. I mean Inc 35 and Inc 500, all these different. But all that came from focusing on one thing at a time, one thing at a time, making it great and then moving on to the next thing. So simplicity adds focus would be my one, one takeaway.

I think that's a super important one. And I bottled the Jeff with his shirt off. It's called customer repellent. You do not want to purchase that product. But at any rate. So that kind of leads me into my next question for you, which is what do you see as kind of the biggest opportunity for chiropractors to market their practice today? Technology is changing so quickly. Docs are inundated with choices. Right. As you kind of just alluded to. There's so much out there. What do you see as the biggest opportunity as we sit here right today, chatting?

Yeah, you know, it's always changing, right. So I'm giving you the best opportunity right now. Now, was this the best opportunity maybe six months ago or a year ago? Probably not, because you know, Jeff, and you know this, you know, there was such a flood of people going on Facebook and saying Facebook ads are going to build my practice. And you know, especially coming out of Cairo school and saying, hey, I'm just going to run great ads and fill a practice. I think what's working best right now for docs is going back to what worked at the beginning, which was creating some sort of health talk or event or community dinner, some sort of event, middle of the road. Like you've heard, maybe you heard of the Jeff Walker formula. Maybe Jeff, you've talked about it. The Jeff Walker formula where you create three videos, you know, or three, kind of like a three step process to getting them to know you and understand you and trust you before you actually sell them something. Right. And we do it in our chiro offices too, right. We maybe have a two day process or we do something at the beginning or some docs or doctors reports or report of findings and something to kind of bridge the gap before you say, hey, I want you to pay me this money. Right. But so many docs will try to run, will run a lot of ads or social media and they'll do a social media post and the call to action, the post is come into my office and we're going and come in for an adjustment or an appointment. They're like, I have no clue how that ties in with my problem, right. Someone coming in and saying, hey, I have headaches, like, oh, get adjusted. It's like it makes so much sense to us, but it doesn't necessarily make sense to the end consumers. So my tip or my piece of advice right now, now, is that because of the political climate with how many people are jumping on social media, how many people are jumping on ads and doing all that stuff, you're vying for these clients time, right? You're vying for. Everybody's looking for the result. Right. Because chiropractic is not quite widely accepted like the medical model is, or like different traditional medical services. What we need to do is we need to make sure that we kind of bridge that gap and we can use the Internet and use social media to do that. So what that would look like is maybe running an ad or even doing a Facebook Live where you bust a myth about headaches. Maybe you say the myth is the key to getting rid of. You thought the only way to get rid of your headaches was through medication or whatever. That's false. Here's five easy ways. And this sounds familiar because this is what Josh has been doing for the last four years. Here's five easy ways to get rid of headaches fast, right? And then people watch that and from that video, if it's an ad, what you can do is you can actually run a second ad to all the people that watch that video saying, hey, if you want to come in for a headache consultation or, and then, you know, do that or do it, do it. Do a live event or a, you know, a health talk on headaches and then tie in chiropractic at the end of that. But I think too often we try to kind of get, you know, get the whole shebang in one shot and we need it break it down, piece it down just like Jeff Walker did in making it into bite sized pieces so people can understand and have some kind of context on why chiropractic can help them with that, you know, specific condition.

Yeah, I could not agree more. And I love hearing that from you because, you know, you've seen it at the highest level and how that works and to break it down just as you did. I think that's where we've seen a lot of success as well. Smart chiropractor body signals, getting people into workshops, but telling the story to get them there and focusing on something that's dealing with their quality of life because that's what's going to speak to them. And it's not, you Know, if they're looking for an adjustment, they can go on Google, you know, and come in for an adjustment. But if you are trying to court people, expose your message, don't go to Z. You got to start with A, B, and C before you get down the road.

That's good.

That's well said. And with that, I guess this might go hand in hand. But what do you think is the biggest misconception? That many practicing docs that are in the weeds, in the trenches, they're trying to get out there, and maybe they don't even have much experience with marketing their practice online, or what do you think their biggest misconception is regarding marketing online, so to speak?

Yeah, I think it can sometimes feel like it's just a big bad bear because there's so much. And you're like, where do I start? And I think the misconception is one that we think that as chiropractors, we can do it all ourselves. We try to do it all ourselves. And so many docs are like, oh, I'm just gonna run all my Facebook ads myself, or I'm doing all my social myself. And it's a valiant idea. But then you go into practice and you have real life. You have patients coming in. You're like, oh, those social media posts are going to fall apart. If you're doing a podcast or doing a video or Facebook Live or running ads, the idea of a doc running ads for 99% of the docs listening. The reason Facebook ads are so daunting is because you shouldn't be doing them. There's people that literally spend. And again, obviously, Dr. Axe is a huge. But there's 10 people on the team that all they think about day and night is about Facebook ads. Right? So you want to hire someone. And that's why I do recommend hiring some agency to run your Facebook ads or to do your social media to at least help you and guide you, because it's going to save you a lot of money in the long run. A lot of these agencies for social media, you can find someone to assist you on your social media. On Upwork, you can find someone on Upwork that's a social media manager, and then they just give you the content that you need to, you know, you need to present. And maybe you spend 500 bucks or 600 bucks a month to have someone guide you. But I think the biggest misconception is that we need to do it all ourselves, because that's how we kind of got through school. And when we started our Practice. But in this digital space, it's really important to find someone that's an expert at social media or an expert at Facebook ads and hire them to do it, you know, because again, as you're well aware, you know, Facebook is changing, social media is changing. Instagram just added 20 new features last week that if you're not using those features, you're way behind the game. So it's important to kind of find experts in that space and work alongside them. And the other thing is, and the last thing, Jeff, on that point, is having a staff member, a front desk member. Social media is not just something that you just do it. It's not like a trench that you just dig that trench. You need to get done. No, you need someone that's really going to really knows what they're doing and they're really going to be studying and investigating it and learning what's the next best thing. So just checking social media or Facebook ads off your list is not gonna get you the results that you're looking for. It's really having a clear strategy and then having a team to execute it out for you. And again, you can find those people on upwork. And then, you know, if you just go on Facebook, you can probably find scrolling through your feeding and probably find 60 different Facebook ads companies that will. That will do your marketing for you.

Yeah. And if we drill down on that a little bit, I know there's so many docs out there that are. They can't turn around without getting a message, like, 30 leads this, 60 leads this month. And sometimes the kid looks like he's in third grade, which doesn't mean he's gonna do a bad job, by the way. But how do you sort through for the docs that are like, oh, my God, like, that sounds great, totally get it. But, man, how do I tell basically the scammers and the bottom feeders from the legit guys. How would you go about that? What's some, like, base knowledge that you throw out there?

Yeah, the biggest thing I do is, well, number one, you know, a digital marketer and some of these click funnels at a Funnel dash event I went to. And what was the other one? Anyways, they're telling digital marketers to go after chiropractors because it's such an easy market. So we're a target for these guys. So we do need to have. We do need to know these things and how to find the best one. Number one is I always say, hey, I want to see your wins. Right. And when I say wins. You're looking for leads driven in. How many leads are they driving into the practice and then what are their conversion metrics? So a good digital agency will actually track conversions on the end conversion. So did they actually sign up for care? Right. So you need to ask them for that. And if they don't have that, they'll go find that if they really want you as a client. Right. That's number one. You want to see total leads coming in and then you want to see conversions, right? So you want to see how many leads are coming in and how many leads were actually converted by the clinic. Right. And I need to see real hard stats. Right. And then number two, you need to ask them for referrals. Just say, hey, I'd love to get a doc that you've worked with that has these stats and I'd love to chat with him. That's just so important because you're going to run into a lot of people that will kind of throw up. You've heard the term leads all the time. And I, you know, there's no such thing as a non qualified lead. I think, you know, one of the things that you can look at and this is a strategy that I'll give to you guys that are listening. And this is kind of how I would set up Facebook ad strategy for a chiropractor is set it up like this. What I was mentioning before, you have that myth and then the solution, right? You have that myth and solution. You run what you call waterfall funnels. So you take that myth and solution. For all the digital marketers listening to this, here's your tip. Take that thing, make a video on that and have it be a niche topic, right? So headaches, back pain, neck pain, diabetes, whatever it is, have it be a niche topic. And then people that watch at least 30% of that video, at least 30% of that video,. Retarget them with your second ad, right? And the second ad needs to be something that builds trust. So the second ad needs to be something like a testimonial. So headaches, headache testimonial, then offer, right? So, and it's called a waterfall funnel. So you're not just running people directly to an ad saying come in and get adjusted. Because most people are going to say, okay, I have back pain or whatever. Or you're getting kind of the low hanging fruit. You want to get the people that have headaches. You, you bust a myth to say, okay, and you give them some real tips, some real value that they're gonna Take. Then you run a testimonial ad because now you build trust. You don't want to talk highly about yourself, you want other people to talk highly about you. And then after you build trust, then you do an offer. So the only people that are seeing the offer have already. They already know you're knowledgeable because you gave them the myth. They already know they can trust you because someone else has had the result. And then you have the offer. So if you do have a Facebook ads person to ask them if they can start doing that, right? So then you're able to bring them through a step by step process and then you're not running in, you're not just spamming people. The last thing to note is when you're working with a Facebook ads company is if they're not changing the ads on a regular basis, then you're working with the wrong company. You need someone that's actively changing your ads on a regular basis. Because so many people run the same ad forever. It's like passing that billboard billboard sign on the highway and it's the same for 10 years. After about 10 year one, you're not gonna really notice anything on that billboard because it's just part of the scenery, right? So on Facebook it's just part of the scenery and they're just swiping through it. The last thing is Facebook's cracked down on not relevance, but the occurrence, the amount of times that ad is occurring. So if you're running an AD20, if you run an ad and someone sees it and they keep swiping and they don't even slow down to look at it, you actually get like demoted on Facebook, right? So Facebook kind of demotes you saying, you know what, your targeting was off there, right? You were not reaching the audience. They didn't even slow down to even look at the headline. So it means you weren't even close to the audience. So you kind of get demoted. So you want to make sure that your ads are. People are actually stopping and seeing the ads again. For these Facebook ads guys that are running, you want to see that if someone's seeing the ad 20 times and not making an action and they're still running the same ad, that's where you have those ads teams that you run ads. They run ads for a month, you get good leads for a month and they just. It's just because they're not changing the ads, right? They're not looking at that. So I know I went through a couple of things there, but making sure that you Know, you ask them what their wins are, ask them for referrals, making sure they're following some sort of funnel where they're guiding a patient through and not just doing the direct sale Facebook ad and then making sure that they're changing the ads on a regular basis.

I think those. That is like absolute gold. So thank you for sharing that. I think that's that kind of in the weeds stuff is what I love to hear and I know a lot of docs out there do as well. And as we kind of come with some of the tools utilized with this, my last question for you is what's sort of either, you know, kind of a tool that you rely on day in and day out, whether that's a software, you know, or piece of hardware for that matter, or something that's come on your radar lately, that you are just over the moon about what's a, what's. What's a tool or again, a piece of software or hardware that's been just integral to what you've been able to accomplish.

Yeah. So that's the insights. Looking at insights on Instagram and on Facebook and you can just Google Insights, but looking at insights, I'll give you one and then I'm gonna be a bonus. So your insights. Looking at your insights. When I was saying before about when you're posting on social, looking at your insights and seeing which posts are getting the interactions right. If you just go to that insights link and you can probably watch a five minute tutorial video on YouTube if you just Google insights and it'll show you how to look through them. But that'll give you all the information on what are people actually enjoying looking at. Right? And so as you're doing videos, you'll see, wow. Not just I'm getting all this interaction on the post where I talk about this thing or I have this prop or I have this thing in the video. So the insight just lets me know on my Instagram, for example, I know if I have post this type of picture or this type of quote, I'm gonna get a thousand likes and I'm gonna get 5,000 interactions, right? But I know if I post this type of post, it goes way down. And one of the things that you'll run into, and again, why you need to stay away from it is if you do a lot of posts where you sell, you notice whenever you try to sell something, it's like boom. Because you haven't built up that value and that trust yet. So insights is the biggest thing. The second thing Is if you're running Facebook ads, you need to watch maybe a 20 minute tutorial on how to look at Facebook ad analytics. You don't know how to run Facebook ads. You just need to read a 20 minute tutorial or watch a 20 minute tutorial. And Jeff, you might have something like this, but just so you're at least aware. And then what I always do is have your Facebook ads team send you a screenshot of the ad backend every month. Just a screenshot. And for you to look at that. Right. And if you have any questions on that, you can shoot me a message on Facebook or Instagram or if you want to, if you're concerned on whether your ads are performing well, shoot me a message on Facebook with a screenshot of your ad, your ad backend. But having just an understanding of how to look at the analytics and understand, oh, this thing has been seen way too many times. Why haven't you changed that at least so we can have our finger on the pulse of what these marketers are doing? So the first one would be looking at your insights tab on all your pages and then also secondly would be getting a screenshot of your ad analytics every month from just your ad, just the front end, just get a screenshot from them, say, hey, I want you to send this to me. And maybe you can even ask them to step on the phone with you for 10 minutes and answer some questions that you might have. Just as a CEO and as a business owner, it's good to know some of those details because then you can quickly see kind of, oh, I smell a rat, something's not looking right. I've seen the same ad. You might look in there and be like, hey, you've been running the same ad for four months and the leads are going down. Change the ad.

I love it. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. All the insight for everybody listening. What is the best way to get in touch with you? Follow what you're up to, see what, what you're into. How can people reach out and find you?

Yeah, so you can find me. I'm most active on Instagram. It's R davidmtwhill. Last name is T as in Tom O U h I L L. And then also if you wanna schedule a call with me if you have any questions, meetwithdrdave.com it has a little bit more of my background on what I do. Again, I'm just, you know, I'm not working specifically with docs on marketing right now, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have on if your marketing person is right for you, I'm happy to do that.

Sweet. The link will be directly in the show notes. If you're listening to this on itunes, you can scroll down click over Talk to Dr. Dave. He knows what he is talking about to say the least, and hopefully we'll have him back soon for another episode. Thanks Dave.

Awesome doc, thanks.