#51 - Branding vs Marketing for Practice Success Care, Part 1

Factor, spelled F-A-K-T-R, stands for Functional and Kinetic Treatment with Rehabilitation. Over the past decade, this unique approach to treating pain and dysfunction has been utilized by healthcare providers on 6 continents, serving as a framework that guides clinical decision-making in patient visits around the globe on a daily basis. With this podcast, our goal is simple: to bring the best and brightest in clinical education to the forefront and empower practitioners with cutting-edge, evidence-based content that improves patient outcomes and inspires healthcare providers to continually evolve their approach to treatment. In each episode, we will feature a training or interview with some of the top minds in healthcare in a short format that is easy to digest with actionable information that you can implement into practice right away. Let's get started. Hi guys, welcome to The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome and thanks for listening today. In today's episode, we feature a topic on the business aspects of creating and growing a successful business with a training on Branding vs. Marketing: Building Blocks of a Successful Healthcare Practice. As a marketing professional in the healthcare industry, I've heard the same story time and time again from students, new graduates, and even seasoned practitioners. The one thing that keeps them up at night more than anything else is how to continually grow their practice and bring more patients into their doors. And while there's no shortage of companies out there selling advertising and making big promises, Without a fundamental understanding of branding, marketing, and sales, you can easily spend a fortune with little to no return on your investment. So how do you navigate all of this? What is that North Star that you use to drive your decision-making so that the investments you make are the right ones? Today, we're going to be unpacking the fundamentals of branding versus marketing so that you have a better understanding of the work that needs to be done before you you ever spend your first dollar on advertising. And today's guest speaker is one that I specifically chose to tackle this topic, my longtime friend and business partner, Jordana McGonigle. Jordana is a marketing professional with 25 years of experience in media, branding, and public relations. And when I say she's literally been involved in every aspect of what it takes to build and grow incredible brands, I'm not exaggerating. So Jordana and I first met back in 2012, which seems like forever ago, when we were working together for a full-service marketing agency and business magazine. We had the opportunity to run incredible events together. We collaborated on groundbreaking creative work for a number of small and large clients in a diverse mix of industries. And she served as editor and later publisher of a business magazine where her creative approach to sales won her national recognition and served as a framework that is still used by publishing houses to this day. Currently, Jordana is a strategist and content developer under her own consulting company. She also is the co-founder of Elysium Creative Collective, which is our joint venture that employs creative freelancers from across the globe to collaborate on marketing projects for companies large and small. And she's, in her— all of her spare time, an adjunct professor for journalism at Furman University. While she wears many hats, she has a passion for helping companies and organizations with strategic marketing, event planning and management, branding, copywriting, and publication management and development. So hit the pause button and grab something to take notes with. Today's information will offer some insight into changes you can make immediately to catapult your practice to the next level. If you can't take notes now, be sure to bookmark or download this episode and part 2. You'll want to listen to this one more than once. So let's cue the intro music and get started.

As Jessica mentioned, my name is Jordana McGonigle. I am the COO of the Elysium Creative Collective. We recently partnered with Texas Chiropractic College. To develop a workshop and a course that helps private practitioners of all different sorts learn some of the basic business skills as well as marketing and branding skills that they need in order to really thrive. So that is my kind of placement, my angle for coming at this topic. Really excited to give this presentation to you guys. And we today are gonna be talking about branding, marketing, and everything in between. So A really heavy focus on branding and what it is and why it's important. And so I'm really excited to kind of move this forward and, and give you guys hopefully something a little bit new that you can put to use at your practices or in our future practices at some point. So today's agenda, we have a few key takeaways. One, why are we here? Why are we talking about branding and marketing? Why does it matter? 2, what are branding and marketing and how do they differ? How do you build a brand? And then how branding can lead marketing. We'll have a case study where we will look at a very popular brand and kind of explore how branding and marketing efforts intersect and what they mean for the business. So first, why are we here? That's a great question. But if you are a business owner, small business owner, private practitioner, you probably know why you're here. There's probably something that you're hoping to get Whether that's a business boost, whether that's an idea to increase revenue or to increase traffic, there are reasons that you would be interested in branding and marketing. In the United States, there are 70, around 70,000 chiropractors. There's about 330,000 massage therapists and about 312,000 physical therapists, which means that if you are in any of those industries or those practice types, you have a lot of competition out there. So marketing and branding is what sets you apart, especially when we're talking about branding. And it helps you really navigate a lot of the avenues for putting your name out there, getting new customers, getting loyal customers, and really building that bottom line. So there's a few stats worth noting, and I'm going to kind of mention these on the fly. I didn't put the sources here. I have those. If those are something that you're interested in, please just let me know and I'll send them over to you with the full studies. But 61% of chiropractic consumers or customers, patients, ran an online search before scheduling an appointment. That means that before you ever saw them, they knew about you. And that is limited to what you have out in the internet space, your social media and your website, all of that kind of stuff, reviews. All of those things are what people are using to make a decision before you even know they exist. Physical therapists, that number goes up to 84%. So we're not talking about small numbers here. We're talking about a cultural indication That shows that people are going to learn about you, especially when it comes to medical services and treatments, before you even realize that they're out there looking at you. Another interesting statistic is that 43% of millennials will switch practices in the next year. Now, I know a lot of people on here may be like, ah, millennials, we don't care what they think. They need to stop drinking coffee and eating avocado toast, whatever. Millennials are in the ages of 26 to 41 at this point. And they manage and own a high degree of movable revenue in all of our societal systems. So if you have that attitude just because I said the word millennials, then you're missing out on something. If they aren't your customer base yet, they soon will be. And they are not as loyal as previous generations. So they will be switching around if they don't like something, if they think something could be better, if they think something could be cheaper, they will switch. And so having a number that high, you wanna be paying attention to them, whether they're switching away from you or switching to you, that's a big number to pay attention to. And finally, 94% of healthcare patients across the board use online revenues to evaluate their providers. This is big on review platforms, especially some of the medical review platforms and Google, this can make a huge difference in your branding efforts because I will promise you, you can put as many marketing messages out there saying you're the best in town, and if every review says otherwise, you will not have customers that you need. So these are just a few things that I wanted to mention. They will play into our discussion further down the road, but I wanted to bring these statistics because they, it is amazing the amount of information, the amount of data, and the amount of patients and revenue that is potential out there for you. So branding and marketing. Now these are terms that a lot of people use interchangeably. So if you were looking for an agency, you might be able to find a branding agency and they will also do your marketing. And vice versa. The problem with that is that they are very, very different. And I want to explore this in detail because it— the more you know about your brand versus your marketing efforts, the more you can control what you're putting out there and make actual dents and actual movements toward progress rather than just kind of spinning your wheels going like, whoa, I'm doing all this marketing stuff. No, you're doing branding stuff. So let's talk about how these two differ so that we can all kind of get on the same page. Branding at its core is defining who you are as a company and actively shaping the experience for your customer. Okay, so that's saying, this is who I am, this is who I serve, this is what I want their experience to be. It is a high-level, decision that you are making that defines your company and everything within it. On the other hand, marketing is a set of actions that you take using a variety of tools or resources to connect and to sell your services. So on one side, we have something that is shaping the experience, shaping your ideal customer. And on the other side, you are really getting someone in, you're connecting, you are selling.

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But let's dive into this a little bit deeper because this can still be a little bit nebulous. So if we're looking at branding versus marketing, branding is the why. Why do you do what you do? Why does it matter to the customer? Marketing is the how. How are you going to get them in the door? How are you going to get them to do the thing that they need to do? Branding is long-term. Many companies hold brands for the entire length of their existence and they never switch. They never do a rebrand. They never change their logo. They never shift their market demographic. So branding is a long-term, even though you don't have to stick with it forever, it is a long-term thing. You are basically setting up the identity of the company. Marketing, by contrast, is short-term. They're campaigns. They're small actions designed to elicit responses immediately. And so they're very, very different in that aspect. Marketing is very short-term. Branding is very long-term. Branding is done at the macro level. So these are big decisions, corporate decisions, how we look, how we treat people, all of those While marketing is a micro level. It pivots quickly. We didn't hit this number with our ad, and so we're going to pivot and regenerate it and hopefully get more. They're small, instantaneous decisions as opposed to the large branding decision. Branding builds loyalty amongst your customer. They decide if they like you, they have a perception of you, and then they hopefully are loyal to you. Marketing generates response. You will hear the term, I will say it a lot probably here, call to action. You are looking for the response. You are looking for the return in all of your marketing efforts. The branding, you are looking to build a relationship. The branding creates a value while marketing extracts value. So the branding is telling your customer what value you bring to the table. Marketing is extracting value, usually in the form of revenue, but we will see later on that that is not always the case. It is extracting value from your customer. Finally, and this is the best summary that I can think of, branding is the being. It's who you are. And marketing is the doing. It's what you do and how you do it. So if you look at those 2 sides pivoted against each other, hopefully it's a little bit clearer for you how different they are. And we will get into how these 2 interact and play together in a little bit. But before that, I want to talk a little bit about building the brand. Okay, so if you have an existing practice, it is likely that whether or not you have consciously made the effort to build a brand, you have a brand. You have a perception in the market of who your company is and what they stand for. Here I have one of the most significant brands that exists in the world, Coca-Cola. And that's just a simple example. We're not going to talk about them a whole lot, but it is a noticeable brand and it evokes a certain number of responses or thoughts about that brand. You think about it positively or negatively. You think about a time when you drank it. You think about whether you like it or you don't. All of those things, but you get those feelings when you see the logo, when you see that red color. And those are all elements of the brand. But let's get into how you actually define your brand. So let's say you have a practice where you have either not consciously gone through a branding process, or let's say that you are maybe a student or a new graduate and you're looking to open your own practice. But you haven't yet. So let's talk about what it takes to actually define your brand. I have a down-and-dirty guide on how to get started. The first thing that you're going to do is you're going to determine your personal goals within the company. Now you can only do this as a high level of ownership, but at that high level of ownership, you're going to decide things like what do you want your business to look like? What kind of customers do you want? How many? Where will they come from? What are your goals for this entity? And in that, you're going to discuss, or you're going to discover a little bit about who you are as well. Who do you wanna work with versus who you don't wanna work with and why? Exploring the why behind all of those questions is very, very important as well. The second thing you're gonna do is define your value proposition. With more than 70,000 chiropractors in the US, what do you offer that is different? What can you do better than someone else? Who can you serve better than someone else? So you're going to define what is, what your personal values are and how they interact with that company. You're going to craft the story. What is the story you want your potential customer to know about you? What do you want them to think and feel about you? If you are a practice that wants to only work with elite athletes, maybe that's because you have a backstory and you used to be an elite athlete and that's why you know that there's a gap in the market. That's part of the story that you can tell to your potential customers. How can you relate to them? Once that's done, you will craft the experience. So what is the experience that you want your customer to have? And what do you want them to sense or discover? So if you do have that practice for elite athletes, what are the things that you know that you need to provide to them in order for them to have a positive experience, to be a retained customer, and to be loyal and bring you more referrals? Those are all very good goals to have, and they come with having an experience that is positive. Finally, once you've kind of walked through all of these practices, and I know that we are flying through it today, but take some time and really sit with this stuff and determine, think about what your story is, think about what your experience is. Once you've gone through all of these things, you'll want to build a brand statement. Now, a brand statement is a 1 or 2 sentence statement that describes your mission, your expertise, and your promise to your customers. Now, a brand statement is something you may put on your website if you feel like it belongs. And it's not something that generally your customers, your patients, are going to care about. They're not going to read your brand statement and make the decision on whether or not to come to you. They've read your reviews already. So they've already made that decision. But a brand statement can be very, very helpful, one, in recentering yourself as a practice owner. So as time goes on and you realize you lose some passion, which is natural, you lose some energy or motivation behind the business, which is also natural. It can kind of help reinvigorate you and get back to the core of why you do what you do and why it's important. The other way that a brand statement is really, really useful to have is if you are bringing new people into the team. Let's say you're hiring a new associate or maybe you have a potential investor on board. Having a brand statement that is effective and emotional can help them quickly understand what your business is, what you stand for, who you serve, and why you do it. So a brand statement can be a very, very valuable piece of your business toolbox Even though it's something that will rarely be seen. It's one of those, oh, for my eyes only, but I know it's there type situations. So let's go into a little bit about creating an engaging brand statement. I want to show you 2 very different examples on a certain brand and see, basically dissect them in terms of that engagement being able to evoke some sort of response. And in order to do that, I'm going to use the brand that is very, very familiar, probably to all of us, and that is the brand of Santa Claus. Now, if you're not familiar, Santa Claus has been around since the dawn of time, at least the stories of Saint Nicholas and all of the variations throughout history and throughout culture. However, if your thought of Santa Claus is a fat, jolly, bearded man who wears the crisp red suit, who carries the bag of toys and goes down the chimneys and all of that, if that is your first thought, that's, that's the picture that you see in your head when you think of Santa Claus, you are a victim of branding. In 1931, Coke commissioned an artist to depict Santa Claus for an advertising campaign that they were doing, and in doing so, the artist focused on the poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and he developed what we now know as Santa Claus. Prior to that point, Santa Claus was often very tall and very thin. He wore different colored robes, green embroidered robes. He delivered presents or toys or other objects in various different ways. So without this brand depiction of Santa Claus from Coke, essentially, we would not all have the same brand of Santa Claus that we do today that is worldwide, globally known, and very, very familiar to everyone. But let's look at a brand statement that was developed as if Santa Claus was a corporation. We're going to look at 2 of them, and I want you to deter— as you're looking through these, determine which one, if you handed them to a potential partner, if you handed them to a potential associate, which one would be a cleaner transmission of information? Which one would help someone feel what the brand of Santa Claus is like? What would help someone quickly understand what they are there to do? So keep that in the back of your head as we look through these 2 brand statements. The first one, Santa Claus is the CEO of a nonprofit organization that gives gifts to children globally. With decades of experience in supply chain management, manufacturing technology, Claus has helped turn Christmas into the modern celebration that it is today.

Okay.

To the point. It tells us the things we need to know. It tells us who Santa is. It tells us his experience, why he's important. It gives us all of the basic information. However, it's lacking something. It's lacking the emotional response that makes someone care, that makes someone relate to the brand. So let's look at sample 2. Santa Claus is the jolly grandfatherly figure behind the single biggest gift-giving operation in the world. Known for his spectacular flying reindeer and wacky chimney delivery system, Claus has become a loved cultural icon who's turned Christmas into the modern celebration that it is today. This statement, as you can see, has a lot more. It says the same stuff, It uses different words. It uses jolly and grandfatherly, so it evokes some sort of vision about who this is. Spectacular flying reindeer, a wacky chimney delivery system— those words mean it's not super serious. This is a fun experience. This is something that brings out the child in you. A loved cultural icon and the modern celebration. So all of these words, even though the elements are exactly the same, the words make a difference in how your brand is perceived. And again, your customer isn't likely to read your brand statement or even really care. But if you are bringing on associates, if you need to onboard someone and say, this is who we are and this is what we're about, if you're using your brand statement to craft the other brand extensions, We'll talk about that in a quick second. Then it's important that you all are on the same page in terms of how you will relate what you do and to whom and to what purpose.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for part 2, where we will discuss basic marketing and branding tasks that you can do on your own, as well as how your brand can steer everything from your vision to marketing decisions. It can also determine the patients you attract and even influence the look and feel of your office. You won't want to miss it. Episode 52 drops in 2 weeks. If you find value in these free trainings, I invite you to attend our April free webinar titled Ancient Pearls of Wisdom. Integrating Master Acupuncture Points in Your Patient Care with Dr. Jeanette Kerban. These 1-hour lunchtime webinars are always live at 2 PM Eastern where you can hop on live, ask your questions as part of our live Q&A, and every registrant receives an email with a recorded replay after the live broadcast. So, mark your calendar for April 18th at 2 PM Eastern for this month's webinar and click the webinar link in our show notes to get registered. You can subscribe to The Factor Podcast on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or the podcast app that works best for you. Give us a 5-star rating to help us grow the show. Every little bit helps. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel for special discounts and member perks on Factor products, live trainings, and online course offerings. To learn more, visit the Patreon link in our show notes. You'll also always find a link to download the PDF presentation from the training featured in each episode. along with a link to view the full video webinar recording if you're more of a visual learner. And last but certainly not least, we invite you to join us for a live hands-on FACTOR® Rehab System training in a city near you. This year we're excited to announce a return to international course dates. Yay! We're visiting London on May 13th and 14th, as well as taking a trip down under to Australia in Melbourne and Adelaide August 26th, 27th, and September 2nd and 3rd, respectively. To view our full course schedule and register to attend a live hands-on course, visit factor-education.com. That's F-A-K-T-R education dot com. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. Spelled F-A-K-T-R-store.com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us Spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.