#52 - Branding vs Marketing for Practice Success Care, Part 2

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 we wrap up part 2 of our training on marketing versus branding with Jordana McGonigal. I have to be honest, I'm in the midst of a growth phase for 2 of my businesses right now. We have new websites launching soon, new product offerings, and an expansion of services. It's a little overwhelming, to say the least. And sometimes it's easy to feel like I'm underwater 99.9% of the time. And to top all of that off, I've also been doing this for 10 years now. And while I've developed more of a tolerance for the stress that comes with the growing pains of business ownership, I also look back and think about all of the things I wish I would've known when I started, or sometimes I regret the things that I didn't prioritize early on that cost me valuable time and money. Brand development is one of those crucial things that you have to understand and solidify in order to set yourself up for long-term success. And today's guest speaker is one that I specifically chose to tackle this topic, my longtime friend and business partner, Jordana McGonigal.

Hi, everybody.

Jordana is a marketing professional with 25 years of experience in media, branding, and public relations. When I say she has literally been involved in every aspect of what it takes to build and grow incredible brands, I'm not exaggerating. Jordana and I first met back in 2012 when we were working together for a full-service marketing agency and business magazine. We ran incredible events together, collaborated on groundbreaking creative work for a number of small and large clients and a diverse mix of industries. She also served as editor and later publisher of a business magazine where her creative approach to sales won Jordana 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's also the co-founder of Elysium Creative Collective, our joint venture that employs creative freelancers from across the globe to collaborate on marketing projects for companies small and large. She's also adjunct professor of journalism at Furman University. And 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 development. So hit the pause button, grab something to take notes with. Today's information will offer some insight into changes that 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 come back to it later. You can also always download the PDF of our slide deck in the show notes. With all that being said, let's start the intro music and get started.

So let's talk a little bit about brand extensions. This is how your brand exists in the public realm. Once you have that brand statement, then you can go and develop what that brand statement looks like, feels like. Your brand extensions could be anything from your logo, your brand colors, your office design and location, office procedures, who your target customer is, even your website and your marketing efforts. So let's play this out again using our example from before of serving elite athletes. The practice who serves elite athletes is going to have a much different look, feel, procedures, locations, et cetera, from someone who is serving primarily pregnant women. The market has different needs. It has different expectations. You may decide if you are serving pregnant women, that your logo needs to be more feminine and frilly. Whereas if you're serving elite athletes, you're going to want something strong and foundational. So all of these decisions, while you may have previously made them kind of haphazardly, oh, I like the color blue, so I'm going to make my logo color blue. There are other things that can be explored just by nature of who you have decided you want to be and who you have decided your customers should see you as. So these brand extensions, and there's far more brand extensions than I listed here. These are some of the most common. These are some of the easiest to understand. Office procedures. If you're dealing with pregnant women, you may have a gentler office procedure than an elite athlete screaming across the room, hey, come on in! It's much different than, oh, hey, it's so great to see you. Would you like a glass of water while you wait? They're totally different feelings, and look, there's not a right or wrong, but it's how it all fits together to create that unique experience for your customer. So let's get into how this all works together. We've talked about branding, we've talked about marketing, we've got a little bit of a feel for brand statements. So we're going to do a case study on one of the most popular brands in the world today, which is Starbucks Coffee. Now Starbucks Coffee, you either love it or hate it. If you don't love it, you probably have still tried it. And if you haven't tried it, you probably still know that there's one close by. And if you don't have one close by, you still know who I'm talking about. So that's the power that we're talking about that this brand currently has in the global, not really even the US, but in the global market. So Starbucks, when you look at their brand statement, they're known for a lot of things, but their actual brand statement that they put forward is to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Now that's very frou-frou. Inspiring and nurturing the human spirit, those aren't tangible things. They aren't measurable. But they do evoke that emotion. They want to be a place of inspiration. They want people to feel comfortable there. And the one person, one cup, they do very well in terms of how it has affected their branding. They write your name on the cup. So you have your own cup. The one neighborhood at a time is an explanation of their growth pattern, which has been absolutely bonkers in terms of a marketing function, the amount of growth that they have done. So when you put all of this together, it's a great brand statement. But again, their customer's not sitting there deciding if they want coffee based on whether or not Starbucks is going to nurture their human spirit today. That's just the guiding principle that is going to direct the brand and further direct the marketing. So let's take a quick look at the brand and then how it integrates into the marketing efforts. So when you think of the Starbucks brand, and again, I want you to remember that the brand as we are talking about it currently right this second is less what you are putting out there. Your brand is very much what people perceive of you. So you can be putting stuff out all day long. I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. But if people don't see that, if it's not executed well and they don't pick up on it, you could walk away with a totally different brand perception than what you're putting out there. So let's talk about the brand perception of Starbucks. We know it as good coffee. I put an asterisk here because I have a ton of coffee-nados who will tell me it's terrible coffee, and then I have a ton of friends who swear that that's the only place they're going to get it. I'll leave that up to you, but generally it's good coffee. They've become known as a place to work. So if you need to write your next novel or you just need a place to squat and do some paperwork while you're waiting on coffee, they're the place to go. There's always a table. They're always booked up, but you can grab it, set down your laptop and get a little bit of work done. They're available everywhere. That is directly related to their brand positioning. In that they were called Every Neighborhood. And so they have made big efforts to be available everywhere, but they are available in Target, they are available in the grocery store, they are available probably 3 on a major highway within a few miles of each other. And then if you get into this sort of more fun perceptions or the perceptions that were maybe unintended, but people still have about them, and that is they are a foundational element of hipster culture. Starbucks was the cool before it was cool element a decade ago. They are known for bad name spelling. So there are blogs dedicated to how badly your name got spelled on your cup. And so they've become really well known for that. And unfortunately, if you've watched the news lately, they have a lot of press going on in terms of union breaking, fair labor practices. So without going into that, there's a lot that Starbucks is known for, and the Starbucks brand evokes thoughts of these things or memories of these things. Now let's talk about how that affects their marketing efforts, or what their— let's look at what some of their current marketing efforts have been. So one of their campaigns was Tweet a Coffee. Now This Tweet a Coffee was done primarily on Twitter, but through social media. And it was a way that you could tweet a friend and basically buy them a cup of coffee as a token of friendship. Well, this was a highly successful campaign. Within just a matter of days, it drew in more than $180,000 in direct sales. So these are sales directly related to the Tweet a Coffee campaign. Now the probably more indirect salespeople that had seen it and came in, oh, I haven't had a Starbucks lately, I'm gonna run on over there. But the bigger thing that happened with Tweet-A-Coffee is that they built a database because it's not all about revenue. Tweet-A-Coffee not only brought in $180,000 in sales, it also built up a database of 27,000 unique users. Because as you tweeted your coffee, you had to connect your social network, you had to give them your name, and you had to give them your email. And so with those things, guess what? They've got your information now and they can further market to you, which means that $5 cup of coffee that you just bought a friend will eventually turn into that $20, $50 a month habit that everyone's trying to break. Some other campaigns that they've done. Starbucks has had some incredible veteran hiring efforts. A few years ago, I think it was a goal to hire 10,000 veterans within the— by year's end. They absolutely superseded that. And so they really had a great campaign in terms of veteran hiring. The red cup. This may be the most popular and long-lasting one. This is the reason that everyone got up in arms about Christmas and saying Merry Christmas, because it was the red cup. And instead of putting out a Christmas-themed cup or a holiday-themed cup or whatever for the holidays, Starbucks released the red cup. They have since had other efforts— design your own red cup, artists campaigns, that kind of thing— but the red cup has kind of lived on as one of these societal type things that has happened. Starbucks did when Taylor Swift released her Red album. They did a Red collaboration again with the Red Cup and released special singles of Taylor Swift. Or you could go into any Starbucks and say, I want Taylor's drink, and you would get the drink that she typically ordered, which was something caramel frappuccino, I don't know. But it was an incredible effort to cross over a bridge and immediately bring in Taylor Swift fans Into the Starbucks fold. And then finally in 2017, Starbucks released for 3 weeks only the Unicorn Frappuccino. I don't know if you had a chance to try it. It was terrible, but it got a lot, a lot of drive. There were people everywhere who would stand in line to get this Unicorn Frappuccino, post their pictures on social, which would make all their friends want to go try it as well. And somehow no one ever really told all their friends on social, this is the worst drink I've ever had in my life. And so it actually was a huge success. They sold so many of those things. I'm surprised they haven't brought it back, but maybe that was because it was terrible. And so if you're looking at this, at the marketing efforts, they are very different from the brand perception. Now the marketing efforts are great. They build revenue. They can build positive engagement. They can build positive brand perception. But when it all comes down to it, if a customer or some random person on the street hears the name Starbucks, which of these sides do you think that they will remember? Will they remember that they had a collaboration with Taylor Swift at one point? Will they remember the Unicorn Frappuccino? Probably not, but they will remember that blog that they love with the bad name spellings, or they will remember it as, yeah, that's pretty decent cup of coffee, I might run in there. So when it comes down to it, the brand perception is always going to win out, and what people think about your brand matters. The most important thing about this is if you don't take the time to define your brand, your customers will do it for you. So if you're already in practice and have not gone through the process of determining your brand statement, your brand positioning, what you look like, how does it all work together? If you haven't done that, please take the time to go back and make sure that everything is working cohesively towards that end experience for the customer. I promise it will pay off. But it also sets the stage for all of your future marketing efforts. And it sets the stage for how people will perceive you and your brand. It allows you to have a voice in that conversation, whether or not they listen to that voice, they perceive you as something completely different. That is something that will take execution and good strategy, but you at least have a voice in that conversation. So as we wrap up, I think there's— we've discovered a lot today, we've talked about a lot, but I want to give you a few action items where to start. That's great information, that's a lot, and by the way, I see a bajillion patients a day and there's no way I have any time for this, and I know it's important but I just can't get there. All right, let me break it down for you. We're gonna break this to 3 major sections. And by the way, if you can't do any of these things on your own, there are agencies that will help you. There are freelancers that will help you. So don't let it go undone just because you have a perception of what time you have and how limited it is. Make the time or make this as a, an important piece of your business, because I promise it is one of the most foundational elements of your business that there is. So step 1, what we're going to do is we're going to go create that brand statement. 1 to 2 sentences telling people who you are and what they can expect. Take an hour and work through this. It doesn't have to be forever. It doesn't have to be a week-long project. Just take an hour or 2 and really think through those elements and what you, how you can shape them into who you want to be perceived as. Once you've done that, step 2, align your brand elements. Ensure that those elements, the website, your logo, all of those things align with your brand vision and your brand statement. Make sure they are working cohesively together and not separately in different directions. Finally, market accordingly. Use the knowledge that you build through the brand statement, through aligning your brand elements, to create a message to target the ideal customer. And give them a message that will resonate and give them a call to action that will engage them. If you can do those 3 things, that is in a very, very large nutshell marketing. That is getting all of your ducks in a row going the same direction towards an effort, towards some sort of response. So if you can do that, you will be head and shoulders above so many of the other practitioners out there. And as we mentioned, there are so many out there that it is crucial that you figure out how to differentiate yourself and how to get that next customer with what you have in your arsenal.

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So that said, I know we covered a lot. I would love to know if you guys have any questions. Happy to answer anything that you might have. Definitely let me know and I will be happy to answer them as best as I can.

Awesome. Thank you so much. This has been really great and informative. We have had a few questions that come in so we can kind of dive right in with those. Going back to what you were saying regarding branding, And developing the brand statement. How important do you feel it is for office staff and each member of the team to kind of understand and be on board with that brand statement?

I think it's, it's one of those things that I think it's important for them to understand, but it's not critical. Like if you have someone that just doesn't get it and they're there for the 9 to 5, right? They're answering phones. They don't need to get it so much as they need to follow the processes that you shaped out of that. So for example, if you, let's say you have a front desk assistant and you serve primarily, let's say a senior citizens market. I don't know that that really exists, but if it does, it's out there. So you primarily serve senior citizens. And so part of the processes that you build that came out of your brand statement is that You will always keep an eye on the door. You will grab the door for anyone that comes in who might be struggling. That you will always ask on the phone if they're going to need any sort of assistance to get out of their car, et cetera, et cetera. You decide this is important because this is the market that we serve. And so these are the office processes. As long as that front desk person understands But that is a non— that's a no-go. You cannot get rid of that. And this is how we treat our customers. It's less important that they know why. Now ideally they would know why and they would be fired up about and passionate about your market and passionate about your customers and they would really absorb that and be able to then further make decisions on their own and judgment calls on their own according to that brand. statement, but it's not critical. It's not something that will make or break your business as long as they are adhering to the processes and systems that you put in place according to your brand statement. Absolutely.

I think, and as you said, it's so important that they just kind of adhere to the pieces of the process, even if they don't have a deep understanding of the branding statement. Along those same veins, when it comes to developing this brand statement, how important is the language that you use? A lot of practitioners oftentimes tend to use clinical words or clinical language. How important is it to use the right type of language when developing this brand statement, not only for your internal audience with your staff, but then also your patients?

Yeah, so I am a language person. I'm a wordsmith. I believe that there is inherent power in the type of word that you choose to do any sort of thing. That said, a brand statement, because it is not so much forward-facing. It's more important that you feel that it captures the essence of who you are. If that is very clinical, if that is very bleached and medical and straightforward and no emotion, then so be it. But just understand that as you hand off that brand statement, as you onboard someone or say, this is who we are and this is what we stand for, That they may not have the same reception to that as if you had considered emotive words or how the statement makes someone feel or what emotions it evokes. So one of those things, so much of this is gray area. Does it matter? Yes. Will it break you? No.

One of our attendees wrote in and said they are new in practice and just now beginning this process. process of developing a brand? Is it more important to first decide on who your ideal patient is and then shape the brand around that persona? Or is it better to create your brand first and then seek out patients that fit that mold?

I think, and I could be completely wrong on this, but I think when you go into practice, you have a good idea of who you want to work with. That may not be a specific market demographic. That may not be pregnant women or athletes or senior citizens. It may just be like, I want to serve this area, right? I want to be the best XYZ in this location. But you have to really decide what those values are and what is most important to you. And if you can kind of rank the top 3 or 5 or 10 things, These are the things that are important to me and this is who I think we should serve. It matters less on what that person looks like. It matters more on how those decisions that are kind of non-negotiables for you as a person, as a business owner, how they further shape the rest of the conversation and then get into building out the brand. But I would always start with that deep internal conversation of what do I want this practice to look like? Who do I want it to serve? How do I want people to feel when they leave? And if you can start with that and answer some of those questions, then I think that you'll get a lot further in the brand discussion than if you just start with what colors do I like and what kind of shape should my logo be?

Absolutely. And I feel like there's a big misperception out there about logos being your brand, about a logo representing your brand. And while it is a component of it, as you mentioned in the presentation, branding is about so much more than just here are our colors and here's our— Thank you so much. I think my microphone might've been muted there. I'm gonna ask that question one more time.

I apologize. I was just talking away over here.

Again, guys, if you have questions that come to mind, please chat those in. I am still watching the live chat here. We have just a few more minutes. So I wanted to wrap up with one interesting one that was submitted. This is a doc that's been in practice for 20 years. He says that he's now bringing in a new partner, which is making him consider a rebrand for the practice. What are your suggestions for how we get started with this process together?

I think that last word is the key, and that's what I was going to ask is, are you as a business owner deciding to rebrand Because you're going to have someone new in the practice, or are you deciding to rebrand because you want someone else's identity and vision shown throughout the brand now? So if the goal is truly bringing on a new partner, bringing on a new practitioner, and I want this person's identity to be reflected in who we are, then I think the first step is really going through that same thing. As you would individually. Who are you now? What has changed? Has anything changed? And not everything probably would change because if a partner's coming on board, it's likely because they saw something in the practice that they really liked. So you've got to figure out, you've really got to do this dissection work of what stays, what goes, and what changes. And until you have some sort of agreement on that and what that looks like going forward, it'll be really, really hard to make decisions on the other stuff. Now, sure, you could do a brand new logo and you could change it up and do a marketing campaign. Now come see Dr. Smith, but it will be far less effective because there's not a cohesive brand driving that decision.

The second part of that question that he asked was, are there any challenges that we should foresee when it to rebranding, any kind of pushback we should anticipate from our existing patients? How do we keep from having confusion?

That's a really, really good question. And it is a question that has plagued people who have done a rebrand since forever. And the best answer I can give you, because there is, there's a lot of opportunities for mismanaged expectations. There's a lot of opportunities for someone to misunderstand that you were once this and now you're this, or, oh, I got this postcard in the mail from your competitor and it's actually from you. So there's a lot of the opportunity. So the best thing I can say is brush up your communication. You have to communicate well, communicate often. Tell all of your current customers, hey, we're going through a rebrand, our new name is this. Tell them again and again and again when they come in for their appointments, give them a card with the new logo, switch out the logos and the brands as the elements come out of that brand transition. Make sure that those are visible. Make sure that they, you call attention to them. You overcommunicate those things in order to manage your current patient load. But also to hopefully bring in a new patient load. So it is a tricky process. These are things that even seasoned marketers like myself, I've been through a number of different rebrands with clients and there's this question every single time is what are we about to step into? And the truth is you don't know. So the best thing you can do is just make it crystal clear what you're doing. Why you're doing it and how it affects them. And if you can manage that level of communication before, during, and after the rebrand, you will eliminate a lot of the opportunity for those kind of hiccups along the way. Awesome.

Thank you so much. I think this has been, again, incredibly informative. This is a type of education that we feel like is very important for practitioners, whether you've been in practice for 2 minutes or for 2 decades, we do think this is really important to understand. So one of the things that Jordana mentioned earlier was the FlightPath relationship with Texas Chiropractic College. FlightPath essentially is a curriculum that teaches healthcare providers about how to launch and successfully operate a business. A lot of that involves marketing, but some of it also touches upon other aspects of your business, Such as financing contracts and things of that nature as well. Jordana, thank you so much for this presentation today. It's been great information, and I know I learned a lot. I know our attendees certainly learned a lot as well.

Thank you so much.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for episode 53, where we feature a new training with Dr. Michael Lovich titled Muscle Memory: How Your Brain Uses Muscle Tone to Map the World. We will be discussing how the brain maps out the body using muscle tone and how that integrates with vestibular and visual inputs. You won't want to miss it. Episode 53 drops in 2 weeks. You can subscribe to The Factor Podcast on Apple, Spotify, 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 our Patreon link in our show notes. You also will 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 training in a city near you. To view our full course schedule and register to attend a live hands-on course, visit factoreducation.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 hyphen. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R hyphen store dot 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. that 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.