In this solo episode of the Practice Profit System, host Matt Gillogly outlines why many medical practices fail at marketing and presents a science‑based framework for attracting high‑intent patients. He debunks the common belief that paid ads alone will grow a practice, explaining that typical Facebook or LinkedIn campaigns generate low‑intent "skinned‑knee" leads that rarely convert. Matt introduces a lead‑intent spectrum—low, medium, and high—and coins the "bleeding neck" metaphor for prospects whose pain is acute enough to prompt immediate action. He illustrates this concept with a detailed personal story about a severe elbow injury that forced him to seek definitive treatment, showing how a prospect’s mindset shifts from casual self‑care to urgent need. The episode then maps the traditional marketing funnel (top, middle, bottom) onto the patient journey, emphasizing the need to move prospects through each stage by understanding their current thoughts and future goals. Matt recommends a content‑heavy strategy for regenerative and longevity services (roughly 70% content, 30% paid) and a more balanced mix for weight‑loss and hormone‑replacement therapies. Finally, he promotes his free book, "The Anatomy of a 7‑Figure Medical Practice," as a lead‑capture tool and invites listeners to request a physical copy. Throughout, he stresses that marketing for medical practices should follow the same scientific rigor as clinical practice.
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All right. On today's episode of the Practice Profit System, we're gonna talk about how to market your medical practice. Yeah, this is one of the big questions that we get all the time. So let's go ahead and dive right in. Now, the reason why people don't do a good job of marketing their medical practice is they violate a couple of basic principles. And just like in medicine, you'll hear me talk about this all the time. Medicine is based on science. If we violate the science of medicine, bad things happen. In business, it's based on science. If you violate the science of business, bad things happen. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the key components to market your medical practice so that you can be successful. Okay, so let's talk about a couple of things that people violate right off the bat. They think that in order to grow their medical practice, they need to run ads. So they go out and they hire a Facebook agency. They're on Facebook, they see this thing, or they see LinkedIn and somebody reaches out to them and they say, we can get you 30 guaranteed leads in the next 60 days. And if we don't get you the leads, you owe us nothing. They think, what have they got to lose? So what do they do? They sign up and they spend a bunch of money. They have to spend money on the marketing agency. Usually that's going to be— the retainer is going to be like $2,000 to $4,000 a month. They'll spend about $1,500 to maybe $2,000 a month. They'll do that for 3, 4 months. They'll get 30 leads. The problem is, is none of those leads convert. And there's a specific reason why those leads don't convert. It's cuz they suck. Okay? Those are not quality leads. There is a significant difference in the world of marketing when it comes to leads. There are low-intent leads that are medium-intent leads and they're high-intent leads. And it takes an expert to go out and create high-intent leads. What is a high-intent lead? It is the intent that they have to buy. The problem with a lot of Facebook advertising or LinkedIn advertising is, well, the prospect has really low intent. They don't really know who you are. What we want to do is we want to get them to a place where they have very high intent. They have what I call is a bleeding neck. Most of the leads that you have have what's called a Skinned knee, and what is a bleeding neck? Well, think about it. If you have a bleeding neck, how quickly are you going to go get that problem fixed? You're going to get it fixed pretty quickly. So we want leads that have what we call the bleeding neck. So we have to get inside the mind of the prospect. How do we do that? Well, let me tell you a little bit about my elbow journey. If you have been watching any of my videos for quite some time, you've probably heard this story, but I'm going to tell it again because it really illustrates. What your patient is going through. Now, I'm an avid golfer. At the time of this recording, I have been playing golf for 50 years. I am a former golf professional. I never played on tour, but I'm a 5 handicap right now. And if you don't play golf, that's pretty good. That means that I'll shoot in the high 70s or around 80 when I play golf. So unless I'm playing like Augusta, and then I'll probably be like 100, but that's another topic for another day. Okay. So. Let's talk about my elbow. In probably 2021, I started doing CrossFit and I injured my elbow. And I'm going to do the short version of this story, but you get the point. So basically, I injured my elbow. I asked my trainer and he said, why don't you just ice it, give it some rest, and, you know, just don't do a whole lot of heavy movements for like 3 weeks. I did that, came back, everything was fine. I injured it again. Then I went and bought a couple of sleeves. I saw a bunch of guys at the— at CrossFit that had sleeves. They had elbow issues and And it was my left elbow. And so I did that. I bought so many different sleeves. I have 6 different types of sleeves at my house. I have hot compression sleeves, cold compression sleeves, compression sleeves. I've got the little thing that goes above the elbow, the thing that goes below the elbow. I've got plenty of sleeves. I've got gray ones, black ones, beige ones. I've got 'em. Okay. Then on top of it, what I started doing is I did some acupuncture, I did some massage, I went and got prolotherapy. I reinjured it. I injured it again playing golf. I took some time off. I did all of these things. And I'm in the industry. And it wasn't until— now this was 2 years. For 2 years, I even worked with my golf coach, my swing coach, to fix my issue at impact because my issue at impact is my left wrist was cupping at impact, which was adding more stress and strain on the tendon. So we wanted to have— be more flat-wristed at impact. I did all of these things and I'm in the industry for 2+ years until one day the bleeding neck happened. What was the bleeding neck? During the opening day golf tournament in 2023, in March of '23, I hit a shot on the 8th tee, the par 5. I hit it a little fat, and as soon as I hit it, I went, holy leap. Okay? I knew instantaneously that I blew my elbow out. I played the next hole one-handed. I played the 10th hole one-handed. By the time I got to the 11th hole, my elbow had blown up to the size of an orange. I started taking pictures. I sent it to my doctors, Dr. Buford and Dr. Demers and Dr. Schachter. And Dr. Pietropoli. And guess what? The next week I got a PRP injection, grade 2 tear, level 2 tear, grade 2 tear of the tendon in my elbow. Okay. Why did I wait that long? Because this is what your patient goes through. The reason why your marketing doesn't work for your medical practice is you are reaching people at the top of the funnel. And if you think about it in your business, there is top of funnel, there is middle of funnel, and there's bottom of funnel. Your top of funnel people are just people that are just starting to engage with you. Middle of funnel people are people who are just starting to consume information. Bottom of funnel people who are— these are the ones that are ready to make a commitment. You have to spend your time and your energy taking people from top of the funnel to middle of funnel to the bottom of the funnel. And in order for to do that, you have to understand a couple of things. You have to understand what are they thinking about in the moment? Okay? In that moment when they are searching for a solution, what are they thinking about? If they're really, if it's just a skinned knee, they're really not thinking about fixing the problem. They just want a bandaid. How do they feel? Well, when I was at the top of the middle of the funnel, I was just feeling that I was irritated. It wasn't until I blew my elbow out that I felt, oh, I gotta get this thing fixed. What are they doing to fix the pain? They're doing everything other than call you. Okay? Mm-hmm. Understand this. They're getting cortisone shots, they're doing prolo, they're going to other people, they're talking to their friends. I mean, these are all the things that people do. Okay? They're not calling you. They're doing anything they possibly can besides coming to see you to fix their pain. And then finally, what do they wanna do again in the future that they can't do now? Once you understand that, see, I could still sort of play golf. I couldn't play every day, but I could play twice a week. Okay. Which wasn't bad. It was good enough for me. If I just played a couple of days in a row, I just gutted out. I just took a lot of freaking Advil and iced it. I mean, that's what I did. I just Gutted out the pain. It wasn't until I hit the shot on that eighth tee, and immediately I heard something go pop, and I knew what I did. It wasn't until that time that I wanted to make sure that I could play golf again in the future. You see, with all those other things for two years, I could still sort of play golf. I could still sort of bench press. I could still sort of do a push-up. I could still sort of do some things. It wasn't until that golf shot that automatically, instantaneously, I thought, will I ever be able to play golf again? And it's when the prospect reaches that point, that's when you know that you've got someone who's interested with you. Your job in your marketing is not to get people when they're looking at buying at the sleeves. It's to be there in front of them when the elbow goes out. That is your job. And how you do that? Well, we use a lot of video content. We build a lot of information out. We have all of our clients build a lot of information out into the marketplace so that— guess what? So that when the issue happens, they've already seen us a couple of times and they know it's time to come to us. So how do you market your medical practice? Well, I'm not the greatest fan of paid advertising with regards to regenerative. Now it works in weight loss, it works in hormone replacement therapy, it works in menopause better. I mean, we work with clients in all these areas. In the world of regenerative, it works a little bit better if you're doing more content. It's, you have to be more content heavy. If you are in anti-aging longevity, content heavier. Okay. Regen is probably like 70% content, 30% paid. Longevity's probably 60% content, maybe 40% paid, or 65% content, 35% paid. Weight loss is more of a 50/50 component. Okay. So the whole key is, is you've got to understand the key fundamentals, the scientific fundamentals to market your medical practice. All right. You want to find out more? Why don't you get a copy of my book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice? On this page, you will see a link where you can activate it. We'll send it to you for free, actual physical copy of the book. All you have to do is just request it. Check it out. In there, we go into these topics more and more, and we have a lot of great free resources for you. So check it out. All right. This is Matt. Thanks for listening to the Practice Profit System. I love being your guide in this journey. Reach out to us. Let us know how we can help you. We want to help you get rid of insurance. That's our goal. Have a great day, everybody. We'll see ya.
