The Top 5 Marketing Secrets Every Clinic Owner Should Know

How do you get more new patients or hire more clinicians at your clinic and yet still remain profitable? This is the question, and I'm on a journey to get you the answer. I'm going to interview the best marketers and clinic owners across the world to give you access to their winning strategies from recruitment, marketing, operations, finance, and more. So you can easily take action on the secrets to grow your clinic. I'm Rick Lau. Welcome to Clinic Boss Secrets. Hi, everybody, it's Rick Lau here. You're gonna love this episode. I speak with Jerry Durham, and we talk about the difference between sales and marketing for a clinic. Check it out.

Marketing gets you the knock on the door. Marketing says, hi, I'm here. I would like to talk with you. That's what marketing does.

Okay, so marketing, just so we're clear, marketing in this case is like, yes, there's branding, but marketing is about getting you phone calls and getting you emails. Okay? That is marketing. What you do, like, whether, like your branding, you do direct messaging, you do postcards. Everything is about getting phone calls. Okay? That's marketing. So if that is marketing, what is sales? Everyone. And, Jerry, in your world, what does sales do?

So let me continue the analogy. Marketing gets the knock on the door to the business. The salesperson opens the door and says, how can I help you? That's what sales does. It puts people onto your schedule that will arrive, pay, stay, and do word of mouth and help you with your marketing in the future.

I like the. I'm gonna get very. I'm just gonna cut to the chase. Sales means converting the calls. It means converting the emails into an appointment. Okay? That's what it is. And who. Let me ask you who. I'm gonna ask you. I'm gonna ask the question again. Who employs salespeople at their clinic right now? These are the people that convert calls into new patients.

Ah, now I'm smiling.

Okay, but, Jerry, do you understand, like, what we just did here? Like, we had to do? Understand?

I know.

So. So I think, like, this is a very distinction. So there's. There's two ways you could get more new patients, everyone. You could generate more calls, right? And what's the other way?

You could train your front desk to convert more of those leads into arrivals, into scheduled people.

Okay, which one's easier? Everyone? Is it easier to do marketing or is it easier to do sales?

That's a great question. That's a loaded question, by the way. Is it easier?

I'm gonna be very honest with you guys. Marketing is hard. I love it.

I love it. Rick's getting. Look at this, look at this.

And the people that do branding, like, oh, you know, like, I'm a Lululemon. I'm an Apple that doesn't generate phone calls. It takes generous. It takes generous phone calls after like 3, 5, 20 years. You know, like, marketing is tough, right?

By the way, I will argue. So here's the deal. Wait real quick. Because some people said, ty, it's close. This is the issue in physio, in healthcare, in what we do. People don't understand and won't acknowledge the connection between Rick and Jerry, marketing and sales. When you acknowledge the connection, they both will get easier. Yet you must first understand there's marketing and their sales and your front desk and your providers are both salespeople. So once you figure that out, your marketing can improve and your front desk team can help Rick be more successful with you. It's that freaking simple.

And you all know I'm a marketing guy.

That's what I'm saying.

Is Rick a marketing guy or a sales guy? I'm a marketing guy.

Rick is the market. I'm the sales guy. That's why I keep talking over him last.

This is the results for last week, right? We spent $183 on Google Ads, right? We generated. Like, this is interesting. So we use. We use Google Ads, right? You know, last week we were testing this for like five, six clinics. You know, in the. We tested like a big city, small city. I'm running this test. I got 12, I got 12. I got 12. I got two emails and 10 phone calls, right?

I see they need help with sales training, dude. That's what I see.

Okay, guys, is this good? It cost me. Well, first of all, with Google Ads, this is what I see. Majority of the leads coming in were phone calls, not emails, right? So that's number one. I'm spending. We spent $200, $183 last week. And we generate 12, like, extra. Like, we generate 10 phone calls, two emails. How much did it cost me per lead? Right. $15. Who would like to get $15 a phone call right now? $15 for a Google Ads phone call? Is that a good number or a bad number? I'll take it. Right? Think about this here. I'm going to show this thing. This is like, where, like, everything gets dropped and I get.

So you need. Let's go back to your question as you're pulling forward real quick. I need people to understand this is not a marketing problem. And most of the clinic owners I know will Say we got a marketing problem because we have no people on the schedule. And I'll say, no, you have a sales problem. This is not a marketing problem. That's the answer to Rick's question on this line.

Look at this.

This is not a marketing problem.

I got 10 calls, and I missed nine. This is real numbers. I'm like, what the heck? I spent $200 or $1,000 a month.

Why bother?

10% of these calls? And guess what? At the end of the day, you know, it cost me a. I booked two, okay? These clinics booked two. So literally, it cost me $91 for a new patient book. Is $91 a good number or a bad number? Type that in the chat. Is that good or bad for a patient book?

Jesus Christ, dude.

Right? That is bad. Okay?

It's horrible. You still have to pay.

That is horrible.

You have all your expenses of your business on top of that. There's no.

So let me ask you, do we have a marketing problem here, or do you have a sales problem?

All right, good.

Yes, sales problem. Okay? And so I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna do another example now. If I spent. If 90. If it cost me. Let's just say, if it cost me $91 on, like, Google Ads, right? Oh, my God. This is horrible. I'm just. That's awesome, dude. $30 for a new patient on, like, let's just say. Let's just say Facebook. Okay? Facebook. Where am I going to spend my marketing next month? I'm going to spend it on Google or Facebook. Which one has, like, a lower cost per new patient, right? If it cost me 91 bucks for Google, cost me $30 for Facebook, where am I going to spend my marketing? No, it's Facebook or Google, Right? Exactly. Baseball. So the point of this story is two things, right? Sales is the easiest thing for you to focus on right now. Everyone, okay? I just use this because everyone's like, I'm talking. Everyone's like, I want to do Facebook ads. I want to do SEO. Like, this is what everyone's talking about right now inside their career. Like, I'm working with, like, 400 clinics right now. Everyone's like, I want to do SEO. I'm gonna do ads. I want to do Facebook ads. I want the Google Ads, right? You know? And. And I'm saying, like. I'm saying. I'm not saying don't do it. Start with one channel, measure it. You know, how much does it cost you to get that new patient in the door, right? And then figure out. Do you have a marketing problem or a sales problem? Right. If it's a sales problem, work on sales training if your sales is good. And then you need to try another marketing channel and see which one gives you a lower cost for new patients. So this is how you determine. Like, this is what I call cost per new patient, cost per assessment. You take your advertisement cost and whether it was booked. Compare channel to channel. Okay, so I'm gonna give everyone a really quick tip. Okay? So all what you do is you create these fake phone numbers. You put it to each of your stuff you put on your website. You put on paid ads, Google Ads, social media, whatever. Dr. Marketing, Dr. Referral pads, like radio ads. And then you could track how many phone calls that you get. Right. And then you can listen to these calls and determine whether they're booked or not. Okay. If you found this helpful and want some free resources to help you be an even better clinic owner, head over to clinicbosstools.com we've got tons of free stuff on getting new patients, bone scripts, selling your clinic, managing clinical teams, and much more. Head over to clinicbosstools.com.