How to Grow Your Medical Practice with Your Existing Patients

Foreign.

Welcome back to the Channel Providers. My name is Will Humphreys, and if we are meeting for the first time, I do videos like this every week to help you increase your income, impact and freedom. And today's episode is going to help the leaders and business owners in health care. As we grow our companies in a technological world, we have to start pivoting into those services that are going to allow us to grow without putting too much of our attention away from healthcare. And so today's guest is going to instruct us powerfully on one of the ways that we can actually grow our business with one of the best assets we already have, our existing patients. So Bailey Jensen is a wonderfully talented individual and leader who's going to share with us how her company, Swell, can be a simple solution to help you grow your reviews. But she's going to go into a lot more information than just her company. She's going to talk about how you can leverage these reviews and grow them into helping your business thrive. So, guys, I'm excited to get right to it. So without further ado, here's Bailey Jensen. Well, thank you so much for taking some time to be with me.

Well, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

You know, one of the things I appreciate about you is your ability to connect. You're one of those individuals who are super high on the emotional intelligence scale. You're a powerful communicator and a leader. And I think as healthcare providers are trying to grow their practices, they get really tunneled visioned into this thing called more new patients. And so they hit the old school methods of marketing in a way that isn't really adapting to today's world. But you understand the importance of leveraging technology for growth. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about what you do?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I work for a company called Swell, and we try to just help with generating reviews, connecting with patients, and growing that business. So I'll kind of go through a few things, but I work with our partnerships, which is connecting me with you. So I'm super excited to be here and talk with all your listeners on that.

Yeah, I can't wait for them to hear. You know, in healthcare, we also get so pigeonholed into specific ways of doing business. The world is changing, and so you are able to provide a lot of value and shed some light on topics that I don't think a lot of healthcare providers are conscious with. So, you know, let's talk a little bit about reviews. I understand that you have some information that you would like to share that you feel would benefit healthcare providers and business about the importance reviews and how we can generate those.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'll do a screen share.

I'm a visual person, so maybe they'll be able to see it and it will make some more sense. Perfect. Let's see.

Let me know if you're seeing my screen.

It says Bailey Jensen has started. Oh, there she is. Totally got it.

Awesome. Perfect.

So, yeah, kind of as you were saying, you know, the world is changing. It has been for a while. We're going into a digital age. But especially with COVID things are becoming more and more distanced and more digital. So we're just gonna talk about what you need to do to grow your business online and why that's important.

So first and foremost, if it will click.

So 93% of customers read online reviews before they make a decision, which is really interesting and it's been that way for a while. But I think, you know, I talking to a lot of doctors, referrals were their number one way to get new patients in the door, which might still be the case. However, even those referrals are still going to go check their online presence because I might have a best friend, but maybe she just had a great experience and I want to see if there's a social proof behind it. So it's really important to have a healthy online presence. So a couple other facts here. 97% of consumers will use online media when searching in their local area. And then 31% of consumers are willing to spend more on a business that has better reviews than not. So it's not even like the price point. This is their first interaction with a potential business that they're going to go to. And, you know, one thing I find really interesting about physical therapy is it's different than maybe like your general practitioner or your dentist. It's not somebody you're going to regularly. It's if you have an issue or if you have an injury that popped up, then you need to find it. One time I got hurt in Hawaii and I came home and I had no idea. I'd never been to a physical therapist, so online was the only way to find it. And it's, sorry, that's my dog's collar working.

That's all right.

So that's just something that's gonna be important that we'll talk about here today.

Before you jump in on that, I just have to say that especially in physical therapy, when you're looking at healthcare, you Mentioned it beautifully. People don't even know we do. Like, the general market has no concept of, like, are we massage therapists, are we chiropractors? And so when someone gets an order for physical therapy, reviews might be the only information because doctors oftentimes just give a list of pts, like, yeah, here's the ones that have shown up in my door. So the reviews might be the only way. Like, that might be the only way they can find out where to go and what they do and if the experience is going to be worth their time.

Yeah, and I think that's, you know, that's the good point that you brought up before. It was mostly like you'd go to a normal doctor and then they would refer you over physical therapist. But now we can just make direct contact with physical therapists, which in most cases, most patients know that that's typically what they need. They just don't know where to go. So, you know, when I'm talking to offices, what I like to say is, you know, let's say you have a flood and you need to get a plumber in asap. How are you going to find one quickly? Most of the time you're going to go look online. So when we're thinking about getting new patients into the practice, we just have to pretend like we're in the mind of the consumer because we're going to go with the past of least resistance. And right now that's going to be online. So we just want to make sure that you guys are standing out amongst everyone else.

So a couple of things that are, they kind of get confusing and it's.

A lot to go through, but. So there's a difference between paid ads and then organic reviews. So a lot of companies will go with a marketing group that will help them build some of those paid ads, which is great. There's just some things to keep in mind. So a pro of getting paid ads is you get to be seen by a wider audience. Right. You can target. So you can target search things. The con with paid ads is it costs money every time someone clicks. And that's not necessarily meaning that you got the patient to convert, it's just that they visited your site. And the other thing is, and maybe this is just me, but after talking with some people, let's say I was searching for.

New ice cream shop near me or something and I had a bunch of ads at the top. Typically people aren't going to click on the ads. They'll scroll down until they see those organic reviews because it's just a little bit more trusted because they're real people leaving those reviews. So with those organic reviews, those are going to impact your SEO. They're going to be more considered as a trusted source. And those are ones that are yours to keep. They're left on your buying business page. Even if you stop paying for those ads or whatnot, those are going to just continue to stay there.

So.

This is one thing that's going to be interesting and I don't think a lot of people realize this, but Google's algorithm uses a few different things to determine how a business ranks on their site. So we're going to talk about relevance, distance, prominence, quality and quantity. Fun fact, there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. So these are important steps to know because these are going to be all organically generated.

So first one.

Oh, sorry, go ahead, Will.

No, I was just processing it. I didn't even mean to say anything. I'm like, okay, got it. This is very useful because we don't spend a lot of time again when it comes to marketing and sales in the physical therapy space in particular, like this is just totally different and it's obviously where we need to be thinking.

Well, and it's hard, you know, I mean you guys have such a different focus. You're there for patient care.

And so what we want to do are companies like swell, we want to.

Take this over for you so that you don't have to worry about it. You're set up for success. It's a one time thing and we'll still help you get there so that you can focus on what matters most to you, but not forgetting about this component either. So the first one is relevance. This just means how well the local business profile matches what the patient is searching for. So as you mentioned earlier, they may not know what you do. If you want to say on your business page, physical therapy and sports medicine versus just physical therapy, you're going to open up another audience that might be saying sports medicine near me or sports therapist near me. So by having that in there, that's going to help you. Pretty simple. It's just on your My Google or Google my business page you can edit that.

Next one is distance.

My little box didn't pop up.

But basically you just want to have that accurate because when you're searching, like if I were to say physical therapist near me in Scottsdale, it's going to show up differently than where you're living. So you just want to make sure that your address is Accurate so that when people are looking near them, it's going to pop up. Next one prominence. This is just how well they're known online. Meaning how many platforms are you on? How does your SEO impact you? So if you have your website, that's awesome. We want to make sure that you have your Google my business page, maybe a Facebook page. If you have health grades, great. Or some people will have blogs. This is the more touch points is.

Going to be more views to your.

Site and potential customers or patients coming in your doors. The next one is quality. So obviously we just want to have a high rating. What we like to do at Swell is have aim to have 4.8 or higher. You know, it's kind of like that NPS, you have your promoters and your detractors and we want to make sure that you're a promoter in that way. And then the last one is just the quantity. So here's the breakdown. Amount of reviews fresh and then frequent. So we want to make sure that you're getting a lot of reviews, but most importantly, we want to make sure that they're coming in often. I've talked to many clinics where they're. They're super frustrated because they'll put maybe a quarter into it and they get a ton of reviews, which is great. And they pop up to the top of that Google Map pack. But then when we search for them again, they're down on the second page, even though they have more reviews, probably better reviews than a lot of other clinics. And it's just because they're not coming in frequently.

So we just want to make sure.

That was an indicating factor of it. So it's like you can have the most. In my mind, it was always like the most highest reviews, but it's a matter of also having frequent enough to where that would. Google knows that's relevant or not.

Right.

Because if you think about it, it's like maybe a year ago you guys were the best, but you've gotten a new doctor or a new owner and things are different. We just want to. Google is for the consumer.

Right.

So Google wants to provide the best option for that consumer and that's why it's taking these things into effect.

Got it?

Yep.

So here's some just takeaways that you guys can implement right away. You don't have to have any system to do it. You can do it right on your own. So one, you're going to want to enter in your complete data. This is just going to be on that Google my business page. So you'll see availabilities to do physical address, phone number category is going to be big and attributes. So just making sure that you are capturing anyone that's searching for something that you might service.

Next one, add photos. This just gives, like, a more personalized experience. Right. If I haven't been to your clinic, but I want to know what your staff looks like, what your front office waiting area is, or if you have a treatment area in the back, this is just going to give them an opportunity to feel like they're in your practice or clinic before they actually have gone there.

Keep your hours accurate. This is very important, especially during COVID times.

Right.

Everyone's changing schedules are weird. Today's Martin Luther King Day. Maybe if you're closed, you just want to make sure that you're keeping those up to date. Because, you know, half the time I look up something and I'm like, well, it says this online, but is that really what their hours are? So it just gives more security with those potential patients coming into the clinic.

Yeah, I totally, like, break trust when I've gone to a business and it shows on Google that they're open and I go down there and they're not.

Right.

Even if I continue to use that service, I have judgment on it. Like, they're out of integrity. Like, it's. It's a real judgment. And really, it just. Because it just frustrates me. I've got to do this extra work now to come back another time or whatever.

Totally. Yeah.

And I mean, it's. It's annoying, but, like, let's say if during this Covid time, you guys are maybe only working three days a week rather than five days a week, just update it so that patients know when they're trying to. To reach out to you.

There.

Last one is just verify your location. So this is gonna look like a map. So they'll be able to click on that address. Right. So if I'm searching it, rather than having to copy the address and then go post it into my maps, this will just take me right there. And then, so the next one, we're just gonna get reviews. Obviously, this is easier said than done. And a lot of people, you know, we ask our patients for reviews, and then you go look at their page online, and it's like, well, I'm sure they're happy. They're just not going through with it. So of course we want to make sure that we're asking the patient make sure they're having a good visit. But what's going to make life easier is using a review tool. So like I said, Swell offers this. There's other companies out there that do as well. But what it will do is it'll pull from your emr. What we like to do is we send it at night between like 6:30 and 7:30pm and we found that we get the best results, you know, versus me leaving, hurrying back to the office or I have to go pick up my kids from school, take them to soccer practice. They just have a little bit more time to digest the day and go ahead and leave a review. So this will be easy. It's going to pull customer information. It'll look personalized. You can even add your logo or a picture of the physical therapist if you want there.

So that will help.

I can just jump in. It's something that I wish I had.

Had when I had my practice. We didn't have Swell. And so in my world, Google reviews were super important of course. So we had all these really creative programs. And my listeners are going to understand what I'm talking about where you know, you have a patient come in and you're like, hey, we'd love to have you review us on Google.

But they can't do it right then.

Because if all those reviews are coming from the same ip, Google doesn't really give it that much credit. So you have to encourage them as much as possible to do it from home. And who are the vast majority of our patients? The elderly people who aren't going. Like I had to help my mom write a review for me when I first opened my practice. She wasn't even in her 60s and I'm like logging in, showing her how to even find the way to leave a review. So I think the power of the tool is, is like all the, like a swell is that it just simplifies it. That's got to be one of the main reasons you guys are so successful. Just make it easy for your clients to get the reviews that their patients want to give.

Yeah.

Oftentimes get stuck in all the, all the junk in between their visits and actually leaving the review.

Totally. And most of the time, I mean a couple of things that you said. One, so when they click on the link that we send, it goes right to the Google page. So all they have to do is click the five stars. So it's like a one click for the patient. Really easy versus when you're asking a patient to go leave a review. It can be a headache like you said, like you might have to go sign in or do all these things, find the, find the right page, then go leave the review. It's going to be a headache for them. And then the other thing is, is when it comes to, on their cell phone, if they have a Google account or a Gmail account that's already logged in, it will recognize that. So it's a lot easier to kind of get those to come through.

Or if you want to use a different platform, we can do Facebook health grades, Yelp, different things like that and make it easier.

Oh, wow.

So it's not just Google. You can actually work with other platforms.

Yep. Cool. And the one icon, swell. If they were to get it, there's just a dashboard where you can see how all of your review sites are ranking against each other. So if you wanted to just kind of have like that conglomerate view, you could do that. And you can also respond to them there. That's another thing that's going to be important too is just when you get those reviews on your site, make sure you're responding to them. It can be compliant, but just like, hey, thanks so much for coming in. We're glad that we could help you out.

So you do encourage that. So when they leave a review, it's.

Really encouraged to just leave a little blurb afterwards.

What's the.

I mean, obviously there's something about that engagement, but your experience tell us why that's important.

It really comes down to Google's algorithm. I wish that I knew the answer for that, but it's having that best experience for that patient. Right. So whether it's a good review or a bad review, we want to make sure that that patient feels cared about even after they've paid the bill and left practice. So that's going to also help with, okay, long term patients. How do we get them scheduled back for their fourth, fifth and sixth visit where they kind of die off? How do we get them back into practice?

There's wow.

So, okay, so it engages that patient.

To where we can bring them back in as other patients. And then you mentioned how it stimulates the algorithm so that if people are in Google and they're responding, it's going to promote your website. And then I have to say that other thing is I've done this before where I'm reading the negative reviews of. Usually in healthcare, I dig deeper. Right.

It's not like I'm going out to dinner.

I'm like, I want to make sure I'm not going to get hurt. And so I've read the named reviews and every time I've ever seen a negative review followed by a response from the company, I immediately feel a thousand times better about it. Like it's just something where maybe that's a great, like a mitigation tool is to respond so that when people are ripping on it for those one in a million cases that happen to all of us, we can actually minimize their impact by simply responding. That's cool.

Totally. The other question that we get a lot too is can you gate reviews? So that used to be a thing back in the day, if you remember. Like, usually you'd come out with a thing where it was like thumbs up, thumbs down. Did you have good experience? If you had a good experience, then it would send the link. Google since then come out where they ban that. Which makes sense, right? Because it's not really accurate reviews. So we don't gate reviews because that's your business page. And if it got shut down due to us, I don't want that on my head. But what we say is, you know, we're even. If you have those one in a few cases that come through and they're having a bad day and they just are going to be negative, we're going to get you so many good reviews that it's going to go ahead and drown those out. And to be honest, I think a 4.9 with a lot of reviews speaks louder to that practice and a five star, because no one's.

No one's perfect. There's always going to be people. And if you're taking precaution and you're going ahead and responding to it and fixing what the issue is, it's going to make all the difference.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't even. I didn't even have anything to say other than I've seen that. But it's true for me. I give more precedence to a company that is between the 8 and 9, 4.8 and 9 than I do a 5.0. The 5.0 is like, okay, I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing where they're weak. There's an assumption, it's true, that every company has a downside. So you want to see what those downsides are. So the 4.8 feels balanced, whereas a 5.0 honestly isn't as attractive as like a 4.9 or 4.8.

Well, it just feels fake. It's like you're hiding something because no one's perfect.

Totally.

Okay, let's see. So we just basically we want to be like that missing link in the sales process. You Know, I've talked to a lot of physical therapy clinics and they usually go with a marketing group of some sort, which is awesome. But what I hear is a frustrating part for them is, okay, so marketing is helping us get all these clicks or getting all these impressions or getting used to the site, but it's not helping convert those into patients. So that's where they're not necessarily trained nor do they have the time to do that. So we want to just help convert those for you. So we have other features like a web chat where somebody, if they click on the site then they can go ahead and request an appointment right there.

But just things that kind of get.

Your site seen and then get those patients to convert and come into your clinic there.

Love it.

And that is all I have. So thanks for letting me kind of go off on that. I'm.

Yeah, I'm so glad you shared all that information again.

I think for a lot of my audience, they care about these things, but like you mentioned before, their focus is on patient care. They're trying to get as much delegated out as possible, which is a really useful tool. Very successful business leaders all agree that we shouldn't spend our time trying to improve our weaknesses. At the end of our life, we just have a bunch of strengthened weaknesses. But what we should be doing is focusing on our strengths and outsourcing everything else. And I'm sure there's some PTs out there. I coach a few that are just technologically inclined, but the vast majority of medical professionals, that's not their strength. Their strength lies in healthcare.

And so, man, when I looked into.

Swell, and this is I get nothing audience, I get nothing.

The whole reason I've created this series.

Of interviews is because I want your business to be aligned with these other businesses that will amplify your profit, your income and your freedom. So when I looked at Swell, the exchange on that is so affordable as well. I think it's, it's a no brainer and it just gives like this, this organic growth feel with them doing very little other than just setting it up, which s' well, does a great job of doing with their owners.

So yeah, I think it's an incredible product.

And I've known you for a while now. You've been really passionate about helping grow businesses when what is it about Swell that you particularly love? What lights you up about your company?

It's a simple product. You know, I think there's so many technology companies out there that I'm sure are great, but even me, I'm like, I don't know what that is. And I work in the tech space, so. One thing I love about Swell is it's easy for the office to use, whether it's the staff, the doctor, whoever it is, but it's also easy for those patients to use, kind of as we talked about. So it's not like we're reinventing the will. We're just making it easier of what you guys are trying to do and trying to accomplish. We're just going to take over a lot of that headache and make it simpler.

Well, I think you said it best, Bailey.

Thank you so much for sharing this information. This is a 30 minute interview that if an owner or a leader of a company would listen to it, could just make one call and immediately impact their. Their profitability. So thanks for taking time to be with us.

Thanks so much for having me on. I had a blast.

All right, well, guys, thank you for watching.

Like I promised, the beginning, major value.

Is about to get dropped. Bailey for sure delivered. So thanks again for watching. Until next time.