The Basics Of Digital Marketing And Advertising - Websites, SEO, Ads, Etc. - Adam Robin With David Straight Of E-Rehab

[00:00:00] It's quality, actually build a relationship, don't just drop off flyers and leave.

[00:00:06] What's their name? What are they into? What are they like? What problems are they trying to solve? How can you help them? So it's quality, quantity, not just one, a lot.

[00:00:30] Where your hosts, Nathan Shields and other successful PT owners and leaders share their experience and insights on how to build successful PT businesses.

[00:00:39] They'll share the stories of their paths to success and show you how you can also obtain greater freedom and more profits from your business.

[00:00:47] That's what the PT Owners Club is all about, greater freedom and more profits. There's plenty of room for you as well so come on in and join the club.

[00:00:57] Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host Adam Robin. I'm here with a new friend David straight with e rehab. What's up David? How are you?

[00:01:10] I'm good at how you doing? I'm doing really good man. I really appreciate you being on the call today. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

[00:01:18] So we met I guess about three months ago or so. Yeah, we met three months ago. I've worked with a few different digital marketing agencies and have jumped into that world and needed some help with my website and whatnot here recently as our company has grown.

[00:01:36] I decided to seek out a new relationship to get a little help with our website, some email campaigns, some foundational support with like reputation management SEO, those types of things.

[00:01:48] And I kept on hearing e rehab e rehab e rehab right so we have a few members coaching clients in our group who are using your service with e rehab.

[00:01:57] So I thought it would be fantastic to bring you on today. Learn your story and learn a little bit about what you do with e rehab.

[00:02:05] Sure so and thank you for that. I started pain treatment patients in the 90s and really enjoyed the communication aspect of it.

[00:02:16] I also noticed that a lot of people didn't know much about physical therapy. And so I always had an affinity for digital tools and dash built our my first website for the practice back in 1996, what you build it on.

[00:02:33] The first website I built on was Dreamweaver. Yeah, and then maybe Microsoft front page and then started to learn the code itself but my big challenge was when I was owning a private practice we lost half of our business to position on clinics.

[00:02:48] And so 48% of our business gone within three months, two big orthopaedic groups that brought it in house. And so I had to get really good at sales and marketing and part of what was the digital side of things.

[00:03:00] So I started running online ads when it was a service called go to and go to got my oature and then Yahoo.

[00:03:08] And then of course, do glads became popular but building websites and then I ran an email newsletter through Microsoft business service they add.

[00:03:18] And I just realized a lot of my clients didn't have these tools either. So I started found a great partner, John Mason, started e rehab in 2003 and start off with email newsletters and websites and then we added things like SEO.

[00:03:33] Mobile became popular and we started running paid ads in 2007. And then social became popular as well and reputation.

[00:03:43] And then we all we've always liked video so a little bit of video and we've been doing it ever since for over 2000 clients and really helping people get the foundational elements online and use good leverage to go as like to say we want to do the $10 an hour job so you can do the $100 an hour job.

[00:04:01] And that way your time is best served doing things that are important. But at the same time if you do it yourself, you practice owners tend to just go with whatever's cheap because they don't know all the important nuances of things and then they don't touch it at all.

[00:04:17] So we just wanted to be somewhere in the middle where we can provide a managed service for people keep their website fresh up today redesigned it form when they need it.

[00:04:27] Help them make sure they're ranking well and reputation and doing some keeping their brand in front of their past patients as well. So that's what we do.

[00:04:35] That's awesome. And you mentioned you still own a practice is that right?

[00:04:39] I don't know in the practice anymore. I'm sold it in 2005 but I'm actually that's a funny story between Paul Gaspar and I were we're better friends now that we were then, but I still part of his marketing team support him and Jason in the practices.

[00:04:53] Well, so I'm still in the practice interface with the clinicians ownership understand what's going on with the day to day and the big challenges. I mean the two big challenges which everyone knows it's it's staffing and payment right.

[00:05:07] That's where I think we're positioned really well as we understand that the average margin for practice nowadays is somewhere on 10% nationally. So they have to spend their money very efficiently.

[00:05:17] And that's where we come into play is that we really provide it an efficient and affordable suite of tools. The low hanging fruit as I call it to get people started in then if one stat is in place when we built kind of what we say once we built a great mouse trap.

[00:05:32] We've helped them differentiate themselves in their community and we say have some good strategies for differentiation, but then if they want to venture onwards to the four figure of types of strategies. And that's like lead generation and social media marketing and things that nature well they can have at it, but they know that they're going to get everything right with us foundationally before they dive into some of those other things and a lot of people don't they a lot of practices nowadays.

[00:05:57] They've tried to form five figure month types of marketing and they haven't had great success with it, especially when they look at the financials which I know you help people understand quite well.

[00:06:07] So we tell them that marketing is not just online digital marketing. It's offline marketing and sales for the community and we are still big fans and huge fans of reaching out to referring physicians where the opportunities to exist and helping maximize referrals as well providing solutions for the physicians in the community.

[00:06:26] And we that's been one of our best initiatives that we still go at the top of our list not so much marketing it sales face the face belly to belly. So we like to make sure that they understand the component of that and provide a lot of training and content around that as well.

[00:06:41] Yeah, I love that. I love a few things that you sit there number one you mentioned we do the 10 dollar an hour job so that the owners can do the $100 an hour job right yeah it's good leverage.

[00:06:54] I mean the problem with a lot of small business owners is they spend so much time treating and then doing things that are it just takes up their time where they could outsource those things and then they can spend their time on more valuable activities.

[00:07:09] I think you can still have got hundreds of people that still treat but they just have to be more efficient in it.

[00:07:16] And that comes down to a skill set that we didn't learn at all and that's learning how to manage people and for us you know it's not so hard to manage people as long as you provide them with systems and processes.

[00:07:27] As well as you take an interest in making sure that they're not just doing a good job for you but they're enjoying their work and committed to being part of the being on the bus so to speak.

[00:07:37] Yeah and you know I work with practice owners who are on different stages of the business but what comes to mind right now for me is they is a really small owner is the small owner who's like maybe a solo practitioner maybe a front desk maybe an assistant and they're kind of wearing a bunch of hats in the clinic.

[00:07:54] And they want to start ramping up their marketing so like people come to me in that stage of business and they say you know I really need to get more referrals in the in the door and like great let's start building relationships and they immediately say yeah well.

[00:08:06] I'm thinking about starting a blog now they're going to write their own blog and we're going to start posting the social media every day and writing all the content on there and we're going to shoot start shooting videos and like all great things great things.

[00:08:21] They mean they all have a little bit of value I think but I was like to say that healthcare is hyper local five to 10 mile radius around your practice yes you've got to get out of your practice and but certainly the practices many times.

[00:08:35] And I know they're just known in their community because they give back to the schools are they are senior centers or they belong to roadaries they have relationships with other businesses in the community they just have there's an awareness of their existence not through somebody reading a blog post or not about you know what a social post and we could talk about why those aren't.

[00:08:57] Not priorities at all but they're outside of their office and again that comes down to sure managing your time wisely but also thinking about marketing more in the broad sense like a professional marketing strategy and plan would be that's not just hey I do digital stuff and that's all I do because it's limiting in our experience.

[00:09:17] Yes and here's the thing like you can write your own blog you can you can write your own blog you can write your own blog every week but it's really like how many weeks in a row.

[00:09:26] Can you write a blog well and still have the energy to like you said like the higher people hope people accountable manager statistics.

[00:09:35] Write policy and procedure you know like it's just it's draining.

[00:09:40] It's a distraction is what it is it's a huge distraction what we found with blogs or creating that kind of content is so what you would ideally do it for is it's something that has some scalability to it you could write a blog post.

[00:09:54] You would hope that if you wrote it you could get it to rank on Google for a local search and then you could take that blog post and you could publish it to social media but since organic reach or.

[00:10:06] I'm not a people that see your post is pretty much dead you have to pay to get that post out into the community in front of eyeballs and it truly is like the old days offline methods like putting it in a newspaper you hope somebody sees it because it's going to be on the 77th page and you hope somebody has a problem that might have a need and so.

[00:10:27] Just like with any type of outbound marketing the percentage of people that might actually have any interest in it is sink small single digits and then as far as ranking Google's pretty.

[00:10:40] Up front saying there really isn't any content that we haven't seen published already so ranking content especially for things that are just not their information types of searches so you want to rank for back pain treatment in.

[00:10:55] In in block see right or net pain treatment in insinitas you might be able to rank it but the number of searches are extremely rare and the chance that somebody's going to be in your area that you serve and reads that blog post is even rare.

[00:11:10] And then the chance that somebody's actually going to come in and become a patient and go through a plan of care is even more rare so I don't think that kind of strategy makes a lot of sense for practices at a foundational level especially if you're in the situation.

[00:11:25] You talk about it a one or two pt shop and you're looking to move get to capacity first and then thinking about how do I scale and hire another therapist it's not going to be through right and blog post and are using social so right that's our experience and we got all the data to prove it that's the good thing about doing this for 21 years.

[00:11:47] We see we have 1500 locations in the data across the United States about what pages people are going to what search phrases people are using where those people are located when they're doing the searches when it comes to SEO.

[00:12:00] We're very consistent saying we want to make sure and this is contrary to what a lot of other gurus like to say but we want to do our best to rank for or transactional searches and when I say transactional these are people that are looking to buy and it's physical therapy physical therapy near me physical therapy in your city and then by far the most important search because.

[00:12:24] The web pt survey July 2022 of consumers and the 2023 survey APTA survey as consumer says it 60 40 85% of consumers are referred so what's the most important search to show up for it's your business name of course because when some of these refer to you they're going to be referred to your business name and that's really quite easy to do unless you have just some generic name if your name is.

[00:12:49] Physical therapy service well that's not very unique that's a common phrase but almost everybody Adam Robin physical therapy right southern physical therapy services that's a unique enough name that you're going to show up and it doesn't really take anything but a SEO from the website to do that that's kind of our search strategy in a nutshell and again those things are far more affordable than you were to hire an expensive SEO company which by the way.

[00:13:18] Okay just the SEO itself is going to be if it's automated about 800 that 900 dollars a month if you have somebody that really knows SEO you're looking at 2000 3000 a month really hard to get return on investment for those kinds of dollars because they're also asking for give me a year commitment on that they have to because Google isn't going to rank something of.

[00:13:40] It's a lot of visitors and a lot of searches next week or next month or even in a few months it's going to take several months of consistency to build up that trust in the Google search algorithm.

[00:13:53] And I think that's why you and I align so much on this idea it's like you said it's really like I think I always always kind of envision like if you want to get referrals in your door you got to be the hometown hero yeah you got to be the hometown hero like you're not going to go drive.

[00:14:10] 150 miles east to this random city and start generating referrals like you need to be the hometown hero and that circle of influence is very small.

[00:14:20] Like you say like maybe five to 10 miles around your clinic so really those are the only people for the most part that matter right and it's like what is it I don't know maybe 90% of the people who are in that area have lived there have been living there for a long time and don't have any intention of moving for any time in the near future.

[00:14:40] So the only way to build relationships with them is to get involved in the community now there is a outer sphere of people who are moving into the community who don't know you who don't have relationships built that's a smaller percentage of people who are going to do some like cold searches online for places in the community.

[00:15:01] And I think that's where the digital marketing really really helps I think it helps with number one here's the thing like people get referred to you by their friends right so if I say hey David.

[00:15:10] You really need to check out Adam at some physical therapy clinic so you already building some trust with me right you're getting some social proof that Adam has a going on over there and he's the guy that he's the hometown hero then when you go online it confirms what you already know about me and that's where you really help me because.

[00:15:29] You confirm what the community has already established very rarely are you just going to like convert somebody organically online like that yeah we like to think of the classic model I mean there's a lot of different ways to think of the funnel or the sales pipeline that people go through but.

[00:15:46] They first have to know you know they first have to have a need right for your service and they have to know you exist and then they have to like you when I say like it say they have a need you fulfill that need and then they have to trust that you can do the job for them and so no like trust and so.

[00:16:03] For those people that don't know you at all they're doing the geographic searches or they're searching for physical therapy or physical therapy near me for people that have there in the middle of that process they know you they've got a referral.

[00:16:16] From Fran family member physician then they're going to go on your website and check y'all and they may Google you first but they're going to Google your business name and so when they see we pop up right away you have a multiple links to your business there's one to Facebook there's one to you they're all working well they're all together they see that you've got 205 star reviews.

[00:16:35] There confirmed for me pop over to your website half the people are influenced by your website making a business choice and then they read a story that makes it is memorable is logical it's fast and easy to digest and then the call section right there form it's easy for them to click to take the next step and so we just really like to understand and that's where asking our people in our practice and other practices how they buy.

[00:17:01] And then looking at the data to it's pretty easy to see what you need to be doing and it doesn't have to cost you four figures a month to get it right so and you shouldn't be doing it and you shouldn't be just doing it yourself and then forgetting it because you have pretty big traffic but your average locations getting a couple hundred visitors a month you have to remember you're a service business people can't test drive you they can't try you on and they judge what they can't see about your service about your PT service.

[00:17:31] Based on what they can see so when you got your act to get that's there's plenty of consumer research around that service service businesses.

[00:17:38] But so when you have your act together there's doesn't raise any doubts in their mind it just becomes easier and easier path as Google says fast easy and friction free to get to the next point which is the phone call or the appointment request and then you do your magic once they come in the door that's right.

[00:17:54] To a great job of providing exceptional customer service but we even like to say before they even come in send them a message through email a lot of emr's have the system or we have a system for it let them know what's going to happen before they even come in allow them to fill out their forms before they even come into the practice again just you know think about how you'd like to be treated not with the experience you'd like to have and try to view it through their filters and it's not that difficult so.

[00:18:24] I think you things right there's you don't have to read 60 books you just have to start taking some seriously people say what massive and perfect action but you just need to take some some action rather than taking another course rather read another book whether than wondering you should do you got a dive in but you've given them the blueprint probably a dozen times I just gave them a print it just got to start doing it just got to start doing it it all comes back it's just like because we're talking about marketing but really we can apply this.

[00:18:53] Same principle to business to anything to be a good parent to be in a good person it's like just identify the handful of simple things that you need to do well and just do those you know like like don't overcomplicated just be like get you a good team around you in this case we're talking about e rehab that can support you on the things that you don't have time energy or knowledge or bandwidth to do and just do the few simple things really really well.

[00:19:21] Get out in the community build relationships and like that's your marketing plan but you can build a great physical therapy clinic that way better than most you know what I mean I think that especially I'm so fond of going to referring physicians and I went through everything everybody else went through when it comes to selling to doctors self doubt they know more than I do they don't care.

[00:19:45] And the more and more I study it the more and more I find those are all self limiting beliefs 100 percent I'll say you're like, I have a lot of things to do with this.

[00:19:51] So glad you said that yeah they're busier than we are they do care they're turning through two to three more times patients every day and they tend to just follow the same habits.

[00:20:02] They do have problems like we do they don't know a thing about physical therapy even in 2024 and most pts won't approach the doctors and if they do and I've asked multiple primary care doctors we don't care about the worth those anymore they all have their own right in house pt so.

[00:20:20] We like to go to the GPs and the internist and establish those relationships we know what's better for their patients than they do.

[00:20:27] Okay, patient walks in the door with the cute back pain shoulder pain knee pain we know it's better for them than they do but they are the gatekeepers so if you educate them based on a current best research and then you just repeat that process staying in front of them because most pts go once and they never come back go back to the doctor because they're too busy

[00:20:47] and what if you do that and you do it you know 20 to 20 different doctors you're going to get a few yeah you'll land one yeah and that's for us that's if they're cold calls if you have relationships with the doctors in the community just tear those into the gold silver and bronze ones that keep feed you ones send you a few and the ones that don't send you any at all.

[00:21:09] I always say start with the silver ones and try to get them in a gold never forget who's feeding you keep the gold people happy and then if you have any time reach out to the bronze level doctors and people hate doing lunches i'm not opposed to do a lunches every once and well either I rarely people will spend 5 to $10,000 on social media marketing they won't get anything out of it.

[00:21:31] I always counter them and I say what if you took that same amount of money and you bought lunches for all those different doctors have you ever had the case and you could answer this i'd be curious but if you're around the case where you bought lunch for the doctors office and they didn't at least throw your bone man you are spitting fire right now.

[00:21:48] yeah good stuff so like the answer that is no like here's the thing like if you're an owner which I would say everybody listen to this is you have to learn over time you learn how to sell your plan of care you learn how to position yourself as somebody who knows what they're talking about you learn charismatic traits about yourself.

[00:22:08] so like you know how to build relationships right you know to build relationships and the thing that I love about you David is I remember when we were doing some onboarding with your company and I said I even told you like I really think I want to do some Google ads i'm thinking about doing some Google ads for my new location and you talked me out of it yeah you told me you know what Adam is there a thing you could else you can do with that money and I was like which I was like yeah of course I could but like it's so awesome to hear.

[00:22:38] you like you weren't just after my money after my sale like you were genuinely interested in helping me build my practice yeah right sure and like it's like you're so right like people are so they're on tiktok and they're on Instagram reels and they're seeing all these flashy like go high level and lead acquisition and all these fancy ads and they think that that's the answer to all their problems that they're just going to outsource having to actually build relationship in the community

[00:23:06] and I love that what you're saying and like I totally agree that maybe not never but as it is that you can outsource that and you can't replicate you can't spend the money on Facebook and replicate like building an authentic in your relationship with somebody in your community.

[00:23:22] yeah I wouldn't completely agree with that and I would also say and if we talk about ads what I typically say with people in ads is I say do it for four months the first month is to set it up and optimize it and then run around your campaign for three months make sure that you're tracking the result all the way to the end so you know if the patient calls and schedules and evaluation and then if you really are good with your business math.

[00:23:47] that your business math you would go back and take that person at schedule find out how many times they came in and how much money you made from them and then go back and see how much you made versus how much you spent.

[00:23:58] And the other thing that people rarely do is they don't factor in the value of their time you know you're you're spending money on me i'm spending money on you right now they're spending money on looking at ads learning ads are going through reports of somebody all of that stuff matters and so that's why I always like to talk about opportunity cost where's a this the best way you can do it.

[00:24:17] You can spend your time and money on generating new business and for some I mean the funny thing about marketing is results great results are usually single digits types of percentages of success so it's not that digital advertising doesn't work for some people it's not that Facebook or social funnels don't work for some people but again you have to have the time and the interest and the support around you to do it really well and you have to have the opportunity to do it.

[00:24:47] And then you get better and better and better so one of the foundational concepts that we built our systems around is simplicity because we don't want our owners to be doing the things so much that are required but we just want the support step we want everybody to be able to do it so if I give you a 10 step process and three sites need to log into and.

[00:25:17] And four other things you need to do in the process and you got to do that every day and then you have to check that results and go back and change things to work with us to change it very quickly gets very inefficient so we're all about simplicity and simplicity may not be quite as good on a small scale if you send out 100,000 emails versus to a group and then you say well I send out.

[00:25:40] 100,000 emails and I've done some segmentation you might get a slightly better result but the effort in the money that takes to actually execute usually gobbles up all of your profits in your time and doing so so that's why we thought very carefully about what we do and if people can just get those these fund and miles in place then they can go focus on equally or even more important things and that's getting out of their office into their community and meeting people.

[00:26:10] And it's amazing when you meet people because they're all struggling it's the same thing.

[00:26:14] Right right, I got a business how can we help each other out and if somebody feels threatened by that then maybe that's not the right person to talk to but I guarantee you there's about 50 other people you could talk to in the community and nobody's going to convert all 50 into referral sources or but if you get five or seven of those people out of 50 they have a need you have some value and then you're helping each other out and it just kind of snowballs.

[00:26:40] From there, so I like hometown hero that's absolutely great home town hero inconsistency right oh yeah that's the cornerstone mark mark and sales is you got to be it's quality actually build a relationship don't just drop off flyers and leave right what's their name what are they into.

[00:26:58] What do they like what problems are they trying to solve how can you help them so it's quality quantity not just one a lot in consistency quality quantity and consistency if you can do those three things.

[00:27:09] If forever it's impossible for you not to get a reflection it's like it's just the world.

[00:27:15] Yeah I mean there are some situations but they are the exception I still know based versus the rule where you can't break into the narrow network they have to refer in house that can be a challenge and I know I mean I've seen read many stories of people doing creative things to find solutions for that.

[00:27:34] But for the typical community still many most communities and get a little bit online get a few referrals get some repeat business because you're a stay in touch with people.

[00:27:46] The doctors send you some business and maybe even have your simple system to get your patient to refer you a friend or family member that's just those things are just cheap and the easy and you just just got to do it yeah man you're talking my language.

[00:28:03] Before we jump into the next episode let's talk about something I think we'd all like a little more of and that is money as a PT owner I know how hard it is to increase your revenue without spending more on marketing or trying to attract a flood of new patients and let's face it you're already stretched then trying to run your clinics.

[00:28:26] But what if there was a proven way to increase your revenue 10% in just 30 days with minimal effort better yet how could you use the additional revenue in your business maybe you could hire another PT could start saving to open a new location or my personal favorite invest in yourself by hiring a business coach.

[00:28:44] Regardless of how you choose to spend it at 10% bump and revenue can have a huge impact on your business that's why I created how to increase your revenue 10% within 30 days.

[00:28:54] A free guide to help you boost your clinics revenue and see big changes to your bottom line by tracking just one simple statistic in your business.

[00:29:02] And here's my big promise when you follow the three steps I lay out in the guide you are going to see up to a 10% increase in revenue in 30 days.

[00:29:12] This revenue boosting strategy is the same one I teach inside my one-on-one coaching program for PT owners but it's my gift to you just for being a listener to the show.

[00:29:21] So head over to ptoclub.com to download your free copy of how to increase your revenue 10% within 30 days and again that's ptoclub.com.

[00:29:33] After you download it and implement it feel free to reach out to me schedule an appointment with me on the same website schedule an appointment with Nathan and let me know how it went and we can talk about next steps.

[00:29:45] That's ptoclub.com.

[00:29:51] I do have another question for you. We talked a lot about ads, paid ads we talked a little bit about paid ads and I guess we both agree that for the majority of at least in network practice owners in this country paid ads really isn't the first thing you should be looking at right.

[00:30:12] I wouldn't say it's the first thing you should be looking at.

[00:30:15] So let's flip it like who really needs to be considering paid ads?

[00:30:20] Gosh that's a good question so I'd say who needs to consider paid ads?

[00:30:26] This was a question I just thought of as we were talking I don't have a good answer to this I've got some ideas.

[00:30:31] So here would be my response to that so I think that it that most people after they've done fulfilled the top online priorities and consider paid ads but you have to be willing to test it and then be willing to move on.

[00:30:47] And then you also have to understand the math and it depends on how you look at the math, the business math.

[00:30:52] So if and you got to have a budget for it in many markets between 2020 and 2022 meta and Google essentially doubled their click costs adds the cost per click for just somebody searching for physical therapy.

[00:31:08] It's anywhere between it varies greatly seven to $15 just for a click and so if you won you're not appropriate for paid ads.

[00:31:17] If you ever worry about people clicking on your ad that are the competition or somebody that's really has no interest in physical therapy but clicks on your ad and you're like oh my gosh, you spent $15 every time they click.

[00:31:30] If that worries you don't think about ads it should never worry anybody because you just look at the end result though I spent this much money in I got this much money out and so I say try for four months make sure that you have the right sensors in place to understand what's going on.

[00:31:49] And we've seen this across multiple ad campaigns that there's some things you cannot track.

[00:31:57] There is some positive there's the old vague saying what is that rising tides, razor ships just getting your name out in front of the community and people doing all these different searches.

[00:32:09] You may not be able to track that your ad contributed to them come into your practice.

[00:32:14] There's a little bit of that that happens because we've seen people they run ads and they do okay they get readify patients a month but you know I'd rather spend my money elsewhere it's real money so they turn them off and then they don't get anything and they don't get anything for not just one month but a few months and it's not because of seasonality.

[00:32:36] So there is some branding that goes on with having your ad show up all the time that you can't measure but you should be able to measure what's coming out the other side and anybody can test those and it varies widely in different markets.

[00:32:50] Some markets have great success other markets not so much over time to markets change because you'll get a lot of people that go into Google ads over several year period of time and then they figured all out they're like I'm not getting anything I just spoke with a guy for example.

[00:33:05] And he's in Long Island he was running ads and he was spending $2,500 a month on ads couple locations and then he turned it way down to I think his budget was now $10 a day so like $300 a month.

[00:33:21] He couldn't tell the difference about what was coming in well you didn't have the right sensors in place to find out what was going on with his ads and at the end of the day it probably wasn't making much difference for him.

[00:33:33] So you don't have those in place you should run ads if you're willing to track you should run ads if you're willing to budget and again you're looking at about $1,000 per location per month yeah minimum and then you should test for a few months to see if it's worth well and then you have to think about the business mass so.

[00:33:51] So if it costs you $900 to take a patient through a plan of care and you make $100 right which is about let's say it's $990 you make a 10% margin $999 in $900 out for expenses no and you're spending $150 or $200 you get that patient bent 200 acquire you only profit $90 you're that one way to look at it as you're losing money on what the other way to look at it though is to think of it from the standpoint of.

[00:34:20] The standpoint of if you're not quite a capacity but you are making a profit meaning you're paying yourself and your staff you're making a little bit of profit then maybe you're willing to spend that $100 to get a little bit more money in because it's not costing you incrementally anymore right you're already paid your staff.

[00:34:41] We paid your rent there aren't any real variable costs associated with that patient coming in so you might say well I'm willing to spend.

[00:34:49] Now that money because I already got on my cost covered my staff can treat two or three more patients visits in a week and so i that's worth it want people often talk about lifetime value of the patient I think that's a fuzzy number though because they'll say well if you got 10 patients from Google ads at whatever $2,000

[00:35:09] let's say half of those patients are going to come back for free because in the lifetime value but you have to that equation looks like 10 years long.

[00:35:18] It's a long game patient comes in one time they may not come back for two three five ten years down the line and so while lifetime market value of the patient does matter I think you got to realize with over what period of time that patient comes back for free so you got to think about those things too.

[00:35:37] And if you're willing to dive in and you understand those things give it a shot but also always ask yourself the simple question that I learned a long time ago if I'm spending X and I get why where can I get by spend X again where can I get Y plus more.

[00:35:52] Where else where's a better place maybe that's the same amount of money and get a better return and if you just think about that simply you might think hey I rather spend I'm going to spend well $1,000

[00:36:06] on ads I rather buy five lunches right I know I'm going to get five patients I make it six seven or eight patients out of that I might build a relationship and push somebody in the corner of our over the well but really be friending them and getting to know them even more so that's I think all of those things matter.

[00:36:26] So I wrote down as I kind of heard you talking and I'm thinking about who are ads right who who should consider ads yeah I wrote down if you're a cash clinic cash based practice or an out of network practice where it's a little bit a sales cycle is a little longer right well yeah that's why so I guess my state my response that would be it really doesn't matter what kind of practice you are because at the end it's just about the finances correct but I don't know

[00:36:55] that the sales cycles any different for a cash based practice if somebody's in need of therapy and they have the option of cash based practice or in network practice they're going to need the care right away in both cases but it might take

[00:37:09] it's not a longer sales cycle but it might be a harder sale is a good way to put it correct you have to have a sales process yeah you have to have a better defined sales process which is a old discussion in its on its own right there plenty of training on those things free training out there

[00:37:23] I'm how to learn how to sell patients into the plan of care I also put on here if you're an owner with not a lot of time but you have a lot of money then maybe you could consider or like if you're somebody who's got like going after maybe you're opening like two clinics at the same time

[00:37:39] you know you're going after like multiple opportunities at once and you don't have the marketing team to support it for whatever reason you need some support digitally then for in my mind at least

[00:37:50] that I kind of think maybe paid ads could potentially benefit you and then also wrote down like if you have like if you're going to use paid ads then you definitely

[00:37:59] need to have some type of way of managing them and not just like outsourcing them like you said like spinning the time actually tracking them and making sure that your money is being spent well

[00:38:09] yeah and I think of it from the CEO standpoint or the owner standpoint it's like I run the ads I have the proper sensors in place to measure the results do I get the report

[00:38:20] and can I understand that report so that I know if I'm making a profit or not and so I don't think it takes too much to manage it if you find the right company to manage them with but it's more to one of your other points

[00:38:32] you just have to have some endurance with this stuff because you're not going to get 40 patients if you run an ads

[00:38:38] you'd have to cover a huge geography have a huge budget and people aren't going to drive that far either it's just for a traditional orthopedic problem

[00:38:48] you know if you have a nip service like we do we treat cardio and pulmonary patients and we see a lot of these dis autonomia patients

[00:38:58] and stuff we have the university's calling us because and it's not me it's has nothing to with me it's it's my great friend Paul he's just so good at what he does

[00:39:08] he's better than anybody else so he's niche themselves and he's so darn good that he's a rare resource and if you can do something like that

[00:39:18] and a darn year like a blue ocean where he's created his own market he's created his own type of thing

[00:39:26] it doesn't not competing with anybody else is not just better he's new and different because he's applying physical therapy and exercise physiology principles

[00:39:34] and his knowledge that no other cardiac rehab clinic is doing no other pulmonary clinic is doing has the latest and greatest technology

[00:39:43] and that's so that's more of a discussion about niche practices and stuff but you know you don't need ads in that case

[00:39:49] you here can be in greater demand all right supply typically but I think there are plenty of up there are plenty of reasons why

[00:39:57] you might want to do some ads but you just have to know if it's worth your time and money because nowadays you don't have extra money or time to waste

[00:40:09] so you're the CEO and owner of e rehab John and I John my business

[00:40:16] what do you see coming down the pipe with on the digital marketing space like what's it the future look like for digital marketing

[00:40:24] is it more of the same or do you see anything exciting coming down like in latest technologies or new innovations or strategies

[00:40:30] that you have your eye on into the future

[00:40:33] I would definitely say it's going to be a lot of more of the same for the vast majority you know a lot of people like to look for kind of different and new things

[00:40:44] but there is for vast majority it's going to be more of the same I think AI is an important part of things

[00:40:50] is we like to think of it as a first draft tool it's a good tool to create big fans of video

[00:40:57] and I'm not talking about influencer stuff where you post 20 or 10 videos a week kind of think that's a whole different business model

[00:41:05] but we do like video I mean have a video welcoming people to the practice let them see who you are

[00:41:12] let communicate that to them not the importance of stretching a calf or hamstring but how about the importance of seeing a physical therapist

[00:41:20] in particular your practice versus a chiropractor or expensive tests or surgery or anything of that nature

[00:41:30] so that's understanding your value and communicating your value proposition to people that are comparison shopping

[00:41:37] so video I think is important and you can facilitate a lot of that through the use of AI

[00:41:42] Google still going to be relevant for a long time their AI was a complete mess their new Gemini was a complete mess

[00:41:50] but that would get better so and I think there's as far as we were positioned

[00:41:56] we serve the one to typically the one to four location private practice

[00:42:01] not a lot of we have some few of the bigger change but we serve the small mom and pop practices for all the reasons we talked about previously

[00:42:09] and who's in need of care that step outside of cutting edge technology just think about the market

[00:42:16] that's what's most important what's going on in the marketplace and it's baby boomers even gen extras

[00:42:23] they're the ones that are using physical therapy more than ever how do they use digital tools

[00:42:30] find if physical therapy practice choose a physical therapy practice work with the physical therapy practice

[00:42:35] I mean I think some of the greatest threats that private practice faces people will say the corporate roll ups

[00:42:42] decrease payment I think it's substitutes and insurance companies and stuff providing digital tools online tools for self care

[00:42:51] so they don't even need physical therapy that would be so I think well how can I compete against that

[00:42:58] and there are all kinds of ways you can message about the value of physical therapy the hands on stuff, the face to face stuff

[00:43:04] I was actually on the minority of people as we were going through the pandemic that thought telehealth was great

[00:43:11] it didn't equate to me as a board certified fellowship trained manual therapist I just touched people

[00:43:17] and I watched people in the three dimensional space not that there isn't value in some of that stuff

[00:43:22] but I thought you know this is just a way for insurance companies to pay us less money

[00:43:27] we really won't deliver the real value to patients if we can't see them touch them have a verbal and nonverbal communication

[00:43:35] and get to know these patients and what their true goals and aspirations are which happens over time

[00:43:40] so I think there's so much value that we still offer in that space but you have to be different

[00:43:46] and you don't have to necessarily be different in the sense of having new programs or expensive modalities

[00:43:54] but how about just differentiate on being the best and going back getting this podcast and probably a does another you guys have done

[00:44:01] and say how can I be the best in the community you know the hometown instead of just another orthopedic physical therapy practice

[00:44:08] hard to compete if you are in a clinically excellent therapist it's kind of hard to compete if you don't have any reputation in town

[00:44:14] then it comes not you truly are commodity how close are you how much do you cost that's it

[00:44:20] yeah you got to be different man I really appreciate it I know a lot of people know who you are and what you do

[00:44:25] but tell like if somebody wanted to get in touch with you and learn a little bit more about your services

[00:44:29] and say if you might be able to help support them with their marketing what would they need to do how they get in touch with you

[00:44:34] yeah super easy you can go to e-rehab.com there's a big orange button you can schedule some time on my calendar

[00:44:42] there's phone number you could call you can certainly just send me an email to Dave at e-rehab.com and I love to connect

[00:44:49] I mean just like you I just have a passion for helping the small private practice owner

[00:44:54] and I get the low hanging fruit, get the important things right and when you get those important things right

[00:45:00] you just focus on the details of those things first then oftentimes you're not left wondering what am I missing

[00:45:07] what am I doing wrong what's next bright and shiny object or silver but it's going to save me

[00:45:12] and those things don't exist you know it's it's fundamentals and getting the fundamentals right

[00:45:18] and understanding how to run your business which is what you teach

[00:45:22] and if you do those things right there's still a market out for us

[00:45:26] and there will continue to be. Sounds great David man I really really appreciate it

[00:45:31] thank you wealth of knowledge and love your approach to marketing yeah man thank you very time we should definitely do this again sometime

[00:45:38] yeah I would love to thank you Adam all right David have a good one buddy

[00:45:42] you too you well

[00:45:46] thanks for joining us today in the physical therapy owners club the resource for stability and freedom

[00:45:51] in your PT practice reach out and join the network today subscribe to our podcast get links to social media

[00:45:58] and access all of our episodes with show notes at ptoclub.com