Hello, and welcome to our show growth without risk. My name is Dr. Janice Hughes and I’m really honored and always excited to come to you on behalf of ChiroSecure. And it’s interesting with 30 years of experience in chiropractic, a blend of chiropractic management, but I love that our show is titled Growth. And my focus is always talking to you about things that are related to the growth of your practice or what I call your business. A really key topic for me is the one that we’re going to talk about today, and I’ve seen it over all the years. Everybody has their own ideas about the distinctions between marketing versus advertising and the role that either or both should play in your practice. Now, I’ve had a lot of experience, but I’m not going to pretend that I can tell you or even define it correctly.
So I always go to the experts, and I’m really excited today to bring to you Terry Phleger and her experience with social media. So Terry, welcome. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you. I’m very excited to be on. Thank you so much for having me.
You’re welcome. So let’s talk about it. How do you define the difference between the words marketing compared to advertising?
Yeah, I think a lot of people have a really blurred vision of that, and they’re very distinctly different. Of course, we use both, and we need both, but they’re very different. So marketing … The old saying is marketing gets you paid tomorrow, and advertising gets you paid today. And so, to kind of break that apart, marketing is really the process of promoting your business through value added content to a targeted audience. And that’s what marketing is. Marketing is truly getting out there, and social media is just the distribution center.
It’s the vehicle now in 2020 to market yourself, is to just get you out there. It’s kind of branding, and it’s very specific content for value for your specific audience.
Where advertising is paying for things, right? Buying a billboard, buying a Facebook ad, and those types of things. But marketing is very different than advertising.
Well, I love that you already touched really on what I think is a really key point, that there is a role and a place and a need for both. You know, particularly again, remember where we are talking to chiropractors, we’re talking to practitioners about how to build your business, how to build your practice. I think it’s interesting because, over 30 years, I’ve watched that things have gone a lot more now to advertising. Let’s face it. A lot of you listening are our new docs that you are leagues ahead of me when it comes to actually advertising like through Instagram, through Facebook.
But what I really want to talk about, Teri, is, from your expert perspective, how … Let’s just take that advertising piece. How can people get the most bang for their buck? Because what I find when I look at a practice and do a practice valuation or really an overview of people’s numbers, now more than ever, we’ve got people spending a ton more money on the advertising. They’re not even clear on how much that’s generating. So, for example, I like to say to people, from a solid business perspective, are you getting a five to one return on your dollars?
Right.
How do do people do that? So how does a practitioner now use ads, paid ads? From your perspective, what are the top two or three things that they really need to know?
Wow, that’s a great question. What they really need to know is that social media advertising does work.
There are so many people that call me all the time and say, “You know, I really want to do this, but I’ve been burned. I’ve been burned, and it doesn’t really work, does it? It’s burning out.” And it’s completely untrue. When it’s done well and correctly, it does work. And so you just need to find that person that can connect with you and know what you want and explain it to you. Because, as chiropractors, they wear so many different hats and trying to do so many different things.
And the social media world is very confusing, right? It used to be where you bought a yellow page ad, right? Or you bought a billboard. You bought a newspaper, and [inaudible 00:05:25]-
And some of our listeners don’t even know what those things are.
[crosstalk 00:05:28]. That’s true. But that’s what you used to be able to do. You used to be able to buy an ad. People you would cut it out, bring it in, and you would … Your ROI. You would know your return on investment.
So now, it is more complicated to get your return on investment. But, if you’re watching and you’re looking … Facebook has analytics and you can see. When I do a funnel, when I do an ad, I’m always looking at the analytics and I’m looking at what the return on investment is. I’m looking how many people it’s reached, what’s the engagement, how many people have left their emails, how many appointments did you make?
So there are ways of tracking it to make sure that you’re getting your return on investment.
Now, it’s interesting because, again, talking about there’s a segment of the profession that knows or understands. They’ve grown up in that world and sometimes think they understand it better. Now also, though, does it make sense for them to keep doing it? Like I think sometimes if we talk about startup mode … So I always like to, in this show talk about, I call it three segments.
Number one is start up. Number two is practitioners that are trying to work from … I’m going to say really sort of striving or tons of work to thriving. And then we’ve got some other seasoned practitioners that say have associates or they’re looking to sell their practice. So we kind of got three segments. In start up, does it make sense for the majority of the chiropractors to do this all on their own? If they understand Facebook, do they really understand all those analytics behind it?
Well, I think it’s … Yeah, that’s a great question, too. I think. I think certainly they can get started with creating their business Facebook page. Certainly, there’s a pretty significant difference between a personal Facebook page and a business Facebook page as far as how to get it to grow. And, as far as the ads on the backend, because they’re always changing.
They’re always changing with new rules, new things. So does it make sense for that? Not really, to be honest with you. And ones that are super, super techie, because, when you create funnels, you’re talking about using many different platforms. You’re talking about using Zapier and CallFinder and texting platforms and email sequences and people scheduling, and it gets pretty complicated making the funnels.
So I would say that their energy would probably be better spent marketing than advertising. Going out and meeting people. I mean good old-fashioned meeting people and making those connections, I think, really goes a long way, especially at the startup stage.
Right? And for startup docs listening, I think that that’s a really important piece in this. Like, a lot of times we think it’s only about new patients. I can show you the challenges. There was an individual chiropractor that I was really fortunate to meet years ago, began to coach him.
He had, in any of our terms, no issues. He, on average, generated over 80 new clients a month.
Wow.
The challenge, he didn’t like understand the marketing piece. And, even though the internal marketing to now service those patients, put them on great care plans, all those kinds of things. So I think you do point out, though, that … I think in the very beginning for startup, almost like some of those early steps, you can do that on your own. But it really then ties into the distinction for me of moving from sort of striving and lots of the work on the business to more thriving is that I really think … And, first of all, I would never be able to keep all that backend straight, but I’m a different segment. But even a lot of existing practitioners, the power, the advantage of having someone coach them, guide them, and then they can do more what they’re really good at.
Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And the thing is. Too, when you are doing advertising and social media, for example, what happened is the pendulum’s kind of swinging. What happened when social media first came out in 2009 … Business Bay just came out. People were starting to use that as a way to communicate to their community. And so they were putting on memes and posting. Right?
And that’s marketing.
Right.
That’s not advertising, that’s marketing. So they’re delivering a segment of their audience, and they’re targeting it to who would like chiropractic care and educating the community. Well, when Facebook Advertising started exploding and working so well, people left the marketing behind. So I have a lot of clients to this day who really don’t post on their page much. They just want to bam, bam, bam, advertise, advertise, bring in new patients, bring in new patients.
But they’re not doing the marketing piece, the posting, the reaching their community.
[inaudible 00:10:30].
And what’s happening is, as Facebook ads are becoming so popular, and the market’s getting a little more squeezed, your marketing then becomes equally as important. And, once again, marketing pays for tomorrow. Advertising pays for today. And so, really, both things need to be done. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions. I have chiropractors that call and want to know, you know, “Should we really be posting on our page when it doesn’t reach as many people and there’s not as much engagement?” The reality is, you still want to be posting on your page. You need to be building your brand, and you need to be educating the community, and you need to do to be doing ads. So they really go hand in hand. And then, I think that’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions.
Well, and that’s interesting. That really speaks to the segment that would be my colleagues. You know, typically say my era of practice is that, a lot of times … Because, if you’re listening and you have a more established business, if you have a more established practice, a lot of times you’ll say, “Well, I don’t want to get caught up in that,” or I don’t need to do that regular marketing, regular posts. Well, part of the challenge is, I want to also reinforce, your practice isn’t as valuable then as you think, because the person that’s going to come in next or purchase or that you want to groom or your associates, they have very different ideas about that. And, if they’re looking at starting on their own and/or a couple of other practices to purchase. So that’s where also, even just from a, how do you get more bang for your buck?
From my perspective, I think a lot of seasoned practitioners learning the power of more consistency with your marketing in those social channels. And I think that’s really important.
You know what? Know what that is really, really a good point because I actually have chiropractors that will call me and say, “I’m heading towards retirement stage. I don’t really understand this whole social media thing. But I know, when I’m going to start to get to sell the practice, they’re going to want social media.”
Yeah.
“And so can you just go ahead and do that? So that when they come in to buy it, that’s already set up.” And that’s what people want, is they want it that easy transition.
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a key aspect of the valuation. That’s a key aspect of the strength of your business. So, again, we do … This is a big topic. The key we’ve really talked about is you want both. You want both marketing and advertising.
Oh, for sure.
Because you do this all the time, this is your regular life, can you share … I’m going to call it your top three actions or things to do for our listeners that will help them grow their business, related to marketing and advertising?
Oh, sure.. Yeah, that’s awesome. So in my world, because it is the social media world, really the top things to do … There’s making sure that, obviously, most everybody has pages now where they have a business Facebook page, a business, make sure you have an Instagram. There’s still a lot of people that aren’t on Instagram and that’s kind of, as a business owner, that really … You need to, at the very least, do that. And Twitter and LinkedIn are great, as well, for a lot of different things. For a lot of networking purposes for LinkedIn. And Twitter is a world a lot of people don’t want to go into, but a lot of people are on Twitter, so you might as well be doing that.
But, definitely, the top three things would be to make sure that your social media is set up correctly. A lot of people, if you look at … I’m going to challenge everybody listening to go right now to their cover photo on their Facebook page, and I’m going to tell you, 95% of you do not have your phone number or your name on it. So people who have like … I’m just pulling this out, so I’m not picking on anybody named Orange Chiropractic. But I’m just saying, if it was Orange Chiropractic, they’ll have the cover photo up there, and it will say Orange Chiropractic. And that’s it. But it won’t say Dr. Janice Hughes or what the phone number is.
Right?
And that is important, because people, when they click on it, it’s a split second. They’re like, [inaudible 00:14:53]. Now, your phone number’s obviously there. They can scroll down and find it.
Right?
People don’t take the time to do that. They really want to look on there, bam, do it. I’m also going to challenge you … and this is just another thing that, on the top of your Facebook page, on the right underneath the cover photo is a button, a call to action button. So it could say, you know, “Contact us,” “Call.” Have that say call because most people are on their mobile phones.
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
And so they can literally press a button and it automatically calls, rather than looking and scrolling down and looking for the number. So I challenge the viewers to go on and see if they have it set up correctly. So number one is set up everything correctly.
Yes.
I also think that having consistent branding and posting is very important. It’s not only important to educate your community; it’s important for search engine optimization. It’s important to have those back links, right?
It’s important for that. And what people are doing is, they’re copying from other people or they’re sharing other people’s and thinking that’s posting for themselves, but it’s really not. What you’re doing, if you’re sharing somebody else’s post or meme, you’re giving them the SEO credit, the search engine optimization credit. You’re increasing their SEO, not your own. You must create your own post or get them, you have to do that. That’s really important. Also, then, the third thing would be to do Facebook, Instagram, social media advertising. It does work when done well, and people who have regular posting, their ads perform better than those that don’t.
Oh, so there’s obviously algorithms in the back again that are definitely impacting that.
Right. Because I have clients call me, “I just want a funnel. That’s all I want.” And I’m like, “Well, you really need to post.” “Nah, I just want a funnel.”
And I’m like, “I won’t even do that.” You have to be posting. So that’s really important to do both, both [inaudible 00:17:01] and do the ad. So those are the three things.
Yeah, those are great. That’s especially … Because I do now a lot of, like I say, practice valuations based on people wanting to sell their practice.
Okay.
And that’s a really important key because, like I say, I’ve talked to them again about the importance of it and the the future purchaser, but also to have that in place so that you’ve already got more of the search engine optimization.
Oh yeah, for sure. Because that’s how your phone rings.
Awesome. Well that … Again, I know our our time. I could ask you a hundred questions, but what I want to do is say thank you. We will make sure that we put some links, again, affiliated with the show so that that way people can even just ask.
You know, one of the things I’ve known is that, as I turn to people like Terry, I ask, and she’s always got a real quick response for me. Just the willingness, and I appreciate, and thank you for your willingness to share and help educate other people.
[inaudible 00:17:58].
So, also, for all of you as listeners, you’ll notice that in talking about this topic, marketing versus advertising, I really like to say, how do you grow your business? You know, growth without risk means put the things in place that will help you grow. Use the systems, use the tools, use the experts and their ideas that we bring to you.
Now all of that wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for ChiroSecure. So I constantly say thank you and owe a huge debt of gratitude to ChiroSecure, to Dr. Hoffman, in particular, who has supported myself, my career, supports the profession with these ideas about how do you grow. Because ultimately it’s about growing your business and growing your impact. So, even from a philosophical perspective, as chiropractors, we help more people the more that we grow your business. So please don’t hesitate to reach out and thank you again to ChiroSecure. Have a wonderful day.
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