S6 EP27 Most Clinic Marketing Is A Complete Waste Of Time

Season 6: Clinic Marketing That Works

Welcome
Welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. I am Katie Bell, and today I am sharing something that might ruffle a few feathers. Most clinic marketing is a complete waste of time. Not marketing itself, but the way many clinic owners are spending their precious hours.

If you have ever poured time into Canva, captions, reels, and posts, only to check your phone later and see a handful of likes, this episode is for you. I am going to help you refocus on what actually drives enquiries and bookings, without dancing on social media or chasing trends.

Episode Summary
In this episode, I talk about the productivity trap that keeps clinic owners busy but not growing. Somewhere along the line, marketing has become confused with posting, and that is a problem. Patients do not pay your rent because you reached more people on Instagram. Patients pay your bills because they trust you, they can find you when they need help, and you make it easy for them to book.

I share the only marketing scorecard that matters, the question you must be able to answer if Instagram disappeared tomorrow, and the fundamentals that have driven the biggest growth periods in my clinic. I also explain how we use social media as a support, not as the engine, and why stripping things back and working the path until it works is often the fastest route to better results.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing is not the same as posting. Activity does not equal results.
• The only scorecard that matters is enquiries and bookings, not reach or likes.
• If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, you should know exactly where your next 10 patients would come from.
• Build visibility where decisions are made, not just where attention lives.
• The fundamentals drive growth: patient experience, referrals, reviews, community relationships, trust, and being easy to recommend.
• Stop doing a mile wide and an inch deep of marketing. Strip it back and work the path until it works.
• Social media can support your campaigns, but it should not consume your time or distract you from fixing leaks in your clinic.
• Look at what is already working, then do more of that before starting something new.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Treat Your Business. If this has helped you rethink where you are spending your marketing time, please hit subscribe and share the episode with a clinic owner friend who needs to hear it. I will see you next week for more bite size episodes as we get clearer on what to stop, what to start, and what to scale.

Treat Your Business podcast is proudly sponsored by Klatch:
Results-driven marketing built for healthcare companies. Unlock sustainable growth and maximise ROI with data-driven digital marketing tailored to your business, backed by patient tracking software from search to revenue.

Find out more at https://www.klatch.co.uk

Resources & Links:

Subscribe to our Channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thrivebizcoach?sub_confirmation=1

Website: https://Thrive-businesscoaching.com  

Free Resources: https://treatyourbusiness.com 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: how many times have you spent 30 minutes maybe creating a post check your phone an hour later and you thought, "Ah, three likes." One of them is your receptionist and the other is your auntie.

[00:00:12] Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast, the show for clinic owners who want real, honest advice and tried and tested ways of doing things. I'm Katie Bell, and this is the new era of bigger insights and bolder conversations to help you grow a clinic and a life you love. Let's dive [00:00:30] in

[00:00:30] Hello, welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. Today I'm gonna say something that just might annoy a few marketing agencies perhaps, maybe social media gurus definitely of which I'm not one of, and maybe a few clinic owners. Most clinic marketing is a complete waste of time.

[00:00:52] Now before you launch your phone across the room or maybe your car on your way to the clinic, 'cause I know lots of you listen in the car on the way on a [00:01:00] Wednesday and unsubscribe, just hear me out. I don't mean marketing is a waste of time, a lot of what clinic owners are spending their very precious time on is a waste of time, and I know that because I've also done it.

[00:01:17] And I have the pleasure of working with many clinic owners, and I see how time-poor they are, yet I also see what they spend their time doing. And for many, they're [00:01:30] spending lots of time on Canva creating, this beautiful content. Hours and hours trying to think of like clever captions, how to do all of these reels and carousels, and is it static post or are they trying to create a dancing video or they've seen somebody do something on Instagram, they want to recreate it.

[00:01:47] Which you know, is a great distraction away from actually doing the stuff that your business really needs you to do. But What I've realized is it's not that you don't have a marketing [00:02:00]problem, 'cause many of you do, but you have a focus problem. And what I know is that we are so distracted by what others are doing and what we feel like we should be doing that we might feel productive, like I'm super busy, but it doesn't actually create more leads or more bookings into your clinic or into your business or into your studio.

[00:02:24] And I think that a lot of what we're seeing, we're like being trapped by, it's a real [00:02:30]big productivity trap, social media being one of those things, LinkedIn being another one of those big traps that I have just removed myself off again. I've still got my profile, but like I've just got it off my phone because I was just getting consumed by all these other people's stories.

[00:02:46] And do you know genuinely- I often look at stuff on- online and I think, I literally do not know how you have the time. I barely have the time to go on [00:03:00] Instagram, social media. I don't have the time to create any of that stuff. And it's really doesn't make any big difference to me in terms of the clinic and bookings and inquiries and, performance And I'm not like, before the social media police come after me, because I understand about visibility, I understand about being consistent.

[00:03:24] I'm not saying don't use social media. We use it. My clinic uses it, Thrive uses it, but [00:03:30] A, I, I don't even n- have anything to do with it. But somewhere along the line, clinic owners have started to believe that marketing equals posting, and marketing equals being really present on social media, and that if your diary isn't full, the answer then obviously is to create another reel or another Canva graphic or another inspirational quote, another post that basically nobody's mum r- actually reads.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] So let's be honest, how many times have you spent 30 minutes maybe creating a post check your phone an hour later and you thought, "Ah, three likes." One of them is your receptionist and the other is your auntie. And that same week, one happy patient referred their husband, their neighbor and their work colleague because they had...

[00:04:20] You had- they had a great experience, they had a great conversation, which created more business, right? And I am really happy for you to have [00:04:30] a thriving social media presence as long as all of the other stuff in your business isn't leaking at the same time. So one of the things we've become completely obsessed with is activity, and we celebrate activity.

[00:04:43] We tell ourselves we're working on the business because we're posting things on social media, and what often happens is you go down a rabbit hole whilst you're posting so that post that you're gonna do for 10 minutes actually turns into an hour because you start looking at everybody else.

[00:04:57] But here's the only marketing [00:05:00] scorecard that really matters is, how many inquiries are we getting in our clinic or our studio? How many of those are booking in and being new patient assessments or booking into classes or one-to-one consultations? That's it, right? Nobody's ever paid their rent with an Instagram reach.

[00:05:20] Nobody's ever paid their tax bill with engagement of who I've met, who are clinic owners. Nobody ever made payroll because your reel got [00:05:30] 10- 10,000 views, right? Patients, clients pays the bills, not followers. And I've worked with many social media gurus before who convince me that they'll write me this beautiful report that comes, in a PDF or a PowerPoint or whatever, and it talks about likes and follows and reach.

[00:05:46] I literally just don't care I, I really only care about and what result did that then have? So if I'm looking back at, in KB Physio over the last decade, the biggest growth periods have never come [00:06:00] because we suddenly became social media geniuses, like we haven't. We got really good at the fundamentals, okay?

[00:06:07] The foundations, patient experience, referrals, reviews, community relationships, being known, being trusted, being easy to recommend. The boring stuff, right? The stuff that nobody wants to talk about because there isn't a shiny marketing course attached to it. And I want you to ask yourself this question as well.

[00:06:26] If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, like where would your next 10 patients [00:06:30] come from? Would they come from former patients, from current patients, from Google, from professional referrers, from local businesses, from word of mouth? Maybe you have genuinely no idea. There lies one of the problems. Because if you don't know, that is the problem, not your posting schedule.

[00:06:49] The problem is that you've built a marketing strategy often, or lack of marketing strategy, around a platform or a set of platforms instead of around patient or client behavior. [00:07:00] So people don't wake up thinking, "Oh, I wonder what my physio posted today." They wake up thinking, "My freaking back hurts. I've gotten out of bed again or I've not slept.

[00:07:10] I've had to reach for the pain relief. My shoulder hurts in the gym this morning. Maybe I've been for a run and I've wet myself because I've still not dealt with my pelvic floor issues postpartum." Or, "Today's the day that I'm gonna get help because I cannot put up with this any longer."

[00:07:26] And when that moment happens, we need to [00:07:30] be visible where decisions are made, not just where attention lives. And that's a huge difference So over the next few weeks, the whole of June, in fact, I am dedicating to getting clearer about our marketing strategy. And at the end of June, I'm gonna run a completely free masterclass, my second one back.

[00:07:56] Last one was great. The second one back is all about [00:08:00] the no-fluff marketing plan for basically for therapists and studio owners who hate social media. So if you feel like you're tired of marketing or you still don't really know what you should be doing, or you're trying to do too many things at once, then I genuinely think you'll benefit from being at this masterclass.

[00:08:23] I'm not gonna be talking about creating a dance or trending audio or a complicated funnel, just getting [00:08:30] really clear on what works in the real world of being a clinic owner and a studio owner. And if you are absolutely amazing on social media, then where the attention can live, then great.

[00:08:46] You can keep doing that stuff. But if it's at the cost of fixing all the other leaks in your clinic or your studio, then really that is not where you need to be [00:09:00] spending a lot of your time. And I remember recently asking our marketing person to do an analysis of their time spent, and I then looked at this and I said here's what we're gonna do, is we're gonna get you to spend less than 5% of your entire," she does 10 hours a week, "an entire month on...

[00:09:19] less than 5% of that time will be on social media." So she-- let's say she does 40 hours a month over the space of a normal month. I was actually asking her to do less [00:09:30] than two hours a month would be driven by social media stuff. So we post maybe two or three times a week maximum.

[00:09:38] We use it as a support to our other marketing campaigns that might be, going out there. But we don't use it to drive our leads. What we then do is we have a Facebook ad campaign, we have Google ad campaigns, we have collaborations going on, we have relationship buildings done, we have external workshops or speaking [00:10:00] events happening.

[00:10:01] We have in-house marketing. We have upsells and cross-sells going on all the time. We're not doing a million things at once, and what we're trying to do more, and more, and more is strip things out, and be very specific with our marketing. Very, very niche. So I hope that over the coming weeks you're gonna join me every week for a small bite-size episode around getting clearer [00:10:30] on what's working for you, what's not working, and what you can just give up and be okay with giving up.

[00:10:37] Or maybe it's that you're looking at who your next hire is in terms of marketing and what they really need to be doing for you. Because many people that I know who work for clinics or and for us as well in the past I've had to strip their stuff back and say "Please don't present me with a report every month on reach and engagement.

[00:10:57] All I am bothered about is how many new [00:11:00] patients we are getting booked into the clinic. That is your job. Get me new patients booked in. So yes, I will work on our inquiry conversion rate, and I will make sure that if you provide us with the inquiries, we will convert those in, but I need you to be driving bookings.

[00:11:16] That is the be-all and end-all." If you want to go and d- drive reach and engagement because you know that then creates that like you knock yourself out. But we're not gonna do that by [00:11:30]focusing on social media. Particularly most people who listen to this podcast are of a size of clinic that is small to medium.

[00:11:42] Most clinic owners have and studio owners have no time. They're still driving most of the revenue, they're still doing most of the work themselves, and they are not allocating enough time to get clear and execute on specifics in terms of [00:12:00] their marketing. So they end up doing like a mile wide and an inch deep of stuff, like lots of different things.

[00:12:07] But rather than going I'm gonna get rid of all of that and I'm just gonna focus on this thing, and I'm gonna work the path until it works," we just get too busy and we get too distracted. And we did an activity actually at our Elevate Your Marketing day which is our live day in May. And we we got clear on what we were gonna start, what we were gonna stop, and what we were [00:12:30] gonna scale And when we looked at what we were gonna stop, we wrote down a whole list of stuff.

[00:12:37] And I went round loads of different clinic owners and studio owners in the room and I said, "What's not working for you?" And we wrote some stuff down. And then but later on, we worked on what we were gonna scale. So what is really working for them, but they need to leverage and they need to just do more of, okay?

[00:12:53] And we got loads and loads of ideas. And I-- and we took some pictures of these, and I said if you are ever stuck for new patients, [00:13:00] this list of what is already working, just do more of, is all you need to do." You don't need to start anything else. You can stop all that stuff, but you can just look at this list on your phone.

[00:13:11] If you're ever stuck for patients and you're like, "Oh, this feels really good. This feels really clear," I said, "Great." But when we looked at the stop stuff, I said, "What's the difference?" What's the difference between this stuff and this stuff? And all it was that they hadn't worked the path until it worked.

[00:13:29] It was [00:13:30] a, we went to this flower show and we had a stand there, but it didn't really work." What aspects of it didn't work? Was it the strategy that you took to the flower show? Were you not visible enough? And actually, we laugh and I'm sure I can share this story. One of our fabulous new members, our new foundation members, he is, I'm gonna say 6'8", I think I've got that right.

[00:13:52] I can basically sit underneath his armpit. He is so tall and so wonderful. And I said to him, I said, "Chris, [00:14:00] if you'd turned up to this flower show as a giant sunflower, do you think you'd have got more leads?" And he was like, "Yeah." I said, " 'Cause categorically, what I can tell you is that you went to the flower show with a really average call to action.

[00:14:14] You had not got a clear strategy. You weren't visible enough. You didn't stand out from the crowd." If you'd put me in that position and said, "How can we maximize on this?" I'd said, "You dress up as a giant sunflower." I know you're all laughing, but it's true. A 6'8" sunflower, you would... [00:14:30] people would stop at your stand.

[00:14:32] With a really great call to action of a 15-minute foot consultation or whatever, something. That sounds rubbish. But something great like that. They would have genuinely created more leads. If we'd have then nurtured lo- those leads in a much more powerful way in giving really clear offers within that as to why people need to take action, they would have made a lot of money.

[00:14:54] And we went through this list and I was like, we, worked on all the other reasons why stuff hadn't worked, and [00:15:00] actually what we then realized is all that stuff could work, it's just that we hadn't worked it till it worked. We'd been too busy doing everything else. So my point here is that often it's because we're trying to do too many things, we don't really get clear on the strategy.

[00:15:18] We don't leverage that to its absolute maximum- We don't get people on the phone and have great conversations. We avoid all of that, and we just then go, "Oh that didn't [00:15:30] really work for me, so I'm not gonna do it again." And then we just go onto the next thing with a really average strategy. So what I want to get really clear on over the next month is what is working for you, what we can do more of, what you can absolutely stop doing because genuinely you have no strategy, and actually it's distracting you from doing the other stuff.

[00:15:49] And maybe are there some things that you can start that you aren't currently doing? I absolutely know that you won't be maximizing your retention. I would know you absolutely won't be asking [00:16:00] for referrals in the right way and for reviews in the right way and maximizing on those. You won't be updating your Google My Business and utilizing that to the level that you should be.

[00:16:09] You won't be maximizing on Google Ads because you're probably not asking the right questions to the agency, or you probably you've got a website that's not converting well enough for you. Or you've got people that are ringing the clinic and you're not converting those inquiries. There is so many leaks that we can fix, and we can help you with.

[00:16:25] So over the next month, we're gonna get more and more clear. I hope this episode [00:16:30]has allowed you to just start thinking about what you can stop, what you can start, and what you need to scale in terms of your marketing right now. And join me for episodes two and three, where I'm gonna talk about why the social media lie that is keeping clinics and studios completely stuck.

[00:16:46] And if I lost it in Instagram tomorrow, here is what I would absolutely, exactly do. I'm gonna do you a Katie Bell emergency marketing plan. And at the end of the month, we're gonna bring all of this together in a 90-minute [00:17:00] completely free masterclass, you and me online. You're gonna get a chance to ask me all your marketing questions.

[00:17:07] But we can get really clear once and for all on what you can stop, what you can start, and what you can scale. Thank you for joining me on this week's episode. I look forward to seeing you again next week.

[00:17:17] Thanks for listening to the Treat Your Business podcast. Hit Subscribe now and keep joining me for bigger insights, bolder conversations to help you build a clinic and a life you [00:17:30] love.