S6 EP29 If I Lost Instagram Tomorrow, Here's Exactly What I'd Do

Season 6: Clinic Marketing That Works

Welcome

Welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. Thank you for being here. I’m Katie Bell, and today I want to play a little game.

Imagine you wake up tomorrow, pick up your phone, open Instagram and… nothing. No account. No followers. No Reels. No Stories. No content.

Before you start sweating, stay with me, because this is one of the most useful marketing exercises you can do as a clinic owner.

Episode SummaryIf Instagram disappeared tomorrow, would your clinic, studio, or business survive?

In this episode, I’m sharing exactly what I would do if I lost Instagram overnight, and why social media is a marketing tool, not a marketing strategy.

Too many clinic owners have built their entire marketing plan on a platform they do not own. Algorithms change. Reach drops. Accounts get restricted. Platforms evolve, or disappear. That is why your marketing needs foundations that you control.

I walk you through my seven-part “emergency marketing plan”, including how I would use my email database, reactivate past patients, build referrals properly, double down on Google, strengthen relationships with key referrers, collect reviews consistently, and become known for something specific.

I also share why I’m running my No Fluff Marketing Plan masterclass, and how it will help you stop feeling overwhelmed and start spending time on the marketing that actually creates enquiries, consultations, and bookings.

Key Takeaways

1. Social media is a marketing tool, not a marketing strategy.
2. Build marketing assets you own, starting with your email database.
3. You do not always need more followers, you need more conversations.
4. Reactivating past patients is often faster and more effective than chasing strangers.
5. Referrals come from a remarkable experience, not awkward asking.
6. Reviews are the modern version of word of mouth, and they influence decisions every day.
7. Google is where people look for answers when they are in pain.
8. Healthcare is still relationship-based, get back into the real world with key referrers.
9. Specialists get remembered and recommended. Generalists often get forgotten.
10. If marketing is draining you, strip it back, focus, and build a plan that works without constant content.

Resources / Links

Free training mentioned: No Fluff Marketing Plan:

https://marketing.thrive-businesscoaching.com/24th-june 

If today is not including some marketing, it should be. And if it is including marketing, make sure you are spending time on the things that really matter.

Thanks for listening to the Treat Your Business podcast. Hit subscribe and join me each week for bigger insights and bolder conversations to help you build a clinic and a life you love.

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: Social media is a marketing tool, it's not a marketing strategy. And, m- unfortunately, many of us have built our entire marketing plan around a platform that we don't actually own.

[00:00:11] 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 in

[00:00:29] [00:00:30] Welcome back to the Treat Your Business podcast. Thank you for being here. My name is Katie Bell, and I am your host. Today, I wanna play a little game. If you haven't been listening for the last few episodes, where have you been? But just pause this episode and go back and listen to the other two because this will then make more sense.

[00:00:50] But I want you to imagine you wake up tomorrow morning. You pick up your phone, you open Instagram, and this pop-

[00:00:57] No account, no followers, no reels, [00:01:00] no stories, no content, nothing. Now, before some of you start sweating, stay with me because I think this is one of the most useful exercises we can do. If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, would your clinic, would your studio, would your business survive? I'm gonna guess that 99.9% of you go, "Yes, it would."

[00:01:23] Thankfully, mine would. Not because I'm clever, not because I'm lucky, but over the [00:01:30] years I've learnt something really important. Social media is a marketing tool, it's not a marketing strategy. And, m- unfortunately, many of us have built our entire marketing plan around a platform that we don't actually own.

[00:01:44] So I want you to think about that for a second. You may have spent years posting building an audience on somebody else's platform. A platform that can change its algorithm overnight, a platform that can decide who sees your content, [00:02:00] a platform that could disappear tomorrow, and it's really risky. So if I lost Instagram tonight, I am gonna tell you exactly what I would do.

[00:02:12] Number one, rejoice. No, I'm joking. Because we would save s- we would get back so much time in our days, wouldn't we? When we are scrolling and, being distracted. But number one, I'd email my database immediately because unlike social media, I own [00:02:30] my email list. At KB Physio, we have thousands of contacts.

[00:02:33] Current patients, past patients, leads, people who know us, people who trust us, people who like us. Yet most of us completely ignore the most valuable marketing asset that we have, our database. We don't often need more followers, we just need to have more conversations. Number two, I'd reactivate old patients.

[00:02:57] This one blows my mind. We do this every single [00:03:00] time we get together within Thrive and we talk about marketing. But many of you are spending thousands of pounds and thousands of seconds trying to attract strangers, while completely ignoring people who already know you, who already like you, and already trust you.

[00:03:16] And I'd much rather speak to somebody who came to see us 18 months ago than a complete stranger who has never heard from us. Number three, I'd ask for referrals. Not in a weird, awkward way, but by creating a remarkable, [00:03:30] exceptional experience that people, that make people want to tell others. And- At KB Physio, one of our values is everyone matters.

[00:03:39] This isn't just something on a wall, it's how we try and pa- make people feel. So how people talk about how you make them feel. Number four, I'd double down on Google. Google Ads, Google My Business, 'cause when somebody has back pain, shoulder pain, pelvic pain, running injury, they don't normally open Instagram for the solution.

[00:03:57] They open Google or increasingly [00:04:00] AI search. They're looking for answers. They're not looking for entertainment. Number five, I'd go and visit key referrers. I'd have coffee with local business owners fitness professionals, personal trainers, running clubs, community groups. I'd get back into the real world because healthcare absolutely is still a relationship-based business.

[00:04:21] Number six, I'd collect reviews like my business depending, depended on it. So in many ways it does because reviews are one of the modern [00:04:30] versions of word of mouth. We had a incident in the clinic just last week where somebody was visiting from Sweden and they booked in a initial assessment with one of our physios, with Charlotte, and she said, "How did you hear about us then if you're in Sweden?"

[00:04:46] He said, "Basically I looked at the different physio clinics in Sheffield where I was staying and I, and you had the best reviews and the most reviews by a country mile and I liked what I saw and I just booked to see you." So reviews are modern [00:05:00] versions of word of mouth and they influence decisions every single day and I'd utilize and leverage those referrals in our social media presence.

[00:05:09] Number seven, I'd become known for something. Not everything, something. Many clinic owners, particularly at the size of clinics that you are all running who are listening to this and many studio owners try to be everything to everybody. You diversify way too soon. You try and solve too many people's problems and that [00:05:30] becomes difficult when it comes to marketing because you're talking to too many different things and too many different people all at once.

[00:05:37] So whatever it is, specialists get re- remembered, they get recognized they get refer- they get, Remembered, recommended. They get refer- referrals from people. Generalists often get forgotten. And here's what I find fascinating. Not one of those seven things required me to dance on Instagram, do some trending audio [00:06:00] thing on TikTok or whatever.

[00:06:02] It didn't require me to spend hours creating content. And it doesn't mean social media is useless. Of course it doesn't. We use it, our clinic uses it, Thrive uses it, but it should support your marketing strategy rather than become your marketing strategy, and that's the mistake I see clinic owners making every single day.

[00:06:20] You're working super hard, you've got... You're getting great results, but you're just not collecting those results. You're just not shouting about them. So we're often working on the wrong [00:06:30] things, and we're creating more content when what we really need is absolutely more clarity, more focus, more strategy.

[00:06:36] And that's exactly why I'm running this masterclass next week, the no fluff marketing plan for therapists and studio owners who hate social media, me being one of those people. I'm gonna walk you exactly through what I think clinic owners need to be doing, how they should be approaching their marketing this year and beyond.

[00:06:57] Let's just get rid of all the bullshit, all the [00:07:00] gimmicks, all the fluff, no dancing, just real practical strategies that create inquiries, that create consultations, that create clients coming through the door, people booking into classes. I'd love for you to join me. I'd love to see you there.

[00:07:15] I absolutely love running these masterclasses. You get the real chance to be coached by me on a one-to-one basis as well as in a group basis. You can ask me questions. I usually bring quite a lot of fun to the session, a lot of energy. And I really want to [00:07:30] empower you all to stop being so overwhelmed with your marketing.

[00:07:33] And if you do have, whether you are a clinic owner who is trying to manage all of your own marketing, like you have no time. So what do you have time to do? What we- what should we be making time for? Some of you are looking now to get somebody doing marketing for you, and you need to be really clear about where you want them to spend their time.

[00:07:51] At whatever level you're at, this mark- this masterclass is gonna be perfect for you. So just remember, you don't need to be famous. You don't need you [00:08:00] don't need to be like this guru out there. You just need to be the obvious choice when people are looking for the answer to their problem.

[00:08:11] So let's Dive in a little bit more give you some really good kind of ideas around some of the, my emergency marketing plan, the things that I've just talked to you about. So number one, I said that I would email my database. Now many of you have ... A, [00:08:30] you're not col- you're not growing your email list.

[00:08:32] That is a problem. You're, you ... We need to be driving people and growing your email list. We are not nurturing our email list, so we're emailing them infrequently or sporadically with no real strategy. And you're worrying too much about unsubscribers and people that are unfollowing you, or it might be that you need to clean your list up and freshen it up, and start re-communicating to those people with high-value, good content that people [00:09:00] actually wanna read.

[00:09:01] So number one thing was like I'd email my database. Now, that's gonna work for me 'cause we email all the time, so my email list is warm. People are used to receiving emails from us. We have strong subject lines. Un- you know, unlike social media, we own that list. So there may be something within that section that you need to just do work on second thing was that I'd reactivate old patients.

[00:09:24] And one of the things that, that you can do instantly, [00:09:30] which is marketing but it's also sales, is that you can look at your list for the last 30 days or 60 days and go, "Who was I seeing who I'm no longer seeing and I haven't discharged?" Get on the phone to them. Pick up the phone. Have a good conversation.

[00:09:43] I just wanna check in because I've seen you for this shoulder problem, and I can see that you've not been back. Are you okay? Do you need some more help? Is there anything that I can support you with, either over the phone or with another appointment? Have more conversations. I would do that over posting every day of the [00:10:00] week.

[00:10:00] It might be that I pick up the phone to all the cancellations that have happened and you've just not chased up. Number three, I'd ask for referrals. I'd build it into the customer journey. I would drive more and more Google reviews to be left as a, just a standard way of working, and I would then utilize those within my marketing.

[00:10:23] So I would then use those as our content on social media. I would use them as our as [00:10:30] some content within our email newsletters that go out. I would use them in the clinic to make people see that we help real people with real problems, and they might feel like them, and that's when they resonate and go, "Maybe if it worked for them, it would work for me."

[00:10:46] Number four, I'd double down on Google. I would have, I, I would look at how we can leverage our Google Ad spend. I would make sure we're optimizing our Google My Business platform. I would absolutely spend time there. Number five, [00:11:00] I would go and visit key people that refer to me. I would look at what's worked in the past that we've maybe stopped doing, and I would probably look at where people have our audience in volume because we're a big clinic, and I would go and have coffee with them, and I would establish some way of working together that we both win and the clients win.

[00:11:18] Number six, I'd collect reviews like my business depended on it. So I think I've already said a version of this, but they influence decisions every single day. And number seven is I would consolidate. I would get rid of all the crap, [00:11:30] and I would go, "Where's my lowest hanging fruit? Where's the service that creates the most profit that I can leverage?"

[00:11:35] And I would start there Because a specialist gets remembered and a generalist gets forgotten. I'm gonna be diving into more of this stuff on the masterclass in just a few weeks' time. So make sure that you head to the link in the show notes and you get registered for that masterclass because I would love to see you there and give you some clarity on where you should be spending your time within your marketing.

[00:11:58] I hope you have a [00:12:00] fabulous rest of your day, whatever you are doing. And just re- remember, if today is not including some marketing, then it absolutely should be doing. If it is including marketing, let's make sure that you are spending the time on the things that really matter. See you next week. 

[00:12:21] Thanks for listening to the Treat Your Business podcast. Hit Subscribe now and keep joining me for bigger insights, bolder conversations to [00:12:30] help you build a clinic and a life you [00:13:00] love.