Planning for Success in Medical Marketing with Dr. Ann Hoscheit

In this episode of the Marketing for Doctors Podcast, host Bob Miglani is joined by Dr. Ann Hoscheit, a seasoned doctor and marketing advisor. Dr. Hoscheit shares her wealth of experience and offers valuable insights on upgrading your practice’s marketing strategies. She discusses the importance of planning and execution in creating a successful marketing plan for doctors and healthcare professionals.

Key Takeaways from Dr. Ann Hoscheit in This Episode:

• Effective Patient Communication
  Learn how to enhance patient communication to ensure that your marketing resonates and effectively converts leads into loyal patients.
• Staff Training for Marketing Success
  Dr. Hoscheit emphasizes the critical role of staff training in supporting your marketing efforts and creating a cohesive, patient-centered experience.
• Strategic Marketing Planning
  Discover why planning and execution are essential to achieving long-term marketing success in the medical field.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Upgrading Your Marketing Tactics
  Practical advice on how to modernize and optimize your marketing strategies to keep up with the evolving healthcare landscape.
• Building a Strong Practice Brand
  Understand the importance of creating a strong practice brand that resonates with patients and fosters trust and loyalty.
• Actionable Tips for Healthcare Professionals
  Dr. Hoscheit offers actionable tips that healthcare professionals can implement immediately to improve their practice’s marketing and grow their patient base.

Don’t miss out on this valuable conversation! Tune in to learn from Dr. Hoscheit’s extensive experience and gain practical advice on how to upgrade your practice’s marketing strategy. Like, subscribe, and share this episode with your colleagues!

Visit Dr. Ann Hoscheit’s website for more resources: www.eyebridgeconsulting.com

Transcript

Bob Miglani:
All right. So. Hello, hello, everyone. This is Bob Miglani. Welcome to the Marketing for Doctors podcast. I'm super thrilled that she said yes. No, I didn't propose. I didn't propose. It's Dr. Ann Hoscheit who said yes to join the Marketing for Doctors podcast. And how are you? Hello.

Ann Hoscheit: Hello, Bob, and I'm just tickled to join your podcast today. It did take a little bit of arm twisting, but I've so enjoyed our conversations. I'm treating this as just an extension of our last conversation, getting to know each other and sharing things that we are both passionate about.

Bob Miglani: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you for joining us. So and as is a wonderful experience, deep, rich experience being a doctor and being an advisor, leadership advisor to so many doctors and practices across the country and marketing. This is what we want to talk about today. So first of all, thank you. And for those of you who are watching this on YouTube and is wearing a white coat, OK, and I'm going to do a hashtag love the white coat because I'm a strong believer that doctors need to be doctors and be shown as such, not providers. Doctors work hard to get into medical school. So thank you and for wearing the white coat. I appreciate that

Ann Hoscheit: Perhaps I'm just old school, but from a practical point of view, a lot of times what women wear, we don't have pockets. I love my pockets. But again, I just a little bit, and also being a female in the profession, when it was male dominated, often just having your name and your degrees or initials, doctorate on your lab coat helps separate you from female staff. So there were a lot of compelling reasons, but I think it just boils down to I like the professionalism. And I do happen to know that that you're a fan favorite for the white coats. I did this for you, too.

Bob Miglani: Well, you know, I think so. I want to hear about your journey. And so tell us about your journey. Tell us about how you got here.

Ann Hoscheit: Sure. Try to do it as briefly as possible. After completing residency, I had a brief stint at Nova Southeastern College of Optometry teaching ocular disease, and then moved to North Carolina and started my first private practice, which was an optometry ophthalmology vertically integrated practice. Really fun, built it to be quite successful, but there was something else I wanted to do. And that was really about promoting private practice for women. So I started another practice that was all exclusively female. um, I physicians, and that was a load of fun along the way. I managed my ADD by keeping my fingers in a lot of different pots. You know, I had a column in review of optometry. I lectured KOL clinical research pretty much if there was anything to keep my brain occupied and having that exposure in the context industry was huge. I think my approach to practice in patient care was certainly more interesting and probably had a greater depth than I would have ever imagined without that. And in 2014, I was approached by one of the private equity aggregators to sell my practice. And we had grown to a size that was going to be a little difficult for private practice to ownership to transition. So I elected that option with the goal of my third startup, iBridge Consulting, which I had been doing some bits and pieces of here, starting actually in marketing consulting, marketing and messaging, and then growing it into an area of dry eye specialty service lines and aesthetics. So right now that's what I do. I run iBridge Consulting full-time or mostly full-time. It's my pre-retirement thing.

Bob Miglani: Yes, there's no pre-retirement. There is no retirement, you know, with people of your character, your integrity, your experience, right? And you have so much to offer the world. And this is what I say to everyone is you've got so much deep expertise to offer You've got to keep going. You've got to keep offering it to people in so many different shapes and sizes. And I think, you know, having your experiences and actually seeing patients, you know, building a business, right, shifting to, you know, a certain type of care, getting into dry eyes, for instance. and understanding aesthetics and all of that. And then now advising, there's so much depth here. And I think people lack that experience and they're looking for it. They don't look for it. So I want to talk about like what you see today. Talk to us about how you see doctors today and what that looks like. What's your view of medicine, of optometry today? So talk to us about that for a second.

Ann Hoscheit: Well, you know, that is a really interesting question, because I think regardless of what kind of physician you are in the world, I think that is changing. I believe that we were entrepreneurial. in in probably my generation, on either side of that, we're going becoming a practitioner of medicine, optometry, dentistry, will often came with the idea of ownership. Yes, we had the proverbial entrepreneurial seizure, and we're running our own businesses. I don't think that the physicians of tomorrow have a lot of that. I think that those folks self-select out before going into medicine. They were raised largely in corporate medicine, whether it be a regional healthcare program or other networks. getting their care in malls and even at corporate offices, you know, a lot of companies have healthcare right on site. So I think that, but what I don't think has changed is the focus on the patient. And I'm going to gamble on that. And that's why I still do what I do when I come at consulting, Bob, I still say I'm patient first. Yes. Everything that I want to do as an advisor is about helping us take better care of the patient. See better, feel better, look better, whatever we're doing. It's got to be motivated by that. And secondly, I actually, despite all the accolades in my past, the thing that makes me really, really happy is the success of someone I'm working with, collaborating with, or mentoring. So that really, so those two things have always fueled what I do and continue to drive what I do now.

Bob Miglani: I love it. And patience, there's such a need for it. And especially, you know, nowadays there's not that many doctors going into medicine, right? There are fields, I mean, outside of optometry, I think there's slots available for so many doctors. And you're like, what, who's going to take care of my kidney when I get older, right? It's like, who's going to take care of my eyes. So let's shift a little bit and talk about the practice owner Talk a little bit about marketing. Let's get into kind of your journey and about turning from a doctor and becoming a marketer. How was that journey? Explain that a little bit.

Ann Hoscheit: Well, I think like most journeys, mine was an accident. Sort of like I became an accidental dry eye specialist, I became an accidental marketing expert. When social media was just emerging, I guess Facebook was the first venue. My practice managers threatened me that if I didn't get on Facebook, she was quitting. So I was at home for a week helping my husband recover from a surgery. So I created my first Facebook account. And little did I know that I I like telling stories, but I also saw it as a creative outlet and I didn't really have much of that at the time. So and it became a really my I bring myself. Yes. to my patients, they know they have my mobile, nobody ever abuses that stuff. But integrating my personal professional life was natural to me. So I think that social media allowed us to do that. And it was new, so that the ability to be in front of your patient and engage, and I figured out in short order, that on average in optometry, contact lens patient comes in every 15 months, a patient wearing eyewear usually comes in about every 24 to 48 months. But with social media, I could stay in front of that patient. And they could we could have a we could deepen the relationship. And I had an opportunity to communicate the breadth and depth of our practice services with that social media. And it just for us, we became on fire.

Bob Miglani: Wow. Wow. What was the, yeah. So do you saw the results right away? They would talk to you. They saw you on their phone and then they visited you and they said, Oh, I know everything about you. I know you've had this, this, that, and the other, but let me talk to you a little bit. Just step back for a second. Is that a lot of doctors and you know, who are, who are like reluctant. They're like, well, I've got a professional life. That's my practice profile, and this, that, and the other. Well, and I've got a personal life, right? I've got my kids, I've got my families, my friends that I want to keep in touch with on social media. But you're saying, no, it's just kind of all blends together.

Ann Hoscheit: It is called social for a reason. And I would say this, you do want to keep your personal life fairly professional. I mean, ethics in your personal life are very important. I had experiences with associates young women posting things that I had to talk to them about. I said, if you want to do that, you're welcome to do it. But while you're in this practice, part of our agreement is that you will reflect those professional ethics in your social media as well. And again, those things you had to write into agreements that you didn't have to put in five years prior to that.

Bob Miglani: Right, right. So you observed that, that, you know, that whatever they were posting was not appropriate or didn't set the standard that you wanted to the perception, the value that you wanted to express to your patient population. Yeah.

Ann Hoscheit: So there, so it is, it is careful. It's a little bit of a carefully orchestrated strategy.

Bob Miglani: It is, it is delicate. You know, my wife is an optometrist, my doctor, and she started getting into social. And so I used to do the same. I got into social early on, like you, and with Facebook and I did lots, I had like 40,000, I was like a lot of followers because I wrote some books and so I had a lot of following and I had a little sticky note on my desktop when I would say, you know, be positive, right? Never complain, you know, always be positive, give instruction, give value. It's like, I made these little things, be humorous, tell a story. So I would always say those, I would just, my criteria for posting were those three, four things. And I stuck with that. And then when I saw, you know, my wife starting posting on social, she didn't like to post on social for work. And then, and then she would post on social and I said, listen, you've got to be a little bit careful because all patients have to do is take a screenshot and then put it on a Google review or something like, oh, she's out there having fancy dinners, but she's not, you know, she doesn't have time to see me. Oh, the worst thing, right? It's like, think of, and she's like, you're just being overly cautious. I'm like, yes, I have to be because we're living in this crazy world we are today.

Ann Hoscheit: And the flip side of it is if I'm out of the office and couldn't see a patient, I liked posting that picture of me behind a podium or at a meeting giving a presentation. It elevated my stature, perhaps, for that patient. She may not be here, but look what she's out doing and integrating that. And then there's the fun side of it. We were into social media a couple of years when the American Business Journals had their social madness contest. I don't know if you remember those. Oh, no, I don't remember. And I said to my manager, we're going to compete. And she said, how have you gone from I'll never be on social media to you want to see if we're the best in the country? And we actually made it to the finals for our business size. And part of that, I developed an alter ego during this whole craziness. We competed in a, are you smarter than a fifth grader event and the young doctors competed. And I jokingly said, well, I've always wanted to be a mascot. I won't be on stage, but I will. So I now I have an eyeball mascot costume that's homegrown. And I go to ball games. I have shown up all over town.

Bob Miglani: Iris the eyeball. Wow. Iris the eyeball. I love that.

Ann Hoscheit: I love it. I yes, I have pom poms. It's that. But it's it was part of our strategy then to come into that final. Yeah. That finalist category. And sadly, we lost. The winner would get ten thousand for the charity of their choice. But we decided the community was so engaged. Yes. that we raised the $10,000 ourselves and presented it to Girls on the Run, which created a whole nother, you know, the newspaper, the TV stations. Everybody said the loser is now a winner kind of thing.

Bob Miglani: Wow, I love that. I love that.

Ann Hoscheit: So you see how, and again, the pillars of, you know, taking care of your patients, growing practice, and of course, the community is very important. So it just became my passion. It was the kind of practice that I always dreamed about having one that was very invested in the community.

Bob Miglani: Yeah. And I see that energy come across right now, as you speak to me and tell me that story. Because, you know, it's not about thinking about how much more money you can earn per se in a patient. It's about stepping back and saying, look, I've got something I want to do that I want to add value to our community. I want to add value to my patients. And so let's go all in. And so I think this is where a lot of doctors get challenged is like, they post a picture or two. They're not all in. And what I understand about marketing today is you've really got to go all in. It's sort of like, if you have an account, start posting. If you have an account, be interesting. If you have a social account and you're interested and you've got something to offer, start saying something, have an opinion, share a story, give tips and strategies, give some advice and get out there. Because there's no point to create an account and have it inactive. Because these days, as I understand, what patients do is they might come and see you. And you say, all right, I'm going to diagnose you with this condition. And then they say, I want to go home and think about it. And then they quote, unquote, stalk you. Stalking was a bad word as I, when you went out, you know, like back then it was, it was a bad word. You had a stalker dude called, right. So today stalking is they check you out, right? They look at your profiles. And if they see inactive profiles, they're like, well, is this doctor really? There's no energy there. I think people want to connect with energetic people.

Ann Hoscheit: And, you know, I'm really glad you brought that up because you have inspired me. I spend my days working with clients to help them promote their services, whether we're helping them with some marketing strategy or working with another marketing partner like you or done for you. And that I realized I've been around so long, I don't necessarily think I have to market myself. But two things happened in the last couple of months. One was meeting you and realizing that I don't do my own marketing anymore. I've just sort of laid really low on that. And secondly, people who find out what we do go, where have you been? Why have we known about you? And I keep hearing that. I thought, you know, unless I'm going to shut this down, which I'm not right. I am doing a disservice by not. So you have inspired me to recreate my own marketing strategy and begin executing that this month.

Bob Miglani: So thank you for that. Of course, of course. And then you inspire me because you've got so much fun in you and you've got so much fun, energy. Obviously you have the expertise, you're wearing the white coat for crying out loud. You've got your But you know, it pays off. You know, I'll give you an example. I was, I post a lot videos on LinkedIn and I found out was my channel, right? That was my, that was my jam. I'm like, let me do LinkedIn. So I was outside this building in Princeton. I had a meeting there. So I'm shooting a video and saying, Hey, and as I was entering that building, I realized this was two and a half years ago in March. And I realized, hey, I was an intern in that building 30 years ago. OK, wow. Yeah. So I'm going into things. I said, you know, I was interned at building this guy named Matt Campion gave me my first shot at an internship. I went to drop off my resume instead of mailing it in like a lot of other people. He shook my hand, took my resume and gave me my first job. I had to borrow a suit. We were We had no money. And so I bought a suit for my college roommate and it started my career. And it was a marketing research internship. Anyway, I posted that video on LinkedIn and people were like, oh, that's great. Guess who writes back?

Ann Hoscheit: The guy who hired you the suit. I was going to say the guy who loaned you the suit.

Bob Miglani: No, the boss. And my boss, who from 30 years ago, I was like 19 or 18, I forget what it was. And he goes, Bob, you were the best hire I ever had. How are you? I miss you. Let's talk. And so I reached out to him. I said, Matt, I love you. How have you been? We lost touch. And he goes, hey, what are you doing? I said, I'm a motivational speaker. This is a few years ago before starting Hoot. I was a motivational speaker. And I spoke on change management. I wrote a book called In Christ the Chaos. And that was my full-time gig, right? He goes, guess what? We're looking for a speaker about change at our company retreat we're having in New Jersey, which is where I live. And how much do you charge? And I said, this much. He goes, we can't afford that much. I said, Matt, I'll do it for free. He goes, no, no, no, I'm going to pay you. And I spoke at his company's retreat.

Ann Hoscheit: I love that full circle story.

Bob Miglani: It was amazing. It was really, really thrilling. It was amazing. So my point of this story is to say that when you've got energy and fun and something to share with the world had nothing to do about change management or my book or my speaking stuff at that time. It had to do with something I want to share with the world that adds value to their life, makes it interesting. Like you, dressing up as an eyeball, going to baseball games. It's just, you make it fun and people connect with energy. And I think that's just, and then it pays off. You know, no, maybe 60% not going to pay off. You don't know, but you don't know which one, right? You don't know what's going to pay off and not. So let's go into tactics and let's talk about marketing today. you know, how do you see, doctors often ask is like, you know, what do I say? What do I talk about? So do you have any tips for doctors today and what they should talk about when it comes to marketing, whether it's on social media or anywhere else?

Ann Hoscheit: Well, there's a couple of different directions I'd like to go to answer that question. I talk about the four C's of a physician's communication, and one of them is just having the commitment. You have to say, am I committed to putting the pieces in place that allow me to effectively communicate in the office? and to my patients when they're not in the office and to the external public, you have to be committed. Secondly, you have to be competent and have confidence in what you're doing. That when I am working with a practice developing a dry eye service line, if the doctor doesn't understand the physiology of ocular surface disease, the physiology of an IPL and confidence that the treatment is going to affect root cause, we're kind of set up for failure. So we have to get that in place. Yes. And then thirdly, the clinical systems, whatever it is, if you're doing myopia management, oculosurface disease, refractive surgery, it has to be a smooth experience because you can send messages all day long. And if the patient comes into your practice and doesn't have a really good experience, you have really have a negative return on investment. And then the communication piece is the last piece. That's the patient relationship management software, the social media posts, the e-blast, the billboards and all of that. So it may surprise you that I put the marketing messaging communication forth, but along the way, it's your brand. And a good example is when we're doing a dry eye and aesthetic service line, I insist that all the materials be branded and in color. Have you not gone into an office and seen a copy of a copy of a copy?

Bob Miglani: You know, it's so annoying. There's zero credibility. It's like you can't be excellent. Exactly. You don't care about me enough. You can be a black and white that's like half cut off or whatever. It's

Ann Hoscheit: It doesn't look current. It doesn't look contemporary. Things may have changed. And so the first step when we're doing a marketing plan is we make sure we have the brand and that we're committed to that. And the materials are especially when you're doing direct patient care, where they're coming off the hip with significant dollars, like myopia management or aesthetics. And so your your community, your quality of communication from the doctor's lips, to a brochure, to a billboard, or a direct mail piece, or the digital marketing should all look first class. And I love what you're doing. I just do need to do a quick drip because when we think of digital marketing, a lot of times we're thinking Google ads, Facebook ads, and you know how hard it is to compete in that world. And I've felt successful marketing is often separated by the personal nature of it. Yes. And that our patients are in our office. They trust us. Yes. I would much rather a digital marketing campaign land in their lap that I endorsed. It even looks like me, sounds like me. It's you.

Bob Miglani: Just some random ad. That's right. That's right. That's right. I love what you said. I love the four C's. I think I would add one. I think that's one.

Ann Hoscheit: Oh, please do.

Bob Miglani: is consistency. And I think you said, which is like, you've got to be consistent. I had a doctor yesterday, huge practice. And, you know, we're talking about, you know, he and I said, what's the problem you're facing? He said, just inconsistent. One doctor says one thing, one staff does another thing. There's no consistency of my, he kept saying the word, I don't like my inconsistency. And I think you say here, commitment, competence, clinical systems, and communication. So the consistency in all of those must be there. And that's the process. And that's the process. It goes back to the process. It's like, what are you doing? Are you setting up systems in place? I think one of the challenges doctors have, and I would love your advice on, How do we advise doctors? This is that often doctors wear the doctor operator hat and they forget to wear and put on the owner hat. And so therefore they're working in the business, not on the business.

Ann Hoscheit: Oh, you're right. I mean, what is that right out of Stephen Covey's? Yes. You've got to work on the business. I have a client who bought a new practice, started open cold. He relocated to the other side of the country and he is, he sort of forgot about how much time he invested when he started his first practice. So he's left zero time to work on the business and sitting there going, why aren't things growing? I'm sitting here waiting for the patients to walk in and go, cause you're not working on the business. You only want to work in it. And I think, um, I, what motivated me, you know, I've been doing operational consulting for years, helping docs build their practices. I loved seeing a $700,000 practice go to a $2 million practice and put all those systems in place. And then, as you know, there was the, the advanced technologies available for ocular surface disease and didn't want those instruments to be purchased and sit there collecting dust. Yes, a lot of them to be put to use. And the doctors who are doing well, they would tell you they're consistent with their communication. In fact, we've built a module into our consulting called the standard of care. So we get all the doctors on a call. And we agree what our standard of care, you know, individual variability for ocular surface disease in that practice. And then there's that there's this agreement that this is our consensus. We also build in staff training. I don't necessarily trust the doctors to do their own. But I want every single person from the optician to the contact lens, to the welcome center, to the billing person to understand what it is about this service line, what they should all go through it as a patient.

Bob Miglani: Yes, yes. No, I love that. In fact, what this is about is not about a protocol. It's about standard of care. So often doctors think, well, what's the protocol? Well, that's disease management, right? But what you're talking about is taking disease management and adding a component to it, right, to streamline it, which is what is the communications, what's the handout look like, who takes what, you know, the patient from one room to the other. And it's that raising that standard of care, raising the standard of excellence through the lens of the patient experience. I think that's, you know, I think a lot of us call it patient experience, but they feel like, what is that? It's the standard of care you're talking about, which blends you know, the all the different pieces, the protocol, so protocols are not enough, as I understand, right? It's like, their systems is really what they're their systems.

Ann Hoscheit: That's right. That's just and I was just advising a doctor who had a new employee. And they were saying, you know, she just seemed doesn't seem to get our culture. I said, Well, what'd you do on the first day? Yes. Did you put her through the paces of being a patient?

Bob Miglani: Right. I love that.

Ann Hoscheit: That's going to be that that's going to be the baptism that helps them be indoctrinated when they are experiencing what you want your patients. They can also be great mystery shoppers. Right. You can debrief them at the end about what they like, what they didn't like, what was confusing and use that as an opportunity for continuous improvement.

Bob Miglani: I love that. In fact, I had a call the other day as well about with the doctor and he said, I really want to grow my dry eye clinic, you know, and so That's why he joined Hood and we're getting into it. And I said, OK, let me ask you something. OK, so you do my biography. Yes, I do. But my staff is kind of reluctant to do my biography, you know, in the first visit. And I said, well, it's very important. You know, he knows he has to do it. I said, let me ask you a question. Would you do staff meetings? yeah, we get around to it every couple of weeks. I'm like, okay, and what do you discuss? And so I said, he goes, well, we discuss like, you know, late, you know, who comes in. I'm like, those are like real minutiae issues. Why don't you, and a suggestion for you here, if you want to really go to your gynecology clinic, and he goes, he said, I have nine staff, And he said, you know, and a couple of them are OK to do the mybiography and pretesting. The others are not. I said, well, why don't you do this? Why don't you take one staff meeting and everybody does a mybiography on themselves? Okay. Do the scan on each other and have a prize of a hundred dollar bill for whoever can do it the fastest and the most highest quality manner. Okay. With the right language. And he said, that's a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? I said, well, because you're working in the business. If you really want people, your staff to be aligned with your goals, you've got to think standard of care. You've got to think patient experience. So marketing is as much about understanding how patients view us as much as how we are putting ourselves out there in the world. People want to spend money on social media marketing and Google ads. You know what? And then they blow it in their offices. Exactly. And they blow it in their offices. What's the point of having beautiful funnel and getting all these leads from you know, from in your funnel, but then you have leaks in your funnel, you know, with a with a with a staff member who doesn't do the pre testing properly, who's not trained, he said, when the patient asked, Hey, what's this test about? Like, I don't know, I just gotta do this thing.

Ann Hoscheit: I walked into my trap that you have one of my pet peeves, you walked right into it. Part of our process is every single employee has to complete a speed or subjective dry eye tool. They have to have my Bomi, my Bomi and Glenn imaging. They have to have a full ocular surface disease workup and then they are treated. Do you know how many of us have paid employees that are untreated or undertreated for ocular surface disease? Totally. 100%.

Bob Miglani: You're right.

Ann Hoscheit: And so if we identify and treat those, yes, we have created ambassadors. That's right. They now can communicate more clearly because they have firsthand experience. And in the classic shoemakers, children have no shoes. Why would I treat your dry eye and not take care of my staff? That's right. So that to me is a formal exercise that anybody with new technology or new service line needs to do. If you're bringing aesthetics in, you get samples for everybody. You get everybody involved in the training. You get your staff using the skincare because if Joe patient walks up to the front desk or Joanne patient walks up, they're gonna probably ask the front desk, the checkout staff questions that they wouldn't dream of asking the doctor.

Bob Miglani: Right.

Ann Hoscheit: It's really important that everybody is on board.

Bob Miglani: Yeah. In fact, you know, as the patient is walking out from the comprehensive exam and the doctor has just prescribed an IPL for dry eyes, for example, patients are often reluctant and they look for like the inside information, right. They go down the hallway and they ask, you know, they ask Jane, you know, Jane, what is this thing? Is it good? Now Jane's response is going to either convert them or not. You know, and if Jane doesn't know what to say, she's like, oh, yeah, you know, some people get it, you know, do get it. You know, I know it's expensive. Oh, you know, it's like what? They're not going to get it.

Ann Hoscheit: What if Jane says, oh, it made three treatments made all the difference in my dry eye or I brought my mom in and it's really helped her. Yes. Those stories go a lot further. And, you know, I learned this when we were starting to promote digital or computer glasses in the office. The rep challenged me, and so what I did is we provided a frame to every employee. I did a computer-based refraction for all my employees. The rep provided the lenses. We provided the frame. Everybody got a pair of task-specific glasses for work.

Bob Miglani: Amazing.

Ann Hoscheit: I would say 90% of the employees wore those every day. So when you went up to Debbie at the front desk and said, Dr. Hoscheit, I just prescribed computer glasses. What do you think? Oh, I would never come to work without mine.

Bob Miglani: Exactly. Simple thing like that. I did a call the other day and I asked, you know, the staff was like two doctors and six staff. and with one of our HOOT members, and I said, who has dry eyes? Sort of it, you know, they raise their hand. I said, who has it? You know, one person raised their hand. I said, how do you know? She goes, oh, symptoms. I'm like, what does it feel like? I said, what have you done about it? She goes, nothing. I said, where can I find a clinic that actually does dry eyes? You've got a doctor right there. She's not going to charge you. Get your, have you done it? You know, my biography says no. What are you doing? It's right there. And this is where I think it's so important to focus the marketing efforts today. We have buried treasure. And let's go back to our audiences. You've got buried treasure in all of your offices. It's the EHR has all the list of patients that you have a certain disease. You've got staff. If you can focus on optimizing the process, the standard of care, the protocols, the way you interact with them, there's treasure there. And it's really about putting that hat on and getting advisors like Ann here to help you actually do that.

Ann Hoscheit: Well, if you look at a statistic, like a patient with ocular surface disease, will doctor have three to four times before getting their ocular surface disease addressed. So if you have, you know, two to four or more years of patients, I consider four years or less active patients. And you can send a digital marketing campaign to the patients who have dry eye, blepharitis, whatever diagnosis codes, you've got something new to offer them. you, you, you've got patient retention. They're likely to call without a lot of other extra effort. That's right. And you're making people happy. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? Making their lives better.

Bob Miglani: That's right. We had a, we launched a new campaign and who'd automated campaign called saw you a while ago campaign. And what that does is basically he takes your list of, let's say, you know, 500 people. So I had to knock to do this. She, she called, she, she gave us some feedback on it recently. She was thrilled about it. And basically, you take your list of, let's say she took a list of 500 names from last year who had dry eyes, who diagnosed with dry eyes. She downloaded on a CSV file, she uploaded into Hoot, and she basically activated a campaign called Saw You A While Ago. And what basically says is, hey, I saw you a while ago. We talked about dry eye disease. I'm going to share a video with you about what it is. And then a second video about, you know, what are the potential problems if you continue without treatment, and then some treatment options, right, if you want. And so guess what? She had of all those people, she said to me, she said, I had so many people call. It wasn't like, you know, a hundred people, you know, it was like 500 names. I mean, basically what happens is there's certain number half are going to do nothing. You know, the other, you know, 20, 30% are going to opt out or delete or whatever. But then you're left with a good, strong 20%, the 80-20 principle. We had this flood of patients come in who we hadn't seen, and they said, thank you for sending me that. I had this, I was feeling this way, and I didn't realize I should be calling you. And then it came in and then she had all these signups for the IPL. So she was thrilled and it was just, it just, people are suffering through these problems. Unless you reach out to them, engage them with some value, not spamming them with marketing promotion, quote unquote, but really educating them, patient education, then you're going to lose that opportunity. And all it took was just, you know, looking at that buried treasure and digging it up again.

Ann Hoscheit: you hit on another statistic kind of that patients will have been to their doctor five or more times. And what have those experiences consisted of? Most of the time, the doctor reaches in a drawer or up in a cabinet, grabs the artificial tear du jour, hands it to the patient. There's no followup, no formal diagnosis, no education. So that patient is out there in the world thinking that's all that there is. So when you send a modern technology message like you do, wow. If I go in, I'm not just going to get an artificial tear.

Bob Miglani: They can do something for me. That's right. That's right. Or prescribed exercises. You know, doctor says, hey, I'm going to send you a video on blinking gastritis. Check it out. It's really important. Like what? OK, wow. It's incredible. So let's let's wrap up. Let's talk about this. Give one piece of advice as we close up here. It's been terrific with you learning so much from you. I'm so respectful of your time. You know, very, very thank you for that. So tell me one piece of advice you have for doctors today who are looking to upgrade their marketing. What would you say to them? and advise them and saying, you know, this one thing, you know, I really think you do this now. What is that one thing?

Ann Hoscheit: Well, I appreciate the question and of course, the opportunity to be here today. If I had to narrow it down to one thing, I would say planning, go back to the old, you know, failing to plan is planning to fail. Yes. And that without creating a plan, and a strategy and executing that cadence, you are doomed to failure. So if I had to leave with one thing, which is really hard for me to do, I would say make a plan, work the plan.

Bob Miglani: I love it. I love it. And in fact, I want doctors today to call Dr. Ann Hoscheit to help them develop that plan. I really do. I don't want to pitch and promote you, but I should, because you provide tremendous value and I respect what you do. And so it's Eye Bridge Consulting. Is that what the website, where can people reach you?

Ann Hoscheit: eyebridgeconsulting.com. And that's just the easiest, quickest way to find me. And the other thing is you mentioned fun earlier. I just got a testimonial from a client and I was so surprised. He talked about how fun it was that he really enjoyed our calls. They uplifted him and he felt kind of nurtured from the owner point of view. He was getting some support that he hadn't had before. So we'd love to help you build your practice, and we'll have fun doing it. How about that?

Bob Miglani: Amazing. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it. For those of you tuned in, this is Bob Miglani. Thank you for tuning in and like and subscribe our Marketing for Doctors podcast. Have a wonderful day. Thank you so much and have a great rest of the day.

Ann Hoscheit: And Bob, thank you for the opportunity and best of luck as you could continue to grow hoot because you're helping us to appreciate it. Thank you.