The Private Practice Success Podcast

33. Inbound VS Outbound Marketing: Achieving the Right Balance

• Gerda Muller • Episode 33

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In this episode of the Private Practice Success Podcast, Gerda unpacks the essential differences between inbound and outbound marketing for allied health private practices. 

More specifically, Gerda explains why mastering both approaches is key to building lasting referral relationships, attracting new clients, and ensuring a steady, predictable flow of enquiries, no matter the season your practice is in.

In this Episode, you will learn (among others):

  • The core differences between inbound and outbound marketing and why both matter for your practice’s sustainability.
  • How to nurture existing relationships with referrers, current clients, and past clients through effective inbound strategies.
  • Practical outbound marketing tactics to reach new audiences and keep your practice visible in the community.
  • Common mistakes practice owners make in both inbound and outbound marketing, and how to avoid them.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Private practice owners wanting to create a more predictable and sustainable flow of client enquiries.
  • Practice owners feeling overwhelmed by marketing or unsure of where to focus their efforts.

Special Bonus:

If you are keen to learn more about Gerda's highly effective client generating marketing strategies, then be sure to check out her in-depth training called "The Fully Booked Practice Diary" which she is making available for FREE to you as a listener of Episode 33. You can get that HERE.

So why not tune in now to discover how balancing inbound and outbound marketing can transform your practice and help you build a business you can’t stop smiling about!

Want Gerda's Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you. 

Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

Well, hello there amazing private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 33. Today I'm going to talk to you about one of my absolute favourite topics, and that is - marketing. I absolutely love doing marketing.

You know why? Because when I market, I get to help more people in better and more effective ways. It is why I do what I do. And I'm pretty sure that if you are the owner of a group private practice, you already know how absolutely vital marketing is for the growth and sustainability of your allied health private practice.  

What we are going to do today is to look at the really important difference between inbound and outbound marketing within your allied health private practice.

Did you know that there is a difference between inbound and outbound marketing? We are going to look at it today, but what we are going to do is look at more than just the difference between the two from a theoretical perspective. Because this is really about understanding how to apply these different types of marketing strategies within your practice so that you can build longstanding relationships, attract new clients, and most importantly – this is the only way to keep the doors open - create a steady and predictable flow of enquiries, so that you can have more clients within your practice diary. 

Now, whether you're feeling overwhelmed with too many clients already, or maybe you're struggling and are finding yourself in a really quiet period - and everything in between - this episode will help you find the right balance in your marketing efforts.  So grab a notebook because we are going to deep dive into the strategies and examples that you can implement right away.  

Let's get started and we're going to start by asking and answering this really important question: 

Why Does This Matter?

This is a question that you should ask about any and all types of business strategies, because unless you know why it matters, you should not be doing it. Okay?  Well, the thing is: marketing is the engine that keeps your practice running. Without marketing, you are going to be left relying on hope.

Hope that the clients will pick up the phone and call you. Hope that they're going to email you and come through the doors eventually. Hope that referrers will remember you. Hope that your practice will stay afloat during quieter times. But hope is not a marketing strategy. I am the first to say I'm a really hopeful, optimistic person, but I'm also a realist and we cannot rely on hope.

What's worse is I see so many practice owners falling into what I call the “911 marketing trap” - that is reactive last-minute efforts that only happen when you're in a crisis. That kind of marketing is stressful, it's unsustainable and ultimately ineffective. 

Instead, what we want is we need you to focus on proactive, consistent, and intentional marketing. That is where inbound and outbound marketing comes in. By understanding and implementing both of these types of marketing - not just one or the other, both - you will be able to:

1.     Build stronger long-term relationships with your referrers and clients. 

2.     Increase your visibility in your community and therefore attract new clients. 

3.     Create a more predictable and sustainable flow of enquiries - wouldn't that be amazing? 

4.     Reduce the stress and uncertainty that comes as a result of inconsistent marketing.

Frustrations This will Solve

Needless to say, having the right balance between inbound and outbound marketing will solve a lot of frustrations that we as practice owners experience. I want to share some of those frustrations with you. I have experienced some of them, and I'm pretty sure you might have experienced some of them as well.

Does this sound familiar:

Have you ever thought to yourself, I don't have time to market my business because I'm too busy seeing clients and I have to prep, I need to write reports, I need to sit physically in a client session. I just don't have the time. 

Or maybe you've thought to yourself, Well, I have a wait list, so I don't really need to do any marketing right now, right? Because then I'll just get more clients on my wait list, and that's stressful. 

Or maybe you've been thinking, I don't know how to find these new clients or referrals. 

Or maybe - and this is probably the worst feeling to have - I feel like I'm doing all of this marketing and nothing is working. I'm putting in all this effort, but I'm not getting the results. 

Getting inbound and outbound marketing balance rights going to help solve all four of those situations. So, by the end of this episode, it is my goal for you to have a clear understanding of how to balance these two approaches and overcome these frustrations once and for all.

Defining Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is all about nurturing the relationships you already have. These could be your referrers. You might have heard me talk about practice angels - those are those very loyal referrers that send you a lot of clients. You also have a lot of loyal clients, past clients potentially.

The goal here is to maintain and strengthen those relationships. How? By providing value and very importantly, staying top of mind. The thing about inbound marketing is this: it is much easier and more cost effective than outbound marketing. What we are doing here is you are maintaining already established, and therefore existing relationships - which is easier to do than creating new ones from scratch.

Your practice angels and your current clients are already invested in you, right? They trust you. They know you. You would've heard the term the know, like, and trust factor. You've already given value to them, and therefore they are more likely to refer other people to you and/or to stay connected. 

So what are some examples then of inbound marketing activities?

Example 1: Referrer Relationships

A lot of us - especially if you've got a psychology private practice like I do - we do a lot of Medicare work. So, in my world, at my practice, GP’s or one of our biggest referral sources. That being said, we've got a child adolescent in the business, so we also have paediatricians that refer to us.

You might have other allied health professionals that refer to you - any type of referrer relationship. So you need to have specific tactics that you're going to employ to keep in touch with them, to stay top of mind, to keep on giving value. 

Ask yourself: do you have a plan for doing that? Do you know what your practice does to maintain referral relationships? Do you go back to existing referrers and do hellos with them? It's not a meet and greet because you're not meeting them for the first time, but it's a catch up with your current referrals already.

Do you send out personalised thank you cards to your referrers? Maybe you could host an appreciation event, such as a morning tea or lunch. Do you provide educational resources for them that they can help to better understand your services so they can better support your mutual clients?

Example 2: Current Clients

Examples of how you could provide ongoing value to current clients - other than, of course, the actual therapeutic work that you do - is you can create a follow-up system to check in with them after their sessions. I work with a number of practice owners and its standard practice for their clinicians to send a very short report to the parents of kids that they have seen after each session.

It could be a simple email asking how you're doing or sharing additional resources. With current clients it's also really important to continue educating them about your service. For example, do you offer group therapy in addition to one-on-one? Are there any groups coming up? What's the benefit of that?

Do you have a way of doing that with your current clients? Do you share value driven content with them, such as blog posts or videos? I think it's really important to, yes, provide optimal service within sessions, but then clients leave and then they are on their own. And yes, it's their responsibility to implement their learnings, but if you can support them in another way, shape, or form, wouldn't that be amazing?

Example 3: Past Clients

Do you actually reach out to past clients with updates about your practice? 

Do you check in with them and say, Hey, it's been six months since you've concluded sessions here at the practice, and we just wanted to make sure that everything is going smoothly. I wanted to remind you that we are here if you need any help and support. We've also attached this really great article that we think you might find of help. Do you do that?

The moral of the story is that you need to have a plan for doing inbound marketing to your referrers, your current clients, and your past clients.

Defining Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is focused on reaching new audiences. This is people who don't yet know about your practice, but could benefit from your services. This type of marketing is proactive, and it often requires stepping outside of your comfort zone, alright. 

So why is it important?

Because even if you have a wait list today, there's no guarantee that your current flow of clients will continue. Unfortunately, I've heard way too many stories of people who have rested on their laurels because they've always had a wait list - and now it no longer exists. 

You need to remember your referrers - they retire, they move to different roles and different jobs. Clients move away. People's circumstances change. Referral organisations are even going out of business right now. You need to be aware of these things. 

Outbound marketing, in essence, will ensure that your practice remains visible and continues to grow. Hence needing that balance between inbound and outbound marketing.

What are some examples of outbound marketing then?

Example 1: Community Outreach

Are you actually partnering with local organisations such as schools, daycare centres, pet cremation services to offer informational sessions or workshops, or fulfill any need that they might have? Those are great opportunities to reach more people.

Do you actually attend community events to promote your services and connect with potential clients? I will never forget when I started my second group private practice - this was back in 2011 - I spent one whole day just driving through the neighbourhood because I already knew where the location was, and I was driving through seeing what NGOs were there. What does this NGO do? What gap might they have in their service provision that my practice could fulfill?

It was one of the best things that I could have done because when we opened the doors, we already had clients booked in. We opened in September, 2011, and I had a baby in March, 2011. It was a hectic time. I didn't have a lot of time because I had a newborn baby for six months leading up to the opening of my second group private practice. 

This really helped so much, because in that situation where we were starting a new practice in a new physical location, outbound marketing was extremely important, and  had to do way more of that in that initial period. Once those referrals and clients came through, then I could start to introduce the inbound marketing. 

Not only could I - I had to - because you need to have that balance. Very importantly, at various stages of your business, you'll need the one more than the other, but you do need to do both. There has to be a balance.

 Example 2: Targeted Advertising

This is the stuff that's going to cost you more money rather than time and energy.

For example, running Facebook ads, running Google ads - where you then target specific demographics such as parents for example, targeting couples for example, if you do couples counselling, or targeting people in a specific location as well. 

I will preface this with saying that running Facebook and Google Ads, I only encourage doing that when you have a larger practice because you will need, especially when it comes to Google ads, a significant budget behind it in order for you to get the return on investment that you would want.

Example 3: Cold Outreach

This is the icky part that most of us don't like to do. 

This is where you send introductory emails or letters to potential referrers, you maybe pop into the new surgery that's opened around the corner, introduce yourself to the reception, and you leave some marketing materials.

This is the stuff where you need to step out of your comfort zone, but it actually feels good to do it. You are going to be so proud of yourself once you've actually done it, and you're going to realise that it's actually not as bad as I thought. They were actually so lovely and they were actually so grateful to hear that there's another service provider to support their patients.

Those are the three examples of outbound marketing. Outbound is all about extending your reach and letting people know that your practice exists. It's your way of saying, “We are here and we can help.” 

Now let's have a look at where practice owners typically go wrong when they doing this Inbound and outbound marketing.

Inbound Marketing Mistake 1: Neglecting Existing Relationships:

Many practice owners assume that once referrer or client is on board, the relationship will sustain itself. But relationships require ongoing effort and communication. 

We know this in our personal and most of our professional relationships, but we don't often apply it when it comes to referrer relationships and actual clinical clients. I have been known to say, and I'll say it today for you, because I think it's important for us to hear this more than once:

One of the biggest mistakes practice owners make is loving and then leaving their referrers. 

They have that initial meet and greet, give them all these documents, nice flyers and stuff - never to be heard of again. That is a common inbound marketing mistake.

Inbound Marketing Mistake 2: Over-relying on Current Clients

If your inbound marketing is solely focused on current clients, you risk ignoring other people that also need your help and therefore bringing in new enquiries, but you'll also be ignoring your referrers. And guess what? Next week there's somebody else doing a meet and greet and maybe they are not going to love and leave that referral relationship.

Maybe they are going to give them ongoing attention, and then they're going to become the preferred provider of the servers. And then you are going to sit and go, “Oh, what's going on? I did it. I went out, I did this meet and greet. This stuff doesn't work.” No, it doesn't work because you didn't do it right.

Inbound Marketing Mistake 3: Inconsistent Communication

If you do this just once or twice, it's not going to work. 

You can't only reach out to people when you are in trouble or when you need something; that also doesn't feel good, right? It doesn't feel good to flood your referrers with marketing because all of a sudden, the diary's empty. It's like, “Oh, okay, so now you need something from me. Now you're communicating with me?” No, you want to be consistent.

Let's look at three of the most common mistakes in outbound marketing,

Outbound Marketing Mistake 1: Targeting Too Broadly

When you are trying to market to everyone, it dilutes your message. 

You have to go; Who am I going to target? What niches am I going to focus on? And then make sure that all of that aligns with the services that you provide.

Outbound Marketing Mistake 2: Lack of Follow-Up

Where you send out an email or you make a connection, and then - nothing. 

Outbound marketing is going to require multiple touch points before it leads to results. You have to be consistent, because guess what? This is you building trust. You need to do that, and that takes time. 

Yes, you might be an amazing person, amazing clinician, and you've got great intentions, but a lot of people out there have been burned, have sent referrals, or have seen helping professionals and didn't have a good experience. 

We need to show that we can be trusted, so you need to take your time. But this also means that we need to be consistent, because the fastest way to break trust is to be inconsistent. Sit with that for a second. 

The fastest way to break trust is inconsistency. Because consistency is certainty, and that leads to trust.

Outbound Marketing Mistake 3: Avoiding the Hard Conversations  

Some practice owners avoid outbound marketing because it feels uncomfortable or salesy like, What I'm going to say at the GP meet and greet? 

Remember, this is not about selling. 

This is about telling people how you can help people that need your services. I don't know who came up with this line, but I've heard it quite a number of times now over the years. It goes something like - replace nervous with service. 

If you feel nervous about going out and talking to and meeting new potential referrers to your practice, remind yourself, and then replace nervous with service. You are there in service to this person and the people they will send to you.

Oh my goodness, this just made me remember the time in my business where I would attend the Primary Healthcare Network religiously. This was after I opened my second location, which back then in 2011 was in the suburb of Capalaba in Brisbane.

I started to attend the monthly GP dinners that were held by the Primary Healthcare Network. Back then they were called something different - can’t even remember now what it was called; these days it's called the Primary Healthcare Network. Back in those days, I think it was the last Thursday of the month, they would have a dinner event.  Primary Healthcare Networks job is to look after general practitioners.  I just once went and I RSVP'd. It didn't say Allied Health Professionals welcome, but I just RSVP'd and they accepted my RSVP and I went - cool bananas. 

I attended those dinners for at least 12 months straight. It was so interesting - the stuff that I saw there and that I learned there. For example, I would see other allied health professionals also come to the dinners. I obviously wasn’t the only one that cottoned on with these things, but they would come, and we would have these banquet tables and I would basically arrive, go sit in a table and that's where I would stay. 

Because I'm an introvert and I'm not one of those social butterflies that go from table to table - that's not who I am. If it's my own event, I will do that, because that's my role. But when I'm attending somebody else's event, I will sit at the table, and then whomever lands at my table, those are the people that I will talk to and I will connect with and have conversations.

For me it was always about going deeper rather than speaking to a hundred people at an event, not that there were that many - there were probably like 50 people at these dinners. But then I would see other psychologists that I remember - they would go from table to table standing up. They wouldn’t sit down. 

I remember this one guy - he would hand out his business cards to everybody at the table. He wouldn't sit; he would like do that in one minute. He would go, “Hey, this is who I am” hand his cards out - because he did it to my table as well. I would see him and my brain was going, Oh, this is so cringe, I could never do that.  I don't know if it worked for him or not, but that's just not my way. That's not who I am. For me, my approach was: I'm going to be consistent. I'm going to keep showing up.  

I will never forget this one dinner where I sat next to this GP - I'm closing my eyes and I can see his face - he was a longstanding GP, and we were talking and everything. At the end of this one dinner, (by then have had the opportunity to talk to him a number of times), and I never said, Can you refer to me? I just talked about my practice, answered the questions they would ask me about my practice, and I would always show interest more in what they were doing.

At the end of that one night, he said, “Well, Gerda, I guess I'm going to have to start sending you some patients.” And I said, “I would be really happy about that Dr. So-and-so. That would be a real privilege for me to work with you and your patients.”

And it's like - ahh. I was consistent. I went every month. I didn't take it for granted. It wasn't a… you know, on the internet it's called a “dump and run,” where people just dump their business details in a Facebook group and off they go. No, that's not what we do. That is just going through the motions. That is just doing quantity over equality. That is being very self-centred. That's not how we build relationships. 

We build relationships by being consistent, by being interested in other people. And if you are in the business of building a long-term sustainable business - if you want to sell one day as a sellable asset - then that's what you need to do.

And it's going to be fun. It might be uncomfortable, it might be nerve wracking at times. But you know - with those dinners - I love eating, and there was always a two-course dinner. It was the highlight of my freaking month. 

So I went.

And it paid off. 

BIG time. 

They actually asked me to talk one year - and I did a presentation at the dinner because they would always have a speaker. And I got the privilege of one year being asked to do the presentation. That gave me even more exposure, and if I wasn't the one that was consistent, they would not have asked me to do that.

Recommendations for Best Practice

So that you can actually balance your inbound and outbound marketing, here's my top recommendations for you:

Step 1: Conduct a Marketing Audit

You want to take stock of all your current marketing efforts.  Are you focusing too much on one type of marketing while neglecting the other? What is your current balance looking like? And then identify the gaps and create a plan to address it.

Step 2: Set Clear Goals

What do you want to achieve with your marketing? Is it to attract more referrals? Is it to fill a specific program? Is it to increase brand awareness? Your goal will guide your chosen strategy? 

Step 3: Start Small 

Start small - but be consistent. You do not need to do everything at once. I know I've given you quite a number of examples in here, and in your mind and brain you might be going, “Oh, I need to do this… I need to do that…“  No. Don't try and do it all. Look at where your gaps are, choose one thing, and do it consistently.

Step 4: Leverage Your Team

If you have a team, you want to involve them in your marketing efforts. Ask yourself: could you assign someone to manage your social media to help you write some blog posts? To organise a community outreach event? Make use of them. I find that a lot of team members love being involved in marketing type activities, because it introduces diversity into their role – so unless you ask, you won't know.

Step 5: Track Your Results

You want to pay attention to what's working and what's not. You want to ask new clients how they heard about your practice, and use that information to refine your strategies.

Step 6: Never Stop Marketing

Remember to never stopped marketing - even if you're fully booked.

Your marketing efforts should continue. Yes, you might lift your foot off the pedal just a little bit, but you most certainly need a baseline level of marketing - both inbound and outbound - running at all times. It's really important because, remember what I said, this is about you building your brand and staying top of mind.

It's also a really important risk management strategy because if something happens that’s beyond your control and, all of a sudden, your biggest referer no longer refers, you will be stuffed. It's your job - your responsibility - as the business owner to have contingencies in place for if, and when, that happens.

If you've been listening to it and you're thinking right now, “Okay, Gerda, you convinced me - I need to do some more marketing,” and that might be inbound marketing or outbound marketing, but you have no clue as to what strategies to use… or maybe you are using strategies, but you're not sure of what other additional strategies could you be implementing, and I'm talking about really specific things to actually do.

What I'm going to do for you is put a link in the show notes for you to an in-depth training that I previously ran called the Fully Booked Practice Diary. I'm going to make this available to you for free as a valued listener of this podcast. All you need to do is go to the show notes, click on the link, and it'll take you to the page. Pop in your details and it'll send you the recorded training. 

That training takes you through the three biggest mistakes practice owners make when marketing their allied health practice. It looks at defining marketing within allied health, and then - this is the part that's going to be of help to you - I talk to you about my top 10 client generating marketing strategies. Those 10 strategies include both inbound and outbound strategies. So go have a listen, select one or two that you want to implement over the next three to six months, and let me know how you go. Because I know these strategies work.

I feel like I actually covered a lot of ground in here. There was a lot of sections in this conversation, but my goal always with these conversations is to get you thinking. To get you reflecting. I truly hope, that, this specific episode has given you some clarity as well as some actionable steps to take your marketing to the next level.

The thing about marketing is that it's not a one-time task - it's an ongoing process. I want to encourage you to fall in love with marketing. Because marketing opens a lot of doors and it allows us to help more people, in better and more effective ways. 

Thank you so very much for tuning in. I truly hope this has been of help. And remember as always, that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about 😊 

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Gerda Muller

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