Make More Money By Doing Less Marketing

Make more money by doing less marketing

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: Hello everybody. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Treat Your Business podcast. My name is Katie Bell and I am going to be your host for today. Thank you for tuning in. Now I know loads of you listen to this podcast on a Wednesday morning when you’re driving to your clinic. So if you’re in the car listening to me, Hello, good morning, and I hope you enjoy this episode.

[00:00:23] Katie Bell: Now, last month, if you are tuning in for the first time, I really encourage you to go back a few episodes and listen to, I don’t know when you’re going to be listening to this, but we recorded these in January, and we were talking all about setting our intentions for the year, setting our goals, and really getting to know why so many clinic owners, so many business owners, Not just in our industry, but in many industries, don’t see their goals through.

[00:00:51] Katie Bell: Why we see such a drop off. And we were talking a lot about how to change your energy around your goals. So that you don’t just start something in [00:01:00] January and by February is then just gone. under the carpet, you’ve got back on the hamster wheel, and we’re back chasing either the money, or we’re unfocused, we’re distracted, we’re doing the kind of spinning lots of plates, trying to just please everybody, and we’ve forgotten the real why and the real strategy behind our year ahead.

[00:01:19] Katie Bell: So if you haven’t listened to those episodes, go and listen to those first. But this month, It’s all about sharing the love and in my clinic, this is a whole campaign that we have got going on. Now, I’m recording this in February, so it is the month of love in terms of it’s Valentine’s Day. It’s also my wedding anniversary on the 15th.

[00:01:42] Katie Bell: So that was very clever because my husband doesn’t really have to remember Valentine’s Day because our anniversary is the day after. In my clinic, we are thinking about how we can share the love, how we can Do less marketing as in external marketing and [00:02:00] driving more people in through the top of the funnel, but create more revenue.

[00:02:04] Katie Bell: Wouldn’t that be nice that we could do less marketing, but make more money this month. I am going to teach you how you can do that. And I’m going to teach you that in a few different ways. Every week, there is going to be a podcast episode. around how we share the love. And we’re also going to run a masterclass, a free masterclass for you all on the 14th of February at four o’clock.

[00:02:26] Katie Bell: It is going to be on Zoom as normal and I’m going to be teaching you how you can make more revenue this month in your clinic, how you can get more clients. without having to do more and more external marketing. Because let’s face it, it can be a cost. It should always be an investment because you should always see a return for your marketing spend.

[00:02:48] Katie Bell: But I’m going to get you to just shift your attention slightly down that funnel as I look at it and not just focus on the top of the funnel, but let’s really maximize the middle of the funnel [00:03:00] and the bottom of the funnel. Client re engagement is a game changer. But we do not spend enough time and enough energy on it.

[00:03:10] Katie Bell: We are so focused on the top of the funnel, that this for many clinic owners does not become a priority. And I want you in February to make this a priority. Because this is going to allow you to Move. Lots of your people that you, that already like you, know you and trust you. We’re going to bring, I’m going to teach you how to bring that retention point earlier.

[00:03:36] Katie Bell: And if you don’t know what a retention point means, bear with me. I’m going to explain it, but we’re going to talk about Netflix first. I’m going to explain it using Netflix as the example. I’m going to teach you how to bring that retention point sooner. I’m going to teach you how you can take people into what we call lifers rather than quitters.

[00:03:55] Katie Bell: Don’t you’ve got those people that you love to work with, that love what you do, that they buy into your [00:04:00] business and all of your services, and they can be your top spenders your clients that want everything. If you bring in a new service they’re buying it, they’re doing it. You’ve all got clients like that within your business.

[00:04:10] Katie Bell: We want more of those. For me, business needs to be simple. So we don’t need to chase thousands and thousands of people on 30 minute sessions for 50 quid at a time. We want less people, but work with them more. We want to optimize their results. We want to give them better exceptional outcomes.

[00:04:29] Katie Bell: And we can do that by leveraging who already likes us, knows us and trusts us. So it’s a game changer. It can significantly impact the revenue in your business. If you’re listening to this podcast and you need to make more revenue, you need more take home, then you’ve got to stay tuned in for the next few episodes.

[00:04:47] Katie Bell: So why is client engagement, first of all so important? I want you to imagine that you have, you should know this in your business, but let’s assume that you might have forgotten, or you haven’t looked at this [00:05:00] metric, but let’s assume that for every client that comes in through your door, you’ve had to pay an amount of money to get them through the door.

[00:05:07] Katie Bell: Okay, and that is a cost of acquisition. Okay, and when you’re working with any digital marketing company They will be able to tell you your cost of acquisition how much you have spent or they have spent on your behalf to get that client booked in or to at least give you the lead and then it’s your job your client care team’s job to convert them from that lead into that new patient booking So when we spend 20 to bring somebody in through the door, and we only then work with them 1.

[00:05:40] Katie Bell: 6, 1. 7, 2. 2, 2. 5, these are some of the patient follow up rates that I’m hearing in clinics across the whole of the country and Ireland as well. You are going to really struggle to make any margins. If your follow up rate, unless you are [00:06:00] running a really, really streamlined business and you’ve got very low overheads, your follow up rate is gotta be within the fours, the fives, the sixes, to make the profit that you need to be able to A, pay yourself and B, reinvest in your business to impact people at a greater level.

[00:06:19] Katie Bell: When we have clients that we don’t convert from a new patient to an inquiry, a new patient to a follow up, should I say, or when we have clients that we do convert, but we don’t keep for very long, which, I’m just going to put this out there, probably means that you or your team are doing a shit job, because you will struggle to get people better, really better.

[00:06:40] Katie Bell: Giving them exceptional results, getting them back to full function with an average follow up rate of one or two. And if you are saying, listening to this, saying I think you’re wrong, Katie. Actually, this is, this feels a bit salesy and a bit unethical. I always say, if there is a clinical need, it is your duty to tell them.

[00:06:57] Katie Bell: If there is no clinical need, it is also your [00:07:00] duty to tell them that too. We don’t give, we don’t force people into working with us who don’t need to work with us. But if you are running your business because you care about the results that you get for your clients, then it’s your duty to see them until they are back to their full function, until they are achieving their goals that they set out with you at the beginning of the session.

[00:07:21] Katie Bell: So they’ve had their problem solved. So we need to be thinking about the conversion of the new patient into a program of treatment, into a subscription model, into a the next session. Some of you will just still be running pay as you go models in your business and I’m going to encourage you to think about changing that in 2024 for lots of different reasons that we’ll go into later in the month.

[00:07:46] Katie Bell: But we’ve got to focus on that ongoing care, we’ve got to focus on the retention, and we can do that when we offer programs of treatment, when we offer packages, and we’re only offering programs and packages to give our clients [00:08:00] the best possible chance of results. In the same way that when you join a weight loss program, that you can’t just go once, you can’t just Eat special K three times a day, once, and then think that you’re going to lose all the weight.

[00:08:14] Katie Bell: You can’t go to the gym once and think that’s going to work. You can’t come and see a physio once and think that you’re never going to have that rotator cuff issue that you’ve been struggling with for 25 years again. It’s just not going to happen. This is normal. People are bought into, we are problem solving people.

[00:08:30] Katie Bell: We are designed to find solutions. And for most of us, people self elect to get their problem fixed. So why is it we find it so difficult to have those conversations with people about what is right for them?

[00:08:46] Katie Bell: And this comes back down to the values in your business and why you do what you do. And you have to step into being bold and you have to step into really giving the clients that exceptional service. And then we also need to [00:09:00] think about those clients that when they finish their treatment with us we’ve got them back to running that marathon or to they’ve achieved their couch to 5k because they’ve had an Achilles tendinopathy and that stopped them running and they’ve achieved running 5k again in under 30 minutes.

[00:09:16] Katie Bell: Or they’ve been able to pick their kids up off the floor pain free. Or they’ve been able to jump on the trampoline with their children without fear of wetting themselves. I know I’ve got lots of women’s health physios listening to this podcast. Or, they are, think about all the pains and the problems that they come to you with.

[00:09:36] Katie Bell: And they’ve got better. But then what we do is we go, okay, bye, thanks, you know where we are. And then they leave. And they sit, perhaps for some of you, on a database. That you don’t do anything with. Or they just sit in Clinico or in Jane or in your software and we never re engage, we never check back in with them.

[00:09:58] Katie Bell: When clients feel [00:10:00] valued, when clients feel supported, they are more likely to return. They’re more likely to return for additional sessions, different services, and they’re more likely to share their love, to recommend you. And you’ll practice your clinic to friends and family. So the Share the Love campaign in February is about client re engagement, it’s about client conversion, it’s about client retention, and it’s about client referrals.

[00:10:26] Katie Bell: So we’re going to cover all of that. in February together and in the free masterclass. So if you love the sound of the masterclass and if you haven’t been on one before, I’m biased, but they’re amazing. They’re awesome. You get direct one to one coaching with me. And we have a great hour together and we are going to get really clear on your re engagement strategy in your business.

[00:10:49] Katie Bell: Because then when that hole is plugged, when that gap is plugged, you can go wild with your external marketing. Because we know [00:11:00] then that the money that you are going to spend on external marketing to get people in through the door is going to be leveraged and it’s going to be maximized. If you don’t have this in place in your business, you may as well just burn your cash.

[00:11:12] Katie Bell: And nobody that we work with has got cash to just burn. So let’s take this really seriously in February. Let’s really share the love. And I’m going to be asking you lots of different ways to share the love in February. So let’s dive in. We’ve got to maximize the lifetime value of your client. And this value of your client extends far beyond their initial visit.

[00:11:38] Katie Bell: By consistently re engaging with them, with existing clients, we can, and offering ongoing support or. Educational resources or personalized follow ups. You can take these one time clients or clients that have come in and then not scheduled another appointment or come in and maybe you have got them better and you’ve [00:12:00] discharged them but then there’s no other follow up.

[00:12:02] Katie Bell: You can turn these into advocates who continue to seek your service. Most of the time, when people forget to book an appointment, or they cancel and they don’t re book, very often, the reason is their expectations haven’t been met, and that’s our fault, because we haven’t taken the time to check in with what their expectations are of the session today, and we haven’t warmed them up to set their expectations.

[00:12:34] Katie Bell: We’ve just gone, okay, yeah, we’ve got an appointment tomorrow. Yeah, see you there. Come at 12. 30. We need to lay the foundation. So this is something that you can fix straight away. Is what is, we call it a kind of member onboarding sequence, or an on ramp campaign. You could call it whatever you want.

[00:12:54] Katie Bell: But it’s basically when you bring a member, or a client into your [00:13:00]business, whether it’s for physio, whether it’s osteopathy, whether it’s into your Pilates membership, whether it’s into your sports therapy services. You want to treat these people like a member of your business. Because that just makes it feel so much better and they’re more likely to stay longer just because they feel like they’re a part of something.

[00:13:21] Katie Bell: We are socially driven animals and we like to be part of communities. So we start by calling them something different. We bring them in to your membership. Or to, to your program or whatever it is that they’re, that you know can solve their problem.

[00:13:38] Katie Bell: So when we book them in, what is your onboarding sequence? What is your warm up stuff? What is your welcome email saying? How are we laying those expectations out of what they What will happen during the session? How can we reassure them so that they don’t not turn up? This is about warming up the clients before they even arrive through the [00:14:00] door.

[00:14:00] Katie Bell: It’s so impactful when you can do a video. So let me give you an example when we have a we have exclusive Pilates events in our clinic where we bring new members in. And When people book we have a whole sequence of emails and text messages that will kick off on booking. And in that welcome email the congratulations, you’ve booked your exclusive free Pilates class at the event that we are running here is a video from Katie.

[00:14:30] Katie Bell: The first thing that we see is my face, unfortunately, in front of them going Thank you so much for booking into our exclusive Pilates event. I am so excited to welcome you into the KB community. We are on, we are here. Your, the priority is to help you move better, feel better and live better. I’m going to tell you a little bit more about what you can expect during your Pilates taster class and then we can go into it.

[00:14:57] Katie Bell: I will be telling them by the end of the session, this is how [00:15:00] you’re going to feel. I’m laying that kind of groundwork in. I’m reassuring them because you’ve heard me tell you the story before when I went to a puppy training class and I got no pre information about where to park, how to get in, the fact that I need to hand sanitize because it was in pigging COVID times.

[00:15:17] Katie Bell: I needed to stand in a square box. I need to not let my lab out of the box. If anybody else is a Labrador owner, Just feel sorry for me for a second, because you get it. If you’re not a Labrador owner, oh my goodness. They don’t grow up till they’re about five, is what I’m realizing. Toby is now three.

[00:15:37] Katie Bell: He is a joy. But they are very strong willed, and they like to do what they want to do. And when they keep telling me to put him back in the box when he was six months old, and everybody else had a dog the size of a pencil sharpener, and mine was an absolutely ginormous lab that just wanted to pull me around the, around the church hall, she was saying, Katie, can you please get in your COVID box?

[00:15:58] Katie Bell: Katie, please, can you get in your COVID [00:16:00] box? I’m thinking, okay, this whole experience. is a disaster, and I don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to ever come back. Now, a part of that is because I’d have no warm up. If they’d sent me a video to say, here is the entrance, here is where you park, here is how you get in your box and what we expect I would have been way more relaxed about it.

[00:16:23] Katie Bell: Did that make me want to go back? Absolutely not. Would I then want to continue training with them in the future? No, because I had the wrong feeling when I got there. And then that feeling did not change. By the way, it got a whole lot worse when they were trying to make us run through tunnels and Toby, frankly, just wanted to play with all the other dogs.

[00:16:42] Katie Bell: So we were the naughty ones at the back of the class, but I digress. Warming up your clients, ensuring that when they arrive at your clinic, it’s like they almost feel at home. They know where the entrance is, there is no drama about parking, they know what to wear. We [00:17:00] can’t always assume that the people walking through our door are as comfortable getting undressed as we are as physios.

[00:17:07] Katie Bell: I remember my first day as a physio student, it was like, wow, okay, I am stood here in my bra and knickers. This is a bit awkward, but this is just how the next three years is going to go. And then you just become immune to that, don’t we? As clinicians, as therapists, we forget people feel nervous coming to see us.

[00:17:26] Katie Bell: People feel vulnerable coming to see us. People have, their story is that they are Janet with the back problem. Or Sally with the shoulder problem. Or John, who’s always had dicky knees. When they are coming to us, they’re in that moment of this story might not be the story moving forwards. I might And so then they lose that sense of who they really are.

[00:17:54] Katie Bell: Now, this sounds completely weird, but if you’ve not thought about it in that way, you’re not giving your clients a service and [00:18:00] the care that you ought to be. So thinking about right at the beginning, what can you do to warm your clients up, to onboard them in the right way, into your community, into your service.

[00:18:12] Katie Bell: Straight away you’re starting to bring that retention point. Retention point is where people are, they’re so bought into what you do and they’ve got that emotional feeling and they’re in. They don’t want to wait for six weeks and seven weeks to go, Oh yeah, actually, I’m quite enjoying this. I’m feeling the benefit.

[00:18:31] Katie Bell: We need the retention point to be way sooner. Otherwise, this is why you get a big drop off rate. This is why you have a high churn rate. This is why you’re not making the revenue that you need to in your clinic.

[00:18:42] Katie Bell: We’ve talked about the first bit, when they come to see you, and how you can perhaps improve some of the communications that you have with your clients to warm them up before they walk in the door. Some other little tips that I’m going to give you, some things that you [00:19:00]can think about is, could you, when you have your client, when you are developing your programs and your packages, could you implement a strategy?

[00:19:12] Katie Bell: That means as part of what you do, you implement regular health check ins. Is it something that when we have worked with the clients on board, they’ve worked with us for six sessions, eight sessions, they’ve been in our Pilates membership for three or six months, is there something that you can do, automated or a personalized approach that demonstrates your genuine concern for your client’s wellbeing?

[00:19:40] Katie Bell: So it could be a brief survey. It could be a phone call, a courtesy phone call. It could be an email. It could be a WhatsApp, a text message. And these are all aimed at understanding how they’re progressing and if there are any new concerns or new goals that they’ve set for themselves. You all know Nicola.

[00:19:59] Katie Bell: [00:20:00] Nicola is our COO in Thrive and we were chatting the other day about a story. Nicola came up to Sheffield. We spent three days together doing lots and lots of business stuff. It was very exciting. But I noticed I could have halfway through the day, Nicola was like, Oh, I’m going to stand up if that’s okay.

[00:20:14] Katie Bell: Cause my back’s a little bit tight or off. And I was like, yeah, of course. We talked about it obviously, because I’m a problem solver. So instantly I want to solve all of her problems for her. And we were talking. About client retention. We were talking about client engagement. We were talking about the retention point.

[00:20:31] Katie Bell: We were talking about make, how we ensure people become lifers, not just quitters. And Nicola was regaining a story about she’d been to have some treatment on her back and it got a little bit better and She had left, she hadn’t booked another appointment because she was a little bit unclear about whether or not she should, and Nicola’s worked in the health and wellness industry for a long time.

[00:20:55] Katie Bell: Okay, so Nicola probably did know what she thought she [00:21:00] needed, but she needed the reassurance of the physio to say, I need to see you back next week. Or, I want to see you in two weeks, because your load’s better, but let’s just check how it is when I’m not intervening every week for you, or when life gets in the way again.

[00:21:13] Katie Bell: And so weeks have gone by, weeks have gone by, and it’s just got worse and worse. We have just come off the back of the craziest three months in Thrive, ever, and there has not been much room for anything else. Sometimes in your business you’ve just got to grind, and we have been in that stage, November, December, and January.

[00:21:33] Katie Bell: Really fabulous. But really busy. Nicholas said, I’ve just been putting it off. It’s been going, this has been going on for months now. And if the physio clinic rang me To give me a health check in, I would be like, Oh my goodness, thank you so much for calling. I’ve been meaning to ring you. It’s been on my to do list forever.

[00:21:53] Katie Bell: Can you just get me booked in? In fact, can you just book me in weekly for the next six weeks? Because I am too busy to think about it. Now, [00:22:00] at no point did Nicola think that would have been a salesy chat or feel awkward for her to be called by the physio clinic to give her a health check in.

[00:22:09] Katie Bell: So is that something that you could implement in your business? You have all of these people who like you, know you and trust you. Who either have just forgotten, life has got really busy for them, but I can guarantee if you haven’t solved their problem fully, 90 percent of those people that are on schedules who have just not returned, their pain and problem hasn’t gone away.

[00:22:29] Katie Bell: It is probably got worse, but life has got in the way. So if we’re here to offer exceptional services for our clients, part of being exceptional for me is that you go above and beyond and you do things differently. By showing ongoing interest, You’re going to strengthen that client therapist relationship.

[00:22:48] Katie Bell: You’re going to position your practice as a supportive partner in their health journey. They are going to think about you next time something else happens to them. So this is about having a strategic approach. It’s about [00:23:00] thinking of all of the different touch points that you have with your customer.

[00:23:03] Katie Bell: Today we have talked about the warm up. If you want more information on this, guys, you’re going to have to come to my masterclass, by the way. But we’ve talked about the warm up and what you can do differently to warm people up. whilst they’re preparing to come and see you. And then we’ve talked about today, the health check ins.

[00:23:22] Katie Bell: When you have discharged somebody, what are you doing with that person? Are they just never being contacted again? We have a three month re engagement process in our company. So when they have been discharged, we pull a report, we take all the discharged patients from three months ago, and we do a personalized phone call.

[00:23:43] Katie Bell: And I have a member of team doing that. Now we have that infrastructure to be able to provide that level of service. For some of you running smaller businesses or you don’t have that infrastructure, that’s okay. There are other ways around this. You can automate it. You could send an email, but if you don’t [00:24:00] focus on this, again, just keep burning your cash.

[00:24:02] Katie Bell: Just keep burning your cash. This is about optimizing and leveraging what’s already there in your business. and taking it to the next level. It’s a strategic approach. It goes beyond that traditional focus of just, I need to just get more new clients through the door. It prioritizes exceptional service.

[00:24:24] Katie Bell: It prioritizes results. It prioritizes lasting connections. It maximizes your lifetime value of a client. And with a higher lifetime value, you can invest more so you can get more new members, more new clients into your business. Then you get increased marketing spend, which gives you greater reach than your competitors, because now you have more money to be able to go and market at a bigger level.

[00:24:49] Katie Bell: You’re able to grow faster. You’d reach people you’d never reach otherwise, because you’ve now freed up budget to be able to market because you’ve leveraged what was [00:25:00]already there. And plus, your members, your clients, the people, you get more referrals, you get more people sharing the love. The other services that you offer get higher purchases and then you have more opportunity to attract more collaborations, more strategic partnerships, more ways that you can make yourself more and more visible to fuel your business.

[00:25:26] Katie Bell: Are we ready to embark on the share the love journey in February? If you are, then make sure that you book onto our masterclass. I’m going to make sure that the link is below the podcast episode today, and you can go in there and just register, and then it will be on Zoom. I would love you. to be their live because we get the stuff done, we make things happen and you make it a priority.

[00:25:50] Katie Bell: If you’re watching on recording, you’re probably distracted by kids, dogs, various other things, and you’re not really going to make this happen. This is a opportunity, an [00:26:00]opportunity to leverage what is already working in your business and take it to the next level. And then make sure that you join me next week where we are going to be talking about retention rates and conversion rates.

[00:26:14] Katie Bell: And I’m going to teach you. about consultative selling, how you can get you and your team to convert at a higher rate from new patient to follow up and how you can increase your follow up rate. And I’m going to be talking to you about the QBR. If you want to know what the QBR is, make sure you tune in next week.

[00:26:34] Katie Bell: Thank you so much for listening. See you soon.