Okay, so today I want to talk about the magic behind nurturing your established patient base and then more importantly, what it means in terms of marketing. 

This one is for those of you in private practice. Are you constantly trying to hit a specific number for new patients or are you actually nurturing the patients that you already have? Today I want to talk about free marketing. It's this concept that has really stirred a frenzy amongst people, but there is such a thing as free marketing and free might mean something different, but what I really want to focus on.

is the difference between setting aside X number of thousands of dollars per month for marketing and the concept of free marketing where you don't have to throw any additional money necessarily, but something that can generate new patients and make it so much less stressful to grow your practice. So, Many of us are familiar with things like the Google ads, the Facebook ads, um, back in the day putting ourselves in the phone book.

I mean, things like that were always a given and it doesn't mean that they're not necessary. I'm not sitting here telling you that things like SEO and, uh, advertisements don't matter anymore. They do. But some practices I have seen are kind of putting all of their eggs into that basket 

and to be honest, we should be diversifying our portfolio. So if you've listened to me talk before about this, you know that I think it's really important to diversify your portfolio when it comes to marketing and trying to grow your practice in the same way that you would your financial portfolio. So that could mean a certain percentage does involve the Google ads, Facebook ads, what have you.

I believe that should be a small percentage. We're talking like 10 to 20%. Um, but what else can we be doing to help generate those new patients? Every practice is going to be a little bit different here, but I primarily focus on the nurturing of my established patient base and what that means down the road.

For example, we tend to really dive into our new patient experience. We want to make sure that when we provide someone with not only great results, but also a great experience in our practice, we know that they're naturally going to just start referring to us, uh, which is really valuable. Their friends and family are going to start coming.

We're going to be able to make sure that they know exactly where to send people when people need somebody in your specialty, but also if they end up not having to come in for a while, you know, that they're always going to come back to you. I once heard from a colleague of mine that once you've been in practice over 10 years, you honestly should have a, Natural reactivation process where every week you're seeing 10 to 15 new patients that are quote unquote reactivations You've seen them before maybe they came in one week for a respiratory illness Well, let's say they're totally perfectly healthy for three to four years But then they have another bout of something, you know that they're going to choose your practice time and time again Same thing happens in the world of med spas in the world of musculoskeletal health, whether you're a PT Cairo family practice You Are they going to keep booking , their annual physicals with you?

Let's hope so, but it comes down to the experience that you give them in that moment. Nowadays in the world of social media, it is so easy to bounce around practices and just pick whoever is closest to you or whoever has the best online scheduler. I mean, those things matter, but if you create an experience, people will drive to you.

They will pay to see you. They will do whatever they can to get the best care possible. So those things really do matter.  So what I want to encourage you is if you are already doing the right things in the world of traditional marketing, let's talk about how to make valuable connections with our patients.

It doesn't matter if someone's been seeing you five years or five months or five days, how are you building a relationship with them in the moment? When they come in, is the first sentence out of your mouth, how's your low back pain doing?  I hope not. And sadly, it sounds kind of funny, but I know that this is happening in a lot of spaces.

When you walk into that room. Are you asking them how their day is? Are you remembering something from their previous visit? Like their recent trip to Florida? Hey Mary, how was that trip last week? Little things like that, and just taking a couple seconds to do so, really go a long way. And to be honest, I have found that healthcare providers do care about this stuff.

They just forget, because we're on such a time crunch when we're working with patients, how valuable this stuff is.  I don't think it's that none of us care or that we're malicious in any way, I think that the current change in times with insurance companies and reimbursement and time codes and having to see more patients per day, I think it has Let us to forget about the little things and how the little things really do go a long way So I challenge you look at your average visit time how much of that time could be set aside for patient nurturing?

for me, you know the majority of my Regular follow up appointments are usually between 15 to 20 minutes long. So very comparable to like a primary care case And what I like to do is kind of split it into thirds. The first third is checking in with them both personally and related to their health condition.

Second third is usually treatment focused or kind of game plan focused. And then that latter third is checking in about what they can do at home, patient empowerment, what their homework is. I tend to use that phrase a lot. And then talking about next steps, any referrals, next visits, kind of the futuristic game plan.

So I like to really divide my patient visits into thirds that way. I do the same thing for a new patient visit, which is normally between 45 and 60 minutes. So I challenge you, take a step back, look at your visit types and how you can differentiate them a bit and break them up to make sure you're hitting everything you need to hit.

The next thing I want to talk about is  There, there sometimes is a bad rap when it comes to community events or marketing events. But what I've found is we need to choose the right ones. For example, there's a humongous, uh, event here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I practice called the Home and Garden Show.

It's an awesome event. It's super fun. There are vendors there, but to be honest, I feel like sometimes some of the vendors Don't make sense in that space. Uh, and what I'm noticing is people put all of that money involved into some of these events, and then they wonder why they're not generating the numbers of new patients that they want from them.

And it's because we're picking things that are just big and fancy and flashy. And we're forgetting that we need to immerse ourselves And basically immerse ourselves into the community in places that matter. Are you getting involved with local gyms? Are you talking with other healthcare providers in your area?

Are you working together with some of these other providers? Are you going to events that actually matter in the space of health? A lot of us aren't. Uh, so I really think it's important not only to increase your visibility as a provider in your community, but make sure you're picking the areas that make sense.

Because patients can see that. You know, if they're going to an event that focuses on interior design and home and garden stuff, why are healthcare providers there? Whereas, are you going to an actual health market where patients There is a neurologist booth. There is a primary care setup. There are multiple hospitals representing their, um, physical therapists, chiropractors.

It has to kind of make sense at the end of the day. So I challenge you to think about the annual events that your practice is doing and just take a step back.

Decide if it makes sense and then decide if you're going to put all of that money in that basket. I literally know offices that are spending thousands and thousands of dollars for these events and the return is just not there.  Next up is social media. This is a dreaded topic, but technically the social media game is free, for the most part.

Um, it's, it's harder for certain demographics of providers, I think, but figure out how it's going to work for you. Do you have the time to do it? Does one of your employees maybe? Do you need to hire this position? Is it valuable at all where you live? Is it something that you should be doing because it generates amazing attention in your neighborhood or in your community?

Every location is going to be a bit different here. If your demographic is mostly geriatric patients, Instagram is probably not the move. If you're in a town with a lot of college kids, you should probably be on Instagram and Twitter. Different things like that are really important to consider. I love when I have a really good week of making posts and stories, I will typically see in the following 10 days, at least 3 to 4 new patients will put on their paperwork that they found us on Instagram, which is really cool.

It's a great return for something that didn't cost me anything, but a couple minutes of my time. I will say though, as a millennial, Uh, and Gen X technically, but as a millennial, I definitely struggle with the reminder of the importance of social media, because to me, it's just not there personally, but when it comes to business, we unfortunately live in a day and age where if you're going to have a private practice or a small business, you already know the importance of this, but I encourage you to look at it as free marketing.

I think for me, it took me a long time to realize that the reason why we should be making these posts is to engage with our already established patient base, Let them know we're here sending gentle reminders,  even creating just some of that relationship and that trust focus. You know, I have people on my social media account for my practice that I haven't personally seen as a patient in five plus years, but they like all my posts.

They're very active and engaged. So it's just a way to create a relationship that otherwise wouldn't be there.  Another huge part of my quote unquote free marketing with my practice that we do is working together with other healthcare professionals. So in my original business plan I set a pretty big goal to be honest that I want 40 percent of my new patients to come from medical referrals.

Um, this could be a physical therapist sending me somebody that's plateauing with care. It could be a primary care provider who constantly sees nonspecific low back pain who could really benefit from a chiropractic approach. Um, it could be a specialist referral. So there's a lot of avenues and ways to do this.

What we personally do, and I'm going to make a separate episode on this with even more details. But basically what we do is every single new patient that comes through our doors is going to get a PCP letter sent out to them.  Hey, Dr. Stacey, Matt came in with low back pain without radiation. Here is where his pain levels were.

Here were his outcome assessment scores. The game plan is to treat him for six to eight visits. We will reassess and let you know how he does, uh, and go from there. And we just share a couple pertinent findings on the exam. It usually is about, I don't know, a paragraph in length. Nothing crazy. bolded. We fax that out.

It's a very simple admin task. We track everything in monday. com, which as you know, from our last episode, it is a huge platform I recommend for private practice management. Um, and we get that sent out, take care of the patient at the end of their care. We sent out a post visit summary, just saying, Hey, Matt's doing great.

His low back pain is now a zero to one out of 10. He no longer has any functional deficit, no problem doing his activities of daily living. So we're discharging him and leave it at that. I've been doing this now for. Um,  I mean, a good five to seven years, and now it's really helped me establish a reputation in the community where these providers know that they can send me these patients, which is really awesome.

They know exactly how I operate. They know what we do in the beginning, middle, and end of someone's care, and they know that I'm a provider that they can trust, uh, which is ultimately the most important thing. Um, which is ultimately the most important thing. So this for me, yes, it takes a little bit of extra time for my admin, but barely.

We make sure to focus on training and creating a system to how this can be sent out relatively quickly. On the patient's intake form, they put primary care information, so it's pretty easy to look up how to get that fax number or send them the letters. To me, the tiny couple minutes it takes per patient is worth it because now, it's not the medical referrals are building as a huge, huge percentage of my new patient generators.

So I really recommend this as a quote unquote free marketing tool because it doesn't cost me a dollar, uh, literally. So I really recommend this if you're not doing it, and this can go for any kind of specialty. If you are a pediatrician, for example, that works with a lot of cases and you see a ton of things like tongue ties and lip ties and dental issues, why not foster some relationships with some private practice dentists, orthodontists?

That right there can generate like a four way providal referral system that benefits all parties. And these are some of the things I think we just don't think about because we're so focused on our day to day. We're so focused on social media and the Google ads and all this stuff, but this is really low hanging fruit. 

And my favorite part about it is it allows us to give better patient care. So again, the whole point of all of this is to be a value based care provider, and this is a great way to do that, and that's how my practice gets it done. If you have any further questions on that, you're welcome to contact me, um, but again, we will be diving into that in another episode just to kind of go over step by step how to create that letter if this is something that's kind of brand new for you. 

The next thing I want to talk about is going to be reactivation campaigns. So if you've been in practice even just a couple years, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of patients in your database. And of course there's a certain percentage that will be more active, a certain percentage that will be more inactive.

But what can we do with those inactives? It's really simple every couple months or even every month to set up a reactivation campaign where someone who hasn't been in and let's say six to twelve months can get a letter just  maybe with a practice update or maybe with um, a referral code or a discount code if you're selling anything, if you're that kind of private practice that sells products, it's just a great way to kind of check in, let them know that you're still around and it might encourage them if they need anything to book that appointment.

Have In our office, we use something called Trust Driven Care, which is a patient CRM. Highly highly recommend. It just makes it super easy. Ours syncs up with our EMR system, so it's pretty seamless, uh, and I do recommend this just because it, again, it keeps you engaged in your community, especially your established patient base. the Thing with free marketing is once you set it up, it kind of works for you. So if you're not already doing some of these things, I really encourage you, especially if you're a newer private practice, I don't want you to feel bogged down and think that you have to spend five grand a month on marketing your new practice.

Double down, focus on the quality care that you are already providing your patients and let that do the work for you.  I've had patients I haven't seen in seven or eight years and they will send me new patients and that patient will walk through my doors and say, Hey, Matt referred me from your practice seven years ago and I haven't seen that patient in ages, but they're still recommending me as a provider to friends and family.

So I hope that encourages you to kind of dive into your systems a little bit and remember some of the quote unquote free things that you can do to boost your practice today. Timing is perfect. This episode is coming out in the middle of November. We have the holidays coming up. Obviously, it's a busy time for healthcare, but then we tend to have that, you know, that unique lull between January and February.

Why not implement some of these systems and practices throughout the holidays so that you're ready to start quarter one off fresh? I hope this helps. .  As always, let me know if you have any questions down the road. Thanks.