All Episodes

August 5, 2025 12 mins

When was the last time you calculated what a new patient is truly worth to your practice? In this eye-opening conversation with marketing expert Nick Doyle, author of the bestselling "Outmarket the Competition," we explore a revolutionary approach to marketing that's transforming how businesses think about customer acquisition.

Nick reveals why most marketing strategies fail: they focus exclusively on either brand building or performance metrics, missing the powerful synergy created when both work together. "Brand marketing is trust," Nick explains, drawing parallels to the branded products we instinctively choose every day. Meanwhile, performance marketing helps you "fish where the fish are" by targeting those actively seeking your services. The magic happens when these approaches combine.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Nick introduces his lifetime value framework—a sophisticated yet practical model that uses patient profitability to determine appropriate marketing spend. Rather than arbitrarily setting monthly budgets, Nick advocates calculating what a new patient is actually worth to your practice, then using that figure to inform acquisition costs. While the math might seem daunting at first, the principles can be applied by any practice that understands its basic patient metrics: visit frequency, average cost, and treatment duration.

What makes this approach particularly valuable for chiropractors? As Nick points out, local businesses often have an advantage since they're targeting a defined geographical area rather than competing nationally. The key is overcoming personal bias—designing marketing that resonates with patients rather than what appeals to the practitioner.

Ready to transform your practice marketing? Listen now and discover why Nick's book has become a bestseller across multiple business categories. The concepts may be advanced, but the potential impact on your practice growth is well worth the learning curve.

Support the show

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, I'm Dr Arlen Ford , the chairman and founder of
Activator Methods International.
Welcome to Activate yourPractice podcast.
And today I'm honored to have ayoung author with us that we've
known for a long time.
We knew his dad well throughchiropractic economics and then
he works there also, but hewrote a book called Outmarket
the Competition, and when mywife read it she said we have to

(00:26):
interview him.
That is a book worth reviewing.
So, hi, nick, it's nice to haveyou.
Nick Doyle is our guest today.
Nice to have you here.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thank you, it's wonderful to be here and that's
high praise coming from Judy.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, that's like the good housekeeping stample of
approval.
So tell me, to start with, whydid you write the book?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
I wrote the book because I couldn't find a text
that combined two things that Ithink are pivotal in marketing.
One, the combination of brandand performance marketing.
A lot of groups excel in justbrand marketing.
A lot of groups excel in justperformance marketing, but in
order to truly out-market youneed to combine the two.
And then the second piece isthat a lot of companies just
take a budget-based approach tomarketing.

(01:06):
You know, with X dollars amonth to spend as opposed to a
profitability-based approach,what is the average
profitability of a customer andtherefore how much might you be
able to spend to acquire thenext customer?

Speaker 1 (01:20):
So what's the most common mistake you see companies
make in their marketing?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, it aligns with those two things, to be honest
with you, and that's why I waslooking for a text that had them
.
One is that a lot of groupseither go heavy on the brand
stuff and then they don'tunderstand why it's not working
from a performance standpoint,or they go heavy on the
performance stuff and they don'tunderstand why they're not
building the brand equity intime or over time.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
What's the value of brand marketing?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Brand marketing is trust.
You woke up this morning.
You brushed your teeth withbranded toothpaste.
You put on a branded watch.
You got in a branded car.
You make those decisions basedupon trust.
You know that is going to work.
You're not always in the marketfor those items, Yet when you
go to make a decision, you arefamiliar with those brands

(02:08):
because of that brand-basedmarketing.
And that's the importance ofbranding.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Over time, so Activator would be a brand.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Exactly A very strong one.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
And someone said one time you know you need some
competition because otherwiseyou're going to be like Kleenex.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, I know, you know this lost a lawsuit around
Kleenex and the term Kleenex,which was their brand term.
You're exactly right.
Same thing with Band-Aid, etcetera.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Everything was a Band-Aid, correct?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
And that was their actual Too strong of a brand, if
you will.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
So what's the value of performance marketing?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Performance marketing .
On the other side of the coin,Performance marketing is to
optimize for the inbound inquiry, so those that are in the
market for that product orservice at a specific amount of
time.
To put it bluntly, it's fishingwhere the fish are, and if you
can do both of them together youcan build that trust over time
which builds share of mind.
You know the cognitive ability,the Daniel Kahneman type stuff,

(03:07):
and then you can also optimizefor those who are looking for a
solution right now.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Why is it important for companies to utilize brand
and performance marketing?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Exactly that.
It's the ability to fish wherethe fish are.
It's the ability to optimizefor those who are looking for a
solution right now.
It's also the ability, from abrand perspective, to build the
trust which allows for thoseindividuals to know your brand
and therefore come to you whenthey are looking to make a
decision.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Talk to me about the lifetime value framework.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, this is probably the most complicated
part of the book Heavy mathpiece here but the basic concept
is using the profitability oraverage profitability of a
customer to inform what you canpay to acquire the next customer
.
So, as opposed to taking astatic approach to monthly
marketing budgets or marketingbudgets in general, where you

(03:55):
have X dollars amount to spendin channel and to spend in a
time period, et cetera, you'dactually inform that spend based
upon profitability.
You'd actually inform thatspend based upon profitability.
So you know you can spend Xamount to acquire a customer
based on how that average onaverage, how profitable that
customer is to the business.
You use that as the guardrailfor the spend and you ramp spend
up accordingly.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
What if a company does not have a good analytics
or reporting?
Can it still utilize theframework?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Absolutely, and it's also a good excuse to get that
in place.
If you don't have that type ofreporting or understanding of
your customer base, it'ssomething that you probably
should have, knowing howprofitable you are on a customer
by customer basis.
So it would be a good call toaction in order to get that done
.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
So what do you have to do to?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
do that In order to get that understanding in place.
Yeah, yeah, it starts from thebottom up.
If you think about themarketing funnel and most people
are familiar with the marketingfunnel, which is
impression-based at the top andthen post-conversion at the
bottom Understanding thepost-conversion metrics, what is
the average customer value?
What is the average margin forthat customer and therefore the

(05:07):
average profitability?
You move backwards up thefunnel.
So what does the average ordervalue look like for an
individual customer?
What are our conversion ratesfrom a lead to customer
perspective?
Then what are our conversionrates from an impression to lead
perspective, and then what areour CPMs at the top of the
funnel.
It takes a a lot of work, butit's totally worth it well, let

(05:28):
let me, though.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
I want to make this.
Uh, what, how do you, how doyou get this to the chiropractic
level of a practice?

Speaker 2 (05:34):
I mean, yeah, sure, it's a great example.
So for a chiropractic practice,I would look at what is the
average profitability of apatient.
So once I get a patient in andI either get them on a regular
schedule or I get them on atreatment plan, what does that
profitability look like overtime?
And once you understand theaverage profitability of a
patient, theoretically, basedupon the framework, you should

(05:57):
be able to take that number andgo to market to use it to inform
, capturing new patients.
So let's use like a local-basedapproach and there's lots of
local marketing opportunities.
Of course, doctors ofchiropractic are way more
familiar with this than I am.
You can attend events, you canbecome part of the better
business bureau, you can usepay-per-click, you can use
social media.
All of those cost something.

(06:18):
So once the doctor ofchiropractic understands how
much the average patient isprofiting them, they can base,
base their budgets and channeldecisions on those metrics.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
This seems like it's a little complicated for the
average chiropractor.
Now, in business I would thinkthey would have marketing teams
that would do that kind of thing.
So can we do that as an averagepractitioner though?

Speaker 2 (06:43):
You should be able to .
I mean, I would think that ifyou were to sit across the table
from a doctor of chiropracticsuch as yourself, you could tell
me how often does the averagepatient come to you?
Eight times, 10 times.
What is the average visit cost?
$100, $200.
What is the time period overwhich that occurs?

(07:04):
One year, two years orsomething like that?
That's going to give you theaverage revenue per customer.
What do you make on thatpatient?

Speaker 1 (07:10):
In other words, what's a new patient worth
Correct?
That's exactly it.
Yes, we all think we know ourcustomers.
What do companies get wrong inthis respect?

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah.
So this is another DanielKahneman reference personal bias
.
People do not make rationaldecisions as much as we think we
would.
So we're here in Vegas.
I can give you an example.
You go down to play roulette.
They have all the numbers up onthe roulette wheel that have
shown for the last 10 tries, orwhatever it happens to be.
That's a cognitive biasexercise.
The odds of the wheel do notchange, but if you look at that

(07:43):
readout and you see 10 blacks,you're absolutely positive it's
going to be a red next time,even though the odds are exactly
the same.
So what people don't understandor don't take into account most
of the time is their ownpersonal bias.
When they're designing the ads,when they're using the channels
, they think about how theydigest media, what images
resonate with them, whatmessages they would act on, as

(08:04):
opposed to what their customerwill be acting on would act on,
as opposed to what theircustomer will be acting on.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
There's a lot of quotes in the book.
Obviously you felt these wereimportant.
Can you shed a little light onwhy you included these?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm a big proponent of theconcept that we stand on the
shoulders of giants.
These are not theories, theseare proven practices.
This is what Procter and Gambleuses.
This is what Nike uses.
These are what these bigCapital One uses, these big
proven brands are using.
The quotes are there to showthat this has been refined over

(08:36):
time and that it does work.
If you have the discipline andyou will execute.
The key word is discipline,discipline.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
So how has the book been received?

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Honestly, it's gone fantastic.
What beyond my wildest dreams?
Bestseller in multiplecategories on Amazon, which is
very cool, including smallbusiness, research, advertising,
small business in general.
It's awesome that it's addingvalue.
That was the whole intent.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Well, I I'm still coming as an average
practitioner out there that'swanting to build a practice.
Is there an easy, simple wayfor them to start this process?

Speaker 2 (09:14):
There is.
I think it would be twofold.
One, if you have an establishedpractice, understanding what
that average profitability lookslike from a customer standpoint
and therefore understandingwhat a new patient is worth to
you from a customer standpointand therefore understanding what
a new patient is worth to you,and if a new patient is worth
$1,000 to you and you knowyou're going to make a net

(09:34):
perspective $500, I'm usinground numbers here you should be
able to spend $500 to breakeven on acquiring that new
patient.
So, with that in mind, wherecan you go and deploy that
capital in the most effectivemanner?
Is it social media marketing?
Is it local events, you know?

(09:55):
Is it pay-per-click marketing,et cetera.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Do you have some successful practices that you're
advising today that use certainsorts of media that really have
been successful?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
It's a great question we don't work with on the
individual practice level.
You know we have worked withbusinesses that obviously are
working with the chiropracticprofession in general, but we
have seen this be successful onthe local level.
In fact, it's easier to executeon the local level, and the
reason being is you have afinite pond.

(10:27):
You know, if you're attemptingto advertise to the entire
United States, that's 360million people.
If you're attempting to onlyadvertise to the Dallas-Fort
Worth area, that's a lot easierof a task.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
I like the concept.
I just want to kind of break itdown, you know.
So I'm a practitioner sittingout there and I want to do this,
and I've had many practicemanagement people that were
friends.
Now, some of them and this isvery interesting they would only
take certain people becausethey said only 20% of the people

(11:04):
are going to be successfulanyway, and so they quickly
jettisoned the 80%.
I don't know if you found thatto be true.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Two comments on that.
One is a little bit of context.
The book starts with a, with aintroduction, and the
introduction states that this isa.
This is a 301 level text, touse the college grading system,
if you will.
It is not meant as anintroduction to marketing.
It's not meant as a here'swhere you start type text.

(11:34):
It's very advanced stuff, quitehonestly.
So unless you are a practicethat is stable financially and
has set growth targets, orunless you're perhaps a practice
network, it probably is toocomplex.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, I really appreciate it because it looks
like you stepped into an areahere that nobody has stepped
very far into or done much with,and so I think there's a lot of
opportunity.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah Well, thank you, it's been received that way,
which is just wonderful.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, was it among chiropractors or among everybody
that was so well-received?

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Among everyone.
Yeah, quite honestly, thechiropractic profession was a
small subset.
The book is not aimed atchiropractic, it's aimed at SMB
in general.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Okay, well, I want to thank you because this brings a
whole new look at marketing,and so I recommend you read
Outmarket the Competition, and Ithink it probably was a hard
job to get this down to thislevel.
I wouldn't recommend it, right?
Well, nick Doyle, thank you foryour work and thank you for

(12:36):
being on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Wonderful.
Thank you, doctor.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Thank you.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.