Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, welcome
back to another episode of
Marketing 101 for Chiropractors.
Awesome guest this week, coreyMorris from Voltage, is going to
dive into why you need to havea plan when you market.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, thanks for
having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yeah, tell us a
little bit about how you got
into this.
Many people know my story.
I'm a chiropractor and then Ikind of forced myself into
marketing with frustration.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So it's more of a
second thing for me.
But what about you?
How'd you get into this wholemarketing for medium and large
businesses?
Yeah, this is not where Ithought I would be.
If I look back to growing up,I'm every you know one in my
family essentially has doctor intheir title, except for me, and
I broke the trend even agenerational one by going to
business school.
So I ended up coming out ofschool with a marketing degree,
but that was really when a lotof things digitally were blowing
(00:50):
up.
This is the 20th year of mycareer, so think back to 2005,
when things were stillhard-coded and we were still in
a much earlier version of theweb compared to now, and
navigated my way through being aproject manager, learning how
to code, basically, and theninto search engine optimization
(01:13):
and broader digital marketing,as we then went from internet
and online marketing to callingit digital and rallying around
that term, probably about 15years ago as well, and so
through that journey, I becamean entrepreneur as well, went
from employee to owner.
So my journey in the businessworld is not one that I would
(01:35):
have ever predicted of how itwent, but now own a digital
agency called Voltage, own acompany called Digital Marketing
Success Plan and I know we'llget into unpacking some of that
as well, but we help, as youmentioned, businesses of a range
of sizes in our focus andexpertise within digital
marketing and building websitesfor them.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, that's awesome
and you've seen it.
I mean, you've seen thestruggles, you've seen the
problems, you've seen the leakybuckets all in marketing, and
that's why you're here today.
We're going to talk about it,and the thing I love about it is
the the digital marketingsuccess plan.
The plan that you've laid outin five steps, that you know,
tells us what to do before weactually do it.
Maybe some organization gets usa little bit further and a
(02:18):
little bit deeper into the goalsthat we're trying to attain.
So let's, let's dive into that.
Where do you think most, youknow, let's be specific with
healthcare and chiropractic andyou know, physical therapy and
that stuff, those types of brickand mortar facilities that do
hands-on services.
Where should they start whenbuilding a plan around marketing
?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah.
So naturally we want togravitate toward like, let's do
the action, like what do we seesomebody else doing or where,
where do we think our audienceis?
And we, we don't necessarily goas far as we need to
invalidating how this makes usmoney or to work backwards from
(02:56):
what our end goal is and what wewant in our practice.
And so and those goals can bedifferent it should be different
for every individual practiceor business of do I want to grow
and scale?
Am I in an aggressive mode?
Do I want to bring on you knowpartners?
Do I want to bring on morepractitioners?
Do I want to make this thing10X what it is now, or open more
(03:18):
locations, whatever it is, ordo I want to operate as a
lifestyle business and stayfocused, personally, hands on on
the mission of where I'm going,but be able to have a focus on
quality and not quantity andmake sure that I'm sustaining
the thought leadership and thethings that I need to do to
(03:39):
educate my patients and to stayin front of them.
And so those are two ends ofthe spectrum, and there's
probably a myriad number ofother ways and options in
between of how we shape ourbusiness goals and what
marketing you do, and digitalmarketing should be a reflection
(03:59):
of that.
So, naturally, workingbackwards from your business
ultimate business goal andquantifying what the metrics are
around that and understandingthose is the key starting point
for us before we start putting adollar into marketing.
Marketing often gets looked atat any time in most types of
businesses as a line item orexpense if it's not connected to
(04:21):
an outcome or a businessoutcome.
It's not connected to an outcomeor a business outcome.
It's honestly something that isan investment and should expect
a return on investment, justlike we're putting the
expectations on what we do infinancial or real estate
investments outside of ourbusinesses or even within our
businesses.
Looking at it that way changesand kind of gives you a
(04:42):
different lens to look at itthrough and not just look at as
a set of activities or thingsyou have to do because someone
told you you should do them, butto have them be more personal,
with conviction, connected toyour mission, your goals.
So starting by identifying yourgoals is critical, and that
gets into the first part of myfive-step process of strategy
(05:03):
and defining that strategy, andso that's really where I start
with.
Anything is, what is that uniquething that we can connect and
quantify.
Is it more patients, is it moreleads that we get through the
website, is it more phone calls,more booked appointments?
Or is it around reputation,even, or retention and not
(05:25):
having to go out and scale an adif you're not trying to do that
, but at the same time you knowa few hits to your ratings
online.
Fair or unfair can really havean impact as well, and so how
you quantify that is step one ofbusiness outcome, and then the
marketing and digital touchpoints that can impact that.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Love it.
Metrics are so importantbecause, without knowing a lot
of, a lot of business ownersdon't look at the metrics
properly.
I mean, they're looking at thecashflow collections, new
patients, uh, and basingmarketing off that.
And and we talked about this byknowing your internal metrics,
the the more specific metrics,the the calls, the conversions,
the hard conversions in theoffice, both from marketing into
(06:10):
your office and then theconversions in your office, and
what the case value average isper patient.
You know, knowing these littlethings can really dictate the
strategy of marketing you'regoing to put forward, first off
and second the ad budget to.
Sometimes you don't need tospend as much as you think you
need to, or other times you gotspend a lot more, depending
where you are in your businessand for growth.
So, metrics, I love that.
(06:30):
Great job, corey, great.
So we start there, weunderstand some fundamentals
about metrics and then we decide, hey, we got to definitely
market, we got to do something.
Word of mouth referrals aregreat.
They only get you so far.
People only know so many peopleand they're only willing to
refer, isn't it?
And they're only willing torefer.
You know they're more like,isn't it true?
They're more loud when you dosomething wrong to leave a bad
(06:51):
review than if you do somethingright to actually refer for you.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That's just human
nature.
I mean, when we give you ahundred dollars and you paint
our wall for us and it looksgood and you leave, we expected
the wall to look good, that'swhy we gave you the hundred
dollars.
We we expected the wall to lookgood, that's why we gave you
the $100.
We're not going to go raving upand down the street saying this
is the best painter ever.
So it's an expectation when youtrade that energy, right.
But when you give you $100 andyou do a bad job on that wall,
(07:17):
boy, are we going to go toGoogle in like three seconds.
My wife's going to be on Googlein like six seconds and you're
going to get the worst reviewyou've ever read.
So we know that right.
So now, word of mouth referralis great, but when we need
something like voltage, we hirelike hey, voltage, help us out,
let's get going here.
Let's get our SEO going, let'sget a reputation going, let's
get some more calls and peoplecoming to our office.
What's that step?
(07:37):
Look like.
What's planning for that?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, and so the
five-step process is an acronym
called START, and this is astart-to-finish process and
framework where there's not amagic answer just as I talked
about a minute ago for everyone,because everyone's goals are
different, your practice isdifferent, your level of
expertise that you want to beknown for, your specialization,
(08:01):
how you're different from thenext clinic on the corner, even
if you're friends and you wentto school together and you, you
are very similar.
There is something different inyour culture, your mission,
your vision, your values thatyou want to carry forward and
and your unique you knowopportunity to serve your
patients in your community.
So, within that andunderstanding that and having
(08:24):
you know your, your strategy andgoals, knowing that you know,
if you've quantified it to thepoint of knowing that I need 20
new patient, you know leads orphone calls or or booked
appointments a month, then youcan carry that forward into.
So that's, that's part oflocking down your strategy.
That's the S, the T.
Then you carry that forwardinto tactics and this is now
(08:45):
where we can evaluate and putanything on the table and
challenge what you've been doing.
Are those leads available inFacebook or through organic
posting or through ads?
Are they available in Googleno-transcript.
(09:57):
So if you heard about thatawesome channel, it's working
for somebody else.
Go do some research on that.
There's some great free toolsand affordable tools out there
where you can go validate howmuch traffic there is around my
location, how many times peopleare searching for things, how
many people are in its targetaudience.
(10:17):
If you're doing some Facebookresearch or whatnot, through
meta, to understand what is thereal opportunity here and how
many dollars might it take.
To your point a minute ago ofyou know you might need ads and
you might need to really dialthem up, okay, well, how many,
how many dollars does it take toget the number of clicks and,
based on some of that math wetalked about a minute ago, how
many does that lead through to abooked appointment and what
(10:39):
does that look like?
And so when you've got yourstrategy nailed down, know what
your goals are and then you haveyour tactics mix.
That's when everything reallyflows through the rest of the
process as well.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah for sure, then
you can.
Then then you can dial up anddial down on your marketing
according to your business goals.
After that, once you find thesystem that works and that's
probably the longest process isin marketing.
It's a course correction allthe time of trying to figure out
what's working while buildingthe background as well.
Seo is forever.
(11:11):
It's not a one-time thing.
I love these people like oh, Igot to hire an SEO person to
help me out.
And then they're like well, Ilet go of my SEO person, it
wasn't working.
I'm like what are you talkingabout?
We're always uh, we're alwaysoptimizing the internet for our
search.
What are you talking about?
So they don't get that conceptthere as well?
What are some you know as afrom a chiropractic perspective,
(11:32):
where they're very personalbased?
I mean, we're not givingliterally anything except a
service.
There's no, there's no pills,there's no injections.
There's no, there's no tangiblething that they walk away with,
except for the service by hand.
Very much like physical therapyIn these types of settings.
What do you feel a logicalstarting point or a logical
marketing plan looks like forsomething like that?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah.
So if we've gone through thestep of understanding, you know
again the business goals andthen how marketing can, could
and should support it.
And then you know quantify thatby the tactics and the channels
and platforms we should be in.
Now we get into this leadsreally well into the A, the
third step of looking at itsapplication step of looking at
(12:17):
what assets we need, and a bigpart of that is what kind of
content, what kind of messaging,and so this is that how you're
defining, you know where, howyou show up to someone online
and what first impression you'remaking.
And then ultimately, the secondimpression I mentioned a moment
ago.
You know, maybe there's a guide, maybe there's talking about an
approach and whether it's, youknow what type of hands-on
(12:41):
approach or what the experienceis going to be.
So there's everything from I.
You know I have pain.
I've maybe never been to achiropractor before and this is
a personal story right Of youknow I have back pain.
Who do I?
You know I'm Googling, I'mlooking it up and then I get a
level deeper and now I'm lookingat different methods you know
from and different approachesfrom different clinics.
(13:04):
And or, you know now I'mgetting into, does my insurance
cover this and how?
How does this get billed?
What?
What does a plan look like?
What is the first appointmentlook like in the education in
that when some in the office,versus getting onto more of a
maintenance plan of going, youknow, weekly or biweekly or
(13:25):
whatnot too, and get it afterthings are in better shape,
after I get through some of theacuity issues, so any of that
content that you have of thepatient experience, you probably
do that well, right, becauseyou know how you greet someone,
welcome them through the doorthe first time.
But it's really thinking aboutdigitally.
Yes, there's that last click,someone searching for you know
(13:46):
chiropractor or physical therapynear me today.
Right, and that's where they'relooking at reviews and they're
one click or phone call awayfrom coming into your clinic.
You absolutely need to be, showup there and be there and put
the right foot forward there.
But how much further do youwant to move further away from
that into the education spaceand be where somebody is
(14:07):
searching by symptom or by?
You know what causes them tothink about and research what
you know where they should gobefore they get to the?
I'm looking for a chiropractoror PT near me where you're in a
very competitive space.
So there's an opportunity toget further upstream there.
But that requires anunderstanding of what content
(14:30):
you can produce, what commitmentyou can make to that and what
level of investment, when thatdoesn't immediately necessarily
translate from click toconversion in terms of your
analytics, but it supports theecosystem.
So getting an understanding ofwhat kind of ads we need to
create, what kind of landingpages we need to create, what
kinds of content and a contentcalendar, how many times we
(14:52):
should be posting, are important.
One of the things that I talkabout often, regardless of
industry, but this is one thatis really critical.
When you're wearing multiplehats or someone in your office
is wearing multiple hats of youknow, could they, how many
things are they doing and and doyou understand what and why?
(15:13):
You know you're posting seventimes a week on Facebook and is
it working for you or not, or uh, and getting that right and
making sure you understand yourcontent calendar or you're
consistent with it and itdoesn't fall off for a few
months when things get busy, oryou know we've got, you know, a
staffing issue, or we've gotsome got to get caught up on
billing or whatever it might beand all of a sudden we stopped
(15:37):
doing something.
So understanding how you'regoing to apply, you know your
strategy and your tactics andhow it's going to come to life
for you is really critical.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yeah, great tips
there.
I mean, you talked abouteverything there.
Now we're going to talk for twomore hours on marketing, but
let's keep it tight.
The thing that came up for meis the value of content.
So maybe from your perspective,when we're developing content,
time is money.
So if we're going to put effortinto developing content, where
do you find the highest value?
Maybe let's look at it from aSEO perspective.
(16:13):
For long-term gain, how wouldyou value the content that you
create?
Is creating text form blogs andputting them on a proper page
on your website for Google toeat up over time?
The best form of content?
Is it video?
Is it pictures?
Is it ads?
(16:35):
Is it boosting?
What is it?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, and so I'm not
going to take the cheap way out
here and say it depends, butthere's it really, as we and I'm
going to rip off the bandaidhere and say AI for the first
time in the show and either oneof us had yet but the, the, the
emergence of AI has coincidedwith a lot of the distractions
(17:04):
of okay, now we had smartspeakers we're talking to, we're
talking to our phone.
There's a lot of searches thathave the words near me in them,
because people are looking forlocalized content or looking for
something around them today,looking for, you know, something
around them today, you know,five, 10 years ago, all of our
(17:25):
focus was on what does Googlethink and what does Facebook
think and what do we do forthose, feed those.
So the job is getting harderfor us now because there are
more sources the AI sources,people asking questions in
random places and more channelsthan ever before.
So I see it as an opportunitythat we don't have.
We're not, you know, having toserve the Google machine and
follow its rules as much.
(17:46):
But all of that said, eventhough we're still still playing
out and Google is still thebehemoth and Facebook is still
where a lot of consumersearching and content is
consumed.
It's more important than everto get out of the noise and out
of the vacuum and not just throwstuff out there and focus on
(18:07):
quality of content, not just thevolume.
It's not about saying we didour 30 posts this month and
check that box and we hope itworked, but it's really to
create it in a way thatresonates and to get as much
feedback as we can on it.
So I love video content.
There are amazing stats aroundit, but you know and you can be
found.
But if, if it's a research topicand you are creating that
(18:29):
thought leadership upstream andreally trying to educate on why
my back might hurt and what myoptions are, and to really
compare and contrast, like thechiropractic approach versus a
medical approach, or when PT andchiropractic you know I've
again been through both of themand my back is very personal to
(18:50):
me because I've got the.
You know what I have for therest of my life with, with, uh,
with my condition, witharthritis, but it's it's.
How much do you want to do?
And where are people consumingthat?
If it's on YouTube, obviouslyit's video.
If you are landing them on yourpage and you're trying to
explain to them and educate them, but also educate them on your
(19:10):
practice and how your approachis different.
Then there's probably a mix ofvideo and text and you bridge
that in the middle.
Um, if they have filled out aform or they're close to it, or
they're looking at your cultureand what's different, then as
much personality as you can getin there as possible and you're
comfortable with.
If you're not a video person,then give them a lot of imagery
(19:31):
and text.
But in terms of what Google'slooking for, I feel like we
often overlook the fact thatYouTube is the number two search
engine, and so if we'recreating content anywhere, I
love to create it with all thechannels and platforms in mind,
so we can create one big, meatypiece of content that we can
then repurpose out and get intoall the different channels.
(19:53):
I'm not saying we should copyand paste a 700 word long blog
post from our blog to Facebook,but we but we can take parts and
pieces of that and whether werecord shorter snippet, two
minute videos off of it or have20 or 20, um posts in that given
month, all pointing back to it,taking kind of a cornerstone
(20:16):
approach that we can trickle outwith cobblestones and get more
return on investment, for whatwe produce is important, so I
don't necessarily think as muchabout you know format first.
I'll think about content, thebig piece and the messaging
first, and then how we cantrickle it out.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, no, and you're
right.
Ai is here.
I mean, it's just the way it is.
You shouldn't ignore it.
I should say you should notignore it.
Like you said, the disbursementof information is going to
happen exponentially.
It's happening.
Google's no longer.
(20:58):
It's still behemoth, it's nolonger the main source of
information and search.
Actually, as of, I think,january 2025, it is now chat.
Gpt Gets more questions asked toit than Google, so that's an
issue.
Now, how do you rank in there?
So there's a whole bunch ofthings there, but AI is the only
(21:18):
way to really help you disperseas much information as you
possibly can across as manychannels as possible in a
realistic fashion.
There's just no way to do it,especially as a solo
entrepreneur.
It's just not going to happen,so you're going to have to use
AI tools to move forward.
So now this is where I leave itto you.
You guys are using AI inmarketing.
Again, from our perspective,what are some great ways to just
(21:41):
maybe get started on this?
Or to look into not specifics,not specific AI channels, but
how to really globally look atAI and be like how can I use it
to maximize productivity and getcontent out there on a regular
basis?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, and I always
give the quick disclaimer that
you know AI is probably the oneof the most misunderstood or,
you know, undefined things.
So right it's.
It's woven into a lot, you knownow, because every software
developer had to say that theywere leveraging it.
So it's woven into a lot of thedifferent third-party tools
(22:18):
that we use.
It's built into now the searchresults from Google and you know
, chatgpt has its own.
Openai has its own searchfunction as well, but then we
can natively use it right.
And so just my favorite onestill to this day is ChatGPT,
because I've spent so much timetraining it that it's hard for
(22:39):
me to go replatplatform and I'lltest the others, but it's hard
for me to go start over inothers.
The challenge is no matter whereyou are in terms of your own
use of it.
The challenge is I have friendswho are on the leading edge of
building software, leveraging AIand their custom models, and we
have our own here in my agency.
(22:59):
But everybody feels likethey're behind and there's this
crazy imposter syndrome and weall feel like we're not there.
So the people on the bleedingedge of it that I know feel like
they're behind somebody else,somebody who hasn't touched it
yet because they're busy runningtheir successful business also
probably feels some level ofbeing behind, unless you're just
(23:21):
writing it off entirely.
But regardless, I find that alot of people are wired one of
two ways.
Either I chase the shiny objectand I'm super into that new
tech thing the next phone, thenext piece of hardware, the next
piece of software I've got morepaying for software I don't
need because I want to testeverything or you're so busy
(23:43):
running your business this is anoverwhelming concept and you
want to test it, but you alwaysget to the end of your day and
it gets squeezed out.
So being intentional and havingguardrails in no matter which
camp you're in, for me isimportant.
So if you're, you've got to putparameters around it and make
sure that you aren't just goingand chasing that shiny object
where your traffic might not beyet.
(24:03):
So pull yourself back if you'reon that side of it.
And if you're on the side of it, where your guilt comes from,
the fact of, hey, it just keepsgetting pushed out of my day and
I don't want to fall behind,but I'm so busy with what's
working now You've got toschedule intentional time to go
test.
I mean, my wife and I um, onenight, you know, spent from 7 PM
(24:24):
to midnight on a Friday nightin two different industries
sitting on our computers testingout back when things were
emerging.
Um, spend some time with chatGPT and doing some training on
it and testing on it, and thatwas fun for us, but it did get
squeezed out of our day to dayfor a while, and so having
understanding what it can do andleveraging it is important.
(24:45):
I've spent over a hundred hourstraining and just talking back
and forth with it and testing itand understanding what it can
do, and so, if I take myself outof being in a business, there
are some things, yes, that scareme.
Right?
I'm not going as far as givingmy voice and having it be me in
video or vocal content, but it'samazing what it can do in terms
(25:09):
of writing for me.
I've given it all 24,000 wordsof my book.
I've given it years of blogposts and social media posts, so
now it can accelerate contentcreation and it's not just
creating crap out there that Ihave to go, you know, rewrite
entirely or spend three times aslong on to go rewrite and fix.
It's giving me my content backin a format and vehicle that I
(25:32):
can use to really scale muchfaster.
I was personally considering avirtual assistant a couple of
years ago and I'm so glad Ididn't get into a contract there
because I can go back and forthin real time and correct things
in AI and get the right contentwithin minutes, versus going
back and forth over days ofsomebody else manually creating
(25:55):
the content.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, I mean it's a
tool to use.
I've done some other podcastson how chiropractors can use AI,
chat, GPT, all these things todo your weekly emails to do
task-oriented stuff, to set upposts for social media in text
format with pictures, things tojust help you speed up.
You still have to create thecontent, but what I found AI has
(26:22):
done in our practice to reallyhelp is to keep our workload
about the same that it was in2019, where we were still
shooting the videos we're stillposting on Facebook, YouTube,
all that stuff, repurposingcontent, and now you have all
these AI things that can spliceyour videos into real stories
and all these things and you canjust blast them across all the
platforms now.
So I find the time that I spentcreating content, especially
video or educational stuff, isabout the same.
It was in 2019.
(26:43):
Thanks to AI, since 2023, whenI got into it, Um, thanks to
that, because I felt like 2021,2022, we're just doing more and
more work to try and get contentdone.
And the AI.
Now when you look back, you'relike, hey, man, you really saved
me a lot of time, Because toget this all across all the
platforms, I mean, I think Iwould just have a studio in my
(27:03):
office and I'd just be aprofessional YouTuber Because I
mean there's no other way to getthis done.
I don't know how the heck we dothis.
So if you use it properly, itdoes save you a lot of time and
it really doesn't cost.
A lot of people are like oh man, how much does it cost?
Is it a lot of software?
It's really not.
It's these little programs thatyou use.
I use Opus to clip some stuff.
I use ChatGPT, which is a freeversion or $20 a month.
Whatever you want to do, itworks.
(27:25):
It works for us.
So it's very affordable, verydoable.
Anything else, I think wemissed the last step in the
marketing success plan.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So it just rounds out
with the with R, which is
review, which is essentiallyreporting and getting being able
to, you can measure everything.
We talked about it kind of inthe strategy phase when we
quantified what we want tomeasure, know third party
software, or you know practicemanagement software that doesn't
, out of the box, integrate withGoogle Analytics, or what
(28:01):
you're doing to track things, oryour phone system, or how you
want to track things, even ifyou're just asking everyone who
calls or fills out a form havinga system where you can close
the loop on that, to really beable to track ROI, as we talked
about earlier.
And then the last step is calledtransformation and that's
making sure that we didn't doall this work in the first few
(28:25):
stages to then say, okay, we'renow going to implement and it's
disorganized.
So this is about getting aliteral plan on paper, even if
it's a one pager, where you'verecapped what you've defined as
your plan and get it intopractice, so you don't get busy
in two months and put it on theshelf, for the next shiny,
flashy thing coming at us islike hey, you know, let's do
(28:49):
that.
Okay, let's time out, even ifit's a five minute conversation
of how does that change thepriorities of the things we're
already doing, how does itchange budget allocation and
where we're putting our focus orwho's going to do it if we're
already maxed out?
And so having a documented planmakes it not just one person's
job and doing what's in theirhead, but gives some
(29:13):
accountability to it and makesit actionable.
So that's the transformationstep of the T.
So it's strategy, tactics,application review and
transformation.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Awesome, Awesome.
You can buy the book right.
You can just get it right fromyour website or on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, so it's on
Amazon.
I've got a standalone websitefor it too.
It's a long title DigitalMarketing Success Plan, so I've
shortened it to the DMSPcom soyou can find the framework there
.
I've got some free resourcesthat you can grab there, um, and
it'll link you over to Amazonas well.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Awesome.
Thanks for your time.
This was great stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, thank you for
having me.
I enjoyed it.
Yeah, take care.