BluShark Digital  0:00  

Welcome to Med Shark Insider with Bill Fukui, your expert host on all things medical marketing and SEO.

 

Bill Fukui  0:08  

Well, good morning, everybody. I want to welcome you to another episode of MedShark Insider. It is a program where we share information about medical marketing, and it’s not just my perspective; it’s the perspective of other experts that we bring on board. As you guys probably know, we’ve shared information on SEO and pay-per-click advertising. Today I want to talk about a topic that I would say isn’t necessarily our strength. That’s why I’ve brought on some experts that I’ve known for many, many years when it comes to visual content. So today’s topic is really, how do we master and leverage visual content in today’s online world, because it’s definitely changed since my guest, Candace, and I first started doing this many years ago. So I have with me Candace Crowe, who is the founder of Candace Crowe Design. And I also have TK Crowe, who is the VP of Candace Crowe design, and they both have many years of experience in working with plastic surgeons and dermatology, and other aesthetic practices. And I would say myself, Candace kind of set the bar many years ago as the expert when it came to pioneering esthetic marketing and the image that practices need to project. She was the first one to in my world that really kind of grasped and understood that, and she’s taken that, along with TK, to the next level in some of the services that they’ve offered, and I also want to share some of the things that they’re doing, because I think it’s important. So welcome to the show, guys. I’m sorry about being a little long-winded there.

 

TK Crowe  2:11  

Thanks, Bill.

 

Candace Crowe  2:14  

So honored to be here, Bill.

 

Bill Fukui  2:15  

Yeah, so Candace, I know you’ve been we’ve been doing this for, gee, the better part of almost 30 years, right? When it comes to long before there was an internet, you were doing a lot of the print and other types of collateral materials, and such that practices, for many years, just relied on society to give them their stuff. And it was so generic, you kind of took it to the next level. What, what, whatever. Why did you start doing that? I mean, what inspired you to do this in this society?

 

Candace Crowe  2:49  

Oh, boy. Oh gosh, I tell you the real story about that. I ended up with four young men, young four young kids. I needed to figure out how to make an income for. I was a graphic designer working out of my house, and they were aged three to 13, and I started, you know, pounding the pavement with my portfolio, and I ended up with a plastic surgery client and Debbie Boyd, she worked for Marie Oleson and Karen Zepco. And we hit it off. And we figured out, you know, we would, you know, the internet was just starting then, and we figured out that, you know, we went through the database and we could cull some of the emails and be very specific about a message to this specific group of people about Valentine’s Day or this or that, we just really did a good job, and then I kind of rolled into patient education, because I watched this, as I won’t say, it one of the society videos of a man in a white lab coat standing talking down to a breast augmentation patient. I mean, seriously, I thought, oh my gosh, that is not the way to talk. No, you are. You are out of place. You go to the powder room. You know, girls will actually let other women feel what it looks feels like, because they they need to know what about the scars and this and that. And so we did patient education based on that. And early in 2002 and TK was actually part of this. He was, we were working from home. He and Austin and the other boys would proofread my work and come behind me and say, Hey, you can do this better or that better. And we developed the first patient education touchscreen kiosk in the industry.

 

Bill Fukui  4:47  

And I remember that stuff that that content was really cutting edge, right? No, I was just gonna say, I think it kind of laid the groundwork for what is standard today. You know, you almost have to have that type of, you know, messaging then, you know, because today’s audience is kind of changed, obviously, but the kind of content that they’re looking for, you know, you know. TK, I know you were one of the co-creators of one of the platforms that you guys created, which is Bragbook, right? Bragbook, which is, and I’m going to give you guys an opportunity to share more about why you did that, what it does, and why an agency like MedShark Digital actually uses it, right our clients, right? I want to get into that. But in terms of content, you’ve been in this business for 15,20, years, yourself. When it comes to content, we’ve always said, because I come from the SEO background, oh, content is king. You know, content, content, you know, you know, I still believe that content does have a, you know, absolutely a major role in what we’re doing online. But yeah, you see is maybe changes in the kind of content that people consume. How to best leverage that for practices?

 

TK Crowe  6:20  

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ve been around for almost 15 years, and before that, following my mom around different trade shows, so I’ve really seen the industry kind of grow up, in a way, and become more professional when it comes to their marketing and their branding and everything. And you know, these, this question reminds me of, I don’t know, probably when I was 12, 15, years ago, when social media was first kind of coming onto the scene, and everybody was saying things like, email marketing is dead, print marketing is dead, and it just see, you know, every so often new marketing channels come out, and they kind of say out with the old in with the new. But for content, it’s not really like that. I mean, we’re in a kind of world where everything’s changing towards these AI LLM models and stuff, but they have to have something to reference. If there’s nothing to reference, they have nothing to spit out. So content is probably more important now than it’s ever been. And you know, people will do their research on the AI tools, but they will go, they want to go to your website and check you out and and see your, you know, digital office and make sure it, it looks professional and clean and well organized, and they offer all you offer the services that they have, you know. And so content is definitely still king. It has changed. It’s no longer just a, you know, 1000 1500 1500-word text document. You want to incorporate visuals into it. You want to make it easily digestible. And then, you know, a lot of the and you know, maybe this is a point of contention, but. You know, your service pages are great for SEO, but when they get there and find out that you offer that service that that you know, they are looking for, they want to see results. And so you want to incorporate those results into those service pages and make it easily findable, so that the person that’s looking for facelift or a mommy makeover is able to, you know, find you and then go into your results gallery and, and look through and check you out and make sure the results match up with the quality of your your website, your SEO.

 

Bill Fukui  8:31  

You know, you bring up a really good point, TK. When it comes to those service pages, right? Because when people search for, say, breast augmentation, you know, surgeon or whatnot. And they’re looking for a provider locally, right? They look up breast augmentation or tummy tuck, whatever it is. And those service pages are many times what shows up. It’s not always the homepage. In fact, it’s rarely the homepage. It’s the procedure pages that they’re actually interested in ranks. So in that case, those internal pages become the entry to your practice, right? Immediately. That’s your branding, right? So even those internal pages need to be designed. That’s why I see you know when, when I look at Candace’s websites that they’ve designed and such, it’s that branding, not only just of the homepage, but even the internal pages, have design value, right? But definitely making it more visual so that people can digest, not only just digest and go learn about this stuff, we need for them to get excited about it. We need for them to get motivated and help elevate that ready to take the next step, in addition to being more learned about the topic and being more confident about. Talking to a provider about it right? Those images on those page not only break up text, but they add emotional value. It’s like when Candace, you remember those days when, we used to get a physical newspaper right? Studies were showing that the articles that got the most widely read, and the articles that people comprehended the substance of the information were the articles that had a picture with it, because they can mentally visualize this information. And I don’t think that’s too different than, you know, our web pages. So getting them to those before and afters like, if they want to see proofs of your work, you know, put a sample of that on the on the page. It doesn’t have to be overly graphic or whatever, but have it so that they know what it is and it’s almost the next step. Click on it, and then they can go to the gallery. You know, I think those leveraging photos and images of your work, we all know that studies show that’s where people spend most of their time, right when they go to their website. So you had mentioned social media. Social media really kind of changed a lot of what we do online, right, and now consumers digest this kind of content when it comes to websites. How do you guys look at social media content, photos, and those kinds of things in terms of integrating that, because that’s the buzzword now, you got to integrate everything. Everything’s got to work together. How do you guys integrate, you know, social media and imagery and the stuff that you guys are producing in a snapshot? I mean, there’s a lot of things you can talk about there, but what would you say would be important things for our audience?

 

Candace Crowe  12:09  

Go ahead, TK. 

 

TK Crowe  12:10  

Well, I think social media is great, and there’s definitely a place for it, but I think it’s kind of become the garage that’s been filled up with a bunch of junk. And so I would really caution practices to just straight up take what they’re posting on social media and slap it on their website and say and be done with it. You know, your website is your digital representation of your brand, of your expertise. Now, there are things that you can use from social media. I see a lot of really great short form content in terms of explaining procedure results or explaining different non surgical, you know, treatments. So I think there is a place for some of the social media content to go on to your website, on service pages. It’s great to have, you know, video of the especially of the doctor, kind of explaining different things about the techniques that he uses, or even, you know, his the the consultation process, you know, the so, so, you know, I wouldn’t say that we take stuff straight from social media and just slap it on the website, but there is a but there is a place for, you know, kind of using social media to influence to, you know, kind of help build out your your website. I hope I answered that.

 

Bill Fukui  13:32  

Okay, yeah, Candace, did you have any, any thoughts?

 

Candace Crowe  13:37  

Yeah, you know, as you were talking about branding and everything, Bill, I was kind of just, I was thinking about this earlier today, and, you know, websites. And, you know, before websites, we had billboards, we had we went shopping in malls, and there were displays in the windows, right? Those were, those were, those were the things that they took really care for and they put the right. They dressed those windows as I think about driving down University Boulevard out here, which hotels, which restaurants have a brand that I go. I know that place. I feel good about that place. I want to go to that place. And that, to me, would be a website. Now, you go in that place and there’s a bulletin board in the back, and there’s all these little business cards and all these little post ups. That’s social media.

 

Bill Fukui  14:34  

That is, I’ve never looked at it that way, but you’re right. You know, the website is your storefront. I mean,

 

Candace Crowe  14:43  

Yeah, yeah, you want to dress it. Make sure that all entryways are prepped well for a welcome, you know, it’s spit shined. And then social media can be a little messier, you know, a little more organic and all that. But, you know, grocery stores pay a lot of money to have, have thought about what’s in this, this, you know, the reach area, right? Yeah, and a lot of money on how many options they have, you know. And more options don’t mean more sales. They actually mean less sales. You know that it’s a lot of social evaluation to do before you just kind of throw everything on the wall and expect it to work. It’s like, No, I want to do this well. And that’s kind of like our company we want to do before and after galleries, really, really, well. Yes, we do websites. We don’t do social things, we really don’t. We kind of help when they have to make us, you know, they make us, kind of, but, you know, we just do what we do well.

 

Bill Fukui  15:58  

Yeah, no. And I, you know, one of the things that you kind of mentioned, and actually TK did, as well as this, you know, that there’s a place for custom photography or social media and all those kinds of things. But for years, we know that most of these really, what we would say, very esthetic looking websites were all stock photography. stock photography, and then you transition to where everybody’s like, Oh, get rid of stock. Nobody wants stock. It’s got to be custom. So a lot of practice starts investing in custom photography. But I have to say that when they just use their own custom photography many times, it doesn’t look like that pretty storefront. What would you say as you know, Candace, from your experience doing website design work, where’s does stock photography still has a role, right? Does it have a role in today’s online website development and where does that fit in with custom production?

 

Candace Crowe  17:15  

So TK and I talked about this just a little bit before, so I’m gonna let him start that and I’ll finish it. But okay, definitely it is a great topic to talk about, because it is evolving.

 

TK Crowe  17:30  

Yeah, so it is really hard to recreate the production quality of a stock photograph. You know those people, the people that shoot, those are, are professional photographers that have all of the setup to, you know, to put the subject of the photo and the right lighting with the perfect backdrop and everything. So it’s really hard to recreate that professional quality. You can do a lot of really good stuff with cus, you know, with your with custom photo or practice photo shoots, it is the quality control is a lot harder, because if you don’t have somebody art directing that photo shoot that knows what they’re doing, I’ve seen practices come back where, you know the there’s a outlet in the back of the photo, and it’s a great photo, but now We have to, you know, Photoshop out that outlet. So there’s a lot more room for kind of, I don’t want to say amateur-ishness, but there is, you know, I think a good balance of the two is important. It’s really nice to go to a website and see the people that you’re going to be interacting with at the practice. It’s also really important to create a professional, you know, in the in 2025 we call it a vibe, but to create a professional feeling for that website. So I think a good balance of the two, if you can establish a relationship with, you know, quite often it’s not the photo, it’s the photographer that brings out the subject of that photo. So if you can establish a relationship with a good photographer in town that you trust, and you know, every two to three years, you get a custom photo shoot, you can refresh your website with those photos. I think that’s a great option. But I would, you know, I would not stray away from using stock photography. If you work with a good designer, a good agency, they’re going to be able to cull through, you know, 1000s and 1000s of photos and create a collection of photos that represent you well and that don’t, you know, they’re stock photos, but they don’t look extra stock, what we call stocky. So, you know, I think a balance of the two time is a huge issue with practices. It’s really hard to schedule some something with a custom photographer, and then, you know, to have everybody show up and and get makeup done and look their best. And then sometimes, you know, some photos turn out really well and some don’t. So it’s an, I would say, custom practice photography is a nice to have. It’s not a must.

 

Candace Crowe  20:00  

Have, okay, Candace, absolutely. And then, you know, like professional photo shoots, they have trained models, Oh, yeah. And quite often, without that, the shoot will fall flat, unless you have a photographer that can actually pose them and, you know, help them feel comfortable. But not everybody. It looks beautiful on the camera, but I do want to say on this stock photography, though, there’s a website, tin, I T, I N, E, y, e, that you can take a photo up and put it in there, and it will tell you just how many other practices use that exact photo. So I always say, hey, look for some photos that you know are a little bit more unused, and then be be creative with them. You might be able to montage, I mean, with photo editing tools today, oh my gosh. The world is, you know, you may be able to make a montage or do something, put a filter on that, or create a black and white and then put color in the cheeks. Or, you know, just unlimited stuff you can do with a stock photo today. But you know, the better the images, the more creative it is, the better the lights and darks. You know, you start with, you’ll be able to or just go paint one yourself and,

 

Bill Fukui  21:28  

well, I think, you know, I’ll go back to your storefront imagery. It’s like, Great that you have custom stuff. And it is about how quickly I can I get this sense of likability, where people like us, right? So I do see the value of custom photography, definitely custom video, if your provider and people, and if you can get releases and patients willing to talk about the practice, talk about their procedure and treatment, you know, huge value in those types of things. But to say that that’s all that’s in there, I think you’re you’re right, that first, when they come there, go inside the front door, it’s got to be compelling enough where they do go inside, otherwise they never go inside, right? So it’s got to be something that, and I think with today’s ability to get really good stock photography, I think instead of saying, is it better to use stock or custom, it’s people practices. Really. Have to understand who they are, right? They have to understand their brand, where custom photography fits in with that, and also what kind of stock photography really radiates, or projects who I am or what you know, how I envision myself, right? And I know Candace was always good when she talked to clients about how to get that out of them, right? How to get that? It’s a touchy feely thing, right? But, but, you know, it’s a tough thing for practices to really understand their own brand.

 

Candace Crowe  23:12  

So it, yeah, it’s, it’s so hard to get outside of yourself, Bill. It’s like, I’m not the most important person in this relationship, and the website is for your patients. 

 

Bill Fukui  23:27  

Yeah 

 

Candace Crowe  23:28  

And yeah, you know, like, and it’s okay. It’s okay to have five pictures of the doctor on the homepage. It’s okay. Some of those look really, really good. You know, these photo shoots today of the doctors are, oh my gosh. They’re like, Whoa, yeah, spectacular. But, and that might get a certain kind of clientele, or it does get a certain kind of it all depends on what kind of people you’re trying to attack. What attract what kind of person you are. You know, like, you know, different brands attract different people. You know, Victoria’s Secret attracts a certain brand. Um, other brands, Dillard attracts a different brand. Doesn’t do well anymore. They tried to attract everybody, and they

 

Bill Fukui  24:36  

kind of, they don’t attract anybody.

 

Candace Crowe  24:40  

And you know, Cracker Barrel tried changing their logo, interesting.

 

Bill Fukui  24:44  

Yes, that was the the whole concept. I think you make a great point instead of step outside of this. This is not about you. You know, when you’re the way. Website. It really is about your patients, and what kind of messaging and who makes for good patients for you, right? Who makes for good patients and what kind of, what is it that they’re looking for, along with what you guys do, right? It’s a it’s a combination. And I even with TK’s mention of, you know, you can do custom photography. And, you know, continue doing it. Don’t just do it one time and then 20 years later you decide, oh, well, I’m going to sell my practice. Let me do a custom photo. It’s an iteration. It’s ongoing, and it could be done in phases, right? If you do mainly stock photography on everything, great. Maybe we can start incorporating some custom photography on some of those internal pages, right that are more informational. Now I can have images of a Doctor, maybe consulting, or holding implants, consulting with the patient, or something on those internal pages that kind of tell what to expect, kind of visually, what to expect in the consultation, etc. But I like the idea of maybe it just is. TK said, Just do, do it in phases. Don’t know. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, right? It’s a combination. I love the idea, because I’ve always liked your guys’ taste in imagery. When I’ve seen your guys work, you guys are really good at projecting kind of emotion. More than just photographs there, it’s emotional, right? How do we make the website emotional? I’m going to jump to a different topic, because I do think practices that do invest in custom photography, when we say we need your photos, the very first thing that comes to mind is their before and afters, and because that’s so important in today’s online marketing for aesthetics, it’s amazing how many practices I still get. One of the practices, actually, I just started working with two weeks ago. The reason he wanted to work with us wasn’t because of our SEO and all the things that that I think are really our strongest areas, but he wanted a website. He liked our website designs and such, but he needed to add a photo gallery. And this practice has been in practice for for over a decade, right? And they still did not have a before-and-after gallery on their website, right? Amazing as that may seem, it happens a lot more than you think, not on college and especially not just in plastic surgery, but now that we’re talking about dermatology and some of these, you know, med spas, even they didn’t have before and afters or really never felt like they needed to invest in them, right? Or some, some of the old school, a bit well, that’s, you know, I don’t want to deal with patients and getting releases, or HIPAA, or, you know, any of this other stuff, so they just kind of avoid it. What do you see when you’re saying the role of of of for a practice that hasn’t really leveraged before and afters effectively, how can What would you say? Does it still play a major role, knowing that social media influence and all this other stuff, where does the role of before and afters fall in terms of how important is that, in the in the sale of practice, right? Selling a practice of service.

 

Candace Crowe  28:51  

TK is going to start on this one, and I’m Where do you I mean,

 

TK Crowe  28:57  

There are so many things to say about this. every single website that I look at the analytics for the before and after gallery is the number two or the number three most visited page of every single website. You know, plastic surgery, dermatology, even cosmetic dentistry, is such a visual. You know, the result that not having before and afters on your website is, I mean, it is not unheard of, but it is. It is wild to me that in 2025 practices don’t have before and afters because it’s probably, you know, besides your reviews and getting found well in Google Search is probably the most important factor in someone picking you over picking someone else you know, taking photos is a is a skill, and getting good photos require, requires time, requires training, requires discipline, and so it is. It is not easy, but the value. Of having a really well-developed, you know, wide-ranging before and after gallery is almost priceless. I mean, it’s you can’t, you know, use these surgeons and providers who spend so much time in school and to not have that representation of your work on your website is really doing your practice a disservice and your potential patients a disservice. So it’s, it’s, I think it’s becoming a lot bigger portion of websites today than it was 10, 15, years ago. And I just there, really, there really is an excuse for not having a before and after gallery on your website. Completely agree.

 

Bill Fukui  30:44  

Completely agree. Yeah,

 

Candace Crowe  30:46  

so Bill, let’s pretend you’re hiring somebody, and you’re looking at their resume, and they don’t have any experience. They have some education. Yeah, they might have even gotten all A’s and made the Dean’s list, but there’s no experience. You might give them a try, but they’re going to make less money, and you’re not going to expect as much out of them. And before and afters are basically your portfolio. It’s proof of your expertise, and I was thinking about it the other day and trying to figure out something that might relate to a doctor, you know, and I just thought, well, would somebody actually sign up for a residency under a doctor that didn’t have any before and after Photos?

 

Bill Fukui  31:40  

That that’s a good question.

 

Candace Crowe  31:43  

I don’t, I don’t know, intimate question. Yeah, so like, would it? Why would it? Why would you expect a patient to choose you if you don’t have proof of your work? So that’s kind of where I

 

Bill Fukui  31:55  

fall, and you know what? And I like the analogy. What I would say is, if they didn’t have experience, boy, I wouldn’t have them do important things, right? You know, surgery, let’s face it, that’s that’s important, yeah,

 

TK Crowe  32:15  

you know. And so much of internet marketing is about building trust, you know. And we talked about this when we spoke on our podcast bill and you know, not having, you know, not having before and after photos on your website is not building trust with your potential patients. You know, they want to be able to see if they if you, if that provider can create the result they want, and they want to see someone that looks like them with the result they want. So if you don’t have that on your website, you’re communicating to that patient that you’re not able to deliver on the service that you came up number one for on Google, right? So it’s of the utmost importance,

 

Candace Crowe  32:52  

isn’t it? Part of the Eat score to Bill?

 

Bill Fukui  32:56  

It does? It does well, Google does. Google looks at everything, right? Google, and I noticed on on brag book, there is the ability to put alt image tags and label things foreign for SEO purposes, right? No question, Google sees value in video and visual content, right? And even pages that it just recognize that it has, it adds more, what it called user experience value, right? It because people, they understand that people are it’s visual, right? They would, they consume information better when it’s visual. They connect text with visuals. Their comprehension increases. Google smart when it comes to that. So it does put weight on pages that have really good content, but also imagery optimized, photos, videos, videos, things like that, that helps support that content. So, great point, great point. Now that we’re talking about galleries, there’s TK mentioned about, you know, it being, got to be consistent. It’s not easy. You got to make an investment here. You know, those types of things, right? This is, this is many times the, you know, when I have practices say, Oh, well, we’ll contribute blogs, we’ll contribute this. The most important thing you can contribute to your own marketing is, number one, reviews and number two, your photos. That’s, that’s where you can contribute the most and have the most impact on on your business, is those two areas. Now, when it comes to photos, I see a huge variation between galleries that are, man, these are really nice. These are really good. Those that are, they look kind of dated. Look a little old. In fact, they probably are old looking at whether it’s the clothing that they’re wearing or the hairstyle of the person in the picture, that’s probably 1520, year old photos, right? So as as as an expert in that, how would you consult with a practice in terms of, what do we need to do to improve the quality of our photos? What can we do to get our photos better than what we have? Yeah,

 

TK Crowe  35:35  

Well, I you know, I’d like to circle back to one of the first points that we talked about. And we said content is king. And when we talk to plastic surgery practices, the piece of content that they’re able to create day in and day out, without even going outside of their normal business operations is before and after photos. So the first thing I would tell them is that they need to make taking quality before and after photo photos part of the culture of their practice. You know, quite often it is the surgeon, the physician, that is the, you know, gatekeeper on taking before and after photos, and that’s great because they are perfectionists, and they generally get high-quality images. But if you really want to be able to create, to get a lot of before and after photos and build out the the type of gallery that a really high performing practice deserves. You need other people there to help support you. So members of the staff need to be trained on taking before and after photos. It needs to come up at staff meetings. And you need to practice, you know, you can practice taking before and after photos. You know, 30 minutes a week every week for 10 weeks, and get everybody trained so that when that doctor is running behind schedule, he someone else is able to go in there and get a consistent, good full photo. So making taking quality before and after photos part of the culture would be number one. And then secondly would be getting a decent setup. You know, I see so many different you know, you can spend a lot of money creating a before and after room or a before and after wall in every single exam room of your practice. You know, you can also get really good at taking a photo on your phone. I don’t really like the phone photos, but if you’re consistent about the distance the lighting, you can get good quality photos on your phone. So creating the right environment for getting good photos, whether that is a, you know, a pull-down backdrop on a wall with some lighting hanging from the ceiling and a little X on the ground where you stand to take that photo. Just get consistent with the actual process of taking the photo. And then, you know, there are really great tools out there for storing and, you know, putting the photos in your EMR, but you got to use the system that works for you. Not everybody is going to be a, you know, high-end techie that can take it with a, you know, the really cool software, and then, you know, hit send and send it there EMR, and hit send. That might not be the right system for you. You know, maybe you have a DSLR camera, and at the end of the day, you take out that memory step, you plug it into your laptop, and you go through the photos, and you say, this one’s good, this one’s good. This one’s good. I’m going to send the rest of my, you know, practice manager to add to the patient charts. You know, everybody’s a little bit different. So find the system that works for you. If you have, like, a $10,000 $20,000 camera sitting in your, you know, exam rooms, but it’s never getting used, it’s no good, you know, maybe you’re, you know, a phone is better for you. So, yeah, those are the kind of things I would tell a practice. And I could probably preach on for another 20 minutes. I’ll let Candace go.

 

Candace Crowe  38:50  

TK was telling me, you know, all he we both cycle quite a bit. But, you know, people go, Oh, what’s the best bike? Right? TK goes, well, the one that you ride is the best one?

 

Bill Fukui  39:02  

Well, said, yeah, so, um,

 

Candace Crowe  39:07  

gosh, dang, I had so many thoughts while you were talking, and they’re all gone. So I think he said that.

 

Bill Fukui  39:13  

Well, no, I think. TK, when you’re talking about photos and the quality of the photos you know and where to invest. Where do I start? What do I invest in terms of equipment or whatnot? I will tell practices. You know, in general, if you’re going to invest in anything, the least expensive thing that’s going to make the greatest impact, lighting. More than having the highest quality camera, this $10,000 you know, camera, it’s only as good as what’s coming in it, and what’s coming in it is dependent upon the lighting of the subject, shadow. Knows, you know, to give it depth, you know, those kinds of things. So I think you know, if I had any suggestions to a practice that says, Well, what should I invest in? I would say, start with lighting. If you know and lighting is cheap. Lighting is very inexpensive relative to other types of photographic equipment; it’s the one thing, but just find the space. Like you were saying, that’s a challenge in a lot of practices. Where are we going to take these photos? I would say, find a good place, like you said, to be consistent, so that the you know, and everything is marked. I want for every breast dog. I want the camera at this height. I want it at this angle, and all my face, facial patients. I want here. I want a close-up. This is where we need to be for that. You know, yes, and have all those kinds of things.

 

Candace Crowe  40:54  

So we’ve done a couple of podcasts with some people for setup for photography, because you can’t really do a great before and after gallery, unless you have good photography, you know. So that comes into play quite a bit. And I can give you the links to that. But Ragu, authori had, Dr Ragu had some, just some very interesting way of putting it. He goes, you know, go down to the Rolex store. Look at their brochure. A Rolex may cost 8000 to $10,000 and your facelift costs $30,000 and look at the photography on that brochure, and then look at your before and after photos and see if there’s a disconnect, you know, come on, you know, like, I have doctors That’ll buy a Christmas gown for their whatever before they spend any money on a before and after photo. Yeah, it has to be. They have to know the worth of it. And you know, every dollar saved on a good photographer is $50 saved on photo editing. Yeah, and we don’t want to go to the photo editing AI world, because I want to be able to introduce an unedited, authentic before and after photo that isn’t AI

 

Bill Fukui  42:19  

untouched, right, especially now that we’re entering this world of, you know, artificial photography, right? Yeah, I completely agree. In fact, I would even say, in today’s world in galleries, it should say untouched, yes, right? Because now the question is, consumers are out there thinking, I wonder if these have been, you know, years ago, we’d say airbrushed, right? Oh, that’s been airbrushed, or whatever. Now it’s like they don’t know if, if anything’s real, right? It is telling people that they’re really asking a question when it comes to if somebody invests in this stuff, right? I’m gonna now be more consistent. I’ve got my team. We’re all behind this thing, and my photos are going to be so much better. What about those old photos that are in there? Do they keep them? Do they call them out? What? What do you recommend? Because I know a lot of surgeons like, Oh, I love that picture, but I’m like, on that’s not really that good, yeah, but in their mind, they are because they know the patient, and they know what kind of outcome they had and everything, they’re really passionate about it. How do you tell or what do you do? Is more, just more better. You know, just add more to what you currently have.

 

TK Crowe  43:44  

Yeah. I mean, I would say, in a general sense, more is better. I like to tell doctors that are considering using the gallery system that we have that the patients judge you on the quality of the result. They judge your experience by the quantity of results, and then they judge the professionalism of the practice by the quality of the presentation of those photos. So when we work with people who have,and it’s very often that they have old photos, and you know, to build up a library of newer ones, and as you’re able to replace those old ones, slowly call them out. Now if some of those old results are just simply phenomenal. I wouldn’t tell you. I would say, keep those in but if they look if, if you have, you know, 100 photos, and 25 of them are scanned images from, you know, 2005 it’s time to get it’s time to move on from those. Yeah, you know. And the only caveat is that unless the result is just like, you know, phenomenal. Then you can kind of keep it in. But I would encourage practices to kind of, I mean, used it, you know, use the tools that we have available to us today to build a high-quality before and after gallery. Yeah,

 

Candace Crowe  44:53  

and if they use proper standards, if the hair is pulled back, if there’s no earrings, if. There’s, you know, a backdrop, if they use all the professional standards those and high quality images, those differences aren’t going to be as pronounced as if they unless they use, like, a Polaroid, and then the Polaroid,

 

Bill Fukui  45:14  

Yeah, you know, one of the other last things I’m going to ask you guys is, we started using Bragbook as an agency because we had a couple of clients using it. And then we realized, you know, clients love it, love using it. And the one thing that you know, TK kind of mentioned, is, it’s, you got to use it, right? It’s, and I will say practices want to invest in their own stuff, right? Want to be able to do stuff. But not only that, but making this gallery process easier, was one of the things that I said, in fact, I told you can just years ago, before we even started working with you guys, I said we should be using this because it takes website designers forever to create those galleries. That’s the biggest barrier. And we have a platform here that we can easily, you know, shorten the development time to get a website live and also leverage it for some of the features it has. So give, give us a little bit of background our audience, a little bit of background about brag book, and what is it, and how can practices use it, regardless of, you know, in many cases, the WordPress or other types of, you know, platforms, how can they leverage that?

 

Candace Crowe  46:56  

So I’ll start and let TK finish this one. So, you know, I’ve always really loved the my client or the patient, right? I want to empower them I do not like I do not like it when they get taken advantage of. So they just don’t know what they don’t know about their before and after gallery. So that’s one. You know, we’ve been doing brag book for over 15 years, but the new brag book has a dashboard, and business owners and managers in 30 seconds will know exactly how many cases are uploaded, what the quality score is of those cases, all of them have they have different points for different aspects of quality. You know, the number of leads they have, they have uploads over time. We’d have these questions asked. Well, how do I know if my my manager, is getting before and after photos on our website? They’d have to go look or check or there’s or that, and then they just wouldn’t do it. So it has uploads over time. So again, in 30 seconds, they know that they’re doing it, and they have, it has a number of number of views, and it has like, different things, like the most favorited photos. Like, wouldn’t you want to know which favorite pop photos are the most popular? Then you create social posts from those the most viewed photos, and that kind of thing. So really, truly, that and then a great presentation. And I would say that Instagram has changed the way we look at before and after photos. You know, we’re not just going to put up with another clunky before and after Gallery, and it has totally changed the way we have developed this the new brag book, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, there’s so many different ways to set it up, where you can have just wall to wall images, these cards, you know, everything is nice and uniform. Or you can have the mosaic where the cards just shuffle, and it’s just absolutely mind blowing. What, you know, the difference between what you can have today and what you could have had even a year ago, you know, a year ago, we weren’t even doing these tiles, and now they’re just, you know, we had a couple doctors say, Hey, I just want it to look like Instagram. We studied Instagram, and you can have Instagram on your gal. Instagram, look on your gallery. All right, so, TK, go right ahead.

 

TK Crowe  49:37  

Yeah, I mean, Brad book came out of a product that we built, I don’t know, 15 years ago, and it was the most used part of that product. So we split it off and built it over a period, you know, and built the first version over a period of 10 or 12 years, and over the last year and a half, two years, we’ve been rebuilding and brag book v2 is what we call it now. And like Candice to say. And the dashboard, as soon as you log in, you get a good sense of how your gallery is performing, what kind of photos are getting seen. But it also really just streamlines the process of putting photos onto a website, you know, it has cropping and censoring tools so that you can, you know if maybe the framing on one photo was was a little off, you can recenter it so that the before and after cases are consistent. The my favorites part of the gallery is essentially like a wish list on the shopping site. Users are able to create accounts select their favorite photos, and then you get a lead email that so and so has come in to the website or to the gallery created this you know, selection of photos and, and you’re able to kind of discuss that during their consultation. So it’s also engagement with the website, which is nice. So, you know, it’s a before and after gallery, or it’s a image, professional image gallery geared towards before and after photos.

 

Bill Fukui  50:59  

Yeah, now and, and I love the idea of making it number one relative to today’s online. We talked about social media, Instagram, right? And it’s mobile. It’s viewing before and afters in a mobile environment, knowing that in some cases it could be 6070, 75% of the traffic that comes to a website and are viewing your gallery. They’re viewing it on a instead of doctors always looking at it on their desktop, or, you know, this 17 inch, 20 inch monitor. You know that’s not how consumers are consuming your photograph, so how IT projects in in mobile, thoughtful, right? It’s got to be thoughtful in terms of how we’re projecting that. But I also love the idea. TK, when you’re saying patients, you know, this is what they’re this is me. I think years ago, I used to have a doctor say they were bringing in photos, you know, that they would be capturing on their website. They they take, print a page of the website, a before and after, and bring the photo in and say, This is what I’m interested right? Yeah. I mean, that’s a that

 

Candace Crowe  52:19  

how they take their phone, they’ve made that my favorite. They type their email address in, and there they are.

 

Bill Fukui  52:25  

That, to me is, you know, takes, takes it off of the virtual and, you know, out of sight, out of mind, and brings it into the consultation room, yeah, which, which, I think is, is a huge benefit for what you guys have developed. So do me a favor for our audience that may not be familiar with brag book. How can they learn more about it? How can they get an idea of what it looks like? How can they get in touch with you guys?

 

TK Crowe  52:58  

Yeah, so the website is brag book gallery.com if you search brag book before and after gallery, it should be the first one that comes up. My email address is TK at Candace crow.com we’ll put it in the show notes. Candace is Candace at Candace crow.com we do have some demo videos on there where you can kind of look at the dashboard as well as some of the front end implementations.

 

Candace Crowe  53:23  

And also, if you are a med shark client, be sure to let Bill know, because a partner of ours and we take good care of anybody that is one of their clients.

 

Bill Fukui  53:38  

Yes, absolutely no. And you guys are so easy to work with. You guys make it easy to work with, which I think is an important part of this, because there’s, you know, let’s face it, the doctors and practices have so much on their plate, so many moving parts in a business, and even just in marketing alone, having partners that you don’t have to worry about or remove stress. It’s a big part of of helping a practice grow. And

 

Candace Crowe  54:09  

this is truly a good partnership with medshark, because, you know, when we have a mutual client, we actually meet together and we make sure everything is set up properly, and then we review that, you know, and if the client wants any edits, we make those edits. And, you know, we just monitor the SEO of that and just kind of help out wherever we can on that. So it’s not just, you know, buy it and we’re you or sign up and, yeah, you’re forgotten. It’s really, really, truly, a partnership where, you know, we have the mutual, you know, success of of that site together.

 

Bill Fukui  54:49  

No, and I, and I’m not indirectly in those I know John and some of our other account managers and stuff are dealing with you guys, but I love the idea of the data that they. Can pull from there. Can always help us in terms of our design, because at the end of the day, it’s about conversions,

 

Candace Crowe  55:08  

yeah, and it holds their gallery accountable. It holds our work accountable. To have a partner like BluShark shark that actually looks at these analytics and, you know, says, hey, what can we do about this? Or dang that is that sites rocking it exactly.

 

Bill Fukui  55:26  

What can we do to take that and apply it elsewhere, right? Yeah, so super well, hey, thank you again for all of your time and expertise. Today, I’m looking forward, actually, we’re going to be seeing you in a couple of weeks here at the floor Society meeting. So I’m looking forward to that. And if anybody’s attending that, please be sure and stop in and visit with Candice and Bragbook. I’m sure they can show you a lot of stuff at the booth there as well. Perfect. Thank you,

 

TK Crowe  56:03  

Bill, take care. Bye-bye.

 

MSD Insider  56:06  

Thanks for joining us for the MedShark Insider with Bill Fukui. Join us next week for another dive into all things medical marketing. All episodes can be streamed at www.medsharkdigital.com/medhark-insider.