MSD Insider 0:00
Welcome to med shark insider with Bill security, your expert host on all things medical, marketing, and SEO.

Bill Fukui 0:08
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of med shark Insider. Today, we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite topics in terms of marketing and sales, because I’m a sales guy, it really is about conversions and how to start turning all this expensive exposure we’re spending money on, and how can we turn that into actual engagements and leads and ultimately, consultations for our practices. So I have two longtime friends that are in an agency that I’ve worked with for many years. They’re with apex, and they are a live chat live text messaging service provider. Ken is the Director of Sales and Marketing. And David is the manager of strategic partnerships. So I’ve I’ve known this organization for many years. And I welcome you guys to the show. I know you guys are gonna bring some good stuff to me. Thanks, Bill. It’s great to be here. Happy to be super. Hey, you know, Dave, you know, we’ve, we haven’t gone back, you and I have not gone back for very long. Because I’ve always worked obviously with your predecessor that was there. With Jim, tell me a little bit about your background, kind of how you came about what your role is at Apex just so our audience can get to know you a little bit.

Dave Scheppler 1:39
Yeah, sure. So I’ve actually been with Apex chat now for over eight years. A long a long time. But But to your point, I know that Jim was was your go to guy for many years, and he was really my mentor at Apex chat, he brought me on. And I initially started off, sort of in an account manager role I kind of quickly shifted into into sales to bring in to new business. And actually, to be honest, going going back I was the other than Jim I was the the first salesperson that we had. And so that was, you know, going back to maybe 2013 or so. And I just, you know, I been with Apex chat so long, just because I it’s a great company to work for, you know, we got great people, Jim was always wonderful. can, you know, I can and I work really well together. And it’s a great service that, you know, I know works. So I built a lot of great relationships over the years with different medical practices and so forth. And, and then just recently, within the last year, as you know, unfortunately, Jim pass, I stepped into a new role of sort of that strategic partnership role, which I’m really enjoying.

Bill Fukui 2:57
Yeah, well, welcome. And, and yet, I’ve got such fond memories of Jim that go back. So I think very highly about your organization, because I think we were one of the first ones to work with you in the medical space.

Dave Scheppler 3:12
That’s exactly right. Yeah. You know,

Bill Fukui 3:15
but But yeah, I’ve always had a great history with, with, with you guys can do me a favor and just kind of introduce yourself and get a give us a little bit of background.

Kenneth Lee 3:25
Yeah. So Dave has been here with the company for over eight years, a little bit behind him. I’ve been with company for a little over six years.

Bill Fukui 3:35
Still, you know, in the grand scheme of digital marketing, six years was a long time, my friend.

Kenneth Lee 3:43
It certainly is. And I was the first like, you know, Dad was the first sales rep, I was the first marketing hire. And we’ve grown so much in the last six years, and a lot of what I’ve been doing is studying like, the trends, you know, how are consumers behaving in the marketplace? What are they needing? And then how are we? How are we as a fixture going to meet those demands for both on the consumer side? And obviously, our actual clients are going to be like the medical practices, how are they going to capitalize on some of these trends that we’re following? That we’ll get into over the course of the conversation?

Bill Fukui 4:18
Yeah, no, that’s great. You know, and one of the things I’ve always felt, why this is so important, why practices really need to embrace the digital communication and not and we can get into this a little bit later. But I want the live stuff. I want stuff that’s that’s live, and there’s a reason for that. But it’s the immediacy. I think we live in a in a an age and a time where consumers expectations. They just want stuff now and it could be at eight o’clock at night. It doesn’t matter their expectations. We’re in a digital world now. I mean, we’re doing this during the pandemic. I think that’s actually kind of accelerated this whole thing. Give me an idea when it comes to consulting with your clients, as it relates to how quickly how promptly they need to be responding and engaging with, with, with their prospect prospective, prospective, you know, patients through the web or through Pay Per Click advertising that they’re spending all this money for, shed a little bit of light on kind of what your experience on the on the timeliness of follow up.

Kenneth Lee 5:34
Maybe we’re gonna start out in Kampala, you just

Dave Scheppler 5:36
jump in? Yeah, you bet. I’ll start on that. So, you know, just to sort of set the table here, of course, Apex chat, we what we do is we provide a 24/7, fully staffed live chat and messaging service. And so in that, and that’s really our main focus is helping practices to convert more of their existing website traffic into more qualified leads and qualified prospects. And this is actually why we were always a great fit, or continue to be a great fit to partner with with many digital agencies out there. In fact, we have partnerships with close to 300, online marketing companies, I believe in, which is why we work so well with you, Bill, throughout the years is because you guys and agencies are doing so much to get that traffic, to the websites with all of your efforts and things that you do. And we’re sort of that extra piece of the puzzle to help convert it once it gets there, through our live chat. And, you know, to your point, so many people now are wanting to engage in in, you know, different have different options to do that. It’s not just a form, it’s not just a phone number. As you mentioned, it’s a completely different world. In fact, you know, we’re all working from home remotely. Now, people work different schedules that, you know, not everybody’s able to reach out from that, you know, nine to five time window. People are doing a lot of online shopping in the evenings. So, but you know, that as far as the timeliness is concerned, you know, the the reason, the value proposition that a service like ours brings is that we do staff, the chat in the messaging on behalf of the practices 24/7, so that if somebody decides to engage through a live chat or send a text message, we are there to make sure that we respond right away on behalf of the business, which is extremely important, because there are practices that you know, have tried to take chats, for example, themselves. They’ve understood that, hey, this is a trend that people are, you know, wanting to communicate that way. But, you know, most of these practices, you know, they may have somebody behind their their desk, a patient care coordinator, somebody answering my phones, the doctors and so forth. And, you know, nobody is really has that focus to be able to respond to these chats when they come in, you know, it random times. And if you’re not going to respond, you know, within a matter of seconds, you know, which is what that person is expecting, there’s a high likelihood that they’re going to say, okay, you know, nobody’s responding to me here. I’m gone. And, you know, let me potentially check out the next site. So it’s our job. We staff, the chat, we have over 200 trained chat operators, and they are there to make sure that we respond very quickly and engage with that person while they’re at their peak interest.

Bill Fukui 8:42
Right. Now, I think that’s Ken, do you have any kind of feedback on that?

Kenneth Lee 8:47
Yeah, I think the crux of what we’re trying to solve here when it because there are a lot of like, live chat platforms that, you know, they’re available to a medical practice today. And that wasn’t so much the case. 12 years ago, when Apex chat started, we were one of the first. But the the court kind of challenge that we realized very early on, is that, okay, great. We know consumers want to text messages, businesses, we know businesses know that they need to use text messaging, and text based communication, because they’re going to get more leads and more engagement that way. Those are known. But the issue, the challenge is that for most businesses, especially small, medium sized ones, who’s going to take the chat, yeah, he’s expected to actually pick that thing up when you’re meeting with patients, when you’re dealing with staff, and you’re trying to operate your business as operator. Right. And so we quickly realize that they need help. And so that’s why we created our own staff, agents employees around so we can solve that problem. And what we’re really getting at we asked about is like the immediacy right? How important is it to respond quick We, and that’s what consumers are looking for. Right? We live in a instant gratification kind of attack salutely. So people want to connect, and get answers immediately want to engage with someone immediately, right? And so that’s the problem we solve. And it kind of Dave’s point, like, a lot of businesses want to do their own chats. And what they fail to realize is that when your office closes, consumers are still looking still shopping, right? And who are they going to talk to you? Right. And that’s really where our service is so valuable, because we run 24/7. And when I was looking at the stats, recently, we found that, you know, 42% of the leads that we generate for the 10,000, over 10,000 businesses that we work for 42% of them happen when their office hours closes, when their office is no longer operational. So you’re talking about nights and weekends. You know, we were actually surprised that how the demand in people shopping, once office hours are closed. And when you really think about that, as as a consumer, you ask yourself, when you’re you’re at work, you may be shopping? Hopefully not, but after work is really when you’re thinking about Okay, should I Who should I hire as my, to get my cosmetic dentistry, you know, as an example, right. And so you’ll see a spike in traffic in chat initiated from in our, in our system, you know, after the business closes into the nighttime, minute, we see a nice spike in demand. And so what that means if you’re a business who realizes, Okay, I gotta do chat, right? I get it, I get it, I get engage. But when my office closes, how am I supposed to operationally fix that problem. And that’s really what we’re solving here at its core.

Bill Fukui 11:48
You know, I, you know, the other thing too, that I found, because I know you guys offer a lot of flexibility, when it comes to manning the chats when they’re when it shows up, and you know, who’s managing it, if you can actually, we actually had a client that was using kind of the rollover, where they’re actually going to try and take the initial chats if they’re available. Because a lot of their staff, you know, they wear multiple hats, that’s the biggest problem that you’re talking about Ken, is, you got people that are trying to do five things at once. And now they got to answer a chat. So a lot of times they can’t get to it, you do have the ability to have that roll over to your agents to take it if they’re not able to immediately take them. But what I found was, you guys actually did a better job than their own staff did.

Kenneth Lee 12:47
Yeah. When when a lot of businesses, they have the right intention and understanding that they need to do offer chat and that experience for consumers. But they fail in the execution, right? Because, you know, I always say, if you’re not going to ask for the chat in an effective way, or in a timely way, don’t don’t offer it at all, because that’s almost negative and negative experience, right? You’re gonna have oh, there’s a there’s a ability to chat somebody, okay, I’m waiting 10 minutes, and nobody ever picked up the chat. Or you never addressed me or I have these long, kind of drawn out periods where I’m just kind of sitting around waiting. And what I’m going to move as a consumer, I’m gonna move on to the next they don’t care about my business, right? Yeah. And so that rollover feature, I’ll say this, though, if you’re a business operator that can have your staff agency or your own staff and employees answer questions, they’re going to be they’re going to do a great job better than we can, right if you’re able to do that. But most businesses aren’t able to respond that quickly, and be able to drop everything they need. And what happens when you have five chats at once is your is your staff going to be able to handle that right? And so that rollover feature is really key, right? So even if you’re intending to do it yourself, but if you get caught up or your staff is in a meeting or at lunch, you know it, we’re here standing by enrolls over 200 agents to pick up the conversation. And so that so that, that customer experience or consumer experience, is there’s kind of like a safety net at the bottom that,

Bill Fukui 14:23
you know, at the flexibility, and maybe David, you can talk to this. I do I have seen you know, in terms of Google Analytics data for all of my clients, and I’ve been through a lot of websites and I look at the traffic patterns. When are people what hours of the day what days of the week? Are they visiting the site, and it’s almost universal. It doesn’t matter what kind of medical or dental practice you are. You typically see these spikes during certain day parts and certain days of the week. I historic rectly, I’ve seen more traffic during the early part of the middle of the week, like Monday through Wednesday, is being the highest volume for most practices. And then even within those days, I’m seeing those spikes like around that lunch hour between, say, 11, and maybe two, and then it kind of dies off. And, and I think to Ken’s point, I’m starting to see a spike around that. After the drive time, home and stuff, it’s around that five o’clock to eight o’clock time that I see another, you know, swell of traffic coming to the site at those times. And I think that’s what Ken’s talking about is, what about the the day parting of, of the service? And when those does the chat service have to be on 24/7? All the time? Or what, what do you recommend?

Dave Scheppler 15:56
Well, we we recommend, and I would say 99% of our clients do have it running 24/7. Okay, you know, we don’t want to ever miss out on an opportunity to engage with someone and hopefully convert them into a qualified prospect for the business. But we do have that flexibility and customization in our system. So if somebody you know, for whatever reason, has that request, you know, we’ll we’ll consult them and tell them what, what we think is the best practice, but we can certainly have the chat, you know, turned off during certain hours turned on, you know, if they’re running a particular you know, for example, if the office is going to be closed on a day, and they’re not going to have anybody to be able to respond to those leads, and they don’t want to have a bad experience for somebody, they can say, hey, we’re closing our office this day, can you turn the chat off, and that’s very simple for us to do. So for whatever reason it is, we can certainly work with them on that flexibility.

Bill Fukui 16:59
Great. You know, one of the things and this was when when we first started working with you guys, my main concern is of, because I used to do a lot of TV advertising, before we started doing the internet, we were doing a lot of TV radio. And if if I’ve got a client that’s spending, you know, advertising dollars, man, that’s got to turn into leads. And and it’s got to turn into consultations. What I found was, you know, and every practice will tell you, the most valuable leads are going to be telephone calls. Okay, telephone calls, generally turn into consultations, butts in seats much more frequently than any other kind of lead that they can generate. My concern, when I first started engaging with you guys was, is that going to compromise? If I’m running those during daytime hours, when people know my practices are open? Is that going to compromise the telephone lead generation? Because, you know, they’d rather maybe send a text message as opposed to pick up the phone and call would that would they have called otherwise, you know, was was my concern? Do you have anything on on on that? Because I certainly have my own experience. But I want to see what you guys have ever experienced. Or if you have any data or anything to support that?

Dave Scheppler 18:24
Well, I’ll just start, one thing that I can, you know, start off with is that, you know, kind of across the board, with our clients on the average with what we’ve seen, and what’s been reported back to us, our clients typically will get a 30 to 40% increase in the number of leads that they capture as a result of someone doing an online search and coming to their website after adding our service compared to whatever they were getting prior. So this is a net, this is a net increase. So that right there is telling you that this is an audience that was not otherwise calling. Yeah. And that’s who we’re capturing. So will there be a couple of people who may decide to chat rather than call? I’m sure there will be a couple of Will there be a couple who chat rather than fill out a contact form that may have otherwise, you know, probably, but the overall net effect, again, is a 30 to 40% increase in leads. So it’s definitely impactful. And one other thing I would say that you know some of your listeners may be interested in is specifically talking about phone calls, is that we also provide an option, we want to get these prospects on the phone with the business as well if we can. And so we actually had developed a functionality that we refer to as call connect, where if we’re chatting with somebody, and so maybe someone’s reluctant initially to pick up the phone, but after engaging in chat and sort of warming them up and having that engagement as you know answering a few questions. We can then say to the person in the chat, you know, would you like to speak with someone right now that can assist you further or potentially speak to a piece Care Coordinator and talk about a consultation. Right? If they say yes, we will ask them for their phone number where they can be reached, and our system will dial that number they’ll pick up and we can make an instant connection then to the practice, seamlessly. And that’s all covered in our service, we don’t charge extra for it, because we know that if we can get them on the phone with them right, then in there, that’s going to increase their conversion further.

Bill Fukui 20:22
Absolutely. I’ve always, you know, and when you guys, when I first heard about that call connect feature, as a man that that that’s a win. Yeah, that’s a win, in the sense that it may take somebody that was apprehensive to call, right, you know, that wouldn’t have called, because in many cases, I go to websites, it’s surprising how many don’t offer anything other than a form. And other than a schedule a consultation, you know, kind of call to action. There’s no lower barrier of entry that that I think practices need to offer their patients. And you’re gonna get though that 30 40% that you’re seeing that was my experience, I mean, that I wanted you to answer but that was definitely what we saw was that we saw, I actually had some that were as high as 70% increase in lead generation. But I’m just saying, on average, it was probably around that 30 40%. But what we found when we were tracking the phone calls, because we use call tracking services and stuff, we did not see an appreciable impact. Nothing really noticeable. Yeah, you’re right, maybe one or two or some, you know, but over the course of the month, we did not see a decline in the overall phone call. We just saw an increase in leads. I mean, that’s all we saw, you know, so I didn’t think it you know, for the practices that are thinking of, oh, well, if I offer this, now I’m gonna pirate from telephone calls, you know, digital lead from telephone calls, which I don’t want to do. That wasn’t our experience. That wasn’t our experience.

Kenneth Lee 22:07
Yeah, in fact, if I may add, actually, there’s a survey that we did. And we also verify this with a third party as well, that found that 79% of consumers would rather chat with a business, then pick up the phone and call initially, initially, right? Because it’s, it’s, as you mentioned, it’s far less of a of a commitment, right? Especially if you’re shopping, right? It’s, it’s less friction, it’s like, well, it’s just a chat. And I could have talked to me, like I can just ask a quick question. Yes. And that question then leads you down the funnel, the consumer down the funnel, where they are then okay, you know what, I’m comfortable making a phone call now. Yeah, the phone. So you’re creating phone calls that otherwise, their intention wasn’t initially to actually call you in the phone call?

Bill Fukui 22:56
I, and that’s absolutely my point. You know, for there was a time when we looked at, you know, tracking conversions. And the other thing is, Google Analytics, we can actually track leads through chat through text messaging. So practices that are using Google Analytics to track telephone calls and all their lead for for goal conversions and stuff on the website, they can absolutely with code, they can actually track the the chat engagements, as well as the chat leads that come through websites in their Google Analytics as well, because Google’s even recognizes there’s a need here. I mean, there is a need here, so that it’s set up for for them to actually track those types of lead conversions or those goal conversions that Google calls them. You know, in the dashboard, you can actually set it up to track those so completely agree with you

Kenneth Lee 23:54
know, actually what you speak of Google. One thing I do want to mention, because this is actually kind of fresh news that we’ve been developing. And we haven’t even informed actually, most of our client base. We’re working on that on the on the newsletter to announce this, but Google, Google, my business, as many of your listeners will know, you know, it’s it’s a great service, right? You got to claim. Right, you got to get your reviews. Right. And it’s huge for organic, right. And now, what Google is trying to do is they’re trying to make map like a place where consumers can search, right? And so they disabled the ability to message businesses and for like platforms like us to, to integrate with that messaging capability. Maybe about a year ago, somewhere around that time, maybe two, but now they recently we enable that feature. And so what we did is we integrated with Google My Business. And so for many of our clients that rely on Google My Business and to have a strategy for that, which most of them should, they can then If they’re our client, we integrate with the messaging functionality within Google My Business. So the way that works for consumers, they search for a plastic surgery surgeon in San Francisco where I live, they can, they can look in the maps and see, okay, the closest one in my area is in this neighborhood, I’m going to click on these few. And they can click on the profile, and there’s an option actually message with the business. When they click that button, one of our agents picks it up, and then they’re engaging live in real time with one of our agents, and we can capture that information.

Bill Fukui 25:34
That’s incredible. That is incredible, that you can actually program that to be on your GMB profile as a call to action. You know, element do you find, and I would say that is in really important for me, especially on mobile, give as much as that’s great on desktop, I would say 70, I’ve got practices, and especially in a market like San Francisco in these metropolitan cities, probably 70% of their traffic is mobile, and web and I am seeing that those touched to call touch to engage touch to things on the phone, huge when it comes to conversions for mobile audiences. So how does that so if I’m on there, and I have not seen this, so I’m loving the fact that we’re talking about this. So when I click on a profile, I go to the profile, it’ll be a touch to call button kind of thing. And it’ll actually show up in on the screen. And I can actually chat with somebody ask questions and stuff just like right there on my phone,

Kenneth Lee 26:52
on a percent. And and they’ll even give you like a estimated like response time based on the history of that profile. And so that’s one of the indicators rate that it’s going to look for, like, well, this business typically respond within minutes, instead of, you know, 24 hours, instead of saying, so they’ll give you an indicator based on your history. And, and what that really what we’re looking at, if you kind of zoom out, we this is a pretty big deal, because you’re now allowing the consumer to bypass the landing page. And by not even go to your website, you’re interacting with the consumer straight from from Google, Google’s platform directly. And so that kind of skips that step of leaving the website in his funnel. So you go straight from Google search, to engagement to be captured on Wednesday.

Bill Fukui 27:45
No, I think that’s, that’s great, because we do optimization for the GMDs. So it’s not just the most local, you know, profile is what shows up. There’s ways of getting those profiles to show up even though you’re not the closest, you know, practice. But I absolutely agree that there’s you know, we found the same thing with the call feature on the, we’re seeing lead gen coming from and Google allows you to track phone calls that come from your GMB. They’re not having to go to your website to get your phone number and call you they’re actually calling just from the listing. They’re there. They’re touching the touch to call phone number, and they’re calling right there. So Google, you know, ultimately, Google wants that too. But, you know, our goal is not necessarily Oh, they have to go to the website. We absolutely want that GMB, that’s why we work with other vendors to boost up their reviews engage with those reviews, and even on the GMB profiles, there’s question and answers. It’s I can’t tell you how many GMB profiles we look at or clients or prospects, that we look at their profile, no questions, you know, and no posts no information. They’re just it’s just sitting there like a, you know, a signpost in the middle of a desert. They’re not doing anything with it, and they’re not. And even when I go into their reviews, they’re not engaging when somebody posts a five star review. They don’t respond to them, you know, and things like that. I think, you know, I mean, this is Google’s form of social media today. You know, they no longer have the Google Plus social media platform that that was kind of a abysmal failure for them. But that doesn’t mean they’ve given up on you know, how to connect with their users and how to engage with on a more social level. And I think that what you’re talking about and being able to engage with that profile, man, it it is like its own social media profile and communication. And where in many cases it will bypass a website, which I think is great. The end of the day, it’s about connecting with those people.

Dave Scheppler 30:10
Similarly, kind of a segues and social media, you know, we also do integrate with Facebook Messenger as well, which is another place where if somebody doesn’t have to go to the website, but we can engage directly within Facebook messengers platform as well. And we’ve had some clients who were big on paid advertising through Facebook. And they had previously had a, their call to action was the contact form in their Facebook paid ads. And they replaced that with the messenger button with us manning the chats on their behalf. And they did a case study with us. And I think it was a three or 4x increase in lead conversions after they integrated our service into Facebook Messenger for their business

Bill Fukui 30:52
know that, again, a whole new thing I didn’t know about. So I’m glad, I’m glad we’re having this conversation. Because I’m, you know, I’ve got to tell my clients to start using some of these other features that you guys are offering because I wasn’t even aware of those. But that’s, you know, social media and, as you know, with with cosmetic and plastic surgery, dermatology, cosmetic dentistry, the social you know, marketplace, that’s where this thing is just blown up for their practices and who their target audiences, especially for the body contouring the breast dog liposuction, demographics, that millennial audience, holy cow, the social medias is definitely where it’s at. I’m so glad that you guys offer something on that platform.

Kenneth Lee 31:47
Like a like a plastic surgery like these body sculpting is an example, I can see a practice running ads with maybe testimonials, or maybe like have answering questions on how body sculpting works, or any kind of like concerns, create a video, use that as an ad to promote it, and then have a call to action radio to learn more. And that when they click on that button, after consuming the video, it then integrates with a quick chat. And we’re now talking with that consumer within Facebook’s platform, and then capturing their information and passing along to the to the practice. And again, we’re really what we’re talking about here is what you what you kind of identified is things, these conversations and these decisions are happening on the social platforms happening not on your website, they’re happening so you can capture them, and you can engage with them, where the consumers are living. That’s the name of the game in this in this world today for marketing,

Bill Fukui 32:48
ya know, and I love the fact that you guys are engaged with that audience and looking at, you know, those platforms, and how you can how it can, you know, help practices start turning on? I mean, I’ve got some practices that have huge followings and have they they actually have a full time person Manning, you know, their social media, I mean, a full time person. I’m like going, you never spent that much money on SEO and on the website yet, here you go got a full time person doing this on the social media idea, Oh, I feel a little you know, like, you know, the leftovers kind of thing. But let me ask on the, when you’re doing the the chat services, I’ve seen services where they’re charging a flat, this is how much you pay a month for this service. And it’s that regardless of how many chats you get, or whatnot, or the quality of the chats or anything like that, it’s just a flat fee. How do you guys, I know how you guys price things. But why don’t you guys share your pricing model, and really the rationale behind it?

Dave Scheppler 34:08
Sure, I’d be happy to talk about that. So going way back our pricing structure and philosophy has always been where we are a pay for performance service. And our clients have always typically really very much enjoyed this model. Where we have no monthly fee to our service we have you know, in fact, we have no long term commitments to our service, it’s month to month, we try to make it as as simple as possible for someone to step in and try our service. You know, sort of when we explain it to them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, you know, no brainer over the last eight years. Why wouldn’t I want to try that? So it works is we don’t charge for every chat. We only charge if a lead is what week Consider qualified and a qualified lead for us at Apex chat would mean that the person who initiates a chat or text message or Facebook Messenger, that we have to get their name, we have to get contact information, they must be seeking a service or procedure that’s in fact provided by that business. And they also need to be within a geographic area as well. So for example, you know, when it comes to medical, it typically it’s, you know, are is the person willing and able to come in to the, to their office where it’s located. And is, well, it has to be a new prospect. So if it’s somebody that is reaching out, because they’re trying to reschedule an appointment, perhaps or maybe they’re coming in for a follow up visit to a procedure that they had recently had, that’s a situation where we still will chat and interact with these visitors on behalf of the business. So since we’re still providing this service to them at no extra cost, because those interactions we don’t bill for, we’re still going to pass along the information to them. But we’re only billing them for new revenue, opportunity, new prospects, where we’ve gotten that key information that I mentioned. And that’s it. So. So at the end of the month, when we build our clients they’re looking at, you know, that that per lead price times the number of qualified leads, and that’s their bill, it’s very cut and dry. What makes that nice is that, you know, if there is a, sometimes we’ll start working with a business who’s just getting started, and they’re just starting to, you know, invest in their online marketing, and so forth. So that business based on if they’re not getting a ton of traffic at that moment, they may get, you know, maybe we’ll just get them a couple of leads in the first month or so, okay, well, that’s all they’re going to pay for. So there is that there is no flat monthly fee that they’re going to be paying. And as they go further, and as their traffic ramps up. And as they start to see the benefits of these other things that they’re doing, you know, whether it’s the SEO, or the pay per click campaigns, and so forth, the chat actually acts as another measuring stick almost, because you’ll also see those chat leads start to increase as well as that traffic comes. But at any rate, our service has always been a pay for performance model, I will tell you build that there are situations because we’re, you know, we’re a really easy company to work with. And we like to work with our clients. So sometimes if we get a client that is, you know, getting a tremendous amount of volume, and they say, you know, it would really be helpful for us, if we could just budget in a certain, you know, amount per month that Ryan pay, right, then we will say to them, okay, let’s take a look at the last few months, see what your volumes been. And let’s come up with a nice flat rate. And, you know, we may give them a little bit of a discount involved as well. And we’ll do it that way for them. So we are we will work with them.

Bill Fukui 37:57
Okay. And I like that model only because now I’m on basing it on a history of, of what my leads are, and et cetera. And I have some history with you, as opposed to, you know, this is just regardless of your history, you’re just past this, this amount, every run, you know, I always felt a little apprehensive, you pointed out one thing about new practices. And as valuable as this is for these practices that get lots of traffic, lots of visibility, I would beg to argue that your services are actually more important to the newer practices, because they can’t afford to keep throwing money at stuff without getting an immediate return on the investment. Right. They can’t float investment marketing investments for too long, whereas a busy practice that’s got a ton of referrals and a diversified lead gen to you know, marketing. They, you know, the these newer practices, they gotta eat what they kill, and they got a limited budget. And they need to squeeze every nickel every patient that comes as an opportunity into there because they spending this money and they they need the return faster than a lot of other practices. So I would beg to say, because of it’s a pay for performance model, if they’re only getting two or three, you know, that they would have wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Heck for what it costs you Oh, you’re crazy not to do this. You know. So even on a lot of newer practices that I work with, actually I got a new practice out in New York City who’s going to be coming on board. I’m telling him you you’ve got to do this. You there’s no exception, because we need to squeeze every opportunity out that visits that website and you’re only paying when it turns into an actual all qualified lead.

Kenneth Lee 40:03
I couldn’t agree more, I think I think the way our pricing model works, really is advantageous for a new practice. Because if you actually get zero, you’re below zero, right? You’re below zero. And so there’s really scales with you. So there’s really no reason why you wouldn’t, you know, go with a service, that’s paper performance, because the risk is there. And it scales with you as your, as they’ve said, as you grow, grow. So does your leads do do a mix chat? Now, one thing I think that’s under under sold on r&d, then is because we charge on what we feel is the most value is in terms of delivering qualified leads that can turn into a patient for for the practice, right. But what also happens, a lot of the chats are actually current cut patients are looking to reschedule an appointment, or have a question for the staff in the middle of the night. And we actually take that conversation, and there’s a full transcript that we pass along to the office anyways. And of course, we don’t charge for that, because we’re paid for performance, right? And so you actually get that service for free as a as a practice, you get to in the morning, look at those transcripts. Okay, who do I need to prioritize, to get back to the to answer some of these questions. And for a small practice, this is very invaluable, because now you have a bigger brand. Even though you’re starting out, you have the kind of awareness and that kind of branding that you’re putting out there in the world that I care about your business, that I’m going to have someone standing by 24/7, to make sure that they’re able to engage with you, my my patient or my future patient. And that kind of a lot of gives you the illusion that you’re a much bigger company than maybe you are when you’re starting off of because it takes a big company that has 24/7 person standing by right.

Bill Fukui 42:01
Yeah, absolutely makes a big difference. The brand is very different. Feeling is different. Exactly. Yeah.

Dave Scheppler 42:11
One other thing I would also even add to your point bill of like really squeezing those dollars is that, you know, we do offer both, you know, managing the messaging through your traditional live chat and web based chat, as well as, you know, the text messaging as well as people like to prefer to text? Well, again, because we’re pay per performance. And there has to be certain criteria that’s met, if somebody does decide to engage through a SMS text message utilizing our service. And let’s say they send one message, and for whatever reason, they’re distracted and or they they abandon us, at the very least, we’re going to forward that mobile number that we’ve just captured to the practice. And we can’t charge them for it because we didn’t get the other criteria. But guess what, there’s a mobile number that then you can follow up with and say, Hey, I noticed you reached out, you know, were you still interested in getting some information? And that’s a freebie.

Bill Fukui 43:08
Yeah. Great point. And I will say, for practices that haven’t turned or haven’t been able to look into it, converting their mainline into a text messaging line. I guarantee it people are trying to text message even your your main line sometimes, because that’s just the world we live in today. So I love the fact that you’re addressing the text messaging stuff, because especially with today’s millennials, my kids that I mean, even growing up, I can be in the next room, I can be at the dinner table with them. And their text messaging me like on hey, we could talk here, you know, it’s okay. Yeah, but they lived that they just developed this mentality that they couldn’t communicate as effectively by doing a text message as they can have in a conversation which I disagree with. But at the end of the day, perception is reality. If that’s how they perceive digital communication to be then we got to live in that world.

Kenneth Lee 44:17
Yeah. You know, there’s there was a study that I read, this is about a year and a half ago. So maybe this has changed a little bit since then. But this study, surveyed many consumers, many businesses and consumers the same time and actually have a number handy. 89% of consumers prefer to be able to text message of business 89% Right. Yeah. And only 48% as of a year and a half ago, of businesses have that capability to receive a text message. So there’s a demand, but there was a gap in terms of businesses catching up and so if you’re one of those business is that, as you said, don’t have a capability to take on a text messaging from when new consumers or patients, you’re kind of missing kind of the expectation in this day and age from, from from consumers.

Bill Fukui 45:12
Yeah, I love that. Great statistics, great statistics, I believe every one of those, to be honest, I believe every one of those,

Dave Scheppler 45:21
you know, one of our longtime clients in plastic surgery. In the San Francisco Bay Area, actually, their medical, or excuse me, their director of marketing painted a really good picture of a reason why our services is is effective as well. She said, you know, imagine, you know, that there’s, you know, some a woman who’s sitting at the DMV trying to kill some time. And that’s the moment where she’s able to pick up her cell phone and start doing some searches. And, and, you know, maybe she was thinking of, you know, something, she actually says, like a breast augmentation or something. Is that is that a situation where she’s going to call and talk about that a bunch of people at the DMV? Or would she rather discreetly, you know, do some messaging. And so again, that’s it, there’s different things to think about as to why a service like this, or you know, just offering it in one way or another, it allows someone to message your business through texting or chatting, because, you know, there’s a lot of reasons why somebody may not pick up the phone, in their current, you know, ad or whatever,

Bill Fukui 46:31
I think just kind of thinking, I love the idea that you have to think creatively, in personal situations, personal interactions, and really look at, look at what you do. How do you leverage your time? How do you leverage your, quite frankly, your phone in many cases, in terms of how you’re communicating with friends, socially, with businesses, etc? You know, this is it’s no different. I mean, you really have to think in terms of those things and be willing to try them. Just try them. I’m telling you, we did that with with you guys years ago. And I said, you know, and this is at a time when people didn’t even understand what chat was. They didn’t know what this thing was. And there was a time when it wasn’t as effective, mainly because the learning curve, the consumer learning curve, wasn’t there. Right? It is there now. Okay. It’s not only there, they expect it. Yeah, they expect to be able to do it. And if you’re not, then I think it kind of goes to Ken’s point is your brand is is diminished. If you’re not doing these types of things. While you’re you’re one of those, you know, practices that that’s really not up to date on the latest and greatest, you know, and I think every practice wants to, you know, project the image that they are, this is a way of making sure that they, they project that image. So, hey, guys, I appreciate all your guys time today. I mean, I’ve learned a lot. And I’m actually going to be following up with you on a couple of the features that I’ve actually learned about to make sure that my clients are using those things. Do me a favor, for practices that want to look into using digital, you know, lead gen conversion elements, like live chat or text messaging, how can they get information from you guys as their, you know, your website? What’s the best way for them to connect with you guys?

Dave Scheppler 48:34
Yeah, so a couple of ways. I mean, you know, certainly, they could come to our website, obviously, at Apex chat.com. They can calm they are free to contact me directly, and I will speak to them My email address is D like David Shepler, s ch, E, PP le AR, and at Apex chat.com. They can call me we’ve created actually a landing page that maybe we could provide that link associated with with you, Bill, because actually, we’re more than happy to anybody who contacted us as a result of this podcast, to give them a discount that’s coming as, as a result of take care of. Net shark and Bill so and we’re more than happy to do that. So you know, reach out, let us know, let us know that you heard that you saw us on this podcast or you know that you’re coming from Bill and med shark and we’ll we’ll get you a discount and treat you really well.

Bill Fukui 49:39
Super. Hey guys. Thank you again and look forward to continue working with you guys.

Kenneth Lee 49:45
Likewise, thanks for having us.

Bill Fukui 49:46
Have a great weekend guys.

Kenneth Lee 49:49
okay.
MSD Insider 49:51
thanks for joining us for the med shark insider with Bill Fukui join us next week for another dive into all things medical marketing All episodes can be streamed at WWW dot med Shark digital.com/med Shark Dash insider

Transcribed by https://otter.ai