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

Bill Fukui 0:08
Hello, everybody. Welcome again to another episode of med shark Insider. And today I’ve got one of my favorite consultants, who I’ve known for a number of yours that works with plastic surgery practices. And where I focus mainly on marketing, she actually has a great respect for what we do. But she brings a whole nother element to the business development, business management. And so today I’ve got with me, Kara McClanahan, and she’s going to kind of talk to us about some of the pitfalls and also some some of the opportunities really missed opportunities I think that practices have all the time and they don’t even I mean, it’s right there. They just don’t realize it. Sometimes it’s the most obvious things that get missed, but they make the biggest difference. So today, I’ve got Kara. So Kara, welcome to the show.

Kara McClanahan 1:04
Thank you for having me, Bill, I’m super excited to join you and share what pearls I can with our listeners and followers.

Bill Fukui 1:11
Well, super, will do me a favor, just give a little background. I know, I think you’re one of the most knowledgeable people that I work with. And obviously when we meet at meetings, we have great conversations about timely things and stuff. give the audience a little bit of background kind of how you got into consulting. I mean, not every, not everybody is cut out to be a consultant. But how did you kind of what’s the path to get here?

Kara McClanahan 1:40
Yeah, so I’ve been in practice management and practice administration for over 20 years now. And I started out as an office manager and found my path into the cosmetic industry about 14 years ago, for last 12 years, I’ve worked exclusively with cosmetic practices, and a ladder several years exclusively with plastic surgery practices. And I think what got me into consulting is that I always loved educating. So as a practice manager, my management style was education, and really empowering my team and educating my team. And that translated to how we did things in the practice as far as marketing and educating our patients. And, you know, I think I had an opportunity early on, and I listened to other consultants, consultants have been around for years, right in every industry, and we take what pearls, we can and adapt that to our business, and turn that into hopefully a tangible resource for our practices. And I realized early on, as I listen to a lot of other consultants, wow, not only do I do that on a day to day basis, with my team, with my patients, but also I kind of wish I had a consultant on me, alongside of me in my practice, not just a consultant that would come in and tell me how I’m supposed to do things, according to their view, but really, really look at my practice as if it were their own. And, you know, help guide me with what they see out there. As consultants, we’re in hundreds of practices a year. And there’s no one size fits all solution for what we do as managers in our practice. And so I kind of took the best parts of what I learned in consulting and said, I can do that. But I think I can do that better, or at least in a different way to really help practice managers elevate not only their own management style, so when I’m working alongside practices as a consultant, I look at the practices as if this were my own practice, and I help guide practice managers, and the way that I knew I needed when I was a practice manager. So I think that’s what makes me a little bit different. But I also I learn every single day, just because I’m a consultant, I’m not always the one teaching, I’m learning every single day, when I’m in practices, when I’m interacting, whether it’s at a meeting at on sites or doing webinar trainings with my practices, I learned from them as well. So it allows me to adapt my consulting style to feed back through other practices, you know, what they need most. And one of the areas that I worked very heavily on in most of my practices on the marketing, because again, there’s no one size fits all solution. And as practice managers, they don’t get to see what’s going on out there in the industry every single day out there at meetings or have the ability to speak to professionals like yourself to gain the knowledge that we do as consultants and can share with them.

Bill Fukui 4:36
Well, that’s great. You know, there are, as you kind of pointed out, there’s, there’s a number of consultants out there, and there’s different styles of how they consult, some of them are you know, I hate to say it, some of them are more dictatorial that this is how we do it. This is my way. And this is and I think, and I think what the thing I like about you is you we’ve actually worked together, when you were in the inner practice, your style of really kind of molding your perspectives around a given situation or a given practice or a given opportunity, I think is unique. Give me an idea. If you were a practice, that’s, that’s needing help. And there’s a lot of consultants out there, a lot of and many of them have strengths, other strengths that others don’t. What would you say? What would you say would be a good way of helping a practice? Identify a maybe a consultant that that’s a better fit for them? What did how would they go about finding a consultant that would be a good fit for them?

Kara McClanahan 5:53
Well, I mean, clearly, experience speaks volumes, that across consultants, there’s a lot of different experiences that we all have, I would say, first and foremost, look at what your needs of your business are. And, and try and identify or partner with a consultant that really understands your area of business. There’s a lot of consultants that are stellar at marketing, or finance. And you’re gonna find a few that are really good at all of it. But I always say if it’s your job, to teach me my job, get better know how to do my job, and vice versa, as a consultant, as a consultant, I can’t help partner with a practice, if I don’t understand their needs. And so I think that there are consultants with varying levels of experience. You know, one of the things that I have an amazing team that I’ve worked with for years, and one of the things I’ve always said is what makes us unique is we’ve all been in every single different position within the practice. So not only have we been practice administrators, we’ve been patient care coordinators, we’ve been marketing directors, I have sat in every single chair in an ascetic practice, whether it’s because I was the administrator, and I really felt like I needed to know that job, or whether, you know, again, other members of my team started as patient care coordinators. And so I think to have the experience from inside the practice is huge. And I think the other thing is consultants that understand that our industry is probably one of the most dynamic industries out there, certainly the most exciting, in my opinion, I’m passionate about aesthetics. But it changes. Often, the advice I give a practice today might be a totally different set of advice. Six months from now, I might be telling you to stop doing what I told you to do six months ago, and especially when it comes to our marketing, right, everything is so dynamic, with our pandemic, with everything else that’s happened, we’ve had to pivot everything we do in our practices. And so I think that that’s another important key when you’re selecting a consultant, because I know consultants out there that have been given the same advice for 20 years. And if your practice hasn’t evolved and changed in 20 years, you might have a great relationship with that consultant, you’re kind of working on an old school practice philosophy. So my my biggest piece is our experience. And having someone that has the adaptability and understand understands that fluidity and changes in our market. Yeah,

Bill Fukui 8:13
I think you’ve touched on on two things. Number one, it is having been in each one of those seats in a in a practice, especially if you’re doing in, in office consulting and training with with team members, there is a certain amount of empathy, and being able to talk their language, you know, to talk to staff, and not be necessarily an authoritative, you know, consultant, but one that’s, you know, we’re here, you said, we are together, I get you I know what you’re going through, I’ve been there. Okay. And after almost that exchange of experience with them, they’ll they’ll talk to you about well, this is what I’m you know, and you’re absolutely there’s a connection that you can have having been in those seats. So I, I think from a consulting and especially when you’re dealing with staff and the dynamics of staff, I think I think that’s that’s invaluable. You change, I think the the change, and adapting to changes in the marketplace. But I think more importantly, I think what consultants many times don’t do, or even marketers don’t do, they don’t adapt to the changes in the consumer. But the consumer is what’s changing as much as we’d like to think technology and all these other things are changing. I’m going to tell you there was I mean, when we first started working together, you know, millennials were the demographic that didn’t really do much they were in fact they weren’t even at a point where they were making a lot of income. Millennials were quite emerging into the job market and stuff. Now those some of those millennials may In air in positions of power, and they are driving our

Kara McClanahan 10:03
practices

Bill Fukui 10:04
are driving our economy, and they are becoming a larger part of the financial picture of what our industry is made up of. Whereas, you know, when we first started working weird, you know, millennials were something that you got to pay attention to. But that dynamic has changed. Now, consumers have changed dramatically. And I think the consulting side of it, and how you’re dealing with those people, you know, it makes a huge difference in terms of the advice and recommendations that you’re giving them. So kudos to the pandemic and the things that are, you know, the timeliness of that with, with what’s going on around us? How does the practice, because I know you’re a big, you know, focus on planning, you know, in terms of activities, calendaring, your marketing, being more disciplined in your marketing, how do you, you know, in light of, you know, the pandemic, and changes that practices have to deal with almost on a daily, weekly basis, on what they can and cannot do, or whatnot? How do you manage the planning of marketing? Because I know, you’re also big on the marketing side? What would you be advising clients today, in terms of, you know, planning for 2021? How would you be, you know, addressing, you know, setting those things up with your vendors and such.

Kara McClanahan 11:36
I think a couple things are key. So for one, you, you set it, right, I am big into planning, one of the things that I walk into a practice, and I hear, you know, tell me about your marketing, and it feels like it’s spaghetti on the wall, right? At the end of the day, they’re they’re throwing things out there, you know, on the 28th of each month, they’re planning what’s going to happen the next month. And so one of the things that I really get focused helps my practice and focus on is the planning. But in our current environment, hey, it’s hard, right? So you have to have a backup plan, and you have to have a backup to the backup plan. And make sure that your marketing agenda is as such that it can be a little bit fluid. So, you know, one of the practices I’m working with right now is already planning into q3 and q4 2021. And we know that we have no idea what’s going to happen in q3 and q4 2021. But we know that if we have an outline or a plan, and we have a backup plan, and we we set our marketing, tasks, plans, campaigns up as such that they can be interchangeable If changes need to happen. So we’re seeing that in California, where things are starting to right now shut back down again, where everyone had all these amazing end of Year Holiday marketing plans, paperclip campaigns, social strategies, and the worst thing we can do is stop. Right? We don’t want to stop marketing our businesses, because we will get through this. But we want to have a pivot, we want to have a change. And so I say plan now, for that change. Think about what those changes can be and make sure that we don’t stop marketing just because we don’t know what to do. So we really focus on what can we do, and pivot your services or pivot your your marketing plans to focus on education and practice awareness, rather than marketing or advertising services? Because we know that that’s where the biggest pitfalls were, when the pandemic had us last year when it came to some marketing plans is we had all these great campaigns built around the services because we know that we’re a very seasonal industry, right? We do laser hair removal in the fall, we do these certain things and certain times. And so change your marketing plans to be adaptable. And again, have have that backup plan. That’s kind of the biggest theme that I’m running with most of my practices right now is let’s create a solid plan as if nothing’s going to change from today. But let’s have a plan for what what could possibly happen. And focus on awareness, marketing awareness, or I’m sorry, brand awareness, practice bringing awareness not just focused on services and surgeries, because those are the dynamics that are less flexible if we have to change our marketing plan.

Bill Fukui 14:28
You know, I think the planning side of it and I think plans help you stay just discipline help you stay focused. You’re saying as opposed to throwing spaghetti against the wall and whatever sticks kind of you know, we will kind of run with it. I think the planning part of it is helps practices and physician stay stay the course. As opposed to this, you know, panic I think a lot of practices didn’t have a plan sort of panicked, you know, during the, when this first kind of came around, and they did, they stopped everything they just pulled

Kara McClanahan 15:09
out. We didn’t know what to do. So let’s just stop.

Bill Fukui 15:12
And then, you know, now that we’re you’re talking, you know, to practices, there are some practices that are saying, you know, we actually did better this year than we did last year, it’s surprising how that can happen is beyond me, you know, but there are practices out there that said, Man, we actually killed it, relative to what we did last year. And, you know, in light of all the COVID and restricted seeing patients, no surgeries, whatever. We were so booked up when we, you know, when we were able to start seeing patients and such, the pipeline was so filled. But I found that those were the practices that didn’t stop me.

Kara McClanahan 15:57
You know, that’s right. That’s absolutely right. And then the other thing is to focus on your marketing on what needs to be marketed. So again, you know, that’s another thing that I work with my practices on strongly is, we have a tendency to market the low hanging fruit, right, that easy things that are fun to market. But those are the things that are going to, you know, that we’re going to be booked out, or those are the services that we’re selling anyway. And one of the things that I noticed with the processes that I was working with through the pandemic, is again, yes, the practices that didn’t just stop marketing, but also change strategy to focus on, what do we want to market versus what’s easy to market? What have we neglected? And again, that goes back to our brand awareness that goes back to looking at the services that, you know, maybe we brought on a new machine right before the pandemic, and we have all that capital equipment expense, and our machine hasn’t been used, because we were closed down. How do we promote that? You know, I think that we saw a mix of pent up demand from our practices being closed, along with people having time to do research, and beyond the internet, and all of these things, who were thinking about services before, because we saw a lot of new patients to our practices. And most of my practices, like you said, Bill, actually, were close to even if not ahead from last year, even healthy after having to close their practices. And the result was continued marketing, but also re energized marketing. We were closed, we went gangbusters once we opened our doors and get patients in the door. And we actually said our pipeline greater than had we just kept our doors open.

Bill Fukui 17:36
Well, I think the other thing too, is I think even the attitude of staff, the attitude of staff, the energy of staff, knowing that, wow, we were now having to the I think it elevated as opposed to the day to day we always do this. And you know, before the pandemic, it was almost routine. Now all of a sudden, people know that, you know, the situation has changed, we’re in a different city, it kind of elevated the train, you know, people are working harder, because we know we have to today, we didn’t take as many things for granted. So I think, the attention to detail, the follow up with patients, all of those things were so much more there, they were more focused, you know, to be honest, they were just more focused. And I did see, you know, and actually I’m putting together an article where I did do Google Trends, where you’re talking about consumers, that there’s pent up demand, or there’s pent up desires that weren’t able, but that doesn’t mean that that those interests stopped. In fact, they actually did as much if not more searching for those, you know, for that information, when they couldn’t see a surgeon or go into consultations. So I did, you know, look at Google Trends and you’re big on the the tracking and stuff like that. Yeah, I did look at the search volume for breast augmentation all the high, you know, dollar luxury, what they would call luxury services. But even like rhinoplasty, facelifts, all of those, you saw a, obviously a big dip right around March, when you know, this whole pandemic kind of thing was in, everything was shutting down. But it didn’t take but maybe a month. And all sudden I started seeing search traffic for those for those services go right back up. And for the past probably six or seven months. They’ve been right at pre COVID levels in terms of search activity and interest that hasn’t waned. So I think the practices they didn’t bury their head in the sand, you know, absolutely, you know, took advantage of that because There was less people in the marketplace.

Kara McClanahan 20:03
That’s right. And you know, most of our practices don’t even know about Google Trends, they don’t even know about how to use some of these tools and partner with our marketing partners to keep these efforts up. So that’s why I love doing things like this. So that we can help educate our the smarter are practices are with all the tools and resources that are available to them, the better they get at leveraging their marketing partners like med shark and their consultants, to really, really leverage the resources to their businesses, because I use Google Trends all the time, every single time I go into practice, and I’m looking at their market, because let’s be honest, I don’t live in every city of the United States, right? Every every city that I go to every practice that I’m in, is in a different area. And they have different, you know, patient faces, based on a lot of different variables or in different markets. And so I teach them how to use things like Google Trends and other analytics to determine what are consumers looking for, you know, we touched on the importance of continued marketing. And we’ve touched on the importance of marketing the right things and brand awareness, but we didn’t talk about and you started to talk about the importance of marketing, what your, what your consumers are looking for. And that’s by using things like Google Trends and other analytics to determine what is your general market looking for? And why I should be marketing now?

Bill Fukui 21:19
Yeah, you know, one other, you know, topic that I get a lot when when I actually talk to practices in terms of how they’re, you know, how their marketing is doing, one of the things that they say, Oh, well, we’re not getting enough leads, or we’re not, you know, we’re not getting high quality leads, is what I get a lot of, I get, oh, well, you know, we’re marketing the right things, or we’re trying to market the right geographic areas, and so, but the leads that we’re getting are not really that high quality. And then as a marker, I’m always kind of skeptical of, you know, the quality of leads to some degree, sometimes it’s the quality of the intake, or what the doctor is actually hearing, even though they’re seeing, you know, big, you know, oh, we generated this many leads. But when it comes to doctor’s consultation schedule, he’s like, Dan, and so that it boils down to that we’re not we’re seeing activity on the phone or in the emails and stuff, but it’s not. And I’m not trying to say that, Oh, every marketing companies, you know, getting you the best high quality leads, you’re fumbling them. But I think there’s a happy medium, how do you go about going into a practice to identify, you know, the the marketing results that they’re getting to the, you know, or is it more of the, or combination of both the staff in terms of how they’re managing those leads, following up with those leads? How do you go, what do you look for when you’re when you’re doing consulting with a practice? And that is an issue the leads are coming in? But we’re not seeing consultations? Yep.

Kara McClanahan 23:09
So I always say it is twofold. So it’s definitely a combination. So one thing that I think is the most common challenge in practice is they’re not tracking all of their leads. So they’re only looking at like you said, I’m not seeing consoles on my schedule. So their end result in their mind is the leads must be Brad, because my, there’s no consoles on my schedule, or we’re not, we’re not booking things. And so I say, Well, let’s talk about that, you know, let’s look at the leads you are getting. And unfortunately, even though I know every consultant and webinar and training company out there says, You’ve got to track your leads, and you’ve got to manage your leads properly. That’s still the number one challenge and practices, most practices are not tracking their leads properly. So you have to be tracking your leads 100% of the time from 100% of the resources. And if you really truly have a low number of leads, then the challenge is external, right if you haven’t got them to the door yet. And you really truly have a low number of leads, once we’ve identified how you’re tracking them what sources you’re tracking, to ensure that you’re tracking and properly. If the low lead volume is low, it truly is a marketing challenge. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a marketing company. Again, we need to look at what we’re marketing to how our marketing where we’re marketing, right, all of those resources. But if you have a good number of leads, and you’re getting those patients or potential patients to the door, but we’re not getting in the door, we have an internal problem. And it’s how our leads are being managed not just by the patient care coordinator, not just by the front desk, but every single step along the way. From that first phone call from that birth email from that chat box on your website. You have to have processes to make sure that you’re tracking and managing as well as following up on these. And I think that that’s where I spent a lot of my time focusing when I first started engaging with Pete practices. Because I want to understand their patient volume. And so that lead management process is huge. So tracking properly, and making sure that you have processes and protocols to capture, engage, and really, really build a relationship with those leads, before they get on the schedule and continue that once they get on the schedule. Because again, doctors just seen his schedule. And that’s the end result of good processes. That’s the end result of great marketing, you have a full patient schedule. But there’s a lot of things that happen from the time we put an ad out, or we have an Instagram story or whatever else we’re doing to market our practice, the end result is the console. And there’s so much that happens in between. And I think that there’s a lot of gaps in processes, there’s a lot of refinement that I do working with my practices to ensure that they have best protocols to really, really nurture their leads, and build relationships that convert patients from those not so qualified leads. And let’s be honest, all practices get tire kickers, but nobody calls or sends an email if they’re not slightly interested. Right. So they might be tire kickers, but they’re interested in what you have to offer, or they would not have picked up the phone and call you, they would have not submitted that email, they would have not chatted asking about the price of the service. So they might be less qualified or top funnel leads. But they’re still leads nonetheless. And we continue to nurture those relationships, and have processes in place for everything in between. I think that’s the biggest challenge right now is getting people to understand it isn’t market schedule console, there’s a lot of things that happen in between,

Bill Fukui 26:38
in between, you know, one of the things that I you know, I know happens during that in between period of time, is consumers don’t stop just because they either visited a website or even contacted, you got maybe even scheduled a consultation. That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped doing, you know, their homework, they probably are checking providers, they’re shopping, other other practices. But they’re also doing things like reviews, I think reviews, they’re checking out, if they booked a surgery, what’s the name of your surgeon? Oh, and then they’re going out and looking, you know, at the reviews for the practice and things like that. I’d like to get from, you know, from you. How do you because I can’t control a lot of what happens in the practice, as the you know, as the web marketing agency, how do you get at the end of the day, reviews are so important? How do you get staff and the practice starting to see this as and take the actions that they need to start building up an online reputation? Because it is somewhat of a popularity contest? I hate to say it, but reviews have kind of become that they’ve become so important. How do you consult or direct practices on the best strategies or best ways to either monitor, manage and get more, you know, reviews from those happy patients?

Kara McClanahan 28:15
Yep. So I think it’s all of those things you have to be doing right. So you have to be able to monitor them, you have to be able to manage them and use them to your benefit, but you have to get them first. And so there’s a lot of different things that play into it. So a lot of our marketing partners have seen like a review tracker or review generators that are prompt to our patients right to request reviews. Those are great, I would say probably about 30% of the reviews from the practices I have worked with. And that’s our lowest percentage. It’s a guesstimate off the top of my head the moment that about 30% of the reviews and practices are generated from things like that. But the other part is really just letting your patients know reminding them, whether it’s through social channels in person that reviews make a difference. When you were looking into having a service, you read our reviews, and it helped you decide that we were the right practice for you. So pay it forward and share your experience with others. Also soliciting for reviews just internally to let us know how we’re doing. Let us know what we did to make your experience in our practice stellar, let us know if it was less than stellar what we could have done differently, and getting patients to understand that their feedback is valuable. So whether it’s post visit emails, which AI or text messages actually, I prefer and patients are most responsive to. We have fun review cards and one of the practices that I work with, we call them let’s get social cards because it also lets the patients know about their social channels, and all the different ways that they can review the practice or read reviews on the practice for our consoles. Right. We have consoles coming into office all the time and if you’re are proud of your reviews share that, you know, maybe they’ve been online and already been reading your reviews, but let’s just make sure they have and then that’ll prompt them to remember how important reviews are after they’ve had an experience. So we have little postcards at the front desk that one side has all of our social channels. And the other side has information about how you can leave us a review a little QR codes to make it easy, it pops up on their phones. And a lot of my practices that utilize physical tangible tools like that actually see a very high success rate and increased review numbers. And I’ll tell you, for our providers, remember how important your engagement with your patients is, and nothing’s more valuable than when a patient is sitting in your, you know, treatment room or a post surgery checkup and says, Oh, my God, Dr. Mess, I am so happy with my result. Well, Dr. Smith should be really comfortable saying, You know what, Kara, I’m so happy that you’re happy with the result. And I would love for you to share your experience. When physicians or providers ask for reviews, they actually get the highest number of response. And patients are willing to do it all day long. I’m not a huge fan of things like you know, review incentives, because I want them to share their experience and to understand how it helps build our business or our reputation and other patients experiences. So I’m not a huge fan of review programs that incentivize, but I love awareness. I love letting patients know how important it is to have their review and feedback. And again, being a longtime Practice Administrator myself, I want to know what my practice is doing right and how I can do even better, right. So that personal reach out and having ways to connect with your patients. But a lot of the tools, again, our marketing partners have a lot of read tools to help us with reviews. And so I think leverage those, those are important, they make our jobs easier. But having things in place, we also want to educate staff and our team members about how important the reviews are. And it doesn’t matter if it’s just a provider, you know, the front desk, the other assistants in the office, other aesthetic providers, their role is just as important. And so they should be just as engaged, and really educating our patients and really, you know, hyping up getting reviews as well make it part of the culture and your practice.

Bill Fukui 32:29
I think that’s the, that’s the word I was looking for culture, you know, and you and I said earlier, this COVID and being shut down. It’s kind of elevated that, that that culture in this, you know, one of the things that we I think practices take advantage of or kind of lose sight of the fact is that as much as we do in marketing, this is still the healthiest practice are driven by word of mouth, and reputation. Right? Still the healthiest practices, and quite honestly, they get the highest quality patients, the more compliant items, you know, through that. And reviews are not, I don’t see reviews as just being Oh, it’s marketing and as my reputation. So new, new patients see it, you know, that don’t know me sick, I’m really good and stuff. It’s those people that went out and actually posted the reviews. I mean, they are your cheerleaders, they’re already publicly championing your practice. And quite frankly, they like you. They want to help you, they like your people, they show up to your events when you have them or when we can have them. Those people that you know, so when they post the review, you got to respond to them, I see a lot of practices when they, you know, when I go to their Google reviews, and I click on them, they’ve got 100 or 50 or 25 however many really good reviews, and they’re great reviews, but not one of them have a response to them that the practice has responded to. You know, the sad news is I go out of my way post this great review, and I’m thinking about all these great things I can say about you guys and and help your practice. And yet when I post it, I never hear from you guys. I never see online that you guys even saw. I don’t even know if you guys saw it. Okay, and I think that’s where I think little things like you’re saying, it’s the little things that you do. So even somebody that goes and says, Oh, they sent me this link to the, you know, to be, you know, to post the review, they’re gonna see those reviews, and they’re also gonna see not responding to them.

Kara McClanahan 34:44
That’s right, you know, so and that’s huge. So I always talk and again, going back to the days of being in that manager role, I answered every single review myself that wasn’t left to a staff member. That wasn’t left A marketing coordinator, I got every single review alert. And I answered it myself. Because again, I want to know what’s going on in my practice. And I also want to be able to, you know, share that review with my team give kudos to my amazing team celebrate that as a win. And so I answered every single one, that when you are answering reviews, of course, you have to think about things like HIPAA compliance, and other you know, things that, but just thanking someone for their feedback, and letting them know that you strive to provide a stellar experience for every patient that walks in your doors. And we’re glad that we could have accomplished that for you. That’s enough. And so what you say is as important as to whether you say anything at all. And the same is true with negative reviews. Remember that, you know, I’m not one that thinks you should bury your negative reviews, they don’t help us. But you know, what consumers are savvy and smart enough to know that we can’t make everyone happy. And it gives you an opportunity to make it right. And when other consumers see that you’ve done that, or you’ve tried to do that, by reaching out to someone that did have a less than stellar experience and say, You know what, though, thank you for your feedback, I want to make sure that we make your next visit with our practice, on Stellar, please contact us or let us know how we can contact you to fix this. That is huge. That takes that the perception from another consumer reading that review and says, Oh, look, they’re doing the right thing. Somebody maybe didn’t have a great experience, but they’re going to make it right. So response is important either way. And you’re right, if we find out of the way to ask people to take a couple minutes out of their time to give us the feedback, we have to acknowledge it.

Bill Fukui 36:46
Yeah, I think, you know, you hope you addressed the negative reviews, and there was a time when practices would only respond to the negative reviews, they would, they would that would be on their radar. And the minute they see some who is this patient or whatever, they’re trying to triage it. And then they’re, they’re only addressing the negative reviews. And I’m like going, Wow, you’re spending all of your resources and time on your biggest problems. Not on your biggest opportunity. Put your best right? Well, and your resources on where the opportunities are. And quite frankly, that’s on your happy patients. They are it’s more important to respond to those happy patients than there are to triage and negative one don’t get, I don’t want clients to get, you know, basically wallow in that and get drugged down both their energy and stuff. But you also pointed out really good point of leveraging reviews in a way I’ve not really thought about because I’m not in the practice. I read reviews a lot. And a lot of times they mentioned staff members by name, you know, oh, Tara was great. Or I, you know, were that was your esthetician, or whether it was a patient care coordinator, whoever it was, sometimes they mentioned those people by name, not just the surgeon or the doctor. And I think sharing those types of things in in the office. Huge. I think that’s great opportunity to leverage that. I think that’s great. Great, great advice.

Kara McClanahan 38:20
Yeah, and what we don’t realize I mean, I think some of us do, and and you you mentioned it, when you were talking about our happy patients been really the lifeblood of our practices. Retention is probably about 70% of your revenues and acquisition, meaning 70% of your revenue in your practice, comes from patients returning not new patients to the practice. And so when surgical patients have left reviews, like hey, everyone was really nice until I had surgery. And then my follow up visits were lackluster. Your Practice is focusing on acquisition, not retention. And so you know that those are our patients, we don’t want to of course, we need new patients in the practice, we want to see new faces, we want to continue to grow our practices. But the retention side of our practice is where the bulk of our revenue comes from, and they drive more new patients and all of our marketing efforts.

Bill Fukui 39:13
You know, I would love to in a future insider interview, get with you and revisit that whole retention issue, because it really should be, you know, an episode in and of itself, because I agree with you that is sometimes the most overlooked. Or just assume that we’re so good that we don’t really need to write, then all of a sudden you start seeing things slip through the cracks, and you start becoming more dependent. What’s on your radar is is all the marketing and all the expenses going into marketing, and they spend no time or resources or money on the retention side. So I’d love to maybe scheduled another one of these interviews where we can address more of that. I think that’s that would bring great value to practices. Absolutely. So why don’t we do this? I’m gonna wind up if you could do me one favor? Is there a way for you know, any of the audience that want to maybe ask you questions or, you know, get some insight, insights from you? Is there a way that they can contact you? What’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Kara McClanahan 40:32
Absolutely. Well, I’m absolutely willing to share my cell phone emails the best way, hopefully, we’ll be launching our new revised website soon. But do you want me to just to share it verbally? I don’t really have.

Bill Fukui 40:45
Sure verbally, and I’ll go ahead. And you know, in the show, I’ll post it, you know, I’ll post your contact information, but for the sake of the video,

Kara McClanahan 40:55
yep. Perfect. So my, I’m gonna give both my cell phone and my email. So cell phone is 480-329-9747. And my email is cara de mcclanahan@gmail.com. And that’s Ka, ra, D, and C, C, l, a n a H A n@gmail.com. couldn’t have been any longer.

Bill Fukui 41:26
Post that as well. But I do want people that have questions to be able to reach out to you because I was a resource. So I think they would find great value in as well.

Kara McClanahan 41:38
Perfect. Well, thank you for the opportunity to chat with you, Bill. I always love discussing everything that we have in common and educating our practices and consumers here. Now I

Bill Fukui 41:49
appreciate all of your time today care of and insights. We’ll share more in in the next episode looking forward to it. Take care Absolutely.

Kara McClanahan 41:57
Me as well. Thank you. You too. Good day.

MSD Insider 42:01
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