In this episode, Steven Schwartz and Michael Tetreault discuss the evolution of concierge medicine and the importance of effective marketing strategies for medical practices. They explore various aspects of digital marketing, including website design, patient retention, and the significance of building strong relationships with patients. The conversation highlights the need for medical professionals to adapt to changing patient expectations and leverage technology to enhance their practices.

 

Chapters

 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Concierge Medicine and Marketing
03:00 The Evolution of Concierge Medicine
05:20 Concierge Medical Marketing: Services and Strategies
11:25 Designing Websites to Convert
14:07 Understanding Customer Avatars and Targeting
19:52 The Power of Marketing Automation
27:27 Automating Patient Engagement
28:52 The Importance of Connection in Healthcare
30:42 New School Marketing Strategies
34:38 Understanding the Need for Marketing
42:25 Creating Value in Patient Relationships
43:46 Free Resources for Medical Professionals
45:48 Recommended Reading for Growth
48:25 Personal Reflections and Faith

 

Steven Schwartz (00:24)
Hello and welcome to the concierge medical marketing podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz. Today. It’s truly my pleasure to welcome Michael Tetrault. Michael is from the concierge medicine today as the foremost periodical for concierge medicine as an industry, as well as the founder of the concierge medicine forum that happens once a year outside of Atlanta. Michael, thank you for being with me today as our guest.

Michael Tetrault (00:48)
Well, thank you. And I want to welcome you to the Docpreneur Leadership Podcast, as we’re doing a twofer here. That way they don’t have to listen to us twice. yeah, we have Steven Schwartz with Concierge Medical Marketing here today with us. You can go to conciergemd.marketing. He’s doing some websites and some pretty fun stuff over there. So Steven, thank you for joining our podcast as well. I’ll let you kick it off with the first question though.

Steven Schwartz (01:11)
Yeah, no, this is great. I’ve never done a two-way podcast recording at the same time. So this is a first for me and I’m thrilled to do it, Michael. So it’s all good. So first of all, please give me some background on yourself. Why and how did you, know, first of all, where’d you go to school and what did you study and how on earth did you end up in concierge medicine as far as the marketing and helping support the physicians in this space?

Michael Tetrault (01:37)
Sure. Well, like many who found out initially about concierge medicine, I got one of the, a friend of ours who was an advisor to our business that was already working in healthcare, but unrelated to concierge medicine, got a letter from his doctor and he’s like, you know, you should check this out. It’s kind of interesting. over the years, over the years of learning and exploring just went to the, some of the early, early, early meetings.

before Concierge Medicine and all the other terminology that has been out there, boutique healthcare, retainer-based healthcare, frictionless healthcare, DPC, DC, what I remember them all having those conversations in conference hallways out there all across the country over the years. we’ve been doing this for about 20 years now in the Concierge Medicine space as the industry’s trade publication and conference. And it’s been a lot of fun. These people, these physicians and their teams

They’re just some of the best happiest places to be in healthcare, which is rare. It’s rare to bump into, I always say, sometimes I feel like I have some of the luckiest days in healthcare because I get to work with 97, 98 % of happy doctors and not everybody can say that. And so I went to school to be in journalism and public relations, initially to be a pastor. So my background is in theology and pastoral and

learned early on in those classes that we don’t know how to communicate as pastors. So we probably better get some public speaking courses. And so that’s what we did and really found a love even since I was in eighth grade with Mrs. Nielsen. She always enjoyed, said, you got to keep writing. And so I followed my passion in writing and journalism and then started the trade publication, Concierge Medicine Today in 2007 and have just been

interviewing hundreds and hundreds of doctors over the years, shaking their hands, hugging their necks, giving them fist pumps, with and without a mask sometimes, depends on their comfort level, of course. you know, I have always said I am not a physician, but I am a patient. And I do know what it’s like to sit on the other side of the exam room from you. And I know what it’s like to sit on the other side of the service window.

from your team and your staff with my kids. And so I know what it’s like to navigate. And I feel like I love what’s happening in concierge medicine and the like, because it is showing that it’s no longer about being the best doctor in the world anymore. It’s about being the best doctor for the world.

Steven Schwartz (04:07)
I love it. Truly beautiful. This whole industry as a space has obviously grown and morphed and tweaked and changed over again the 20 years that you’ve been involved with it. What are the most surprising changes that you’ve seen maybe in the last five years?

Michael Tetrault (04:25)
In the last five years specifically, I would say that the amount of information still from the media is fairly good, but I’d say it’s still inaccurate. And if you study what’s called Gelman amnesia, it’s kind of a term I think Michael Crichton termed, and he interviewed a physician and it’s one of those things where you read an article

And you’re on a subject matter that you’re really an expert in. Say, let’s say you’re really good at, you know, diabetes and you know, diabetes inside and out. But when you read a report about an article or a news story or watch a video on, you know, what is diabetes and how to do this and that with it, you’re the subject matter expert behind the reader. And you’re like, that’s not accurate. And I find that that’s what I feel when I read things. But then, you know, Gelman amnesia is like when we turn to

you know, or like, yeah, everything I’m reading about embroidery is really accurate. You know, like that sounds neat, but I have no knowledge about embroidery, right? So it’s like, I just assume that the article about embroidery is accurate, but I’m a subject matter expert in this. So I’ve seen the media be a lot less adversarial and much more educational related to what concierge medicine is. So they’re leaning in a little bit more patients. man.

They’re so much more accepting. I always say concierge medicines, kind of like the two most polarizing words together that you can put together in healthcare, but it has really set the example for customer service and hospitality in healthcare for others to start looking at, be like, you know what, I don’t understand it, I don’t get it, but I like what that doctor’s doing there. What if I tried that over here in my health system?

And so people are starting to straighten up and stand up and be like, yeah, I’m, I like what they’re doing. They’re, they’re really leading by example. And so I’ve really seen that and patients are starting to lean in a lot more because patient burnout is a thing. And I’d say that there’s still more and more physicians who are not crossing their arms as much about it, but that goes towards more of a cognitive bias and a kind of a mindset of, well, I’m a physician. I’m supposed to wear.

I’m supposed to wear the badge of making no money, wear it like it’s a badge of honor. And I think that that’s somewhat changing. But as one physician we interviewed recently said, she’s like, Michael, it’s not only going to take an act of Congress to change how we educate physicians, it’s going to take an act of God. And we have definitely seen some really great things happen since COVID in healthcare, where I remember talking with an attorney and he’s like,

back in June of 2020. And he’s like, did you see what some of the insurance companies have done? It’s like, yeah, we’ve been wanting that as patients for like years, 20 years. And then they turned, they were able to wrench on it within three months. Patients were better off for what some of the things that they’re doing. So that’s kind of my last five years. But let’s talk about you for a moment. Let’s talk about Concierge Medical Marketing. Talk to us about…

what this is. you doing postcards? Are you doing direct mail? Are you doing websites? Tell us a bit about Concierge Medical Marketing.

Steven Schwartz (07:39)
Sure. Hell, I’m glad to have you ask me that question. So my background briefly was over 25 years of owning and operating a traditional generalist digital marketing agency where we built websites and provided digital marketing services to lots and lots of different industries from medical, dental, to restaurants, to I don’t

authors and nonprofits and churches and ministries and you pretty much name it and we help them with their websites and their marketing. And it became increasingly challenging to be an expert at anything when you’re a generalist, essentially at everything. And so in 2024, I made a huge change in my career and essentially my life focus, which was number one,

I sold my legacy agency to a friend of mine who also owned a digital marketing company and he is taking it to to new heights. And number two is that I started Concierge Medical Marketing with the very specific sole purpose of providing concierge and DPC medical professionals with the different digital marketing services that they need to meet and achieve their goals, whatever those goals.

might be. To do this, we have three different programs that we offer. The first one we call transition. This is specifically for a medical provider who maybe have had a practice for 30 years with 3000 or 4000 patients and they’re burned out, they’re tired, but they’re not ready to retire. So they’ve heard about Concierge Medicine, they start their practice. How do you market to those patients that are in your existing panel?

to educate them on the value of switching over to the concierge part of the business. So that could be through emails, through videos, through ads on social media, and other techniques, of course. The second program that we offer is called Growth. And this is the traditional space for digital marketing. For example, I have a practice. I need more patients. Maybe I have 20, 30, 50 patients now. I want to get to 300.

How do you expose your business to the people in your area who are the most likely candidates to learn about and sign up for your concierge practice? So that’s called growth. And that may be along the lines of, obviously, an awesome website that looks great on mobile as well as desktop that’s designed to convert. That includes creating a Google Business profile that’s properly filled out and optimized, distributing, and

syndicating the Google Business Profile data to hundreds of different locations across the web, over 500 in fact. From there also, we have different tools that we use that actually help Google show that people are interested in that profile, which continues to push it up higher and higher. Search engine optimization, obviously helping get your website higher on the organic searches when people are actively searching for

You know, DPC near me, concierge physician near me, primary care near me, doing Google ads, right? That’s where you pay to be at the top of Google. What are the right phrases to target and what are the wrong phrases to target and how to do that properly? Facebook ads and meta and retargeting ads. There’s so many cool things that can be done in the space of growth. It literally comes down to how aggressively the physician client wants to grow their practice.

The third and final program that we offer, call Nurture. And Nurture is all about helping the existing patients, potentially of a full panel with a waiting list even, helping those people feel loved and appreciated and remembered, right? So that could be keeping in touch with them with email, with text messages, with ads on Facebook, with videos. In fact, how about getting together once a quarter

for a wine and cheese party with your physician and the team and meet some of the other patients, literally to help your existing patients feel great about their investment in their healthcare with this particular practice so that every year when the time comes to write the check for the year, that they renew. We all know in marketing that it’s so much easier to keep a happy customer, or patient in this case, happy than it is to find a new one.

It costs less and it’s so much more pleasant. So we encourage the nurture program for practices that are already full. So those are the three programs that we offer. And we’re here literally to help our clients succeed in whatever level and to whatever goals they wish to achieve.

Michael Tetrault (12:35)
That’s awesome. And so you’ve been working with doctors already. I presume, right?

Steven Schwartz (12:40)
Yes, absolutely. We have several clients that we’ve been helping, one of which is Dr. Jason Littleton out of Orlando. Great guy. He’s been a DPC, sorry, a concierge doctor now for over 10 years. He’s been featured on Fox News over 200 times. Super, super guy. We have other folks that hired us to help them with their marketing as well, but we’re looking to grow. We’re happy to…

to do strategy sessions with any practices who are looking to grow or need nurture and whatnot. People can schedule a 15-minute chat with me, cmmkg.com/schedule. And that’ll show my calendar where the physician or NP can find a time on my calendar for a 15-minute talk, literally just to find…

what the high level pain points are, what the goals are, what are you trying to achieve. And then from there, we’ll hang up. We’ll do some research on our side, myself and one of my team members to really dig into the actual situation. Let us review the website in great detail. Look at your Google business profile. Look at how you’re ranking for SEO. Is the website optimized properly? Are you throwing money away on Google Ads and so much more. We will then schedule a second meeting where we’ll basically present

our findings as a deep dive. Typically, it’s gonna take an hour to an hour and a half to really show everything that we found and provide our suggestions on what we would recommend to turn the ship around and help achieve the goals. And obviously that client is welcome to take the feedback and guidance that we’ve provided. If they already have a digital marketing vendor they’re working with or a team member and they’re happy with, that’s fine. We’re happy to add value. But of course, if you need help,

this is what we do for a living. right. So anyways, we’re here to help. We’re here to serve. And we really care about improving health care for all Americans and helping our physician leaders to really enjoy their career so that they’re not burned out. We want our doctors happy and rested and paid well enough so that they can continue to come back day after day and give their best.

Michael Tetrault (14:54)
Awesome. Well, you said something and I want to walk down that rabbit trail just a moment. And that is what does for the doctors listening, designed to convert mean? I know what it means. You know what it means. But this is a big hairy deal in marketing, especially online.

Steven Schwartz (15:15)
Sure. Great question. When you go to a website, first of all, are you looking at it on a desktop, on a laptop, on a tablet or a smartphone? Well, more than 65 % or so the numbers keep growing. People are looking on their smartphones. So when it comes down to it, you literally have this much space to get somebody’s attention right out of the gate before they bounce and go elsewhere. And so what do you do with

that space. Now from old days, we’ve heard the marketing phrase above the fold, right? When you have a newspaper, the advertising space above the fold of the newspaper is more expensive than below the fold. On the internet, the content that you need people to see most importantly needs to be above the fold, meaning you don’t have to scroll down to get to it, right? It’s there in front of you. So what needs to be there?

You need to use that space in a smart way to show who you are as a company, what you offer and have some sort of call to action button or link that grabs people’s attention quickly and clearly to do the thing that you want them to do. For example, at the top of your website, it should have a button that says something like schedule your meet and greet appointment today or

Reach out to us today or schedule now something like that. And by the way, this button again, we call a call to action button should be in a color that is different than the rest of the color palette of your website branding. Why? Because we want it to stick out like a sore thumb. We want people to land on that page and immediately see maybe in a bright red button with white font that. absolutely.

Michael Tetrault (17:03)
Was there a pun intended in there? I know,

right? We’re in healthcare. We’re gonna have a little fun.

Steven Schwartz (17:09)
But we’re gonna have the cardiac monitor, you know, graphic on it. Yeah, but the idea here is that we want to have something that sticks out so clearly and so almost obnoxiously that people absolutely will see it and in it, you know, schedule your meeting today, schedule your consultation, call us today, text us today, whatever that might be. You also want to have reviews available for people to see. We call this social proof.

Michael Tetrault (17:14)
Mm-hmm.

Steven Schwartz (17:38)
Social proof is where other people may say great things about this office and the general public will believe those nice things more than the doctor saying, hey, we’re awesome. Right. I’ve heard a fact that statistic that something like four out of five people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. That’s crazy, but that’s true. So the idea on your website,

Professional fast loading your brand name and what you offer, clearly accessible and visible without having to scroll down, and a call to action button. So somebody, if literally they have only two or three seconds that they look at this webpage, they say, I know what I need to do, click that button, and it takes them to a place where they can schedule their meet and greet appointment. That’s what I mean by saying a website designed to convert.

Michael Tetrault (18:33)
I remember this made internet marketing really simple. And I hope that this is helpful for the physicians and practice administrators out there listening is, you know, similar to what he just said, you know, think about traveling down the interstate and you see all these billboards, right? And then like Bucky’s is wonderful at marketing and like Bucky’s 175 miles from here. And then an hour later,

You’re only 114 miles from here from there now, you know, isn’t a coffee going to taste great? You know, there’s these social media signposts that you should be putting online, but you don’t need to be everywhere all over the Internet is what my mentor said. You just need to be a superstar in your own backyard. So I’ll let you go ahead and riff from there and continue.

Steven Schwartz (19:20)
Agreed.

Sure.

Yes. So what you’re talking about is your customer avatar, right? This is a kind of techie sounding phrase. And no, I’m not talking about 12 foot tall green people on some planet out there from a movie. Your customer avatar is the group of people that you think are going to be the best candidates to be patients at your practice, right? What are they?

quote, look like. What are the criteria about those people? So for example, if your concierge medical practice charges $4,000 per year, you may not be getting the 18 through 30 crowd. Maybe they’re not in a place in life where they can afford that investment yet. So let’s say we want to target people age 30 through 65 who have a certain income level.

who live within a certain geographical radius around your practice. And right there, those three criteria might be enough to put your ads in front of the right thousands of eyeballs on different platforms so that they see the ad message. Right. And that could be Facebook and Instagram. That could be on on LinkedIn. It could be on other platforms. One other thing I do want to mention

You mentioned the billboard and Bucky’s, which again is genius marketing. But one of the things about billboards, which is terrible, is that you drive by, you see it, and then it’s gone. Bucky’s is smart by having multiple times that they expose their ad message to your eyeballs. And it makes you think, yes, I do want to have a pulled pork sandwich. Yes, I do want to see what their bathrooms look like or whatever silliness they have on their billboards, right? But on the internet, there is a cool technology that

All of us have had to deal with as a consumer. Imagine you go to a website, you’re looking to buy a kayak for your family because you want to take them out on the lake or the river and go kayaking. You look at some kayaks and then you leave, it’s dinner, you go on the internet the next day and then what do you see ads for wherever you go? Kayaks, right?

Several years ago, clients would talk to me and say, my God, is the internet following me? Is the big brother watching me? No, it’s simple technology where a little, a little bit of code, a little thing we call a pixel or a cookie gets tied together to you and your device. And then when you travel to other places around the internet, the, the websites where you are need to put ads in front of your eyeballs and those websites figure, Hey, let’s put an ad.

belonging to one of our partner vendors, in this case, the medical practice, put it in front of their eyeballs. And so that they get reminded, in this case, that I was interested in the kayak. So show those kayak ads over and over again, right? For a medical practitioner of a concierge or DPC practice, as long as somebody comes to your website, you can tag them with this cookie, this pixel. Then wherever they go on different websites like Fox News, CNN,

the Weather Channel, History Channel, ESPN, all these different places, those websites need to put ads. They’re going to say, this guy had an interest in Dr. Smith, right? Put Dr. Smith’s ad in there. That’s like the Buc-E’s driving down the road where you’re going to see that ad over and over and over again until something happens. Number one, they clear the cookies and cash on their computer browser. Or number two, they click the button.

and go to that website again and say, you know what, I am ready for my meet and greet appointment. This is type of marketing technology that everybody should know about because it’s been done to all of us as consumers, but very few businesses take advantage of it as a marketing technique. So we encourage folks, absolutely use it. Talk to your web designers and digital marketing agencies that you’re working for, sorry, working with to do your marketing and say, I wanna do this cookie pixel thing that follows them.

and shows ads to them over and over again.

Michael Tetrault (23:30)
And here’s the litmus test for those

positions or practice administrators listening. If you know somebody who can explain what he just said, great, use that person. But if you have a patient or the practice administrator who’s already super busy and you’ve delegated to be like, I need you to go update the website and you’re like, what software do we use? That’s not the person you should be putting in charge of your online presence. And it is, you know,

Again, it is so important to get this stuff right. And if you don’t understand all of what he just said, I mean, I, for the most part, I understand it. get it. We’ve all experienced it as consumers and you know, yes, it seems invasive sometimes, but that’s marketing. Like we’re, it, that is a good thing because we’re getting more specific in what our needs are. I went out and looked for a socket the other day, like a socket set on mechanics that guess what I’m getting ads for mechanics socket sets, right?

I an old car. It needs to be fixed. So all right. Well, thank you, Steven. That was very super helpful. And I hope that I hope if you’re not currently have a good website that you’re truly happy with that is converting leads, you know, it’s not bad to be a lead generation website. In fact, what’s the point? I would say if your website is out there just telling me how great you are and how great your brand is and where you went to school and then you put your CV up.

Steven Schwartz (24:26)
Over and over.

Michael Tetrault (24:54)
That’s not what’s gonna make me choose you and your practice. I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.

Steven Schwartz (25:04)
Right. You you hit the nail on the head. You know, when I started my first agency in 1999, for the first several years of that business, our focus was build a great website. It’s there and it’s available so that when people either search for it, they find it or it’s something that people can write on their business card and their letterhead to give credibility. Right. Someone gets a business card at a meeting. They say, oh, X, Y, dot com. They get home. They look it up. OK.

It looks legit. Let’s give them a call. That’s sort of the web 1.0, right? And we’re somewhere at web 2.0, 3.0, who knows, these days. But if your practice needs to grow, if you haven’t hit your goals yet, then you need to do these things, including having a website that’s designed to convert, making sure that you’re ranking favorably on Google, as well as Bing. In fact, one of the workshops I’m going to be offering this year

is how to optimize your website for favorable ranking on chat GPT. All right. The techniques that you can implement so that when people search on chat GPT for local businesses, that your website comes up over your competitors. So anyways, AI is a whole nother discussion for another day. But there’s so many different things that you can and should be doing because your website should be a lead generation machine.

One final thing I wanted to mention, Michael, that we haven’t even got into is the whole concept of marketing automation. What the heck is that? Well, imagine if you do an ad on Facebook talking about your concierge medical practice and people see the ad, you have the ad displayed to your avatar 30 to 65 in the area where I live, $100,000 or more per year income, whatever it might be. When people see that ad,

They click, it takes them to a place where they see a landing page, maybe a video, maybe your reviews, and a form that says, our free XYZ report on why Concierge Medicine is better than traditional insurance-based, fill out, give us your information. So people fill in their first name, last name, email, and cell phone number, click the go button. Bam, something exciting happens when you have a marketing automation program working for you.

It collects these leads that people fill out the form. It then sends them a message, whatever that thing is that you’ve promised them. Maybe you’re sending them a white paper. Maybe you’re sending them extra reviews. Maybe you’re sending them a coupon or a special or some sort of incentive to try out your practice or to come for your meet and greet, whatever it might be. But it’s not just one email. You can have your marketing automation software configured.

so that every day it sends an additional email or maybe every other day it’ll send a text, something like that. Even a voicemail message, your voice recorded can be dropped into their voicemail box on their smartphone, right? All of this stuff can be automated. So you don’t have to have Sally at your front desk calling up people and reminding them about your practice or manually emailing or manually texting. You could literally create an automation

that sends an email a couple times a week, text messages and whatnot, so that they are reminded of your practice, encouraged to come and make their meet and greet appointment. In fact, you can even have it tied to your EMR system and your calendar so that people can see when you’re available to have a meet and greet appointment, let’s say 15 minutes, 30 minutes or so virtually or at your office, they can self schedule.

And once they do that, then the system can automatically send reminder, text and emails as well. So all of this stuff is completely doable and accessible. We can help our clients with configuring this for their specific needs. And obviously for all the docs and NPs listening to this podcast right now, if you have an existing vendor, talk to them about doing this. And if they look at you with a blank stare and they don’t know what you’re talking about, please feel free to schedule a time with me. I’d be happy to explain further.

Michael Tetrault (29:16)
That’s awesome. And

our guest today is Steven Schwartz. He’s the CEO, founder of Concierge Medical Marketing. You can go to conciergemd.marketing to learn more. We’ll also put some links to how to connect with Steven and learn more about what he’s doing and connect with his website. He’s got some good content on his website. I would highly recommend you check a peek at some of those. conciergemd.marketing.

Steven Schwartz (29:41)
Yeah, I appreciate that. Michael Tetrault pleasure taking this time to be with you and having you tell about your story and your 20 years involved in this business from the marketing and PR and education side of the fence, as we say. Really great talking with you. Glad to be on your podcast. I’m thrilled to have you on mine. We with the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast have interviewed doctors and NPs and

people in the financial realm who help physicians keep track of and grow their money. That way companies that help with EMR systems and so much more. there’s tons of great content at the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. Please check it out, like it, share it, whatever. And we’re still looking for more interesting people to interview. So if you’d like to be a guest on my podcast, please just reach out to me on LinkedIn or through our website. It’d be my pleasure to speak with you about that.

Michael Tetrault (30:37)
Well, I don’t want you to go. Do you have a few more minutes? Because I still have a couple more questions and comments. OK, all right. So Scott Cook said, school marketing teaches that a brand is what it tells consumers that it is. Let me say that again. Old school marketing teaches that a brand is what it tells consumers it is. New school marketing. This is where we live and work and breathe every single day.

Steven Schwartz (30:43)
Yeah, sure. I’d be happy to. Go ahead. Fire away, brother.

Michael Tetrault (31:05)
New School Marketing, and I hope that you get this, says a brand is what consumers or your customers or your patients tell each other that it is. I want you to share your maybe one or two things because dentists are amazing at marketing and you probably learned a thing or two in your past business experiences and

What did they do or what did these other doctors offices in your past experiences and working with websites and designing, know, lead generation websites that really focused on, you know, converting those leads into true customers. What did you learn from them or what there’s, what’s a mistake that physicians might be making today?

Steven Schwartz (31:47)
Right, right. That’s a can have a whole podcast just on that topic. The main things I would say is that you you need to connect. All right. You need to connect with your patients as a personal human, as a real living, breathing individual. You got into medicine, I assume, to help people. You may have had the desire. Yes, I want to make lots of money or yes, I want to have a boat or whatever kind of things like that. But

When it comes down to it, most people who I’ve met who have pushed through their education, med school, residency, all the sleepless nights, all the stress, and then on top of it, having all these loans to pay back and all the hassles, you’re doing this because you love people and you want to make a huge difference. So guess the most important thing that I could recommend

for a physician listening to this is use the internet especially video use social media and support that with a great website and a great brand so that people can see and feel your heart that you truly do care about them their lives their family and the situations that they’re going through

One of my dear friends told me one time he said there’s two kinds of people in the world There’s those that are going through something really rough in their life and are willing to talk about it and The other people are not willing to talk about it Okay, everybody’s going through something Everybody’s going through a challenge of some sort even if you’re flying high there’s something you’re working through and so what I would say is as a medical professional use the internet especially video to help

portray who you are as a person that truly cares for your patients and the more you do that and Have other people who you’ve helped tell their friends about how great a physician you are and how you’ve truly helped them The rest of the marketing becomes dramatically easier

Michael Tetrault (33:51)
Wonderful. Well, our guest today has been Steve Schwartz. I’m not done with you. So if you have questions for me, you’re welcome to throw them at me. But I have a couple more for you.

Steven Schwartz (33:52)
What?

So you go right ahead. This is fun. It’s usually me asking the questions. you go right ahead, Michael, and we’ll wrap it up here soon.

Michael Tetrault (34:05)
Hmm hmm hmm.

All right, so which one do I choose? I’m not going to go with I don’t need marketing because I feel as though most physicians, especially the ones who are following their entrepreneurial tendencies, understand that there is a need for a certain amount of marketing. However, what do you say to the physician, the practice administrator, the gatekeeper that says, well, we don’t really

need a lot of marketing. It’s not necessarily nurture either, because our price point is pretty low. And that’s our value proposition. The price point is low. We’re really simple. kind of easy. You know, we don’t participate in insurance. We don’t, you know, participate in Medicare. So really, the relationship here is pretty straightforward. And, you know, we have a website and it works for us.

So what would you say to that doctor, that doctor’s office, that maybe they could improve?

Steven Schwartz (35:00)
Yeah, that’s a really good question. You know, in my career, I have talked to, I’m sure hundreds of folks when I get on the phone with them, they say, we’ve got a website, we’re really busy, we don’t need any marketing. And you know what? It’s not my job to convince you that you do. OK, it’s not my job to sell you on something that you don’t need. And, you know, if a business is is busy and they don’t have room to take on more folks.

You know, they don’t really need active marketing. I do encourage the concept of nurture, as we mentioned before. But you know what? It’s not my place to try to convince you that you do need to hire us for some services that you may not need, you know. And so what I would instead encourage that practice to consider is raising their rates a little bit. Right. If you’re charging, you know, ninety dollars a month per life per month.

at your practice and you’re so full that you have to turn people away, maybe it’s time to do one of two things. Number one, have a higher level care plan, maybe more items that come in your value stack and double your price. And that will keep the ability for extra services to be for a different member of your care team to be able to handle those situations, those patients, those things.

like functional medicine, we need more time to work with these folks, but at $90 a month, it just simply doesn’t make sense. And keep a sort of lower level, but still plenty effective level for your baseline $90 per month care plan. Now, we’ve talked about the 80-20 rule on this podcast interview, and I heard one years ago that’s always stuck with me.

and it’s in the relation of your pricing model. And it goes basically like this. If you charge a million dollars a year to be someone’s private doctor, how many people are going to sign up? And answer is probably none. And if you say, well, we only charge one dollar per year per patient, how many people are likely to sign up? Probably everybody. Right. So there’s somewhere in between there’s a magic number.

So the way I learned the 80-20 rule on pricing your product or service is if you talk to 10 people, 10 prospects, and eight of them say yes, and two of them say no, it’s too expensive, then you’re probably where you need to be priced.

Michael Tetrault (37:31)
By the way, nobody out there is charging a million dollars. Just want to say that for the stigma perspective, I feel like I’ve seen them all, but some price points are, I’ve seen a couple, but those are in the small, small single digit percentages of high-priced concierge medicine programs. So the elitist, it’s only for the wealthy. Those arguments don’t hold water anymore, And it’s really more about patient relationship and what…

Steven Schwartz (37:38)
yes.

Michael Tetrault (37:57)
I need to know that you’re going to care about me. And so when we survey patients who are leaving their current, leaving their current traditional plan reimbursed physician in search of a concierge doctor, these are your potential customers, right? Across the country and the globe, they would say, well, what’s the most important factor? Well, it’s not cost.

And that might surprise a lot of folks like, I thought it would totally be cost, at least in the top two, didn’t even crack the top five. So I want to know you like you, and I want to trust you. And I want it to be pretty darn convenient. Like, how do I connect with you? What’s, and don’t tell me call the front office because that’s not going to fly anymore. Patients want what we want. Used to be when you talked about luxury and those types of things. And this is backed up in the book. If you haven’t read it, it’s a wonderful book. I handed out like candy to doctors.

called excellence wins. And the author said, Look, you know, back in the 80s and 70s, luxury was all about marble and a little bit of opulence and, you know, brass and gold and those types of things. Luxury today is a completely different thing. It says, I want what I want. And I want it now. The internet has has really fast forwarded that change in mindset to about a customer. And that we’re we’re not always your patients. Like, we’re busy parents.

We’re employees, we’re sandwich care generation caregivers. We’re not always your patient until we call your practice or we interact your practice. Another good litmus test for you is look at your last 10 social media posts. What were they about? Were they just promoting how amazing you are? look at this new thing we’re doing in our practice. That’s just saying, pay attention to me, pay attention to me, pay attention to me.

It’s not actually saying to the customer, hey, I can make your life a little bit better. And that’s all it’s about is just a little bit better. Our guest today is Steven Schwartz. He’s the CEO of Concierge Medical Marketing and Video Marketing. You know, that is an interesting one. This is not a question, more of a commentary. But, you know, we’ve all seen and bumped into those positions at

medical conferences, you know, I’ve been to dozens and dozens of medical conferences over the year. And you always see like the one or two physicians who’s like they do the video marketing a little too much, they do a little too many selfies. And you’re like, I’ve got there. That’s so great. And I love being in their photos, but I don’t in their videos, but I don’t necessarily I’m a bit of a social hermit. So I don’t love you know, that that you can just tell like, that’s the type of individual they just love doing that. And that’s their thing. But then there’s those who

really, they only post, they post a lot, a lot of videos, especially on Instagram lately for some doctors. And they’re really posting like personal things, you know, like, hey, you know, our nurse practitioner, she’s amazing. And she just had a kid and we’re just going to celebrate her. if you see her today or you come in this month, you know, tell her, you know, tell her how amazing of mother she is, you know, those types of social media posts where it’s showing your gratitude and

It’s extending your care and compassion and empathy towards others, not about, hey, I went to school here. Hey, we’re doing this now. Hey, we just partnered with this company in the community. Those things are helpful. But if the last 10 posts on your social media profile are all inwardly insideritis focused, it’s insideritis, in my opinion, is just a cancer in healthcare. It just says you can identify the symptoms of, they’re easy to identify.

Because when you hear a healthcare practice, listen to things about marketing or public, you know, video marketing or automation or SEO, they’re like, yeah, those are all great ideas. But we don’t have time for that. Like we just don’t have time to do videos. We don’t have time to post on social media. And then you delegate, well, let’s try out social media in a staff meeting. So they try it out and they delegate it to somebody or two people in the practice that are already trying to do pre-authorization calls and trying to manage a schedule.

and trying to keep you on time. And then four, three, four months later, they come back into the staff meeting like, so how’s that whole marketing thing going? You’re like, I really haven’t had any time. He’s been busy, but yet, you know, it really doesn’t work. So we we’re getting new patients anyway, but we don’t really know how we get them because we’re too afraid to ask. And, you know, it’s awkward and we don’t want to seem like we’re promotional. So doctors really never know. They’re not measuring.

They’re not measuring the return on investment on marketing. They’re not asking for reviews. They’re not creating a culture where patients want to keep coming back. And that’s what I love about Concierge Medicine in particular, because they are creating a remarkable environment that’s actually worth remarking about.

Steven Schwartz (42:49)
Love it.

Yeah, let me jump in real quick here, Loved all the different truth nuggets you just left for us here. One concept that I learned a few years ago, which I truly love, is in the concept of, if you promote yourself, promote yourself, promote yourself, at some point people are like, ugh, enough. So what I learned was the concept of feed, feed, feed, fish. And the idea is that for every

time you’re reaching out three times should be giving great information, cheerleading your staff, sharing a positive review. One, two, three. And then the fourth one would be, hey, if you’re frustrated with your current medical situation and you’re looking for a better way to have a tighter relationship with your doctor with same or next day appointments, give us a call. Let’s talk about it because this might be a good thing for

Right? So feed, feed, feed, then fish. Give, give, give, and then a little gentle take. I think that’s a better mix. And I do love the concept of cheering on the staff member who just had a baby. She’s a great mom, does a wonderful job here at the office when she gets back from maternity leave. All that kind of stuff is absolutely wonderful. I did want to mention that I wrote a book called The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing.

Michael Tetrault (43:48)
Awesome.

Steven Schwartz (44:10)
for Concierge Medical Practices. And that book has over 100 pages of actionable digital marketing strategies and advice that you can put to work in your practice immediately. And you don’t have to hire somebody to do it for you. The book is available for free from our website, conciergemd.marketing. Simply go to the homepage, scroll down a little bit to where there’s a picture of the cover of the book.

put in your email address and click the submit button. Our system, Marketing Automation Software by the way, will send you a email and on that email there’ll be a link where you can click and download the PDF to your computer. I encourage you, grab the book totally free. We’ll send you a couple emails in that automation sequence as a way of saying, here we are, here’s your book. If you have any questions, reach out. If you’re struggling with anything that you’ve read here, please reach out. We’re here to help you.

But if you have an existing vendor that’s helping with your digital marketing, share with them. There’s no problem with doing that. We want the medical professionals in this industry to succeed. And if writing a book and sharing it for free with the world is what it takes to do that, that’s fine with me. I know we’ll continue to get clients from folks who need our help and want us to implement the things in the book. So it’s all good. All right. Just want to know that that’s available.

Michael Tetrault (45:34)
That’s great. Thank you for sharing that because that was my second to last question. now my second to last question is what book would you recommend that or you give away most? And it could be pleasure reading. But we put together a list twice a year of book recommendations of those who interview. And forgot which one did I get yesterday. I got a really good one yesterday from another guest. And she I just don’t have it in front of me. But

What book do you give away most or would you recommend? Or maybe it doesn’t have to be business. It doesn’t have to be self-help. It could just be something that you’re pleasure reading and hey, these doctors will take it to the beach.

Steven Schwartz (46:09)
So the book that I recommend most is typically for business for those that want to grow. It’s called $100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi. right. 100M Offers, Alex Hormozi. And for people who don’t know Alex Hormozi, he is one of the biggest names in digital marketing. And his company acquisition.com

is all about giving away tons and tons of free information to help businesses get to a couple million dollar a year revenue. And then once they pass that mark or achieve that mark, he offers additional services to either partner with them or buy them or partner financially with them to take them to hundred million dollar businesses. And in the book, tons of great information.

But the main thing that I want people to take away with is something, a concept that means make an offer so good that people will feel stupid to say no. Let me say that one more time. Make an offer so good that people will feel stupid to say no to it. All right. And the idea with a medical practice, look for X dollars per month, you get 24 seven, 365 access to your doctor and care team by phone.

by text message, by email. You have same and next day appointments. You don’t have to worry with health insurance, premiums, paperwork, and all that mess. And this, and this, and this. Maybe vitamins and supplements that we recommend. Maybe exercise plans for the gym. This, that, and the other. Whatever it might be. Make what we call a value stack. All these different things that come with your program when people join

your concierge medical practice as a patient, they get all this stuff. The offer needs to sound so good that they’ll feel stupid to say no. And when you have done that right and dialed it in, people will say yes over and over again.

Michael Tetrault (48:10)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I hope that everybody listening has learned a lot about digital marketing, a lot about the importance of a lead generating website. And our guest today has been Steven Schwartz. He’s the CEO of Concierge Medical Marketing. Go to conciergemd.marketing. We’ll put the link in the show notes of how to connect with Steven and learn more about what he’s doing in the book as well. Our final question for you today is if you…

Steven Schwartz (48:11)
Thank

Michael Tetrault (48:37)
And I asked this of all of our guests. What’s one thing you are glad you did?

Steven Schwartz (48:44)
Well, the most important thing that came to me with your question is putting my faith and trust in Jesus Christ as my savior. I did that in my early 20s as a kid and it’s changed my life. So on a personal point of view, man, that’s it.

Michael Tetrault (48:57)
Well me too.

That’s the name of the game. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. Thank you. I’m a believer as well, and I love what my pastor said about kids’ ministries, is that you start them young, and you get them going even if they don’t like it. That’s why you pay for the pizzas. Because if I don’t learn anything, at least I got fed. I got a full belly. But eventually, your kids are going to drift.

You know, they’re they’re going to college or life or life is going to get hard for them. And, you know, that anchor is planted in them so deep that they will only be able to drift so far. And so I love that about, you know, our church and what we’re involved in with our kids and, you know, have those encouraging conversations with them about, know, one of the things I was just encouraged by was the Book of James. It was

Just be intentional. Look for an opportunity, look for a moment. And it’s amazing when that’s front and center as a conversation, as somebody who loves to communicate and as a student of communication strategies and techniques and public relations is you look for an opportunity to connect with your kids. And for me, it’s waiting in the car while we’re waiting for his sister. And it’s like, it’s just he and I.

You know, we got five, 10, 15 minutes where we’re just waiting in the car together and there’s nothing else going on in our lives. We catch up on school, we catch up on relationships, we catch up on likes and dislikes. And, you know, those are important conversations. So if you’ve learned anything today, Hey, put your faith out there, but have be intentional. And, that’s, that’s great. So Steven, thank you for being our guest today. And thank you for letting me be on your program and, know, talking to you about.

what you’re doing to give a moment to you and your audience to actually take a little bit of a reprieve and tell them what you’re doing.

Steven Schwartz (50:55)
No,

I really appreciate that, Michael. Thanks for your time and thank you for leading the charge with helping get the word and the name and the true message of Concierge Medicine and DPC out there so that more physicians and docs and MPs and APs, sorry, PAs, they all know that this is a viable option. in embracing this new direct pay kind of deal, they can have a more fulfilled life, a more fulfilled career and still make money and have better outcomes.

So thank you for what you’re doing as well.

Michael Tetrault (51:25)
Thank you, I appreciate it.

Steven Schwartz (51:27)
All right, pal. Have a great day. Thanks for your time. And folks, we will see you on the next podcast episode.