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LUW Series: Marketing a Private Practice with Steve Turney | POP 1099

How is fear mucking up your marketing efforts? Why is consistency so important in building up a strong marketing campaign? What are the four pillars of what makes great marketing for your practice?

In this Level Up Week Series podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about marketing a private practice with Steve Turney. 

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Meet Steve Turney

A photo of Steve Turney is captured. He is the Executive Director of the Mental Health Marketing Conference, a two-day event that educates the mental health sector about marketing. Steve is featured on the Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

Steve Turney is the Executive Director of the Mental Health Marketing Conference, a two-day event that educates the mental health sector about marketing. The two-day event educates mental health professionals and organizations about consumer marketing so they can reach more people, more effectively. Steve is also a connector and a content creator.

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.

In this Podcast

  • Common mistakes in marketing to avoid
  • Great marketing mindsets 
  • The four pointers of marketing 
  • “Pricing is a factor of your marketing”

Common mistakes in marketing to avoid 

The biggest mistake that can cause you to trip up in your marketing efforts is to let fear get the better of you. 

Fear can cause you to doubt yourself, take shortcuts, and even drop in the consistency of your efforts, which means that a lot of what you put in doesn’t get maintained by your efforts. 

Overcome your fear, or learn to take action despite its presence, so that you can remain consistent and authentic in your marketing efforts which maintains your customer’s trust in your brand. 

Whether or not you need new clients today or tomorrow, you should make it easy for anybody who meets you online to say, “This is the experience that I expect to get at this place, and once I have it, it’s the same. It’s authentic” … So, there’s always a long-term need to be building our brands … our actual promises that we’re making in the market. (Steve Turney) 

Great marketing mindsets 

1 – Anything worth doing is worth doing badly: just start! Even though it may be nowhere near as good as you want it to be in the beginning, you cannot become a great marketer if you don’t start somewhere. 

2 – Consistency: in marketing, consistency is the name of the game. It doesn’t have to be the best or the brightest or the biggest, but as long as you are consistent, you will begin to see results. 

You’re in a current in a river of information flowing, so what you want somebody to do is every time they see your brand or logo, they want to get the same impression … That’s great marketing and branding. (Steve Turney)

The four pointers of marketing 

  • Get your website right. This is your virtual real estate that you should maintain well since it’s (almost always) the front door to your practice. 
  • Your content marketing strategy: What are you saying out in the market that people can find that is relevant and accessible to your ideal clients? Remember that social media is an additional aspect of marketing, and not marketing in its entirety.

I think a lot of therapists get it kind of backwards. They see social media and think; “Well, that’s where I need to spend my marketing [dollars]” and those are wonderful places [to market] … but social media for the most part is awareness, and it doesn’t drive transactions all the time. (Steve Turney) 

  • Build an email marketing list: use social media, for example, as a tool to get people onto an email marketing list since that is another solid rock of marketing, and is a great way to get folks to start trusting you and to start purchasing from you. 
  • Work with video: video marketing is incredibly effective in bringing on new clients. A lot of therapists may be hesitant to use video, but it’s not about therapy itself, but rather to get clients comfortable with you. 

“Pricing is a factor of your marketing”

Yes, it is important to offer accessible avenues for people to be able to get therapy and the help that they need, but those avenues do not need to come at your expense. 

There are many different ways for you to offer your services to the community without you going home with no income beyond the necessities. 

Begin with the end in mind, because you are the captain of the ship who needs to set the course. Build in philanthropic routes while building a solid and successful business. 

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LUW Series: From Empty to Overflowing – Joe’s Formula for a Full Practice | POP 1098

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Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

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Podcast Transcription

Joe Sanok 00:00:00 You’re someone with a vision for your practice, for your side hustle, and for your personal journey. But when it comes to establishing your path and how to get to where you want to be with your practice, things get a little messy. You’re also someone who’d prefer to go in person instead of to groups and listening to everyone else’s story. To me, it sounds like you could benefit from one on one consulting with our experienced practice of the practice consultants from 595 a month and up, you can work with a consultant that will give you more direction and practical, tried and tested tips matched to you and your goals. For more information, visit practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Again, that’s practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Joe Sanok 00:00:53 This is the. Joe Sanok 00:00:54 Practice of the practice podcast with Joe Sam accession number 1099. Hey, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So glad that you are here. we’re going to get kicked off in just a moment. welcome to the third webinar for Level Up Week. Joe Sanok 00:01:17 We’ve been kicking out two more, and then we have one more today. And we have for a day for the next three days. So, make sure you stick around in the next webinar. So, let me share with you, our screens, our screen here, screen share thingy. and tell you a little bit about, Steve who is hanging out with us today. so welcome. We are talking marketing, a private practice. And, if you haven’t joined us this morning, we’re the first two were a lot more just along the lines of, just like plan presentations, walking through, filling up your practice. but this one and then the one after this are a lot more conversational. So we have Steve with us. We’ll introduce in just a second. Then we have Isaac afterwards. half an hour afterwards. That’s going to be talking about multi-site location, practices. So how do you run it in three different places. So, really excited today. if I have not met you yet, I’m Joe Cenac, and I’m the founder of practice of the practice. Joe Sanok 00:02:16 We started that back in 2012. we’ve helped thousands of therapists to build a thriving practice they absolutely love. Been doing the podcast for a while. We passed episode a thousand earlier this year in June, and we’re about to hit episode 1100, probably in mid October. So we’re doing 5 to 6 a week. and it’s just amazing to just see the level of people were attracting as guests. we just, a lot of the episodes that we just recorded, Josh, who’s on our team, has been really doing some good analysis of people, and we’ve had USA today bestselling authors. We’ve had, just some top keynote speakers. one guy was ranked, the number one expert on workplace culture by Inc magazine. And so just these really awesome interviews that are coming up. So if you’ve missed any of the Practical Practice podcast, we’d love for you to check out those. Just the game is getting raised by the team. They’re like doing an amazing job. So, you know, we get 60,000 to 100,000 listeners a month and then a lot of other things. Joe Sanok 00:03:17 But my biggest role is being a single dad to my two awesome daughters. They’re ten and 13. We have so much fun together. We were on the beach yesterday. I got to go paddleboarding and we went out for tacos and it was just like, you don’t know in Michigan when it’s going to snow. So I mean, like it literally last week was in the 50s. So you just never know. so we take advantage of those days as much as possible. and we are lucky enough to have Steve Cherney with us. So Steve owns and runs the Mental Health Marketing Conference, which is a three day experience for behavioral health marketers, executives and clinicians that feeds the mind, fills the heart and fuels connectivity. The ninth Annual Mental Health Marketing Conference is October 1st through third. So this in just a couple weeks, I’m going to be doing the closing capstone there on Thursday morning. Talking about Thursday is the new Friday and some other things. so really excited to be hanging out with Steve in person. Joe Sanok 00:04:10 We’ve never met in person, so, it’s always so fun to do so. Steve. welcome. So glad to have you here. Steve Turney 00:04:18 I’m so. I’m so glad to be here. I you mentioned we haven’t met in person, and I, I that’s true, but I feel like I’ve met you in person. you know, follow you on Instagram. And, you know, I do love your family posts. And it’s so cool to see, you know, your, your priorities and your values and things like that. But it’s great to be here again with you. Joe Sanok 00:04:39 Yeah. It’s really interesting how it’s like, you know, like most of my all my team in South Africa, I’ve never met in person, but it’s like I feel this connection with people that, you know, it transcends seeing someone in person. Steve Turney 00:04:49 So just right off the top, I want to thank you for sending me these books. We’re going to be giving out about 90 of those Thursdays, the new Friday books at, your capstone presentation. Steve Turney 00:04:59 You’re going to kick things off Thursday morning. it’s like one of the biggest last presentations we have. So it kind of saved the best for last. And, and then give away 90 books is so cool. So thanks for doing that. Joe Sanok 00:05:10 Oh, I can’t wait. It’s gonna be so fun. Well, Steve, let’s talk a little bit about just marketing in general. And so I know you have the pulse on a lot of different aspects of the marketing world. let’s just start like really big picture, you know, you’ve been a part of many level up weeks. You’ve been on the podcast. I always like to just start with, like, what are you seeing in the marketing world shift that maybe six months or a year ago wasn’t happening? Steve Turney 00:05:36 six months or a year ago? you know, I think certainly we are seeing the continuation of people talk about referrals starting to be not, as slushy as they were before. So, you know, I was I was watching that trend, you know, six, 12 months ago. Steve Turney 00:05:55 And that continues to actually probably change the the delta or the momentum on that. So I, I hear a chatter on LinkedIn and other places about that continuing to be, something that a lot of clinicians and therapists are going to need to, you know, make sure their books are full, whereas, you know, 3 or 4 years ago, just flying in the door. And yes, there still access challenges to be had, but, there’s that I think, that that’s the big one that comes to mind. That’s the big trend is that, you know, referrals compared to three, five years ago are just in a very different place right now. Joe Sanok 00:06:32 Yeah. Now, when you think about challenges that the average clinician has. So we’ve got people that like there’s one person that she’s starting her practice in January. So like brand new just passed the exams. And last month we gave her a big high fives virtually. and there’s people that here probably have 30 or 40 clinicians. So big kind of differences and kind of focus. Joe Sanok 00:06:51 But like where do most therapy type people screw up? Marketing? Steve Turney 00:06:58 probably fear. probably not being familiar with it or or good at it, or judging themselves for not being good at it. And so probably maybe not being as consistent as they could or should be, with their marketing or even their branding. I mean, their branding being that, that promise that you’re making out there in the marketplace, you know, which is definitely part of your marketing strategy. whether or not you need new clients today or tomorrow, you should make it easy for anybody who meets you online to say, this is the experience that I expect to get at this place, and once I have it, it’s the same. It’s authentic. It’s it’s there’s a through line all the way. So there’s always a long term need to be building our brands. and that doesn’t mean our logos, but our, our actual promises that we’re making in the market. and then just, you know, whether it’s whether it’s just, I don’t want to use the word ignorance, but, you know, there’s a lot of things we just don’t know about. Steve Turney 00:08:00 We’re not experts in everything. So clinicians come out of school oftentimes underprepared for the marketing and business side. And I could say the same thing about accounting or, you know, a couple other back of house things. But marketing is one of those things that, is one of the keystones for, you know, growth, success. Is that awareness turning into interest, turning into engagement, turning into new new clients or new patients, whatever the semantics are. So, you know, just, either kind of failing to plan forward with your marketing or, feeling overwhelmed by it. I think fear is is more than anything, what an especially a first time clinician coming to into the market might be overwhelmed by. Joe Sanok 00:08:46 Yeah, no, thanks for breaking that down. I think that yeah, we’re we’re continuing to see that, that people just aren’t sure how to market. They want to do it right. You know, and I think that’s we want as a baseline, we want people to go into therapy that want to do it right. Joe Sanok 00:09:00 Like we don’t want people to just like, well, we’ll spaghetti at the wall. We’ll see if it works like that’s we want our natural postures to be around, like good training and good ways of thinking about good ethics, all of that. And when it comes to marketing, that’s not always the best mindset to go into it. Can you talk a little bit about kind of mindsets? You see, and before we get to that, we’re going to probably in five minutes or so start taking your questions. So this is not a just Joe interview. I want you to say here’s where I’m at. I want to, you know, dig in with Steve a little bit. If you want to virtually raise your hand, then just down below, click raise your hand. That means that you want to come on camera, asks you a question. We’ll pin you in front of everybody so that we can have a conversation. If you just have a question you think Steve can just answer and you don’t need a back and forth, just put that in the chat. Joe Sanok 00:09:43 So, we’ll go to that in just a second. But you know mindset Steve, like what kind of mindsets would you challenge. Would you encourage when it comes to marketing our practices? Steve Turney 00:09:52 Yeah, there’s like if you think of a bell curve, you know, there’s there’s two mindsets that I would bring to mind. One is the, the G.K. Chesterton quote, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. So just simply starting, you know, talking about the health of your practice, you know, let’s talk about, you know, if you want to get in shape, what do you do? Well, you simply begin, you know, you don’t, you don’t try to do too much. You just begin and you set a baseline. and that’s, that’s more often than not the magic and then go back. So, you know, consistency and marketing is the name of the game. It doesn’t have to be the very best, brightest, most beautiful logo you’ve ever seen in the world or the the social media post that changes the world. Steve Turney 00:10:35 You know, this is you’re in a kind of a current of a river of information flowing. So what you want somebody to do is every time they see your brand, your logo, they want to get that same impression. And you know, when I see the practice of the practice chair that cut that blue color. you know, the name is gray. I think I know what I’m going to get every time. And that is, that’s great marketing and branding. on the other hand of that bell curve is if you’re in a place and a maturation of your business, to consider, you know, expertise in marketing, rather than home rolling it yourself or, or doing it yourself with your own in-house team, it’s well worth, looking at marketing agencies and, and PR firms that this is their expertise, the same way that if I need coaching, I’ll go to an LPC, you know, and in no time because that’s my that’s the way I can easily find my true north and connect with my emotional intelligence. Steve Turney 00:11:33 It’s the same thing for marketing. not every agency is fabulous or great, but especially if you can get an agency that doesn’t have a long, learning curve around the language of mental health and the nuances of mental health. And certainly HIPAA compliance is in there. you just get. I just love expertise. And so there’s an opportunity to think about outsourcing that rather than, you know, building it yourself. Joe Sanok 00:11:58 Yeah. Well, as we, have those questions start to come in and you all start to raise your hands. I’m going to ask Steve just a couple more questions, but jump to the front of the line. Every single one of these, we get to the end and there’s more questions than we have time to get through. So, get in early and often. So, so, Steve, like, when you think about, I don’t know, maybe the 3 or 5 bullet points of marketing, a practice that you’re like, okay, if someone’s only going to put in a handful of areas that they’re going to work on, like, what would you say they should be working on? you know, what would you say they should be working on? Steve Turney 00:12:33 you know, get your website. Steve Turney 00:12:34 Right. That’s, that’s a, that’s a real estate that you own out there in the internet. And there’s a lot of different trends and phases that come and go and you know, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, these are important channels, but that’s all leased space. And I would say, you know, that the front door to your practice is your website. and websites have been designed for Google. Really. Google is your big customer there. So, you know, I think your content, marketing strategy is kind of the big next rock that you need to be thinking about on a regular basis. What you’re consistently dripping and putting effort into is, what am I saying out in the market that people can find that’s relevant and fresh and clinically rigorous and also accessible to the the people that I want to either target or attract? because Google feeds off of consistently fresh information and that information, that content can be repurposed down into little short videos for your social media channels. I think I think a lot of therapists get it kind of backwards. Steve Turney 00:13:42 They, you know, they see social media and they think, well, that’s where I need to spend my marketing. And those are like, those are wonderful places. You can definitely double down on a channel and have a ton of success. but social media, for the most part is, awareness. And it doesn’t drive into transaction all the time as much as, using social media as sort of a tentacle to the octopus or the, or to the mother base and, and attracting those people to your website, to those places that you own. Your email marketing list is definitely another, another big rock that I would consider, putting a lot of time into because that is where somebody feels safe. They pretty much own that environment when they get messages. we get a lot of messages. So they also need to be relevant. And, you know, at times urgent or, entertaining or compelling something to get the awareness. but that’s oftentimes where transactions will happen. They’ll maybe click through to, a landing page that may be to your intake form, things like that. Steve Turney 00:14:48 And then I think video getting good at video is a big one. So I’m a co-founder of a new company called My Practice Video. I’m not going to pitch that here, but I mention it because I’m really excited about making video marketing easier for people because therapists are, I think, naturally inclined and definitely clinically trained to stay out of the room. And so you certainly see some therapists that are aggressive or, you know, very proactive with their their video creation. And that’s usually a wonderful thing. but I think a lot of us are hesitant about putting our face on camera. and so how to do that? Well, in this age where, you know, the website is no longer about, just text that Google will read and process and our, our social media feeds. You know, if you think about Facebook ten years ago versus the video that you see today or Instagram. yeah. It’s it’s a video first world. So there’s that. those are some of the, those are some of the big rocks. Steve Turney 00:15:51 I think those for, you know, website content marketing. yes. Social media channels for sure. And, and how to how to use video. Well. Joe Sanok 00:16:00 so awesome. Yeah. We just did in next level practice, we just had Michael Kent, who I think he’s coming to the mental health marketing conference. he came and spoke to us about doing good video and like, that’s all he does is video and photo. So, Yeah. Cool. We have a question. So, Allison couldn’t virtually raise her hand. I just want to remind you all how to do that. So in the bottom you’ll see react. If you click on react, you’ll see raise my hand. So, sometimes it’s a bit confusing. It used to be just right at the bottom, but now it’s under react. So I think zoom didn’t update. So if you can’t find that and you want to ask a question, feel free to do that. Or you can just put it into the chat. Allison. go ahead. Joe Sanok 00:16:37 You’re welcome to turn on video if you want. if not, that’s cool too. Speaker 3 00:16:41 Awesome. Thank you. And thanks for that reminder. I don’t use zoom super often where we’re a teams play, so yeah. cool. Well, I just want to say first, thanks also for hosting all these free workshops. It’s been, helpful to join. I’ve done a few this morning, so appreciate it. but long and short, my question is really about synthesizing marketing metrics. So we have a guy that does Google ads and SEO. We have another guy that does marketing. We just updated our website. He this, you know, second guy helps with just ideas for how to, you know, build more traffic, get more calls, things like that. And as very much a non marketer, I don’t always know how to synthesize the information about your Google ads look good, your SEO looks good. You’re ranking here. Your terms are this where you should change this? You shouldn’t change that. So just any general, you know, thoughts, feedback on how someone who’s not marketing minded can really feel more comfortable in that space. Joe Sanok 00:17:47 Yeah. Steve Turney 00:17:48 That’s a great question and thanks for coming on video. It’s nice to see you and it’s nice to see so many people on this webinar. It’s amazing the the poll that Joe Stanek has I would say one, it’s your right to, ask those experts to make it as simple as possible for you. That’s on them to communicate it clearly. I’ll often to I’ll oftentimes because I’m in your seat too quite honestly I’m and I’ll say you know, say it to me like I’m five and or, you know, that report needs to be drilled down into 2 or 3 recommendations, not simply the data. So sometimes marketing analysts and marketers generally will want to deliver results for you. So they send you these reports that have a lot of information. You don’t need the data. You need the analysis. So, you know, make sure you’re getting the top level insights that they recommend. The onus should be on them to recommend, but it’s on you to say what your goals are and so you know the business goals. Steve Turney 00:18:50 Working backward from the business goals and meeting them as they come forward from this SEO. You don’t need to know a ton about what your keywords are doing, or if it’s a long tail approach versus short tail. You want to see those 3 or 4 metrics that are, typically engagement focused. So, you know, you want to see, people on your website for a healthy amount of time that aren’t bouncing immediately. you know, you want to see your intake form being engaged on a regular or growing basis. you know, lead acquisition tracking is sometimes a little tricky. So you can’t always hold their feet to the fire for every like, not everything is measurable. but if you can, if you can see, you know, you kind of need to pick what your metrics are. So is it email list growth? Is that where you’re feeling like, this is my closed garden, and once I get somebody in here, then I can look at my click through rate. And the click through rate typically leads to two new clients a month, something like that. Steve Turney 00:19:53 So so definitely, you know, bring your business mind to it and then pick your pick your small goals that you know are going to drive results. And then they can tweak and play around with AB tests for your your Google Ads and all of the all of those things. They don’t necessarily need to be beautiful, but they do need to be testing those ads. So make sure they’re, you know, they’re running, you know, 4 to 6 when they can and let the algorithm kind of do some of that work if they’re not already. it doesn’t need to be on you to say, well, this is the one with the person whose smile I like the best. You know, I get into those moments where I’m like, I don’t know, you don’t have to know. You can let the machines do that work. and, and but again, be B and I’ll stop with this, but be cognizant of what your goals are with those ads. So if your goal is top level awareness and you know it’s one thing, if you want to see click through to a specific landing page, that’s another thing. Steve Turney 00:20:56 And that all ties back from your business. Is that is that helpful at all or do you have a follow on question? Speaker 3 00:21:01 No. That’s super helpful. I think. I don’t want to get into the weeds of it. That’s why we pay people to do that in mind, you know, idea. And so I think being very clear of asking them to make it really clear is it’s a good reminder to we can do that, that they don’t just get to send us this and be like, and that’s that sort of thing. Yeah. Steve Turney 00:21:23 Read this ten page report. Yeah. Like, no you’re not quite done there. Joe Sanok 00:21:27 I appreciate you bringing that up. And when we work with group practice owners oftentimes we talk about the Carver model. So the Carver model is actually a nonprofit board governance. And so the model is the board of directors sets the ends. So we want to alleviate homelessness in the area. And then the CEO or executive director creates the means. How are we going to get there? And I think this is a helpful mindset of saying, okay, ad agency, we want more clients for these two new clinicians. Joe Sanok 00:21:58 They specialize. One is a play therapist. The other is helping with post-divorce. We want them to be full within the next 60 days. You tell me the means of how we’re going to get there, and how are you going to report that out to me, you know, once a week just to like forward backward report this next week. We’re doing this last week we did this just every Friday, every Monday, whatever it is. Just give me a quick like, where are we at with those ends that I want? that can to me that help me focus on where do I actually want to head. And you figure out how we’re going to get there. You’re the expert. this also works great with even a virtual assistant or a regular assistant. If you’re like, okay, I want to know how many sessions happened every week. I want to know how many conversions there were. I want to know how many. No shows or whatever. You know, 2 or 3 big like dashboard things are. Joe Sanok 00:22:42 You tell me how you’re going to get that information. as my executive assistant. and then, you know, tell me how often you’re going to tell me that, so that whole, like, ends and means to me, it’s been so helpful for not getting in the weeds. Like what you’re talking about. Speaker 3 00:22:55 Awesome. I appreciate it, y’all. Joe Sanok 00:23:06 Something always comes up when you’re running a private practice. Well, gusto is payroll in HR services can make it a little easier. Gusto was designed for you, the small business owner. They take the pain out of running a business, automatically calculating paychecks, filing payroll taxes, setting up open enrollment. Gusto. Does it all want more time tracking health insurance 401 K onboarding commuter benefits offer letters access HR experts. You get the idea. With gusto, you can focus on the joy of running your business. It’s super easy to set up and get started, and if you’re moving from another provider, gusto can transfer all the data for you. It’s no surprise 99% of businesses said the value they get for gusto is worth the price. Joe Sanok 00:23:54 And here’s the best part. Because you’re a listener, you get three months totally free. All you have to do is go to gusto. Com forward slash Joe again. That’s gusto comm forward slash Joe. I’m telling you you’re going to love gusto. Get started today. Let’s bounce back over. I see we’ve got some chat coming through Steve. we got recently invested in a website and hesitated, but now feel confident it was the right move. Stephanie would love to hear more about that. Stephanie follows up with do you see benefit for using a platform like LinkedIn instead of Facebook or Instagram, since they are so saturated. So Steve, what are your thoughts on that? Steve Turney 00:24:36 I love LinkedIn, I I personally, because the nature of my business is B2B. I’ve invested heavily in LinkedIn. I invest nothing in Twitter and very little in Facebook, although I do think Facebook’s definitely has merit. my personal experience with Facebook is a lot of robots, but I know there’s a ton of people and especially groups that are really productive and active on there. Steve Turney 00:25:02 So, I don’t want to say anything about Facebook. I think it’s great. but I do think LinkedIn is the least of the spammy, social media channels. And again, from my experience and the people I talk to, and it’s very professional. So, it does have this unspoken culture of you basically avoid political things. You basically avoid some of those hot button issues that can rile us up sometimes. So you do have an opportunity to to make a great voice and a professional appearance. And if you Google yourself, like Google your name. More often than not, I mean, LinkedIn is way up there in the search results. So other people are doing that too. And it’s a social proof that you can have out there. So I would invest some time in it and you can do things where you, you know, you can use different social aggregator tools. I don’t have one to pitch specifically, but, you know, tools that let you post in multiple places at the same time, essentially, Hootsuite would be one that comes to mind. Steve Turney 00:26:08 That’s pretty common, a little pricey, but, we use it. It’s worth it. So, yeah, yeah, Facebook and LinkedIn. Instagram. You know, Instagram is great. Instagram is also aging, you know, and I think, TikTok is definitely relevant and and having its moment in the sun. and then it comes down to, you know, what’s my investment in this channel, you know? And am I willing to commit to this long term? And I did commit to LinkedIn. I saw that and like this was for me. And it was like 15 years ago. And I just continued to drip, drip, drip away, send out invites and be consistent with the content. And it’s amazing, like so many people that I meet that I’ve never met before, the first thing they’ll say or one of the first things is, oh, I’ve seen you on LinkedIn and and sometimes it’s like, oh, I’ve seen you on LinkedIn. It’s like so much. But I’m like, hey, I, you know, here we are. Steve Turney 00:27:03 And and it did work. So, you know, you got to be empathetic about the reader. You’re not just going to send out every last thing. But yeah, I think for a therapist out there, you know, developing a professional, brand and a look about yourself, LinkedIn is a great channel for that. Joe Sanok 00:27:19 I think that you touched on a good point, Steve, where it’s like finding where you enjoy it to like, clearly as you talk about LinkedIn, you like it and you enjoy that. Like, I hate LinkedIn. Like I. I go on there once or twice a month to like connect a little bit, but it’s like, I just don’t like it where it’s showing up for a podcast. Like, clearly I do it 5 or 6 days a week just talking with people, making those connections, having the team do it like it’s so easy for me. And so finding like what? What’s the thing you can do consistently that you also don’t hate? So I think that like then like the people that like LinkedIn, like you are going to find you there and like if you were a therapist, it’d be like, oh, like Steve is cut from the same cloth. Joe Sanok 00:27:59 And so like, I want to hang out with him and, you know, do therapy with him or whatever, refer people. whereas if we forced ourselves into like doing a TikTok dance where we feel all awkward and it’s like we’re doing it for the likes, it’s like it’s never going to convert because it’s like, those aren’t your people. Steve Turney 00:28:15 That’s so that is a great point. And, you know, it gets into like the kind of our happiness quotient as we do this. Like we have to do this stuff. So, you know, let’s not forget about ourselves and the way that, you know, dopamine might interact with serotonin or, you know, cannabinoids or opioids in our mind, and, you know, those natural receptors that we have when we’re doing things that are creating friendships and meaning and recognition. And, you know, a lot of the algorithms are based on feeding that dopamine hit for us. But it’s a natural thing. It’s not a bad thing that we have this in our system is just being aware of it and and using it for our own good along the way and making sure that we’re that’s a that’s a great point and making sure that we are your point is great. Steve Turney 00:29:03 Mine is rambling. Joe Sanok 00:29:05 No, yours is awesome too. Steve Turney 00:29:06 But just to make sure that it’s, it’s, benefiting the individual and the community at the same time. Joe Sanok 00:29:13 Katie, you had asked, what platforms do you suggest for video content recording before? Steve Fields this I love. If you’re able to unmute yourself just so that we can and maybe turn your video on, just to ask some follow up questions, because I can imagine that based on your goals will probably be how Steve, answers it. so if you’re able to do that, would love that. If you can’t do that, that’s totally fine. but let’s just see if if Katie is able to unmute and, and join us, to ask a couple follow up questions there. If not, we’ll do our best. Speaker 4 00:29:45 But hey, so sorry. Just caught the end of that. I had somebody call our practice, so I had to jump on, but then heard my name, so, Joe Sanok 00:29:54 Yeah. So I was just asking if you didn’t mind coming on, for us to ask some questions about your goals around, platforms. Joe Sanok 00:30:00 We suggest for, video content recording. Speaker 4 00:30:03 Yeah. So, our practice, we are a smaller practice. less than ten. and we kind of. And our ideal, the what we put out on social media is kind of labeled as icing on the cake. Right? And we really focus on customer service, making sure that we are converting inquiries into clients, I’m making sure that we are paying attention to our clients who are there within our practice. And so we have started dabbling into the social media realm. We have created a meet the team real, which is just a quick, you know, fun, catchy thing. but what I have found in the editing process, I have previously used Adobe Premiere Pro, I’ve used iMovie, I’ve used things of that nature. But, what I found as challenging was everybody’s video recording, audios were different. And you can pick up on everybody’s like, mouth clicks and this and that in a and I am kind of a perfectionist. And so I was like, how much do I hyper focus on this? but we want to put out this content so, so people can know who our team is. Speaker 4 00:31:14 And we put it out on Instagram and Facebook. And thank you for the LinkedIn aspect and recommendation because that’s a really good plug as well. But, would you how would you recommend for people to record? I think that a lot of them did it on their phones or through a camera on their laptop. But would you recommend zoom? Would you recommend another platform to record? Steve Turney 00:31:34 Yeah, that’s a great question and I would love Joe’s insight on this too, I would say. you know, you even see professional ad firms these days going real casual on even television commercials. So, you know, the video quality, it’s nice to not have grainy video, but audio is really important, you know, like if you have to invest in one thing, being a perfectionist, you know, you may want to look at a post-production editor and you can find those pretty inexpensively, depending on what you want the output to be or the job of this video to be. I use Riverside FM and I really like it for recording. Steve Turney 00:32:14 if you’re recording more like kind of how to courses or like showing somebody around a website, Lume is a great tool to use. but for me, Riverside is typically what I use to record. I’ll put it into a service called descript, which gives me a lot of AI tools and a little bit better video editing. I like iMovie, too. You know, I can get a lot of good results out of that. but they don’t have quite the audio reduction. Where Riverside and also descript will take out all the ums and the Oz and the little, sound clicks sometimes. but you might need a, you might need a person, and it’s not a full time hire. You can just outsource that for, you know, 100 bucks, a couple hundred bucks for a video clip. Joe. What do you what do you think? Joe Sanok 00:33:01 Yeah, I agree with everything you just said. I would say really categorizing in your head, like, what are the 3 to 5 pillar videos that you like that they just need to represent your practice like a meet the team kind of thing. Joe Sanok 00:33:16 would probably be some of those, maybe each person having their own like professionally done video, where it’s, you know, a minute, maybe 90s of them just talking about their approach to therapy, who they help, things like that. maybe one that has to do with the specialty of the clinic. and those are ones that I would say are worth hiring a videographer for half a day or a day to have that consistent audio. They have the same mic, they’re the same lighting. Maybe it’s in different spots in your office, but you can just get that consistency, for those pillar videos. And then I’d say the other ones are more ongoing videos. So social media, things like that. I mean, even like the default reels, templates, can do a lot, just within the default on Instagram. I think most people on social media, aren’t usually expecting and even sometimes they’re turned off by two professional of a video. so like, for example, we’re hosting a conference next spring called the Group Practice Boss Conference here. Joe Sanok 00:34:10 And, you know, spring looks different in Michigan than other parts of the year. So I recorded this past spring a whole bunch of video, just like when I was walking to school with my daughter, walking along the flowers like, hey, springtime in northern Michigan. We’re doing the group practice Bass conference in a couple weeks. Make sure you sign up. And so it’s like those are just casual with my phone type of things. The audio doesn’t have to be much better than what’s on my phone for that type of video, because it’s more important to have the, quantity of content rather than the quality in that situation. So, I think there are things, though, that you can set up in your office, like having, you know, a selfie stick that people can take outside with them or can put on a tripod, maybe having a Bluetooth microphone that people can put, you know, on their shirts if they’re going to record something. But I think the idea what I heard you say that I would challenge is you said something along the lines of, I’m not sure how they recorded if it was on their video or on their phone or on their like. Joe Sanok 00:35:04 The reason you have a bunch of different looks is it wasn’t all in one device. And so we just, you know, probably would say, okay, this day is recording day or, you know, you get this 15 minutes, it’s all in your phone. It’s all in some other camera. Then it’s a lot easier for someone that’s doing editing to then say, okay, consistently we have this buzzing sound in the background across all the videos, because it was all in one person’s phone that has the buzzing versus we have 12 different reels and 12 different sounds. but yeah, I think having even just an editor for some of your social media stuff, they’re not that expensive. And that’s something that our team is full right now. But, you know, we take on clients once in a while to, to do that kind of work on just a kind of ad hoc basis. Speaker 4 00:35:43 Well, in a, in a follow up kind of question to that or statement, I would say is our practice does have some of our therapists located in other states. Speaker 4 00:35:50 And so, you know, it’s kind of hard to bring everybody in, in person. But that was after that learning experience was like, you know what? Maybe we should have done it all. You know, I scheduled a 15 minute recording session in zoom recorded on that and, you know, be able to capitalize. But I didn’t know if there was a good, virtual recording platform that can be done, to, to record things. But I appreciate the The help in the Riverside and the descript in the loom. Joe Sanok 00:36:21 We use Zen Caster for all of our podcast recording. It’s very similar to Riverside, where it comes in as two separate tracks tracks. So then the audio engineer, if one person’s sound is too low, they can pull it up or things like that. I mean, the big thing, in my opinion, if you’re doing virtual, is making sure they have some sort of headphones with a mic that’s close to them. If it’s just some AirPods and then having at least two sources of light, usually at two and ten, that are on their face so that they’re well lit. Joe Sanok 00:36:49 Those things alone will make it look so much better than, you know, anything else with the cameras we have today? Speaker 4 00:36:55 Awesome. Thank you so. Joe Sanok 00:36:56 Much. Cool. Yeah, yeah. Next question is, do you have any, thoughts and recommendations for VA? Fatima, we may have some follow up questions there. Feel free to unmute. And if you want to turn your video on, I’d love to hear more of what kind of marketing, because that’s a broad, broad industry. Speaker 5 00:37:15 So thank you so much. I’m in the gym. That’s why you don’t want to see my face and the way I’m looking. Sweaty. So sorry for you. I just, I’m having a really hard time. I don’t want to do all of this stuff. I have a lot of people working for me. I’m seeing patients. At the same time. I want a VA who can manage. A lot of the email marketing really helped me with, like, launching this. you know, I have a book I’ve already written about my ebooks, all of the stuff you talk about, and I’ve had horrific experiences with Fiverr, you know, getting Vas that way. Speaker 5 00:37:49 I just spoke to a company named Assist World. just wanting to see what your thoughts are. If you have someone reputable that’s not going to cost an arm and a leg that really, actually can help. Steve Turney 00:38:03 Yes. Yeah. That’s great. you know, I don’t know what you mean by an arm and a leg, but other than, you know, expensive. But, there’s Vas virtual assistants that can help you with so many things. And then there are freelance, you know, contract marketers that, you know, a VA is typically, more often than not, sort of a catchall. you know, they’re they’ll they’ll watch your inbox, you know, they’ll make appointments, they’ll do social media posts, all sorts of things for you. and that’s wonderful. And, you know, oftentimes very cost effective. Sometimes I would drill in just another level into expertise and, and try to see what your specific marketing needs are and see if there’s somebody out there, more on the freelance side of things or part time gig that, you know, maybe a specialist or an expert in, let’s say, search engine optimization, creating some, some long form content and making sure your website has all the keywords and the tags that are necessary. Steve Turney 00:39:03 so that’s a, that’s another way to tackle that. It still can be virtual. It still can be, a ton of assistance, but they may just work under a different name than a VA. Speaker 5 00:39:12 Okay. So any recommendations? in terms of where to go to hire someone. That could be like a dedicated digital marketer for me, instead of like, you know, taking one person from here, another person from there, someone that could actually manage those things on a more regular basis. And it’s dedicated, like, could become part of my team. Steve Turney 00:39:37 Yeah. If you want somebody to be part of your team, that’s one thing. I mean, shameless plug, I would definitely say come to the mental health Marketing Conference. It’s it’s the community for behavioral health and mental health marketers to get together. And there’s oftentimes people there who do these services, copywriters and, and paid ads specialists. you know, it’s it is a benefit of working with an agency. Is that you? You don’t get one person, but you might get part of five people. Steve Turney 00:40:03 And those five people work as a team to be greater than the whole of what one person could do. So if I tried to be full service marketing myself, I would fail. but if I can engage fractionally a team or an agency like a marketing agency and I certainly have tons of recommendations. I could give you probably a long list to let you pick from. Speaker 5 00:40:22 Yes. Okay. I would love to hear that. Steve Turney 00:40:25 I’ll do that as a follow on. We’ve we’ve curated quite a list over the past eight years, so I’ll, I’ll say I put. Speaker 5 00:40:32 My email in here maybe, and, we could just email it to me and the notes here. Steve Turney 00:40:38 Yeah, that’d be fine. I’d be happy to do that. Anybody who wants that resource, I can promise to send that out this week. Joe Sanok 00:40:45 Awesome. Well, sorry I got kicked out there, Steve. we just, like, broke the internet together. Steve Turney 00:40:51 We’re that popular. Joe Sanok 00:40:52 We’re that popular. I’m going to jump in the chat and see, those follow up questions that came in, before. Joe Sanok 00:41:00 And, Steve, you may be able to see some of the questions we haven’t hit on. Jen’s giving me, some of the, the links as well. a lot of emails that you’re getting there, buddy. Steve Turney 00:41:13 I know we got a lot of emails. Joe Sanok 00:41:15 a lot of people that want want that resource. Steve Turney 00:41:17 Well that’s cool. Yeah, I’m happy to send it. It’s it’s neat to see. And I will say I talk with I talked with people. It feels like all the time, clinicians who come up to me and say, oh, man, I’ve taken courses or I’ve joined the community with Joe. And it’s been a ton of value. They they associate value to this. So like I saw the like this is a $199 value calculator. No it’s not. That’s maybe the price that you sometimes sell it for. But the value is tremendous. So I mean what what a resource there in a bundle. So but I do legit hear that all the time that they get value out of these, out of these, courses and communities. Joe Sanok 00:41:58 thank you. Well, as questions are coming in, what are your kind of final thoughts on marketing? Like, let’s kind of land it? you know, I’m sure we may have a couple more questions come in. But when you think about marketing, what haven’t we covered? And what do you want to make sure we get in? Steve Turney 00:42:13 Yeah. I mean, I think it’s worth talking about. This is like a natural, a natural extension of what we were just talking about. But, you know, classic marketing. Like, if you go to school for marketing, pricing is a factor of your marketing. And, there are there are great studies that have been done. there’s a study that, you know, there’s a there was a jeweler and she was having a hard time selling these necklaces. And so before she went on vacation, she scribbles this note to her assistant, half off, like, put this price half off for these necklaces. She just wanted to get rid of them. And the assistant read it as double the price. Steve Turney 00:42:52 And, the owner comes back and the jewelry is all sold. now, there’s a very fine, nuanced conversation to have about price gouging. What is price gouging? you know, how do we make sure we’re caring for the community? however, there is a struggle for people who oftentimes are philanthropic or or in industries that they want to do good for the world, which is such a beautiful thing in undervaluing that work to the point that they get burned out. And so while there are macro factors, you know, pricing in a way that allows you to pay the clinicians, you know, in a way that sustains their livelihood is, is a worthy, honorable thing. And, you know, unless you make the intentional decision to just go pro bono or quasi pro bono, then that’s another decision that is just as worthy. but you got to know your move there. But it’s really a it’s really a marketing function, product place, price, promotion. And when we think marketing, we think promotion. Steve Turney 00:44:01 but you know, your facility, that experience when somebody walks in, that’s marketing that is like the place you are. And how does that connect to that through line of the outcomes you want to drive and, you know, the, the products, quote unquote, you know, it’s at least a good exercise to think about what are the modalities, what are the side hustles, what am I working on, and how do I have the right product mix for where I want to take things? So it’s all, again, like to Joe’s point, you know, begin with the end in mind. You’re the captain of the ship. You have to set the the course. And then it’s about working toward that course, or that goal. But, you know, those are all those are all marketing functions that we, we don’t oftentimes think of. So I would think, you know, maybe a closing note would be make sure you’re thinking about all of marketing. Joe Sanok 00:44:50 I love that so much. Thanks so much for hanging out with me and Steve today everybody, and letting us into your ears and into your brain. Joe Sanok 00:44:56 Thanks Steve. Steve Turney 00:44:57 Thank you so much. Joe Sanok 00:45:06 Today’s episode was sponsored by gusto. Gusto is who we use for our payroll solutions. I absolutely love it because it helps do all the taxes and file everything, and I don’t have to worry about having a whole accounting team or bookkeeping team that’s doing that payroll. So try gusto.com/joe. You’re going to get three months totally free. It’s going to help you with your payroll and so many other things like doing open enrollment, filing payroll taxes, calculating paychecks, all that sort of stuff you can do with gusto. Again, that’s gusto.com forward slash. Joe, thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band silence sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. Joe Sanok 00:46:05 If you want a professional, you should find one.
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