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Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.
Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand your business, visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.
[SAM]: Hi there, and welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast. I’m so glad to have you with me today. Today, we have Tobin Lehman on the podcast. Tobin is an author and the founder of New North, an award-winning digital marketing agency dedicated to helping B2B technology firms grow. With over two decades of working with brands like Southern States, Pfizer, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Kimberly Clark, and a host of others, he has earned an industry reputation for taking the mystery out of marketing with clear strategies that earn real results. With a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design and Photography from Penn State, Tobin, previously taught design and business courses as an adjunct professor at American University and Shepherd University. Tobin resides in Frederick, Maryland with his spouse and five children. Hi Tobin. Thanks so much for joining us today.
[TOBIN LEHMAN]: Thanks Sam. Glad to be here.
[SAM]: So can you tell us a bit about your story and how you ended up in digital marketing as a founder of New North?
[TOBIN]: Well, great. I’ll give you the short and sweet version, as many stories have long, long trails, but like you mentioned in the bio, I mean, I graduated from Penn State with a degree in design. That was a fantastic program. I really ended up there, actually not making into the architecture program, but actually getting into the design program but then really realized there was so much to design that I really loved that really thought about more than the strategic side of design, design, really being this idea of creation with intention, not just, you know sometimes people hear design and they think it’s like artsy, but really this idea of thinking through things, using information and really being intentional about the communication. And so graduated there, started working for other ad agencies. I’m kind of a dork. I’m kind of into data. I was actually the only design student that was actually in calculus as well in college.
So I’ve always had this numbers and analytics side with me in design. So when I came into the agency world, I was instantly put into the digital side of the house which was actually kind of growing and bulging in. I mean, I was, trying to think through, this was early 2000, AdWords was just coming onto the scene. Google had just set up Google analytics. I mean, so I was really fortunate to be on the front side of so much that was happening in the digital side of marketing just being able to be with that. And so growing into that space working for that agency, it was only a few years later in 2008 when I opened up New North. And as they say, the rest is history. I have been growing the New North agency now for about 12 years, specifically focusing on tech and kind of growing into that space, but really always keeping data and design. We always say we’re metric focused, but design driven in the sense that metrics and data inform us, but we have to be creative and be good thinkers and design thinkers to be able to make the improvements as we go forward.
[SAM]: That’s awesome. Yes, I think it’s such a powerful combination to combine the two and focus on both of those aspects.
[TOBIN]: Yes, absolutely. I mean, there’s no real way you can do marketing without being both creative and both analytical in that sense. I mean, creativity for its own sake, doesn’t really get you a lot. And so I think marketers have such a unique challenge and especially practice owners. I mean, you guys don’t even spend the five years or four years in college kind of doing the marketing side, but being able to market your practice, I think it really does involve both that freedom to be creative, but also having a bedrock of understanding and data to be able to kind of move those things forward.
[SAM]: Absolutely. So you’ve just recently written a book called Ride the Tornado. Would you tell us a bit about that?
[TOBIN]: Yes, absolutely. So Ride the Tornado has been a book that’s been kind of years in working. Really what the idea behind Ride the Tornado is this idea of being iterative in your approach to marketing. And so this is the process we actually use at New North and so this we’ve been building up here over the past years, I actually decided in the end of 2019 to actually start writing this book. And so actually through all 2020 it was being processed and obviously as COVID hit, really put things to the test of our own process. We were able to actually use the process and so we use it every day here. And so as we kind of came out the tail end of this year, launching the book, it really is good timing. I wish we would have had it all ready to go pre COVID, but I don’t think anyone would’ve had ears for it, but I think now as things are a little bit more kind of moving forward and people can start to see a little bit deeper of a horizon for their businesses, for their lives, it’s time to really think about how we take charge of change and really that’s the idea behind.
It is really when, you know I say when yesterday’s plan don’t work anymore, when what you were doing in marketing isn’t working anymore, like what do you do? And you can’t just look around at everyone else and copy them. You need to actually have some kind of thinking process, some kind of framework to be able to experiment, to feel free. As we mentioned previously, to be creative, but also understand is that creativity working for your advantage? And that’s the idea of Ride the Tornado. It’s kind of taking charge of change, especially in the environment we’re in now and being able to create a process, a way of thinking so you can be free, but also see if it’s working
[SAM]: Well. I thought it was so amazing when I came across it that it has been released in a time like this, because I mean, this has been a worldwide season of change, unprecedented change. So yes, I actually thought it was pretty amazing that you’ve released the book in this season.
[TOBIN]: Yes, absolutely. I mean, it’s falling in a good season I think. It’s a timeless principle really. The idea though, is there’s so much change happening now, like you mentioned, but there’s, I mean, there’s always been change, but really now everyone’s having change brought to their doorstep. And so how can we as business owners, as leaders of practices, really understand how we can make sense of it, especially when things are moving so quickly in the front, especially in the digital marketing side, let alone our lives in general.
[SAM]: So I think it is such an important thing to talk about specifically when it comes to a marketing strategy, because I think as you kind of have touched on a lot of people will create or spend a lot of time creating a marketing strategy and then kind of stick to that for many years. And you mentioned that you speak about this in your book, but can you speak a bit more into why agile thinking isn’t better options for our unpredictable market, especially at this time?
[TOBIN]: Absolutely. Yes, so just to frame that up, if maybe no one’s ever heard of agile thinking, but really the agile idea here is just being nimble enough to base and not over commit to an idea and really to think through how can we create a process for seeing results incrementally before investing the whole thing. I mean, I spent 20 years now in the marketing world and when I first started, there was a real drive for these kind of annual marketing plans or even multi-year marketing plans. And those are fantastic, but in the same sense, what always would happen is three months in, six months in everything would change. And that just creates all kinds of challenges. And so when we talk about that, we call it killing the long-term plan. I think it’s both a comfort and a reality. In one sense, the comfort to say, “Hey, as a business owner, as a practice owner, don’t worry about figuring out what 2021 is going to look like.”
The long-term plan, you could put that out there and get some initial sketches, but hold it loosely right in that sense. But the other side is also experimentation time. It’s also a time to be open to say, “Well, I’m not going to just rotely commit to doing this kind of thing for a year. I’m going to look at it in three months, six months, nine months burst and just see if we can really see what’s happening there. But the only way you can really do that is if you start to adapt to an agile way of thinking in a sense that, and we talk about in the book, these three steps, assessing, ideating and executing. What that means is in the assessment phase, we talk about looking at data, looking at what’s working, what’s not working and really having that kind of reality check of your marketing to say, what’s working and what’s not.
If you’re not able to do that right now, maybe you’re doing marketing that doesn’t have data associated with it, that’s something you need to spend time looking into. We live in a time like no other where just about everything you do from a marketing perspective has some data connected to it. And so if you can understand your data, you can assess it and understand what the performance looks like. And also with the wonders of Google, you can actually find out if it’s relatively successful compared to your competitors. I mean, there are industry benchmarks everywhere. If you want to understand what other practice owners are doing, what that looks like, there is data out there to understand that. So you assess and then you’re free then from there to say, “Well, maybe our email newsletter, our email drips, aren’t working as well as we think they should based on some of these pieces. Let’s work to perfect that, or make that better.”
And so you ideate, “What are some different ways we can make this better? We can experiment, maybe try some video for emails.” And that’s huge. It’s a great recommendation to do video. Video is going to be king for a while now. So I think doing video in your emails and then testing that, sending that out, and then you execute, which then is obviously creating that email and sending it out. And then when you send that email out, you kind of loop back into the assessment face saying, “Well, how did that email do?” And so, that assessment, ideation and execution cycle repeats itself over and over again. And you’re able to then build upon it, you don’t need to commit to 10 emails with video. Just do one and see what the data looks like.
Now it may convince you. You might want to do more in that process, but that’s the idea. That’s why long-term thinking and just cladding a bunch of stuff out doesn’t really make sense. What makes better sense now is to adjust and move forward. Now, same thing could be said for operational pieces as well, but anything, about marketing about social media, I mean, social media changes so quickly. Just trying one idea and getting data back and looking at, “Did that really work well?” Now there’s things you need to understand with social media, like how the algorithms work and things like that, but feeling free to then to ideate and try things and look at the data and see how it works, that’s how you become a leader in your space. It isn’t like copying someone.
You know, spending 20 years in marketing, one of the biggest temptations a lot of business owners have is just looking across the street at a competitor and say, “Let’s just do what they’re doing.” But that’s only going to make you number two. That’s the reality. It’s only going to make you only half as good as what they are because they’re the one leading the way. The way you lead the way is by not thinking long-term, by being agile in your thinking and that assessment, that ideation, creative ideas and executing, and in doing that cycle and looping that through. And that’s how you start building into these new uncharted areas, which everything’s uncharted at this point and really defining that for it. Does that make sense, Sam?
[SAM]: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a really great kind of formula to follow. And I was just thinking that this concept of carrying the long-term plan actually makes so much sense specifically within the digital space. I think previously people have maybe been able to hold a long-term marketing plan kind of in the print world, but as you said now in the digital space, things are changing so often. And to kind of as you say, maintain that agile state of mind is so important in the digital space.
[TOBIN]: Right. And we think about just what’s happening here specifically in the US. And I’m sure everywhere there’s this massive push to online and every aspect of being online. So, I mean, COVID pushed everything online in the sense that businesses that may have been in-person have moved to video conferencing formats or moving on to e-commerce. And so if you’re just committed in, I mean, obviously people were forced to change in those cases to keep their business alive, but whether we’re forced or not, the unpredictableness, the ability to change can be a little more pleasant. Maybe we’re not forced to change, but in the same way as we look at growing businesses, taking a market and growing, that means looking into what could be out there and really setting a goal and moving forward.
And one of the important things of the assess and ideate and execute loop is in the center of that loop, you know the eye of the tornado as we call it, is the goal. So with anything in digital marketing and marketing in general, you can market all day long. But when you have a goal that allows you to actually assess an idea and execute around that goal. So if it is reaching more market, if it is engaging your clients more, whatever that goal may be, that’s really where the focus of the process works. And so that goal is just to stay in business. There’s pieces there but if it’s also to grow, if it’s to expand, if it’s to increase your web visits, whatever that goal may be, that’s the center of that process.
And that really is why it’s so good for an unpredictable market, because your goals are maybe shorter term in that case. If it’s, let’s just survive this, or let’s retain clients, you need to put that goal out there. It brings focus and allows you to then move your marketing in that direction. Sometimes it’s hard to think if we meant from a market expansion kind of tactics saying, “I want to get more people into my practice.” That’s one idea, but what about just retaining people? That was a goal. So what are the ideas there? It’s that we can use email to retain. We could use video to retain, we could use our social media to retain. So that goal is so critical in the plan. And I really think that the goal approach versus the planning approach is really what changes most dramatically in the agile; is that you think about goals. You don’t think about just having a plan, but you think about what your goal is now. And that goal could change in three months. That goal could change in six months. As soon as you achieve that goal, then you’re able to move.
[SAM]: And I think that [inaudible 00:16:12] you to kind of be ever changing. In today’s content is what’s going to make the difference between, like you said, the company that’s in the lead or at the forefront versus the company that’s kind of running behind and trying to catch up with everybody else.
[TOBIN]: Absolutely. Yes, there’s, it’s a challenging place we’re in, I mean, in digital marketing, practice owner. There is so much change, and it’s not that you can just do what you did yesterday, but you really have to be one foot into this idea of innovating and moving forward and thinking about the new technologies and giving them a try. And I think that starts to get into maybe another topic to talk about, which is really this idea around results over perfection. I think one of the things that holds most people back is wanting to do things like really, really well, their first time out. If that was the idea, no one would ever learn to ride a bike because you have to start somewhere. You have to begin.
And even if it’s a really, maybe cringe-worthy LinkedIn post after you’ve posted a couple of times or a video or an email, they get better. And so I think iterating your marketing and having this freedom and this openness to say, “I’m going to try this. I’m going to go out there.” You’ll be surprised by how much support is out there in your audience of your customers, but really this idea of iteration and thinking about getting new results and increasing results versus just being perfect. Now there’s a time and a place for perfect. Like if you’re going to send 3000 brochures to the printer, like that has to be perfect. There’s [inaudible 00:17:53] digital opens up a whole new possibility where today’s video could be better than yesterday’s video. So each time you go out, you start thinking about results versus just nailing it each time, and you have the ability to go for.
So it’s just an iPhone video for your first video on Instagram. Great, but maybe as you see the results, you invest more and you get a better camera and you get lighting. And so always thinking about just looking at results and keeping your eyes focused on the data, on the numbers, and that’ll allow you to then iterate and be more successful as you go out there. You may find that people really resonate with your message and you can get feedback. And feedback can come from data, feedback can come from your audience as well, but yes, really encourage people and say, think about this iterative approach to not think that we can’t iterate quickly because everything has to be so perfect and so well done.
I mean, the best thing about digital is it can change. And sometimes it’s the worst thing about digital tools because you can always tweak it. I know some of our clients will change their website weekly as they kind of think of new ideas and things like that. That’s great. And it can be very time-consuming as well, especially if you’re a multi hat wearing practice owner, but in the same way, like feeling that you can look at results and think about, “What is this really achieving for me,” not just, “Hey, is this perfect and can we move forward?”
[SAM]: And I think from a marketing budget perspective, it also just makes so much sense because I know you mentioned earlier as an example you know, sending out one email, including a video, as opposed to kind of setting up 10 emails and sending them off. Because I mean, then you’ve spent so much time and resources on that email series and then it doesn’t even perform well, whereas you could have spent a lot less time just on one email first seeing how it performs and then continuing from there.
[TOBIN]: Absolutely. Yes, we typically call that over committing. You’ve over committed resources into an idea, into a process and what it really lacks is feedback. You’re basically saying, “I’ve created this MVP. I’ve created this ideation. I’ve thought about it, and now we execute.” And we tend to over execute. Like we over commit into doing you know, I said 10 email series, or we scheduled our whole month out in social media. And that’s okay. We do that ourselves too, but in the same way, you have to look at the data and be ready to iterate at a pace that makes sense for you, especially if you get into new things like using video or email, or even if you’re trying to acquire lists or even networking. I mean, some of these things apply to even in-person kind of things like how well is this group doing there? So yes, it definitely allows you that freedom to experiment, but then have that understanding of, “How do I know if I’m spending my time or my resources in the right way?” And that’s where that assessment phase really kicks in and helps you.
[SAM]: And it’s almost like setting up like, so you could set up a plan, like you say, if the social media for your month, but then still allow it to be agile. So I’m just thinking, I also kind of plan out my social media ahead of time, but then if an event happens or conversation happens that I want to be a part of, I’m still able to kind of include that in my plan and then push some other posts back, for example. So, for the listeners or for the eight type personalities listening who want to still have a plan I think that that’s still possible, but then just making sure that you can adjust that if need be at the drop of a hat.
[TOBIN]: Absolutely. Yes, it gives you that flexibility to be able to do that and yes, have those check-in times, have that understanding of what your assessment looks like and really how you can use that to your advantage to iterate the right pace. Maybe you just look at it weekly, maybe you do look at it at the end of the month, but however you do decide to do that, just to commit to doing that. So to look at it, not just plan one month and then plan the next, but take that time to assess, see what worked, do more of what works, less of what didn’t work, and that is the baby step then of working through something like the RTX framework – this kind of rapid thinking and executing framework where you can start to grow your marketing through those pieces.
[SAM]: And as you said, as well, these days with all the platforms that we are using to market our businesses and it made, they all kind of include testing and make it so easy to test. And I actually, just in the episode prior to this spoke to our copywriter and we were talking about just AB testing on email platforms as well, and kind of testing a certain variable of the email, whether it be the subject line or the body text or anything like that. So, and as you said, also using it as a reason to engage with your audience, your social media audience; so kind of putting up polls and getting an idea of what they would respond to. I mean, I don’t think companies have ever had kind of that feedback at their fingertips before.
[TOBIN]: Absolutely. Yes, that’s a great way of thinking about assessing and understanding what would work and what would resonate. I mean, I know it wasn’t that long ago that LinkedIn introduced Polling, right into the platform. So yes, there’s so many ways to test even using third party testing or like yes, AB tests on emails. There’s so many good ways to get data. And even just direct conversations with your customers too. I mean, one of the things we advocate for a lot when we start working with a new client is we actually will get a list of their customers and talk to them directly. It’s just a great way to think about that. And it’s one of the things that probably feels counterintuitive, but even just to look at maybe your first appointment, or first time you met a new client coming into your practice to sit them down and just say like, “What was your first impression of us? What did you think about? What brought you here? What were the things that brought you to the practice?”
Those are great questions. They sometimes feel hard and maybe awkward someone to ask, but they’re so rich with an insight that can easily push over into your marketing and think, “Well, everyone thinks of us like this. Let’s kind of integrate that into our marketing and maybe boost that message that they liked, that we were friendly or they liked that we had a certain product or a service.” Those are the ideas that help you then iterate and create new ideation for your marketing.
[TOBIN]: So Tobin, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to go about it?
[TOBIN]: Well there, you can go to ridethetornado.com and you can see information about the book there, and there’s a contact form there. You can find me on LinkedIn as well and connect there. I’m happy to connect and talk more questions. Obviously you can reach out at newnorth.com as well, the agency that I run but any of those roads would get you to me and be happy to talk more.
[SAM]: Awesome. And for those of you who have been on the move while listening to this, we will have all this information in the podcast show notes, including a link to the Ride the Tornado book. So Tobin, if every private practice owner in the world we’re listening right now, what would you want them to know?
[TOBIN]: I want them to know that it’s okay, and I encourage you to experiment, think outside the box, set up your data, so you have some insight to look into, but be creative, experiment and get out there and ride the tornado.
[SAM]: Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the Marketing a Practice podcast.
[TOBIN]: Thank you, Sam. It’s a pleasure.
[SAM]: Once again, thank you so much to Therapy Notes for sponsoring this show. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and tele-health a whole lot easier. And if you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will input your client’s demographic data free of charge during your trial so you can get going right away. Use the promo code, [JOE], that’s [J O E] to get two free months to try out Therapy Notes for free.
Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.
Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.
This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a to professional, you should find one.