In this episode, Dr. Capella and Dr. Boucher share practical tips on using social media to grow your Direct Primary Care practice. Whether you’re new to social media or just looking for ways to improve, this conversation covers the essentials to help you succeed.
Link to Podcast: Social Media Marketing
Welcome to DPC Pediatrician. We’re Dr. Phil Boucher and Dr.
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Marina Capella,
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two DPC pediatricians who are on a mission to share our love of direct primary care with you.
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Welcome everyone to another episode of DPC Pediatricians. Today we are looking forward to having a little bit of a conversation, maybe a little bit of a debate, because the topic we’re going to discuss today is, do you need to use social media to market your practice? Now,
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Phil is sort of the king of using social media to market, and so I’m excited to have this conversation. And, you know, there are practices out there who use social media, and there are practices out there that don’t use social media. What is ideal is really a little bit up to debate.
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So Phil, I want to ask you this question first. Like, do you think every DPC pediatrician out there should be using social media?
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Oh, that’s a great question. I don’t think everybody should be using social media. You don’t have to use it as a way to grow your practice for sure. And when I talk with practices that are like trying to figure out their marketing, I mean, the old truism of available, affable,
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and able are like the three things that they used to say way back in the day of like, Are you going to grow your practice? Are you available? Are you affable? And are you able? And it’s kind of often in that order. It’s assumed that, okay,
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I’m going to go to the pediatrician and they’re able to be the pediatrician and do the things that they need to do. I think that from a, how do I get out there and market myself and grow my practice? A lot of it, like in the olden days, is word of mouth.
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And so if you have a lot of people that are out in the community talking you up and sharing their experiences with you, then you can get by without needing to have a bunch of social media going on or a bunch of different marketing avenues that you’re doing to grow your practice.
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And so I think it’s very dependent on the, like everything we’ve talked about, like, is there a podcast episode here where we’ve just been like, this is the hard and fast rule. And if you don’t do it, you’re dumb. No, it’s all nuanced when it comes to it. And so I think from my perspective, it’s one thing
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leg of the practice marketing stool. And the other legs would be things like word of mouth and referrals from patients, referrals from others in the community, community events and other ways to get your name out there. And then I don’t know how many legs of this stool is going to happen.
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And then, you know, being found on Google and that sort of thing. And those are all different ways that you can say, here’s how I’m going to market my practice without using social media or have that fourth leg or fifth leg of the stool be social media as a way to grow your practice.
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And if you find that your practice is growing at the right clip, then don’t add another thing because… It’s just another thing to do. But if you’re saying I want to grow my practice a little bit faster or I need to reach more patients than I’m finding right now,
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then social media might be the easy and effective way to do that. Does that make sense?
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Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I agree. It’s like one possible opportunity. Right. And I do think it’s wise to utilize it. I have not been the best at utilizing it, to be honest. But I did challenge myself to at least try. And I’ve put some content out there. I’m just not very consistent with it. Um,
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and I think it was the consistency, I think for, for most, because you get like on a streak of, okay, I’m going to talk about this. I’m going to talk about this. I’m going to talk about this. And then life gets in the way and all the other things in your practice get in the
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way and clinic gets busy. And then it falls by the wayside and then you’re not doing it. And you’re like, is this worth it? Or it’s worth it, but I don’t have the time for it. Or it gets stuck with all of the like clicking and captions and all those different things.
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And then it falls by the wayside.
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That being said, I’ve noticed, I’ve had a few people recently comment on the social media account, just random people, including other pediatricians or physicians who found me. And they were like, oh, I like this video that you put. And it was from like a year ago.
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So people will find your account sometimes and then kind of look through what you have in the past. So there’s that. So even if you’re not consistent, people can still kind of get to learn about you through looking at your social media account.
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I think if people say I need to grow my practice, then I would look at those different legs of this marketing stool. Can I get my own patients to just advocate more and refer more patients to me? And maybe what that looks like is offering them some sort of bonus.
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If they do find patients and direct them your way, the way that we do that is is if a patient refers another family and they join both families get a month free and that came about because we belong to this neighborhood pool and if you did like
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if you found another family and got them to join then you got a month free and i always try to be on the leaderboard of like hey you should join the pool make sure and say my name because then we both get a month free and i would get like a you know summer free pool i’m
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I was like, well, that’s a great way to do it because it incentivizes both parties to make sure and say, hey, Phil Boucher sent me to sign up for this pool membership, like make sure that we get credit because then both sides get something for it. So finding ways to get your own patients to refer,
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finding people in the community, which honestly, usually it’s not other doctors that are going to be referring people to you. It’s usually other clinicians. So we’re talking about PT, OT, lactation, others that say, hey, I’ve heard that you’ve been having trouble with your doctor. You’re not really making, you know, it’s really difficult.
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Have you heard about their practice? And I feel like that that’s a better way. I just don’t think that most pediatricians are going to refer to another pediatric group, whether or not they’re a good fit or anything along those lines. So I haven’t found that that’s been a successful way to get it.
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Perhaps if you partnered with a family practice office and said, hey, if you have any more complicated pediatric cases that you don’t feel comfortable with, would love to help. And we can try and send our practice’s parents to you, that sort of thing.
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Great way to just incentivize them to participate and then get you those interesting cases too. And so those sort of referrals can be one. Community events is a great way to grow your practice too. And so the way that that looks for us is mostly around new babies. So we do, our hospital has these expectant parent classes.
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And so we show up there and we talk about new parent stuff. And that’s a great way for us to grow our practice without social media. And it brings in those new babies that are, it’s the first parents. They’re not having to break up with the pediatrician’s office.
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They’re going to be super happy to get to talk with you. And then they’re going to be the ones that get used to the texting when they have questions and concerns. So it’s going to be hard for them to get that out. But if you say I need like lowest common, most effective strategy,
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I do think there’s something to be said for social media because everybody’s on their phone all the time because they are just dying for more information. And it allows you to educate and inform about the things that are important to you, especially in this day and age when there’s lots of misinformation and disinformation out there.
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You can be the voice of reason and trust and you build that and establish that authority in your community. And then when people have an issue, they say, I remember those videos. I remember this person. I still hear a lot from families that like, hey,
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you really helped us during COVID because I was just putting out information about COVID as things were evolving and those sorts of things. And that sticks with people. And then they remember that when they need somebody. And so I think that it can be one effective way to reach more people.
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Now you don’t need a hundred thousand followers. You don’t need to spend hours and hours putting it together. You don’t need to spend all sorts of time batching tons of videos and all of those sorts of things. You can get up in whatever way that you like, whether it’s writing, whether it’s video, whether it’s talking, you know,
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and just recording that and get out in front of people and make a difference that way. So it doesn’t have to be all encompassing and it doesn’t have to take up hours a day.
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Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I love what you said about making it informational because I think that that’s kind of what really attracted me to doing it. It’s like, oh, like, you know, I just saw this patient and they asked this question. I wish more parents knew the answer to that question.
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Let me just like put it out there and for just everyone’s benefit. Right. And so I like to do informational videos. I think it’s important to do a majority of informational videos. That way you don’t bore people with like, videos that seem like you’re just trying to get my business and you’re just trying
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to get my business you’re just trying to make money because that can come off poorly but mixing a few of those in like oh look at the benefits of this practice my office manager and i did a silly video about a year ago where she played the role of a mom and we had this little like
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doll that was the baby and so we did like one 30 second video depicting basically a standard office visit where like the pediatrician is just rushing to see the baby and it’s like do you have any questions okay bye and they’re already out the door
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before you get a chance to ask questions and then the contrast in 30 seconds of like oh an hour goes by and you got a chance to ask all your questions and you don’t have any residual questions because you actually have the time to remember all your questions
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And so it was just a silly little video that we acted out. And that was something that was highlighting the benefits of my practice as opposed to a standard fee-for-service practice. So you can have fun with it a little bit. But I think informational videos really are great because it benefits the community just for free.
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But you also have to decide how much time are you willing to commit to just putting free informational content out there. And that’s up to you to decide where that boundary is.
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I think that my rule of thumb is essentially the 80-20 rule where 80% of the content that I put out is just educational, informational. And it’s strictly for the benefit of, hey, here’s important stuff that I think parents need to know about pediatrics and parenting and all those sorts of things. And then like you said,
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if you can make it less salesy, like, hey, look at my practice, join my practice, those sorts of things. And instead you can couch it in here’s how we care about for patients. So an example of that is I will teach about nummular eczema. Somebody sent us a picture.
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Here’s the picture that somebody sent in about they got kicked out of daycare because their kid has ringworm. I said, well, they have a history of eczema and that looks like eczema to me. And there’s a specific type of eczema called nummular eczema that looks coin-like. I’m going to text you.
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I’m going to send you the cream in. And this kid does not have ringworm. It doesn’t make sense that they would have ringworm when they always get eczema at that location. That was the way that I was able to teach about nummular eczema and also share how we practice, which is… What makes sense?
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Like you don’t have to take time off work. You don’t have to be out of daycare for days and days for ringworm or, and you don’t have to call and play voicemail and play phone tag and then get an appointment. We can look at the pictures. We can say, we know this patient, we know their family.
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They all have eczema. This is eczema. We can send them the cream and get them back to daycare. And that’s a way that you can share about how your practice works differently while still educating. And then that slowly over time gets people thinking, hey, maybe there’s a better way to do this. Or, hey,
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next time I’m on the phone playing phone tag with my office and being told that you have to come in, but we don’t have any appointments till next week, maybe there’s a better way. And I heard about this other way from somebody that was on… my phone.
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And so that’s kind of how we use that 20% is to teach how our practice works while also teaching about important healthcare things rather than just like, here’s how cool my practice is. Here’s how much it costs. Here’s what you can pay with. And those things, people don’t care about that.
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Those get no views, but when people feel smart and educated, then they’ll watch and share.
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Uh-huh. Gotcha. Speaking of no views. So let’s suppose a pediatrician or a DPC physician has decided, okay, I’m going to try to do social media because it’s one of those marketing stool legs and I’m going to give it a try and I’m going to do X amount of minutes per week.
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You know, you decide what you’re willing to devote to it. What are the biggest mistakes that you see people making that are trying to kind of start out their social media accounts in the DPC world?
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Biggest thing that I think sets people apart that are successful with it and not is having a plan in advance. Because if you don’t have a plan for who I’m trying to reach and what I’m trying to get them to understand, then you’ll just make random videos about things that kind of some of them hit,
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some of them don’t hit, and you’ll never know what’s working and what people actually want to know more about. And so if you’re going to invest the time, and I always just do it 10 minutes per day, like you’ll never catch me doing any social media stuff for more than 10 minutes per day.
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I always think, okay, who am I trying to target right now? Who’s my ideal new patient? Maybe it’s expectant parents. Maybe it’s parents that are wondering if their kid has ADHD. Maybe it’s parents of kids with migraines or children with asthma, whatever it might be.
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I’m going to specifically create content for those people and create 10 pieces of content directly aimed at helping people who are wondering if their kid has ADHD. And then I’m going to figure out what those questions that they typically ask are. And then I’m going to create information that supplies the answers to those questions.
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And that’s going to be my focus. Once I’ve got that nailed down and once I’m getting some feedback on what people have questions about based on what they’ve heard, once I’m seeing like what worked and what resonated, then I can say, okay, I’ve made 10 pieces of content for parents that are wondering if they have ADHD.
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And now I’m gonna talk about to new parents about the common questions we get because I want to help those new parents that are expecting or just have their baby and also talk about how we do in-home newborn visits and those sorts of things. So I think that’s the biggest mistake is like,
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trying to talk to everybody at once. Instead, you need to talk to a very specific ideal new patient. And then once you’ve gotten comfortable with that, then you can pivot to another ideal new patient. But realize that the people that are wondering if their kid have ADHD do not really
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care about newborn jaundice and your in-home newborn visits and vice versa. And so we can’t talk to everybody at once and expect for anybody to hear us.
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Yeah. Excellent. Thank you for that. One of the things I like about your videos is that you get right to the point of what you’re trying to say. And I’ve heard you talk about it. You know, you have to have a hook in the beginning because especially with social media and reels nowadays.
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people’s attention span is like three seconds right so so if you don’t grab them with something right away they’re gonna just like skip to the next drill and so that can be like oh have you ever wondered about or something like have you been
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ever been frustrated by or oh i saw this interesting case and then you show a picture something like that right away is really important i see too many physicians in the larger tpc community saying Hi, I’m Dr. Capella. Oh, it’s a wonderful day, isn’t it? Just wanted to say.
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And then by that time, people are kind of like scrolled by. So hook them in the beginning, I think is a really important thing. And make it short.
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The attention spans are so short. Like even videos of mine where I feel like it’s a really good video. And at two minutes, I really get into the weeds of talking about the nutrition for ADHD. And it’s got 100,000 views or something like that.
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When I go and I look at the metrics and you can see like audience retention, Even if it’s a video that has all sorts of likes and comments and shares and has a million views, the retention is like less than 10 seconds.
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And so if you really do not front load the most important information, nobody’s going to see it. And you think like, I’m going to stick that at the end. No, you have to just lead with the most important information to try and hook them and
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then get them to stay because it’s just too easy to just do that. It’s just too easy to keep scrolling.
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Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for your input on this issue. I know you’re kind of the king of social media with NDPC and it’s wonderful. You have your own courses where you try to teach other physicians how to utilize social media for marketing purposes.
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And so if anyone is interested, check out Phil’s marketing courses. I think we probably both agree that it’s a great tool to use. but you don’t necessarily have to use it. There are lots of examples of physicians out there who have had success through word of mouth or through referrals from other practitioners in their community.
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And also sometimes people have a micro practice like we’ve talked about before. And if you only want a hundred patients, it’s not that hard to get there. Although sometimes in the beginning, if you’re new in a community or if you haven’t worked in primary care in that community before, it can be a little more difficult.
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So it’s a tool that’s there. It’s very easy to learn in general. It does take some kind of stepping out of your comfort zone for a lot of people. I would say that’s probably one of the hardest things is just getting comfortable being in front of a camera and then watching yourself and hearing yourself.
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But, you know, there’s nothing magical about me or Phil. We are people just like any other people. And we just got comfortable. being in front of a camera. Phil probably more so than me, but it’s totally up to you.
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Yeah. I mean, it took a long time too. Like my first videos, I would like spend hours editing them. Like there would be no pauses. I was going frame by frame so that like, it looked like I was blinking when I was blinking at the right time so that nobody
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could tell that I like was piecing things together. And then I finally realized like people have such a short attention spans and one video is not going to make anybody pull out their HSA card and join your practice. It’s going to be a series of, I know this person, I like this person, I trust this person,
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I need this person, and then they’re going to sign up. And so that comes with time and with consistency rather than just perfect poise and the lighting being perfect and all those things. Yeah.
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And honestly, sometimes the imperfection of it is what attracts people more because I feel more comfortable, you know, having a relationship with someone who is not like a glamour queen on social media. So there’s that much more relatable.
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Like I tell people all the time. record in your car and they’ll see the real authentic you oh my gosh he’s got the same car seat that we have and look his is full of cheerios too and he has a ton of
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boxes he must need to go to you know the recycling depot on his way home like those things make people relate to you more rather than make it seem unprofessional or anything they’re like he’s just like me we have a lot of cheerios in our car seats yeah
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Exactly.
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And so that is so much more relatable and authentic than perfectly poised, perfect lighting, no hiccups or anything like that.
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Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you decide what’s best for you when it comes to utilizing social media for your practice. But definitely if you’re just afraid of it, I would say challenge yourself to try a little bit of it and then just see how it goes.
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It may not be right for you, but I think a lot of people stay away from it out of fear and anyone can overcome that fear. So thanks again for listening and until next time.
