Listen to the podcast here: Is Sponsoring Events Worth the Investment
Episode summary: In this episode of DPC Pediatricians, Phil and Marina discuss how pediatricians building a DPC practice can be more intentional about where they invest their marketing time and money. They explore why community sponsorships, school events, local advertising, and other traditional marketing efforts may feel worthwhile but often provide little measurable return, particularly for newer practices working with a limited budget. They also share their experiences building referral relationships with other healthcare professionals and emphasize the importance of finding physicians, doulas, midwives, lactation specialists, chiropractors, and other professionals whose patient populations align with the families a pediatric DPC practice hopes to reach. Through examples of both successful and unsuccessful marketing efforts, Phil and Marina encourage pediatricians to think carefully about audience alignment and focus their resources on relationships and opportunities that are more likely to connect them with the right families.
Welcome to another episode of DPC Pediatricians.
We are on a roll talking about some of the, and going through some of the questions that have come in from people that have registered for our upcoming virtual summit.
We’ve been getting loads of questions and we’re trying to use our executive And so this was a question that came in about sponsoring events and other community sorts of things. And like, is there a return on investment? The question was from a physician who recently started her practice. And she was asking how to talk to other health professionals about your business and get referrals from knowing them. Also, is it helpful to market at school fairs and sponsoring events?
Or is that a waste of time? In the big picture, I’ll talk first about the sponsoring events and then maybe Marina, you can share some insights into like getting in front of other health professionals and other businesses, referrals and those sorts of things. Sponsoring events, sponsoring t-shirts, sponsoring baseball teams is great vibes and feels when it comes to supporting your community, supporting your kids’ activities and those sorts of things.
But in the big picture, these are not the return on investments that anybody makes it out to be. Put your name on the back of your kids’ baseball t-shirt if you want a tax write-off and you want to feel good about it.
But don’t expect parents to be like rifling through their kids’ drawers to find that t-shirt. Then look on the back and remember what your practice is called. It just doesn’t work that way of actually bringing new patients into your practice. And so if you’re trying to be lean, if you’re trying to keep costs low, then I would just say, I unfortunately don’t have it in the budget for this year.
Please reach out again next year. And hopefully I can help when you get those sponsorship inquiries and those sorts of things. We very early on signed up with this neighborhood newsletter thing that goes out to others.
There’s all sorts of like magazines that neighborhoods will send out. We tried that. We thought that that would be a good investment to get people in. It maybe brought a couple people in, but it was definitely not when we look at the overall return on investment. We couldn’t track that, okay, this is why people saw it.
Now, I’m sure there was some intangible, like, hey, I’ve heard of this practice. Hey, they were in this magazine that I was kind of looking through while I was making dinner that came in the mail before I threw it away. It might… Contribute to the overall gestalt of, I’ve heard of Dr. Boucher’s practice enough times that maybe when I need something specific that it will jog the memory, but we can attribute a lot of incoming new patients to that in particular.
So in the big picture, I would say buy the chocolates from your kid’s baseball team rather than shell out the money to get on the back of their t-shirt if you’re looking to support their team and to save a little bit of money. Skip the sponsoring sorts of things. Marina, what about you when it comes to how to talk to other health professionals about your business and to get referrals coming in?
Like what have you found has been helpful and successful in that regard?
Yeah. Well, I like what you mentioned that if you are asked to sponsor an event or anything in your community, it can be a feel good thing if you have the money to donate and you want a tax write off. But really you have to think about the match,
the alignment between the audience that’s being targeted and your ideal audience, right? When we were thinking about our ideal audience and families in DPC, because it is a cash based membership based practice. You have to target families who have the disposable income to even have this as an option, right?
And so your average school is not necessarily going to be aligned at all with that. Will there be maybe some people? Yeah, but they’re not really looking. They’re looking at their kid playing out on the baseball field. They’re not looking at the logos
or whatever.
So that alignment comes into play a lot when you’re thinking about how to target other maybe business owners in your community, other health professionals. Whether they be physicians or allied health professionals like therapists, midwives, doulas, lactation specialists, etc. So for me, what I have found most useful is to target those whose audience and patient base,
client base is most aligned with my client base. So people especially who are paying already cash for services is where I have found the most success. So those doulas. Those midwives, some of those lactation specialists, chiropractors, interestingly, right? Because a lot of people pay cash for chiropractic services and a chiropractor can’t do everything.
And so sometimes parents will ask the chiropractor, hey, like I am more holistic leaning. Do you have a physician who might be a little more holistic leaning? And so for me, that worked really well. But you have to think again about the alignment. When I first opened my Colleague Margie and I were sharing the building.
We had our own DPC practices, but we shared an office space to help on overhead. And we jointly went in together on buying lunch for an OB-GYN practice in our community, but it was a hospital-based OB-GYN practice. So we spent probably three, $400 to take lunch to this big group because we thought, yeah,
we need referrals and this is the perfect group and we’re going to give them our spiel. And we did give them our spiel and people had lovely things to say. And we’re appreciative of the lunch, but we got zero referrals from that lunch. And that was because we were targeting a clinic that was insurance based.
And so their client, their patient base is not out there looking for cash options, right? They want to use their insurance. That’s why they’re at that practice. So really think about is their patient or client base, do they have the characteristics that I’m looking for in my The families
that are going to come to me and the families that I want to attract. I would say that that’s really, really important to think about because you don’t want to go waste your time giving flyers to people who are not going to send you referrals at all. And then you’re just wasting money and time.
For example, in the other direction, we have a ton of ABA companies in our community. I think there’s just been like an explosion in the number of ABA companies over the last couple of years for various reasons. And so they will often come to us and I’m like, look,
I make like one referral to an ABA company like per year or maybe two or three, right? But this is like, please don’t give us flyers. Please don’t give us anything because we’re just going to put them in the recycling bin and I don’t want you to- Right, like
save your money, please.
Your money. And I’m honest. It took me a while, though, of my office manager and I receiving so much stuff. And then we started to just be blunt with them and say, we’re sorry, but please keep your stuff. We’re not.
We don’t need more pens or notepads or wire to just trash cans.
Yeah. So those are my thoughts on finding the ideal referral partners in your community. Now, sometimes you might be surprised because you might meet someone, my city, city of Mill Creek has these little like business luncheons once a month and business owners or their staff are invited.
I actually only sometimes go when I like, maybe, I don’t know, two or three times a year I go. Otherwise my office manager goes for me and she is making connections with other business owners in the community. And sometimes it might surprise you. Maybe there’s someone who you didn’t think would be an ideal referral partner,
but maybe they are. Maybe they’re a therapist in your community that sees kids that you wouldn’t have thought of or you didn’t know existed. Or I don’t know. I’ve met some interesting people. I can’t think of any specific examples, but people I thought,
oh, I wouldn’t have thought to make a connection with you, but maybe it’s worth it. Yeah, actually at one of those events, now I’m thinking of an example. We met someone who runs a little magazine called Mill Creek City Lifestyle. And she heard our spiel and she was really interested.
And my office manager, Erica, gave a good spiel, connected us. And we found a really good paid marketing opportunity through that, where it does cost us a couple hundred dollars a month. But we get an ad, like a half page ad in their magazine, which is hyper-targeted. Two middle and higher income families in our community and is
a classy little magazine that everyone gets once a month. And because of that, they just this month, they did a feature article on our practice and it’s been a nice relationship that targets the right people, not just everybody, but the right people.
Well, I think that there’s a lot of opportunities to find those sorts of people that like when you’re talking about different ancillary services or ancillary healthcare, that there’s those opportunities to make those connections. Like you said, like with the people that are used to more relationship based rather than large volume. Yes. Hospital owned groups,
private practices like other private practices, people that if you have a specific area where you find, I see a lot of ADHD and a lot of these kids with ADHD end up in occupational therapy. So what if I reach out to some of these occupational And so I think that’s a great question.
I also think like with the newsletter that you were talking about, those are things, if it seems like a good, if it passes the test, then it’s worth trying that. Like not everything is going to work out. You’ll have coffee with people. You’ll have people over at your office that it doesn’t work out.
But you’ve still like learned, you’ve still connected with them. They might find a way to support you in the future. You might find a way to support them in the future too. So I do try when I’m not introverting to be willing to get out there and say,
This might not be the biggest growth strategy that we ever found, but it might contribute 1% or 2% right now. And it might lead to something down the road that I hadn’t considered. So I’m okay with having this not work out and I’m not going to put all my eggs in this basket.
But if I have a bunch of eggs in a bunch of different baskets, maybe, maybe something will click.
Yeah. I like what you mentioned about the relationships and the reciprocity there too, because It’s not just about going out and saying, Hey, what can you do for me? What can you do for me? What can you do for me? Like you have to make it reciprocal to some degree.
Maybe you start out the conversation joyfully talking about what you have to offer and saying, Hey, I wonder if there’s a, there’s a way that, you know, we can work together, but offer something in return because people aren’t just going to want to do something for nothing. Right.
You have to develop that relationship and offer something in return. Hey, I’ll refer clients to you. You refer clients to me is the basic idea, but you can get creative in other ways. There are lots of ways to engage in those reciprocal relationships so that you’re not just asking people to help you out,
but you’re offering something in return as well. And you don’t have to bend over backwards either. Please don’t overgive here because that is a tendency of many of us as physicians to overgive or offer too big of discounts and things like that.
Yep, totally. No, I think there’s a happy medium there. But I think when you’re able to, making those connections, especially in your community, will only do you well in the long term, especially if the contribution that you have to make to it is just a conversation. Just checking in, finding out what they do,
finding out what you do, finding out where there could be overlapping balance rather than be like, hey, please, please send patients my way. Please send patients my way. Please send patients my way. The question that I like to use when I’m meeting with somebody, whether it’s an occupational therapist, speech therapist,
doula, something like that is what are you seeing a lot of right now? Because that lets them kind of talk about specifically what they’re encountering a lot of right now. I love a lot of parents that are asking about integrative reflexes and also about iron. Well, it sounds like you’ve got a good rap on the reflexes.
We do a lot of work in ADHD with iron because we know that iron, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that’s an opportunity to then say, This is how we could partner because you’re not ordering the lab test occupational therapist, but you’d probably like to make sure that if your patients are asking about that,
that you have a good, reliable resource that isn’t going to laugh in their face when the parent brings that up. So those are good ways to show here’s what I could do that could help you to be successful with your patients.
I love that. I love that. Yeah. Picking their brain a little bit because that is useful information. It helps you also. Let’s say you’re doing social media videos the next month. It’s like, oh, how can I? Speak to the concerns that parents are having right now, right? Exactly.
One last thing I would mention is just don’t be shy about deleting or saying no thank you to opportunities that come your way because I get once or twice a month some email or my office manager will receive some opportunity. Would you like to sponsor this? Would you like to do this?
And like everybody’s asking for money, right? Right. Don’t feel guilty. Just know what serves and what doesn’t serve. If something comes across that really does pique your curiosity and does seem like it would offer true value for you, then consider it carefully. But don’t be shy about just hitting delete on some of these opportunities coming your way.
Especially when you’re starting out, you don’t have a lot of excess money to invest in these sorts of things. A few years down the line, you want a tax write-off like Phil said earlier, go for it. But right now you have to be wise in how you invest your dollars.
Amen. All right. Well, if you have been thinking about this and trying to put all these pieces together and you’re like, I could use some more insights. I could use some more ideas for my practice, whether you’re starting out or if you’re in that growth stage, the virtual summit is coming up.
So we, Marina and I host a virtual summit at the end of September, September 24th and 25th. It’s a two-day event where you show up. This isn’t the sort, and I always tell people like, don’t show up and then also play on your phone the whole time or expect to clean out your inbox. This is actionable.
This is workshop style where we are learning and coming up. It’s summit.dpcpediatrician.com or just look in the show notes.
All right. Thanks everyone. We hope to see you there.
