Phoebe Gutierrez sits down with Ashley Gay, to unpack why most doctors treat marketing as an afterthought, and how that costs them patients. They cover foundational branding, Google Business Profiles, online scheduling, networking strategies, the pitfalls of social media vs. ads, HIPAA-compliant marketing, and why patient experience is the real differentiator in private practice and telemedicine.
This episode is sponsored by NURP
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In this practical episode of Telemedicine Talks, host Phoebe Gutierrez welcomes Ashley Gay as she shares her unique journey from graphic designer to physician marketing expert after supporting her husband through medical school, residency, fellowship, and the launch of his own practice.
The conversation focuses on the critical (and often overlooked) marketing foundations that determine whether a private practice or telemedicine venture actually attracts and retains patients. Topics include naming and visual branding decisions that support long-term growth, the power of Google Business Profiles and local SEO, the importance of frictionless online scheduling, dual business-card networking strategies for referrals, realistic approaches to paid ads versus organic social, and the compliance minefield of healthcare marketing (HIPAA, BAAs, Stark, fake testimonials, and more).
Ashley and Phoebe emphasize shifting from a physician-centric mindset to a true consumer/patient perspective, reducing friction, building trust, and creating an experience that makes patients choose (and stay with) you.
Top 3 Takeaways:
About the Show
Telemedicine Talks explores the evolving world of digital health, helping physicians navigate new opportunities, regulatory challenges, and career transitions in telemedicine
About the Guest
Ashley Gay is a branding and marketing strategist who has worked with both large companies and independent physician practices. With a background in graphic design and a marketing degree, she has supported her physician husband through training and private practice launch. She now helps clinicians build authentic brands, attract patients, and grow sustainable independent practices and telemedicine ventures through Digital Ash Agency.
Connect with Ashley Gay:
About the Host:
Phoebe Gutierrez – Former state regulator turned telehealth executive, specializing in compliance and sustainable virtual care models.
Connect with Phoebe Gutierrez:
https://www.linkedIn.com/in/pkgutierrez/
phoebe@telemedicinetalks.com
(mailto:phoebe@telemedicinetalks.com)
[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Telemedicine Talks. It's your host, Phoebe Gutierrez. the old ball and chain is not here today, so you are just with me, and I'm so excited because I think our audience is gonna learn so much from this episode on one of the things that I think physicians don't understand is really, really, really important, especially as you jump into entrepreneurship, telemedicine, and private practice.
We're gonna be talking about marketing, and we have Ashley Gay here. So welcome to the show.
Oh, I'm excited to chat all things, nerd out all things marketing and brand .
Amazing. Amazing. So before we jump in, I think,why don't you just tell everybody a little bit about how you got into the marketing world?
'Cause I think your story is really interesting.
Sure. So I went through a marketing degree by designing my way through it. So I've actually been a graphic designer for a really long time. And, and once I got my marketing degree, while I was doing that, right afterwards I met my husband, who was a aspiring med [00:01:00] student.
And so we got married and then started on that awesome med journey as you go through, through school, through residency, through fellowship. And I worked in branding and marketing the entire time we were going through that med journey. So I worked for really big companies and really tiny ones, and through that special time of being med broke, you
kind of say yes to everybody
and everything.
So from billboards to little, logos to car wraps, everything. Sprinkler manuals, I've done it. I've,definitely been there. But when he decided that he wanted to open his own practice after a couple years of practicing, done with training- We were able to leverage both of our experiences and put him out on the right foot.
it is interesting having your personal life and your professional life kind of collide into, into a niche, as we call them, that... A subset or a community of people that I can see a [00:02:00] lot of angles, 'cause I do feel like physicians especially are very misunderstood right now.
They do what they do because they care so much about people, and unfortunately, sometimes we get jaded or we get taken advantage of long enough where- ... that spark kind of gets lost. And I'm a firm champion of an independent practitioner, where you can have your own practice and craft a life that you love 'cause you worked so hard to get there, and I've just been a passenger in that ride.
And so I wanna do everything I can to help you succeed in whatever dream practice you wanna build.
Yeah. I think The interesting piece is to, to your point, is I think a lot of times, it's almost, the burned-out physicians that kind of start to think about private practice versus the ones that are like, "Oh, no, I could totally do this."
They do hit that kind of peak, "I'm fed up" and, "I'm done." I've- I've kind of- Yeah ... had that- that moment. [00:03:00] and I think what's- And- Oh, go ahead.
I was just gonna say, as a spouse of someone who was experiencing that very thing, because of it, it wasn't necessarily the medicine, but I- I was watching him fall out of love with the medicine due to the work environment that he was in.
And so the burnout was not necessarily... I mean, there's a ton of things that are just part of all of our jobs that we really don't like. But to watch your spouse, let go of something that they worked so hard for, s- seeing the slippings of that, but also, financially as a family, you've hung your hat on this future, and you need it to work out, and everybody wants it to work out.
And so I, a lot of times I end up talking to spouses too, it's like, "What did that look like? What did that feel like?" To go from the certainty of the paycheck to launching a private practice where things are a little bit less stable in the beginning. But it's been incredible. It's been amazing.
I- I find it, 'cause I work primarily with, like private prac- or, the two sides, like the private practice and then, the [00:04:00] very large kind of like digital health telemedicine And my thing is like it's very rewarding because you are, you're able to see the spark come back.
You're able to see physicians get that, you know, that sense of I don't even wanna call it accomplishment 'cause I don't think it's that, but it's just that sense of like clinical independence that they're all supposed to they're supposed to be operating in every single day, but we know doesn't really happen.
Yeah.
So that, the overall happiness because we joke ,
It's just kind of like, well, it's crazy down there, at least it's my crazy and you can do something about the problems that arise. And how much empowerment that gives you and how much satisfaction that can give you in your day-to-day, I think means a lot.
Yeah. No, totally. Totally. So the, the interesting piece for me is, what I do with physicians or, really anybody who I help build the private practice is of course like we focus on the like things that are just gonna get you live, right? it's all compliance.
So it's like, do we have the right filings? Do we have the right this? Do we have the right that? And throughout the whole time I'm telling them, "Are you thinking about your brand? Are you talking to [00:05:00] people? Are you branding? Are you marketing?" And it's always "Oh,no. I'm gonna do that when I launch."
And I don't know, in my experience, I've always felt that was the biggest mistake that I see where it's oh my gosh, like I, I wish you would listen a little bit more because for me in private practice especially, a physician's brand is really huge
And usually, if you've been practicing for a while, you have been working on your brand because a brand really in its very simplest terms is what do people associate with you?
What feelings do they associate with you? And when you open your own practice, that expands to now you get to, to communicate that vision to the people who work with you, work around you. How do greet a patient? What do you prioritize? How do they feel when they walk in? How do they feel when they walk out?
So all of these things that they associate with your practice has everything to do [00:06:00] with getting the patient. So the compliance obviously is incredibly important, but we don't have a practice in the long term unless we have an attractive practice to walk into and for people to, give a chance if they don't already have a relationship with you or searching for you personally.
How do we
convince
people or make it as easy as possible? Because sometimes I will talk
to
doctors, and doctors are trained this way, and I know this very intimately, but they're trained in a way to present themselves, to people as if they are potential patients. it's like a phantom relationship that actually doesn't exist.
Because a person is not your patient until they decide to be your patient. So until that happens, they're just a person looking around. They're vetting things like they vet any other service professional. They're, quote-unquote, "shopping around" with tabs open in their browser. they don't [00:07:00] necessarily choose doctors the same way a lot of us that have been in the doctor club for a long time have chosen a doctor.
Because if you're in that community of people... If I need a, a dermatologist, my husband calls his friends and they get me in. It's a completely different disconnected experience from someone who lives in this world, a world of healthcare, as someone who's on the outside who, manually chooses their providers.
And so we need to make sure that we're keeping that in mind while we're doing all the compliance things, that we're like, how are we gonna get patients in the door?" Because, that doesn't do It helps us not get sued when they come. But we gotta get 'em to come in the door.
Oh, no,
absolutely
The way I always try to phrase it is, we have our, like, operational or our compliance roadmap, right? There are certain things that are just, we just have to do these things. And then I always kind of joke, it's like,how you wanna market yourself, how you actually wanna get those, people in the door, you know, [00:08:00] booking with you is a little bit more...
You have a lot more options. And my strategy is always,we think through different things. 'Cause to me, it's like it's something that people come to me, but they don't actually think about it, and I do find it just so problematic. On your side, when you think about marketing for, especially for physicians,you're coming from a very,like a very structured, in my opinion.
very structured, very regimented, very step-ori- ... If I do these, these 10 things, I'm gonna, do really well on the MCAT, or I'm gonna do really well, in, in med school. marketing doesn't work like that. Marketing is a lot of, trial and error and experimenting and putting yourself out there.
What are some of the, techniques that you've used with your clients to even just get them to feel comfortable in this space? Because it's very different.
It is very different, and there is a good checklist of things that we wanna do before we hit the ground with a lot of marketing stuff. So we wanna lay [00:09:00] a base full of, that just sets us up for success so our marketing actually works.
So that kind of stuff is, are we named correctly? that has a lot to do with what you want this to be. What do you wanna grow into? Yeah. Do you wanna sell it one day? Do you wanna have multiple locations? Because how you name it can really cap how it is sold later on. So having those discussions.
And then having a lot of discussions about what you want this to grow into as far as the vision of this place, because it can run away with you if you don't put it down. So okay, we're gonna put down, okay, what are your priorities here so you can communicate that to your future employees? Great. That's gonna lead us into what's this logo and the visual branding parts, what is it going to communicate?
'Cause unless we have- The vision on paper, and if you can communicate it to me, then I can bring it to life visually, but that also [00:10:00] empowers us to use the s- right words on our website so that we communicate it to patients. But then there's also, we gotta make sure we say where we're located. We gotta make sure we say if we're telehealth.
We gotta make sure that the verbiage makes Google happy. It makes the AI engines happy. So crafting that content is another stepping stone. And another one is if you have a Google business profile, if you have either a service area or a brick-and-mortar location, we gotta make sure that's done.
And when those building blocks are in place, now we're like, "Okay, now we go into the marketing stuff. Now we go into the networking stuff. Now we go into the post- we go to the SEO stuff. We go into the marketing strategy stuff." So that kind of stuff I believe that doctors do not leverage their network nearly as much.
So one thing I tell every practitioner to have is have two sets of business cards. Have one set that can be handed out to any kind of potential patient when you're out and about, you give to your friends, you give to your family that they [00:11:00] can hand out. You have another set of business cards that is strictly for providers.
That
business
card has your personal information on it. It has your personal email, it has your personal phone number, it has a direct way for that provider to get ahold of you so that you can discuss patient care. Because if you are in a specialty that relies, especially on referrals-
the thing
that matters the most to most primary care pediatricians, people that keep patients for a long time, is what happens when I send my patients to you?
Yeah. What am I going to expect? And when you are armed with that kind of, "Hey, you can get ahold of me, you're gonna expect a note, within 72 hours, and I will contact you with any questions that I have. But you're gonna hear back from me, and if you don't, you can get ahold of me," that kind of relationship building within your network can go really far.
And then [00:12:00] we go to the unique marketing things, and sometimes that has to do with whether or not you have a non-compete or not. We did. We had an 18-month non-compete that we had to market around, so we had to get a little crafty and a little clever, a little out of the box
No, no. So interesting. So interesting.
Yeah, the amount of, private practices that I've worked with that didn't have a Google business profile, that didn't have any way for anybody to contact them on their website. I think it was like they just had your like, book an appointment and pay $300. And it was like, hold on, like what... what if...
consumer, we gotta think about the consumer's perspective here. Like- ... I'm not gonna just do that. I'm gonna go try to shop and see what provider I like the most. And so I do think it's really interesting 'cause, to your point, I think a lot of times, yeah, we just skim over those things and, think a lot about maybe the, the growth side or just oh, let's quickly, try to get people in.
Super helpful.
And that's kind of how like sometimes, private equity will come in or a big, you know-
Yeah ...
network, say, of [00:13:00] clinics will come in and They are thinking about the buyer's journey much more than maybe an independent practitioner who went to medical school and opened their own place was not trained on.
They were not trained on how people make buying decisions- ... and where they're falling short. So like you're saying, maybe... it's astonishing how many providers do not let people book online. They will not do it. Even new patients. It doesn't have to be everybody, but To allow new patients to book an initial appointment online independently is a huge differentiator.
And I know that it can be a pain system-wise. I understand that. But are we a practice that is going to really put the patient first in all aspects, not just in the care? Because I believe that every practitioner puts patient care at the beginning, but it's usually the medicine. [00:14:00] It's not the patient experience.
Because if we put the patient experience, not just what's easiest for us, but if we put that patient experience at the forefront, all of the other decisions are so much easier. Yeah, maybe the EHR is a tiny bit more expensive, or there's an extra step that the staff needs to do to make it happen. But if we truly make it as frictionless as possible- Yeah
to get the patient, the initial patient, because people hate finding new doctors. Like they hate it. Yeah. They will choose one and stick with it for a long time. So if you're the one that gets the new patient right then, chances are they will stick with you for a long time
I completely agree.
I'm a mom, I'm busy, I consult, I do a podcast. I mean, I do all these things. And so to me it's this idea of you have to make it really easy for your customer to want to work with you, which means, maybe you don't necessarily think that, that method [00:15:00] of booking an appointment is super convenient, but like, they do.
And so one of the things I always try to tell people is like you need to stop trying to talk to yourself and you're not the buyer here. you need to go talk to people. let's go do some discovery. You guys need to go talk to some people and really understand what the consumer perspective is.
'Cause for me, I think that's I'm so glad you brought that up because I think it's so important, because it's not a one-size-fits-all. You have to think. No. Some people like things this way, some people like things that way. And then at the end you get to decide, what are the three personas or the three different journeys you want to accept, and then where are you gonna draw the line?
And, maybe-
Yeah. And that happens with the visuals too. So once we know exactly who the patient, like what you're going to provide, what you're not going to provide, and what patients we're going after, sometimes the logo you like is not the logo we need to choose. You are not the buyer, again. So if you have a patient base that maybe doesn't read so well, a cute [00:16:00] scripty font, hard to read, clever, whatever, is not in your best interest.
Legibility trumps cute all day. Legibility trumps clever all day. Because people don't choose... I just see people get hung up on logos like crazy. It's like, listen, it's a couple characters and an icon. It cannot communicate absolutely everything that you do. That's what a brand is for. A brand is not a logo.
A brand is, again, associations. The association of, hey, if I call the office, are they gonna pick up the phone? or do I have to call back several times- Yeah ... to get somebody on the phone? Or is it easy for me to pay a bill? Is it easy for me to get an appointment? or is this a place where maybe I do have to wait till October to see the plastic surgeon because they are that in demand.
And maybe that's what they want. The branding that they want, that this is exclusive, you wait for this. you create that scarcity. So again, it's very specialty dependent. But I will say that the online [00:17:00] scheduling is very much underrated amongst healthcare in general
Yeah.
Yeah. it's really interesting, 'cause to me I find it common sense a little bit. But, when you think about it, you're right. there are a lot that kind of require you to pick up the phone or do something that's a little bit more ... Again, it's interesting because, I don't do marketing.
I don't really like it that much. that's why I, empathize with them because I'm in the kind of the same boat. nobody likes marketing themselves, it is uncomfortable. Yeah. But when you think about how large companies do it, their big thing is how do we reduce friction?
How can we- ... drive conversion? there's a science behind how your website gets set. There's a science behind the words that you're using, why there's multiple pages, for other practices, and I think the interesting thing is, when you look at it from a consumer perspective, you never, put one and one together because you're just, trying to figure out, you're the audience.
Is it speaking to you and only you? but, that is what all these [00:18:00] very large companies spend the majority of their budget and time on, which is really interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. Getting found online and making things frictionless. And it's amazing sometimes. I posted something on TikTok about, hey, if you're expecting me to print out forms before I come into your office, I have devastating news for you.
Like, it's not happening, you know? Most of us don't even own printers. And there was a comment on that reel, on that TikTok that was just kinda then, you will return when you have them," kind of a thing. I was like, that's an attitude. That's a way to go about it.
Yeah.
There are things that in this world that as a consumer, if you were buying anything else, there's no way you would stand for it.
You just wouldn't do it.
Yeah.
I mean, most people won't even pick up the phone to call a pizza anymore, like to call for a pizza. Yeah. why would they expect ... Because that's the way that consumer behavior is turning, and it makes it, we live in this Amazon app [00:19:00] world where- we just ... There's, again, less friction. People expect that in all facets of their life. And so if you can make that happen, I would highly recommend that. Because also good marketing, good ads, let's just take ads, give the person something to do. They give them an action. It's like a call to action
Like a CTA, right? So if I write an ad to your practice and they click on it, and that call to action is pick up the phone- It's not gonna happen. If the call to action is fill out this form and we'll call you back, or fill out this form and we'll get in touch with you, you're gonna have a steep drop-off too.
But if there's this click this form, pick your day, and come in, now we've got a conversion.
Yeah.
So let's not waste money on ads where there's no call to action. Or if you don't know your call answer rate, and [00:20:00] 20, 30% of your phone calls are not getting picked up, you're wasting money on ads and actually making people even more frustrated when nobody answers the phone So you gotta be smart in how you're deploying your money.
And I am not in the business of wasting y'all's money. that's not my favorite thing to do, 'cause I know how tight the money is, especially- Yeah ... in the beginning. Yeah. But you wanna worry about this stuff when you're at a point where you're like, I'm too busy to worry about this, but I know I could have more patients, but I'm too strapped to figure this out on my own."
If you're at that point, that growth point, there's a couple of operational things we wanna look at first before we just throw money at a problem.
Yeah. I think it's interesting,you touched a little bit on kind of the whole, you know, m- meta Google ads, kind of ad spend.
from your perspective, because working with a lot of private practices, I feel like in today's age, you can get a really solid return on doing ads, if the [00:21:00] message is landing correctly, you have everything set up. an example is I get pushback on it a lot because to me, at a certain point,
you just gotta do it, right? You gotta rip the Band-Aid off. you just have to do it. You gotta invest in yourself and your practice, and you have to use advertisements. But, the argument that I get a lot is, I can't compete with hims and hers," or, "I could never compete with these-" drive-through telemedicine companies. Like, why would I even try? Like, why am I gonna waste my money? I'm just gonna do social media, and we'll see what shakes out. how do you get somebody, over that hurdle or that hump or even just that mindset? That
mindset is,
it's very true. And there are some juggernauts, especially in the telehealth space, there are some juggernauts. This is why you've gotta really think through what makes you different and why somebody would choose you over them. Is it a price differentiator? Is it an attention differentiator?
How do you create an offer that is better or different or personalized than what is already out there? And you [00:22:00] can also use it to your advantage. You can say, "The clinic that's not the big guy. the people who know your name."
Yeah.
Flip it on its head, because a lot of us- We know what drives us nuts about our industry, and it actually, that is what fuels us to do things differently.
those are your ads right there. It's like, what drives you nuts and why are you doing it differently? you probably don't like the depersonalization of these big guys to just provide drugs. take that message, spin it a dif- 10 different ways, run those ads and see what sticks.
Also, you don't have to go after the ginormous markets. So this is just a trick that you can deploy. Yeah, your ads in Los Angeles and New York City are gonna cost a lot more, but if you run them to smaller markets, they're not going to cost you as much, but there's just as many people-
...
in, mid-size cities as the larger cities.
So maybe when you're first starting out with ads, you [00:23:00] target specific areas of where you are just to keep ad spend down, just to test some stuff. So if you find a winner, then you can spin that up nationally. But to test things, test messaging, do it on the smaller markets. You're not gonna spend as much as you would if you're trying to target the entire United States as a telehealth company right off the bat Social is very, very effective if you are willing to take the heat of being on social.
Yeah.
If you have something that you are not afraid to say and get the heat back from it, and you are not one to apologize for what you have to say, but you don't, social can do wonderful things for your practice.
But social is social. You need to be on it. You cannot depend upon your practice just posting generic information. Nobody wants to see it.
Yep.
People wanna follow people. So unless you're a practitioner on there giving, quote [00:24:00] unquote, "free advice" or... it's just doesn't work the same way as ads do .
Oh, 100%. 100%. and interestingly enough, when I talk to, some of my private practice clients, 'cause again,we touch on marketing, we don't get into it. But it's always I say "Pick your poison," but if you're saying that you think social media is gonna be your ticket because it's free, but you refuse to actually get out there and have a clinical opinion about anything 'cause you don't wanna push boundaries, and then it's just not gonna work.
If you wanna just, outsource, the little carousels- Yeah ... that really don't say anything but, it doesn't do anything. So to me, it really is that, if you have the right mentality and the right personality, it's great.
more often than not, I've had so many physicians, flounder like almost, forcing it when really it was like, I just- Just do the ads.
let me just bring you a consultant , to set up your marketing stuff.
everybody can tell. We can tell if It's [00:25:00] painful. we're there on those apps to have a good time, and people like to follow, not just people, they like to follow personalities. If you're not willing to, show your personality, that's not really worth it.
And let's be real, it is not free. Your time is very measurable. As a practitioner, you know how much you make per hour. So to convince yourself that we're just gonna do social because it's, quote-unquote, "free", that's not true, because your time is not free. And those, a lot of times we're like, I want to get this out of social.
I want this out of Instagram. I want this out of TikTok. I want it." what do they want out of you? They want your time. They want your attention. So it's not just you posting stuff, it's you going in there commenting, liking, scrolling. Doing all of those things will get you rewarded because Instagram's goal and Facebook's goal is actually not your money.
They have plenty of money. Same with Google. They want their social platform to be the best place to hang out. That's what they [00:26:00] want. Same with Google. They wanna be the best search engine out there. unless you're giving them content and things to talk about, they're not gonna reward you on the back end by showing you to more strangers if you're not willing to pour the time into being on their app.
So there's always a trade-off, and none of this is free. And again, like you're saying, it's pick your poison. What do you hate doing? And I have yet to meet anybody that I could convince that social media's a good idea that they already don't like it, that they already don't spend time in it, they already don't have a culture of it in their office.
They think it's annoying if their front desk staff is making a reel and posting it. it's not gonna fly. So let's just do something else. Just do something else.
Exactly. Exactly, my marketing strategy is I'm 100% networking, right? So I do a little social media.
I don't do any ads. I, I'll sometimes try to market myself. I do lots of blogs because I just like writing. ... but I'm a heavy network- that's how you and I met. I just, I reach out. I'm- Yeah ... I'm a [00:27:00] heavy networker. And what I tell people is, everyone, they... It all takes time.
Marketing is a, a game where it takes time. You have to let it mature. Doing something for a couple days is not effective marketing. You really have to make it, give it time to, marinate. and really,I say this with, my whole heart, working for large digital health companies, they have 100 different ads running at the same time.
They have social media, seeing if that's working. They're doing ads here. They're doing conferences. They're doing this because they have the resources to diversify and see what works and what doesn't. for me, the, the big thing has always been, like, really, at all these companies it's usually, who gets the most traction at the beginning, and that's what they, tend to invest in.
There's a really funny Instagram, page. It's, not in private practice, They're, air conditioning, and they're, like, in Florida.
Oh.
And they post the funniest stuff. they have millions of followers, [00:28:00] and he's, blown up, and that is all their marketing. ... but to your point, you have them, you have all these,HVAC contractors singing to Taylor Swift and doing these little- skits that are really funny and engaging. And I have seen that technique with some private practices or some dental offices that do it.
Yeah, I've
seen that ... to your point, you gotta be all in and be okay and embrace it.
Otherwise-
Yeah ...
And if it's not you, it's not you. let's be honest. it's not my husband's thing. He doesn't do that. a lot of feeds that I've seen, they create, the office staff is actually the stars of- the feed, and it has nothing to do with actually what they're doing.
but it shows that they have a good time at work and people like being there. there are a lot of different ways to go after organic social, audience. I get inquiries. I have a little, a tiny following on my socials, which I find clients that way. But like you, I'm a big networker.
I blog. but as somebody who has run ads as well, it is uncomfortable to watch a bill run up [00:29:00] when it takes two weeks for Facebook to even find your people.
it's not a cheap thing for them to figure it out. Now, they're good, but you have to invest a certain amount of money to even have them find out.
Now, it gets easier as it goes and, depending on who's running your ads, they get better and better. But I also know that healthcare is just ripe for being taken advantage of with this kind of thing. when my husband and I go buy a car, we don't put doctor on the application, because you get charged more.
It's the same with this subset of people, which is another reason why I wanna work with them. Because a lot of the time, the people that I work with, I don't work with a lot of telehealth, but I do work with a lot of independent practitioners that are small-ish practices. They're not even ready.
They're not ready for ads because they haven't even-
...
done their local SEO yet . It's like, let's get you found in the city you actually practice in.
Yeah.
Let's, before we worry about ads, before we worry about anything else, let's just, pull the [00:30:00] lowest hanging and cheapest fruit, honestly.
Let's do that first.
Yeah.
And then let's get you some more networking strategies, and then we'll see what happens. Because also growing too fast can be a problem- Oh ... operationally.
yeah. Believe me, I know. Yeah. Believe me. We've all been there. I know. Yeah ... no, I think that's a really valid point.
I do think that,very similar to, your firm, is like my approach, as well, in the perspective of there are so many physicians or private practice owners that do get taken advantage of from a place of, "You want me to run your ads? Let's run some ads," right?
They're not getting the actual true kind of guided perspective, because you're thinking about, "Sure, you're just gonna, you're gonna pay me to do this thing, and it's not gonna work, and we're gonna just, So I do think it's really important that when they are looking for people...
'cause to me, I view you as a full kind of like scope, like, marketer. A lot of people that I, talk [00:31:00] to are like, "Oh,I hired this person to build a website," and I'm like They're not gonna tell you what your brand... Like I, what are you do- A developer is not going to be tell- like helping you with the colors.
And they get so flustered why, the website looks crappy and why, you know- they don't have anybody who, is coming to them because the name of their clinic is, Lake Health and
Yeah.
So to me it's awful. Like there is A lot of compliance with this tech. Like you have to know somebody's very HIPAA sensitive to any kind of information you're collecting. Which is another reason why I'm such a huge proponent of online scheduling, 'cause typically it goes through your EHR.
And any time you collect anything via form, it needs to be a HIPAA compliant form. the marketer that you're using should not be able to see, because you're usually advertising something that has to do with a condition, right? But when you have patient information that is tied to help for a certain condition tied to your practice, I would rather be overly cautious [00:32:00] and have that compliance.
And they drive everything. And it's something you usually already pay for. And if not, we can figure it out But there is a whole different level of advertising in healthcare that is a, it's kind of a behemoth. You don't want somebody that just runs ads and they'll be like, I run them for... No, I've run some for, this healthcare."
it doesn't mean you ran them compliantly.
Yeah.
that, that is a really interesting point because,you see a lot of stuff happen that you're like, "Oh, you can't do that in healthcare marketing, honey." I'm not even gonna talk about, the pixels and all of that 'cause again,this is also, like, I have skimmed the surface.
You are probably way more of the expert on this side. But, to your point, you do. You get the wrong person. Are they marketing people based on, patient intake information? is everything kind of ADA compliant on your side? Are they using fake testimonials? I've had marketers, like, at big companies use fake testimonials and have to be like,
You just spent 300 grand on ads and you used fake [00:33:00] testimonials?" oh my gosh, I'm gonna get investigated for, like-
Exactly ...
it is an interesting teeter. I always joke, and it's not really a joke, but I say, marketing is what gets you into trouble, right? So you can be out of compliance in some way, shape, or form operationally.
If you're on the smallest scale, maybe, you're gonna skim it and you'll get there, right? We'll get you there. But what tends to happen in my perspective is you have, again, people that want... They're looking for revenue. They're doing things that, you know... I think it's really relevant right now, especially in, the peptide space, where you see people, like, throwing a bunch of money behind, marketing these drugs that are not FDA approved.
And I'm like, "Ah I wouldn't do that if I were you, but I mean- Yeah ... sure, to each their own.
Yeah. It's, And ultimately, it's the person with the license, they're the one that's on the hook. The marketer doesn't get sued. Yeah. So unless you get sued and then you turn around and sue the marketer, but even then, the buck stops with the company that's been hired.
it's very [00:34:00] sticky situation. You just wanna make sure that you've got... And that's why I've kind of like, ads is a last resort for me. Like it's the last thing. I would much rather have you create an engine that, again, it's like networking, right? Like the engine that gets people talking, that gets people coming, that- that gets you established where you are, where you're not spending a ton of money hand over fist.
And a lot of these marketers too, they'll say, we only get paid unless you get patients." that's not legal. That's against Stark Laws.
Yeah.
So you can't do any profit sharing kind of stuff, which people will come at hard.
I can't even tell you how many people that I've talked to be like, is this compliant?"
And they don't even know what I'm talking about. Yeah. So if you're going to go that route, if you're gonna go the ads route, just make sure that they even know what HIPAA is, and how they collect their information, how they protect their information. And for you to be compliant, you've gotta sign a BAA with that person- and with that company to run those ads. So make sure [00:35:00] that you've done your due diligence too on your side.
Yeah,I think a lot of people forget that at the end of the day, unfortunately the way that this market really works is you're either so big that you're gonna catch like, a FDA or an FTC type of situation, where sure, but that's like few and far between.
or it falls on the doctor who is trusting in a person who, again, has the mission of "I've just gotta get you patients because, again, I'm potentially getting compensated more for the patients I'm pulling in." interesting, it was funny, a nurse actually just got indicted, in Georgia for like a fraudulent scheme, but it was exactly that.
she just had a bunch of marketing companies, and it was a total stark violation, and I was like, " Oh, that's funny. Can't do that."
it's the same reason why I can't be a partner in my husband's practice, because I'm not in healthcare There are so many compliance issues with this particular industry that's why we stick to ourselves, right?
Like, all [00:36:00] of us in this that serve doctors tend to network together because- ... we know all the same things. I just came back from the National Society of Certified Business Healthcare Consultants convention, and this is a room full of people that are revenue cycle management, lawyers, all compliance, billing, every, CPAs, everything you can think of, and we just serve healthcare because to keep up on it every year, and all of the new things, and the state of the union, to hear it all,is important to stay on top of it.
But also, if you need somebody in this space in your state, make sure you're getting a vetted consultant.
yeah. totally. Totally. Or at least somebody who understands healthcare, right? my biggest criticism is just y- you can hire a marketer, you can hire an operations person, you can, hire a compliance expert, but if they don't actually understand healthcare, it's all for nothing because we are a different beast.
Healthcare is- Yeah ... a different [00:37:00] beast. Absolutely ... and as much as everyone tries to, "Oh, I'm in energy," and no, energy has regulation, and
I'm sure energy is its own kind of beast, but The point is it's different.
Exactly
it's just different. Exactly. Exactly. we're coming up on time. Okay ... one thing I think that would be, from your perspective, what are some of the mistakes that you've seen that you would want our listeners to walk away with? Either, things that they're not gonna do, or things that they should probably go and focus on, especially if they're in private practice today.
Okay. I would tell you that your website should be working for you when you sleep, while you're sleeping. that's the goal. Your website should be a site where it is going to be found and make Google happy. That is who our main customer is, is when we put up a website, that's what it is. And so if you have not touched your website in, I'm gonna say, five plus years, it's time to take a look again.
Yeah.
How it's written, how it's [00:38:00] updated. Again, Google expects you to update your website a lot. so I would tell you that's important. It's important to look at. It's something you don't just throw up and then leave. It's supposed to be working for you. It's, the biggest ad you have, that, that website.
And then I would also say if you are a local practitioner, you need to be paying attention to your Google Business profile. if you want more information on that, feel free to contact me. But it's how you get found on Google Maps We need to get you in the top three of Google Maps when somebody's searching for something you do.
Those people get about 127%, I think, more clicks than anybody further down. So we wanna get you in the top three there. And that is relatively cheap and something that gets very much overlooked, 'cause once it gets verified they just forget about it and leave. And it's like, "Ah, it'll capture reviews whenever it needs to."
Yeah. But you can work it. It's like you can post questions and answers, you can post things that are going on in your office, and when you do that, it makes Google very happy and they- Ooh ... bump you up in the pack without paying them. [00:39:00]
Yeah. Super. I didn't even know that. That's really interesting.
if we do have listeners that are interested in getting in contact with you, which I really hope a lot of them do... Stop asking me marketing questions, people. I don't know it. You're just gonna get my opinion of like- ... I can't do social media. Why would you try? how can they reach you?
Sure. They can visit my website, digitalashagency.com. you can email me there. I have a contact form there. You'll find my email there. You can also follow me on Instagram. It's mdbrandpro. You'll find me there. I do a lot of, brand rounds where I talk about good examples of logos and crummy examples of logos.
So we get into that a little bit, and I share tips and tricks there. I'm also, active in the DMs, so if you send me a DM, I'll get back to you. that way you get a little, to know a little bit more about my personality. Follow me, I'm also on TikTok, same mdbrandpro, but digitalashagency.com is where you would find out more about me and see some work as well.
[00:40:00] Awesome. Awesome. Ashley, thank you so much for coming and having this conversation. it's really nice to get to talk to somebody who, knows what they're talking about in the marketing space, 'cause I get stuck working with so many marketers that, again, they're just focused on the growth and they're not really thinking about, the foundational building of it, and it's so important.
It's so important to, all private practice. So thank you so much for coming on. everyone should definitely check her out. and, we'll see you guys next time.