Ep. 250: 250 Episodes Later: What Actually Works in Urgent Care Marketing

PCMP (00:01) All right, we're gonna shoot confetti and make sounds and and hold up our little candle here because we are at episode 250. 250 episodes. I am currently holding a candle, which I'm about to blow up before the wax hits me. So if you're watching, you can see this. All right, and now we have celebrated two our 250th episode with you guys. That's right. Episode one, digital marketing for urgent cares, was posted on November third of twenty twenty-one. And here we are, two hundred and fifty   Episodes later with 125 hours of urgent care marketing recorded. And I say weekly without missing, but really like we've put out an episode every week. That doesn't mean that we've recorded one every week. Sometimes we have to stockpile them a little bit. We do. Just like any good production that we will pre-record what we can. But no, yeah, we are here at 250 episodes. It's five years in the making. And my goodness, a lot has changed for us in five years. Well, two things of note.   One, we're the most consistent podcast in the urgent care space. We've seen a bunch come and go and go. come back and go. And we try and be entertainment first. So I think maybe that's that's that's the stickiness of it. Maybe. and then two, we are the number one urgent care marketing or urgent care podcast for that matter. Yeah. in the world. We're gonna hold that tight. Worldwide. Mr. Worldwide. Mr. Worldwide. And we've had people from Australia on this podcast before. We have.   try to make him a client, didn't w he never responded back to me. But I just so you know, if you come on the podcast, we're not trying to make you a customer all the time. But the opportunity, you know, I'll ask. That's right. but no, so yeah and then yeah, I was looking back at some of the stuff, some notes of like what's happened in the past. Like just from a pure if you go back to episode one, the quality of the   of the episode and all that stuff. All right, Michael, stall. I'll be right back. I know we're live on I know where it is. Yeah. So I'm stalling right now because what he's gonna go grab is actually the original mic that started this entire thing. for those who've never started a podcast and want to get started somewhere, there's something called a Yeti mic. It's about a hundred and twenty dollar mic. runs off USB so you can plug it right into your laptop. And that's where we started. We we were shoulder to shoulder   talking into a single microphone 'cause we didn't know if this podcast would last or not. And here we are, you know, fast forward all this time we've grown our studio, but there it is. So for those gonna hold it up to the camera.   Yeah. I'm not talking under the microphone. There you go. You're gonna see it. You're gonna see a bunch of signatures on it. And so what we've done with this microphone that originally started, you know what, I wonder if it needs its new home. It might. you know, you know, we could might that back over here into it's got names of team members that have been with us through through the years. And some aren't here anymore. When you make it to ninety days with the company, we have you sign the microphone. yeah, there's Hal right there on the corner. We made it. Yeah.   so anyway, this is this is what started essentially started the urgent care niche of patient care marketing pros. And so we've kept it as a memento. And then as we hire for our team, people come in after 90 days, they get to sign the microphone as being part of the team. Their voice is heard in the patient care marketing pros business. So yeah. Anyway, how cool is that, man? Microphone. I kind of forgot we kept it. Yeah, we did.   well, the the thing is is we don't have a lot of turnover and so therefore we don't do a lot of hiring, even though we're hiring right now. I'm about to say like Susan I see Susan and how which are our our most recent local hires, and so makes total sense. there's some names on here that no longer work here, which is fun. And some that still do. And some and majority still do. I don't even recognize that name. Who that who's that?   Yeah, I don't know. Like, who are you? But they left their mark. Don't recognize your name. So anyway. Two hundred and fifty episodes is a milestone for us. And and we always try and make sure that we're giving as much value to our listening audience as possible. Sometimes we just gotta celebrate what we've done here. Yeah. but I will tell you this: if you didn't listen and engage and leave us reviews and give us feedback and and you know, sign up as our clients and and then, you know, give us   Give us great connections and all that. This this podcast wouldn't exist. So it's literally a listener driven podcast. It it really is. And you know, we get after probably the first two years of the podcast, we would go to urgent care events and they'll say, Hey, are you the walk-ins welcome guy? It's like, yeah. Like, who are you? That's right. I've been listening to you for a long time. Like, why don't you ever leave us a review? Michael over there spinning it. Like, you're a fan? Prove it. Yeah. Open up your phone.   Yeah, we we joke the first interaction we had with that was actually with John Med and he's our number six podcast subscriber. I just had an idea in real time for all of our urgent care association events. yeah. Yeah, we do the Mr. Beast thing where we walk up to random urgent care owners and say, Open up your phone. If you follow us on podcast, we give you a hundred bucks. yeah. actually And if they don't, they don't get it. But if they do, like do you follow our podcast?   A hundred hours and buy okay. Yeah, this is happening in real time. That's that's that's how this works for us. but you know, the whole reason it started was we wanted to serve the urgent care community. Obviously, we wanted to grow a business. Yeah, obviously we wanted to make connections. but we felt like there was something missing in the urgent care association in the ur not the urgent care association, but the urgent care community. Yes. And that is I I don't mean to be rude, but like   Some entertaining content. Yeah. Yeah. We there's no nice way to say it. Yeah. I mean, medical by design isn't supposed to be that entertaining, right? Like it's even call it sterile. Do do. There it is. There you go. But for us, like we're the marketing dudes in a in a medical space. Like we're we all have medical backgrounds. Sure. And we've learned a lot in your space. But but no, yeah, like entertainment's kind of like our goal here because we do want to educate, but we want to have fun at the same time. Cause what's the point?   if you're not having a little bit of fun with it. That's right. and then even we were I was looking at reviews on the podcast and majority of them were saying like that these guys are just entertaining and we kind of know stuff. Yeah, we even had one like I don't know, I'm not even energy care and I like this. Yeah, I'm not even in energy care, but I've enjoyed this. Like, that's kind of wild. You're really bored. Exactly. But let's let's talk about some things. So like I said, this episode 250, which means we've had tons of content over the years. Like you said, 125 hours.   of content at this point, just and purely us talking, which is five days of just pure talking. That's right. So if you're if you're stuck on a plane, though we can entertain you the whole time. All the way to Hawaii. Exactly. And back. And so but that's one piece. The other thing is so let's talk about some of the stats around it. So like our number one episode still today, which is now so so when I did this, just for clarity, yeah. I did this for the past year. Okay. All But but it's it lines up though, right? So   the front desk evolution, which is a talk, it was a UCA talk that I did that we converted into a podcast episode. Still number one. You guys love it. We have an entire thing we're building around front desk because there is such a huge need, and we didn't even know the need existed until we started working with you guys. And y'all didn't even know it needed it needed a solution until you start working with us. That's right. And so like we're building something on top of that, like a front desk training course that we'll be releasing soon. But   Still, number one episode is front desk evolution, which is fantastic. And then followed up with like missed call or missed revenues. Like that the important like we go back to like, you gotta grow your business. And that's where all these are coming from. Even the 90-day clinic rescues, you gotta grow your business. So I if the best we can tell from our listeners, like they have you guys have a challenge. Like, I need more patients, I need more money, I need to add that next location, but I can't get this first location off the ground, or I got   Or we you have ten locations and five are doing great and five aren't doing great and you don't know what to do. Like that's what we're hearing through all these stats right now. Right. So I loved the the episode two hundred is where we laid out this is what we exist to do. And our we're on a mission to help one hundred brands crest that forty patients per day. Yeah. Yeah. and by brands, we also we mean brand individually, but we also   realize multiple locations can with it within can exist within a brand. So if you're a 20 location, one brand, each one of those locations, our our mission is to help those locations get to 40 patients and above. And the reason why is because it gives you options. So we made an episode about that. yeah. Just like we we know from talking to you guys and in building content over time, 23 patients per day, give or take, is the magic number to make some money.   Like you're breaking even and there's a little bit of profit on the other side. And then we recognize that 40 patients per day is I'm ready to add locations or I am profitable and making great money and I'm enjoying it right now. and I have some margins in place. So and and once you get past 40, it's like, okay, now we gotta add more people or do adjustments because now the capacity is like a a new conversation. So like that's what we see, and we've been believing that's part of our mission where we're like   We want that hundred brands breaking 40 patients per day per location. And when we have our clients break those moments, they typically say, Hey, we're right, we just had another location. That's right. Here's the address and phone number. Like, thanks. It's almost like clockwork. We know it's coming and we can predict it. And what we really appreciate is the fact that our clients trust us to help them to open that location with patients on day one, ready to go.   understanding that we're about a hundred and twenty days away from their break even point on average. And then after that, we're off to the races for looking at other locations once they stabilize. Yeah. Right. Because everything is a season, everything ebbs and flows. Yeah, we recognize summers are slow. flu season is real. Like I had a conversation with our newest client, he's a startup. today, he had called me, had some questions. It was like the general, like, what do you think will happen? And stuff. I was like, well   And I explained We don't really think. We know what's gonna happen to you. Let's talk about it. And I told him I said, 'cause he said, yeah, somebody said like October, November is can be pretty good. I was like, Yeah, I said it can be, and then it'll slow down right before the Christmas time, and then cause everybody's out from school, and then they get together for family and it starts to build back up a little bit. And then flu should hit in January, and that will carry you through about March, and then you gotta get ready for summer. It's all season. And it's all seasonal stuff, and and we were just talking about different   strategies around ad budgets and everything and it was a fun conversation but like I had like no quiver in my thought because I was like I know what we what what works and what doesn't work. Yeah, well not only have we seen the seasons, we see it at scale. Yeah. You know, even even the largest urgent cares, some of the largest urgent cares, some of them are bigger, but even some of the largest urgent cares that we deal with still aren't even close to the amount of exposure that we get because we're doing it across hundreds of locations, right?   so they could be a 10, 12, 20, 50 location urgent care, but we still have the context of all these other brands that we're dealing with in the different markets that that we love to talk about. And and while I won't bring a strategy from across the street to a competitor or or a competitive strategy across the street to one of our clients, I will bring it from across the country. Yeah. I will bring it from another market and say, hey, this is what's working over here. Do you want to try it in your in your clinic over here?   That's really hard to do with a local marketing company. And I love local marketing. I'm not I'm not beating them up. They know the local market. I mean, this company started based off local marketing. That's right. Like it it you know, the boy Nick the Marketer, which is the owner of patient care marketing pros, started as a local B and I driven agency, essentially, where you were seeking out any type of business that would pay for marketing dollars. That's right. And, you know, and it slowly grew into it. We found the   Seven FA because it's go find a niche and then we discovered our niche thanks to your kids' urgent care. and then COVID and all the things, and then boom, here we are. And and it's so fascinating because now like we understand the numbers and the conversations, and now we can have about two hundred and fifty episodes about this conversation around urgent care, which is kinda wild. 'Cause I remember when we first started it was I don't think we have enough to say for a weekly podcast. I was gonna say   And I I have to give props to people like who do a solo podcast. I don't think I could do a weekly by myself podcast where I just talk. because I think our back and forth conversation makes it easy. Cause you know, truth but told, when we get ready for these episodes, it's usually 10 minutes prior. That's right. Yeah. And what the good news though is that that well, that sounds like y'all aren't really prepared for that, Nick and Michael. Well, the thing is is that we have a lot of information to draw from. We're trying to select what's the best information in the   relevant information for the time that we're in. Yeah, and it's not repeating something we've already talked about. Cause like I get a lot of different urgent care news things sent to me and I'm like, that'd be kind of interesting to discuss and go deeper on. And and then what we're seeing like we even have some AI inside of our Slack channels that helps us find stuff that the our production team, our CSMs are finding and want to mention and like, that's happening with our clients. Let's talk about some of that 'cause everything that we bring up has been typically our own experience or our clients' experience that we've just learned through.   Like we don't just make it up and hope it sticks. Like it's real. Yeah, we could have a whole conversation around bringing consultants into the marketing business. Could tell you all about that. We gotta be careful. But yeah. I will not pull punches. Yes, exactly. Anyway. Sorry. It's been my experience that I consulted as somebody who failed at what they were supposed to be doing in the first the funniest I will shoot shots. The funniest way I heard it described.   Nothing against the idea of a consultant. There are some legitimate needs there, but we gotta be careful. But I remember my one of my MBA professors said that a consultant a consultant it will go become a teacher because I couldn't find a job. Like But i it's interesting ca you talk about the consultant stuff. So like we've had some experiences with consultants like being the in between between us and the and the client and   On occasion, like it's not terrible. Like they give us what we want, all the stuff like that. But they have to be there at the very beginning of the relationship. That's fine. Yeah. But when they're brought in randomly or usually when they're brought in new, we're we lose. Like we're not who they are. It's not even a loss. Well, who loses is the client. Yeah. And the client is paying for two different things at that point and it doesn't seem to work out. But moving on. Anyway. Sorry. Throw it a punch, moving on. It's cool.   Want a couple of things too. Send an email. Yeah, let's get it. Let's get some hate mail. Nick's junk. And Gmail's like That's a real email. That is. You know, we had a clean podcast. And I love that you never knew what that meant to the other person. For me it was junk mail. For those who didn't catch, he said Nick's junk at Gmail. Is it Nick's Junk at gmail.com? It is. And it was supposed to be just like   Yo, you want me on a newsletter? Here's Nick's junk at Gmail. And you Well, I said it to one person one time. They looked at me really weird. They really did. And I was like, Nick, do you not understand what you're saying? He's like, I never thought of it that way. All your dirty minds out there. Do you ever check it? No. I couldn't log into that email if I wanted to, but I can tell you what, I got every old navy and and gap and any gas station I've ever been to. Yeah, that's so Yeah, that's that's my junk email. I love it.   Should have changed it to junk email at gmail.com. There you go. Exactly. Anyway, enough of that. Episode two fifty. Well, so a couple other things that are worth noting w since the beginning of this podcast and now not just in the podcast itself, but as a company like that's this is powered by patient care marketing pros. our agency has grown tremendously in the past since the beginning of this thing. That's right. not just you know, when you look at our first episodes, we were in a different office.   We were in actually the same desk, technically the same desk. Actually that is the first you can't see it on this side, but that's the first desk I ever bought for the company, period. I know, and it it still works. I remember I had to tighten all the bolts again, not like maybe last year, because it was getting kind of wobbly, but that's right. Still works great. I don't even know what brand it is anymore. But but no, like that was where we started, was on that thing, and then like over time like we had like one or two urgent cares that were and then we grew from there and just kept going.   and now we're like where we are now is tremendous. And then like I was explaining to somebody yesterday, maybe been Grace or somebody like what has happened to us in the past eighteen months with the urgent care space is tremendous. Like our agency flipped in the past eighteen months in terms of how much we were able to serve the urgent care space and it's just been wonderful to watch. I don't we I can't even tell you the whole reason why, but for some reason you guys decided to like us back in   In the beginning of twenty five. I'll toot our own horn. I'll tell you why. The the number one lowest common denominator is simply that we do the work that we say we're gonna do. yeah. And most other people don't even do that. Yeah. So that's just like level zero. Level one, we take it up a notch by delivering amazing results. I really do believe like nine times out of a ten, we're delivering well above what we even said we were gonna deliver. Yeah.   And most of the time it's been my experience so far, Michael, is that that one out of ten is just simply they don't believe what we're saying because they've been burned so many times by other agencies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's the whole thing. But and even like the when you do research on like digital marketing for urgent cares, we're being referenced and all the AI searches now and all that stuff because we're the only ones that talk about it. Like we're kinda it it out there. But I was pulling our tracking software yesterday just to kind of I was looking at something and   In seven days, this just happened. Like in seven days, we've generated almost 9,000 leads for our clients in seven days. Here's what we know about that. Sixty-one percent of those leads are patients that come through the door. Yeah. So if you could do math real quick. Yeah. So you're looking at you look at 5,400 of those patients. Patients. 5,400 patients were generated from our services in one week with our clients. And we don't have like a massive client list either. and so it's just super cool to see that. And then like I was I was looking at something else and we   Are pushing like three plus million dollars in as been that we manage and all that stuff for client. Like it's all grown so much over time and it's allowed us to just get better and better. But it's just cool. It's just kind of cool to see all that. What's funny is I think it's it's built momentum for those you have the ones that the the clinics that have come on with us early on that have trusted us, yeah, and allowed us to make mistakes. Yeah, we have clinics that have been on this longer than the podcast. Yep. allowed us to make mistakes, grow from those mistakes.   Pay them back for those mistakes, all the things that come along with with the mistake. But here's the cool part. On the other side of that, we have now years of data, mistakes with other people's money. I hate to say it that way, but it is what it is. And again, we've kept good relationships in order to be able to say that. so that now when somebody starts with us, here we are five years later, when somebody starts with us today, they I mean, they're light years ahead of   starting a year ago. Yeah. Even like Devin, our production manager will say our day one is the day ninety for most agencies. Yes. That's because like we we know what works and what doesn't work and the numbers just pan out that way. Like I mean it's not like a hundred percent guaranteed because you know things happen, but it's pretty darn close. That's right. That's right. But this has been such a joy.   There's been ups and downs in the podcast world because we don't always know what works, what doesn't. And you guys can talk to us. And everybody deals with imposter syndrome who's behind a microphone or a camera. Yeah. Everybody does. Like who am I to tell you how to run your business? you know, we deal with that kind of stuff. And and we we talk about how can we do this different and better to better serve the urgent care community because we want to put the best thing that we can put out there for you. You know, we're looking at redesigning the studio.   this one isn't terribly old. What two years? Barely. Barely two years old. I actually I was I think a note here, episode two hundred was the new so really just over a little over a year old. Okay. but even still, taking a look at that, how can we deliver this episode to you in a more entertaining way and a better swipe and deploy type situation? Right. So we're constantly looking to improve it and we would welcome your feedback. So   most of that feedback comes in the form of a review. That'd be great. Yeah, that and hello at patriocare marketpros.com. It's in this email. That's Hannah's email that she receives on that side. but we want your feedback because the only feedback we ever get is in person. Yeah. Which is always which we're grateful for. Which we love. I love being caught in the elevator and the guy starts talking to it. That's right. I don't mind that at all. But I at the same time, like we want to know what you guys want to talk about. And if you notice this year we've backed off on the guest a little bit because we're trying to get   More consistent guests that make the most sense. Because we've had like at one I was looking back, like we had a ton, like a slew of guests last year, year before, and we were just letting vendors come on and so forth. And that was fine, but we're starting to realize like we want to make sure the quality is where it needs to be and like it's good info and not just like a pitchy type thing. That's right. Yeah, because that's not necessarily our goal. But I I will tell you this we would love to tell more urgent care stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and I can promise Michael won't try and sell you anything. No, no, no, no. I'm just kidding. He will.   no, what I'm saying though is is we would love to tell you know more stories on the podcast from an urgent care perspective. Yeah. so if you have a story around your urgent care, good or bad, I don't care if it's a single location, a startup, a 30 year veteran, you sold it. You've sold it maybe at some point, or you're brand new and you don't know your experiences up, you weren't expecting like we want to hear those stories because   There are plenty of we have enough conversations outside the podcast that they listen to it and said, Well, I maybe I do want to start up a urgent care. And they just go down this path and they end up starting one. Like we have quite a few clients, it's because they heard us and said, maybe I want to start one. That's right. And so like, but here but the but we want to tell the stories of like what does it actually look like? Cause it's sometimes   You may say, we kind of paint a pretty picture. Like, no, it's still hard. It's still a business. Like, there's still elements to it. But it is like, yeah, you can make great money with it, but it's not easy. That's right. So I just I love to hear those stories of like what were the hardships of it? What were the challenges? What was the successes of it? Like, what did you really enjoy that you weren't expecting? and then we always talk about, you know, when you're building a business, it's not just to build a job for yourself. You're trying to build freedom and   And reminding you like, hey, there is freedom on the other side of building an urgent care, but you have to be intentional with that. We want to hear those stories. What does freedom look like? So yeah, anytime we can bring somebody on that's that's in this space right now, I'd love to talk to you. Send us an email, hello at patient care marketingpros.com. Let us know who needs to be on the podcast. And if it's you, that's great. We'll schedule a time to to chat for a minute. Last thing is we want to just give you a tool.   something that you can rate your own marketing with. yeah. We'll drop the link because offer dot patient care marketing pros dot com slash urgent dash care dash scorecard doesn't read very well. Okay. But it can click well. Yeah, we'll drop that in in the show notes for you to be able to go to go visit that. But an urgent care scorecard is just simply it's it's like a digital health check. What what does your clinic look like? Yeah, from a marketing perspective. And we'll send that to you. It's just a free report to show you where you are.   There's no strings attached, just take a look at it and see if it has some value to you. Yeah, and the ones that have come through so far, 'cause it's a new tool for us, like it's not very old. And the ones that do come through like, yeah, like they are confident here and just not confident there. And no one has scored a perfect score yet. Like they've always had like a troublesome area. That's right. and they're we're there to help along those paths. Like, well, this why do you think it's troublesome? And then talk about it. And it may not be as bad. Or like, yeah, like you need some help there. And what's really cool is typically with this report.   In the areas where you have a gap, we probably have a free resource that we'll send you at this point in time to help you fix that gap. and just okay, well, obviously this is a lead magnet tool for you guys. Kind of. what we have found is that we give away almost all of our information. But what we have found is that most people don't want to execute on what we give them. No. And that's where we step in and help. Or they get confused on what they're trying to do. That's right. So   You know, I never really spent a lot of time sending you to our website, but if you go to patient care marketingpros.com, you can see all of the free resources there. But specifically the urgent co care scorecard will be dropped in the show notes and that'll just give you a good place to start. I would do that and then go look at our resources to see if there's one that matches the gap. Yep. Cool. yeah. Happy two fifty. It has been two fifty two hundred and fifty years of America.   250 episodes of 250 episodes of Walkins Walk. Coincidence? I think not. No, it was all timed out five years ago. That's right. We were so committed. And here we are at 250. Perfect timing. The only thing that would have been better is if that dropped on July 4th. yeah, would have been funny. Close. Not too far. Not close to far. Even close to Labor Day with all those things. That's right. But all right, guys. Well, thank y'all for listening. Please leave us a review. Please star us on your platform that you're listening to because it helps us every single time.   If you got questions, hello at patient care marketingprose dot com and we will see you on the next episode.