How Will Savvy Doctors Build Their Brand in 2020

It doesn’t matter where you currently are with your practice — whether just starting out or already being profitable and serving lots of patients.

Most practice owners, no matter what their field or specialty, are treading water. And to make matters worse, as their practice grows, so does its costs.

Few doctors understand how to continually increase their income, lifestyle, and joy at the same time.

In this article, you will learn:

• Why you need to create a personal brand
• How other doctors are planning to do it in 2020
• What you should do instead
• Why I’m recommending that
• How to get started

If these things are not interesting to you, then this article was not written for you.

Ready? Let’s do it.

Last week I was having a business strategy call with one of my consulting clients. I’ll just call him Dr N.

By the way, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks helping my clients plan their entire business strategy for 2020. And a big part of that revolves around their personal brand strategy.

This has always been relevant but I believe (and I’m not alone), that it will only get more and more relevant in 2020 and beyond. Later in this article I’ll explain why.

During this call Dr N. told me that in his office they don’t have time to be posting and active on every platform creating content, and so he wanted to know: which is the one platform I thought he should focus on.

So I turned the question on him… I said, “you tell me. What do you think you’ll get the most ROI from the time invested?”

He paused for a moment and then gave me an answer. And he even explained why he thought that was a better option than the others he was thinking about.

Before I tell you what his answer was, I’ll just say that it really surprised me.

Mostly because I’ve been working with Dr N for almost a year, and I’ve seen him go from completely apathetic about sales and marketing to not only engaged, but enthusiastic about learning more and taking his practice to new heights. Since then, he has taken control of his business, looking at key numbers, tracking them and thinking of ways to continually improve and serve his patients better.

And so I was really surprised when he said that the one thing he wanted to focus most of his time in, was writing articles for his website’s blog! He even shared with me his reasons why (see further down).

But after our call, as I thought more about it, I wondered how many doctors felt that way. And so I sent out a very informal survey to a few of my connections here on LinkedIn and to a few of our email subscribers.

In total I asked about 300 people a variation of the following question:

The results?

The majority (64%) chose option A. Either as the only answer (39%), or together with another answer (25%). And that’s not counting those who responded “All of the above” (13%)

I was not expecting this!

Why was I surprised?

I want to be clear that there’s nothing inherently wrong with creating written content. In fact, and I’m not an SEO expert, but I am a firm believer that written content is a great way to keep your website fresh and updated with relevant information about your practice and services.

But I don’t believe that it has a great ROI, despite what the “keyword experts” and “content marketers” tell you.

I think that it takes way too much time for the potential return.

And if you are like every practice owner I work with, you are already too busy being the doctor in your practice.

And so, finding the time to write fresh content regularly is as likely as your sugar-obsessed patient finding time to eat well and exercise…

But what if there was a way for you to generate fresh content for your blog and website WITHOUT having to come up with time (and inspiration!) to write?

Curious?

First let’s start with the obvious: Every doctor MUST invest time in building and nurturing their brand because soon that will be the only way to get found and noticed.

If you are not convinced about this and actively working on it, I hope you’re either about to retire or willing to go work for someone else – neither of which is bad, by the way…

But if that’s the case, then you can stop reading this article; you won’t find much value further down.

If on the other hand, you want to know what I think is the best time investment you can make in 2020 to build and grow your personal brand, keep on reading…

It’s… Podcasting!

Yes. Podcasting.

I do believe that podcasting gives you a better ROI than video. And MUCH better ROI than just writing posts.

Plus, it’s a platform that is just about to explode.

In the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, it’s ‘underpriced attention’. You can (and should!) start “investing” in podcasting now so that by the time the big boom happens, you’ll be far ahead of everyone else.

The way I explained it to Dr N. was: Do you remember what happened with your Facebook Fanpage back in 2012-2013? The one you created but never figured out how to grow? And then you went out and hired someone to “get you more likes”, remember? Except by that time, it was neither easy nor beneficial anymore…

Well… Podcasting in 2020 is Facebook in 2011. You need to get in on it now!

But hey, I know that most doctors reading this won’t take it seriously. And in 2022 they will regret it…

And so, if that was not reason enough for you to decide, wait till you read what’s coming next:

Podcasting has the best ROI because you only create ONCE and you have your content needs covered.

Yup. You read that right.

With every new podcast episode, you automatically have material to feed:

1. Your blog / website
2. Your YouTube channel
3. Your Instagram account
4. Your Instagram stories
5. Your Practice’s LinkedIn page
6. Your own LinkedIn profile
7. Your Personal Facebook page
8. Your Practice’s Facebook page
9. Your Practice’s Twitter account
10. Your email newsletter
11. Content for a book / ebook

If you already have a podcast and are not using each episode for all of this, connect with me here on LinkedIn and ask me how you can do this.

Think about this: one episode = (at least) TEN pieces of content.

Let me give you an example:

Right now, it’s taken me about 4 hours to draft, edit, read, edit, polish, review, re-read, re-edit, insert links, find images, and finally publish this article.

But it would’ve taken me about 5 minutes to bullet point what I wanted to say and maybe 15 minutes to explain it in a podcast.

And on top of that 20 minute investment I would’ve:

1. Transcribed it (automatically) and posted to my blog. (10 minutes to proofread and edit the transcript)
2. Automatically converted it to an audiogram video to be uploaded to YouTube and inserted the transcript as close caption (2 mins)
3. Cut a clip (with the same app as #2) and use it as a promo clip on my IG stories (3 mins to choose the clip)
4. Create an image (in Canva) to share it to my IG profile, using the text from the clip in #3 as caption (5 mins to create the image)
5. Post the YouTube link to my Company’s LinkedIn Page. (1 min)
6. Share that post to my own LinkedIn Profile. (1 min)
7. Post the YouTube link (or upload the video file) to my Company’s Facebook Page. (1 min)
8. Share my Company’s link to my own Facebook Profile (1 min)
9. Share the link to any of the posts above to my Company’s Twitter account. (1 min)
10. Use the text from the promo clip and the image in an email to send to my subscribers linking to either the blog post, the video or the podcast itself. (5 mins)
11. Use the transcript for an ebook for lead generation. (5 mins)
12. Use the transcript as the first chapter of a book about podcasting for doctors. (1 mins)
13. Put all of these links in a file that my team can reference and send to any clients who are interested in our Podcast In A Box service. (1 min)

That’s it.

In total, 55 minutes to create 13 pieces of content. Compared to over 4 hours to get this article up on LinkedIn alone…

And the best part is that you, the doctor, don’t even have to do any of this! Just record the audio and have your team (or ours!) do the rest for you!

Not convinced yet?

At the beginning I told you that in this article you would learn:

• Why you need to create a personal brand
• How other doctors are planning to do it in 2020
• What you should do instead (Podcasting!)
• Why Podcasting.
• But I’m still missing one…

How to get started

First the good news: it’s easy and doable.

It just takes time, patience and persistence. But you’ve got this!

The not-so-good news?

There is a learning curve and a lot of moving pieces before you can start publishing your episodes… But again, it’s not brain surgery.

In the last few months, we’ve helped over a dozen doctors start their podcast. And I’ve learned what was holding them back from launching on their own.

Invariably, the two main reasons were:

1. I don’t know what kind of podcast to create / what to talk about.
2. I don’t know how to actually do the technical side of it.

And so I’ve put together a cheatsheet to help you overcome both of these roadblocks!

It includes the different types of podcasts you can create as well as the cons and pros of each one. I’ve also included a list of 21 episode topics you can cover which apply to pretty much any health practice.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s an extra bonus which will walk you through the steps to set up and manage the technical aspects of your podcast.

Just click here to get it all!

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with your network. If you have questions, post them below.

ps. And whenever you’re ready… At Practice Growth Formula we help you build your brand and grow practice. Whether you’re starting out, taking over someone else or been in practice for years, we can create the roadmap to take you from where you are at to where you want to be. 

Ready to learn more? Schedule a free call now.