You’ve probably heard it all before: get a Facebook page, be more active on Instagram, start a blog! But are these marketing channels really beneficial for fertility clinics? Are Facebook posts really going to help you beat out your competition when it comes to new patients? Can’t we just rely on our success rates and word-of-mouth referrals?
On this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin talks to Dr. Donald Young of Mid-Iowa Fertility Clinic, a two-doctor physician group outside of Des Moines. His practice has been a client of Fertility Bridge for the past year, completing the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic, getting a treatment plan, and choosing to continue an ongoing marketing relationship. He shares why Mid-Iowa Fertility decided it was time to pursue working with a marketing firm and why they chose Fertility Bridge as their marketing partner.
To get started on a marketing plan for your company, complete the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic at FertilityBridge.com.
Welcome to Inside Reproductive Health, the shoptalk of the fertility field. Here, you'll hear authentic and unscripted conversations about practice management, patient relations, and business development from the most forward-thinking experts in our field.
Wall Street and Silicon Valley both want your patients, but there is a plan if you're willing to take action. Visit fertilitybridge.com to learn about the first piece of building a Fertility Marketing System--The Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. Now, here's the founder of Fertility Bridge and the host of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones.
GRIFFIN JONES 0:52
I’m talking with one of our clients, Dr. Young, who is the founding physician at Mid-Iowa fertility just outside of Des Moines, a two doctor physician group there. He has been a client of Fertility Bridge’s for about a year. And I'm not sure that he--even if I thought how well we would do in an engagement, that you would ever do a testimonial for me, and here we are talking about it! And I guess you know, I'm curious why did you come to us in the first place? What was the challenge or the monkey on your back that led you to seek us out?
DR. DONALD YOUNG 1:31
I saw you at a--I think it was the SREI Saturday meeting in Denver a couple years ago at the ASRM Annual Meeting and they had people talking about marketing that day, and you were in the audience. And then I asked my friend Sam Chantillis from Dallas and he had started using you and we were concerned about our web presence, social media presence, and keeping our market share as more competition from an academic program was pushing in on our territory, so to speak. So we thought we needed to be more aggressive and invest in that because for the previous several years, we really hadn't needed to do any kind of marketing because we were the only clinic around and then that changed. And so we've needed to become more aggressive and the idea of using someone who's specialized in fertility clinics appealed to me. I’ve met a lot of other marketing people and it's not the same.
JONES 2:33
What does it sound like when you talk to other marketing people?
YOUNG 2:35
They give you kind of a cookie cutter approach, you know, that they use for any other type of business. You know, none of them are really even specialized towards the medical field for the most part, so they look at marketing a medical clinic the same as marketing, a car dealership or the same fertility clinic the same as a family practice clinic. And those are obviously two different things.
JONES 3:01
I think so, too, hence me starting the business in this. But I have spoken at SREI, ASRM, and MRS. And a lot of people have seen me speak there. And sometimes I get the impression that people think that I'm full of hot air sometimes maybe, maybe they do, maybe I'm just self conscious about it! But I sometimes think that and I think if anybody would think that you would be that type of person, I see you as a skeptical person. So did you think that in the beginning?
YOUNG 3:30
Well, I've always thought your haircut needed to be altered! It’s a little strange, but I think you know, marketing people are kind of more artistic realm people anyway. And so, you know, I figured all right, he just looks strange and that's because he's in marketing.
JONES 3:47
Well, so normally our correspondence is pretty short. That is to say, my correspondence from you is pretty short. If we're in a meeting, you'll just say, “Yep, got it.” And you'll make fun of me in front of my team for talking too much. Or, you know, I sent you an email about doing this and it just says, “Okay.” So you're kind of a man of few words in general, but a couple weeks ago, we're talking about moving to the next phase. You said, “I've been impressed with your work ethic and results as of late--or especially as of late,” and I thought, holy cow from Don Young, that's like, that's like a 10,000 word essay. I told my girlfriend about it!
YOUNG 4:34
You know where that comes from? Is I didn't have a smartphone until about three years ago. And so I had my flip phone. And as my kids would text me and I have to respond like I'd use a Y for yes, or an N for no and and so it's kind of continued with that is you know, even though I have a smartphone, I still do--I don't type so it's quick and I haven't really mastered that voice texting. So anyway, that's where that comes from. But I think my friend, Dr. Chantilis in Dallas was also impressed with you, too. He's maybe a little more verbal than I am. But, you know, especially now, I think, everybody would always take the response when your numbers are down, because, as with COVID-19, you get hesitant to spend money, that's a natural human reaction. And the marketers standard line is, oh, now's the time to really push it. Well, you know, you have to strike that balance of--you have to be cost effective with your marketing in these days with what's gone on. All of our incomes are taking a hit this year, but I think you responded well to my concerns on the cost part with this virus, also. I think you also made the comment to me that if we ever had any issues to call 24/7, you know, and this obviously has been one of those times where you need a little reassurance on what you're doing.
JONES 6:02
That must have been the COVID talking. Actually, normally that is not the normal--I try to say I'm building a system so that we take care of all the important things during regular work hours, and then we don't have these little fires going on. But when COVID happened as it was happening, it's like March 10, or whatever, you know, things are still going on, March 11, or whatever it was, the NBA closes their season--it was like it was speeding up so fast from going week to week, day to day, hour to hour and that's when we, especially in March and April, just touching our clients so much and making sure we're doing different things. But I was really nervous about being--I know that there's times where people step up and then there are times where all of a sudden you don't hear from the people that you need. And so I've tried to make sure we were in the former camp. How do you feel like we did with that?
YOUNG 6:58
Good, you know, I think the best thing that we have done this last two months is where you guys pushed me to do the Facebook Live and answer patients’ questions. I've gotten more positive feedback from patients from anything in the last 30 years of practice was that Facebook Live that it reduced their stress levels so much. And it was reassuring to them that we were around and we were answering their questions and communicating with them. So I think that was--that was like a masterstroke to do that Facebook Live, start doing that. That really was a benefit.
JONES 7:38
I'm happy to hear you say that sometimes people just come to me and they say, do what you did for them for us. And it just--I tried doing that in the beginning and I came into the field in 2014, had pretty big success in my first two clients and then just tried doing the exact same thing for the next two or three or, I would say the next five tried to do the exact same thing. And it either didn't work or just didn't work quite as well. And that's when we came up with the system. And you and I are now--meaning your company, Mid-Iowa Fertility, and my company, Fertility Bridge--are now in an ongoing engagement. But it didn't start that way. We started off with a diagnosis, then we moved to the treatment plan, then we did one implementation project that was successful, then we moved on to ongoing. And I think a lot of times, people are thinking when I'm reaching out to them for that first diagnostic that it's got to be an ongoing engagement or that you know, it's only $600 and I'll give people their money back if it doesn't work. So I guess what was that like to move from--because each time we're basically revisiting the idea of do we still want to be working together with that diagnostic to the plan to the first implementation. Each time you want to move on to the next, so what was that like?
YOUNG 9:04
Yeah, I think having a plan is good. You know, some of it, I just want to have it laid out. So I wasn't too concerned about that initial investment so to speak, because it's not much money, right? When you get in some of the other stuff obviously, you can spend as much as you want on the advertising side. So you have to kind of look, I think, at your market and what your budget is for that. And that was something that you made a comment of, you know, you're going from spending zero dollars on marketing to you know, this is like a night and day change and that was stressful for me. But now I think it has and it is continuing to pay off on that, which I think is gonna be really important the next two years because I think there's gonna be a lot of struggling clinics for a couple years. We are going to go back to 2019 numbers probably until 2022,
JONES 10:01
I don't think so either. That is my personal read on the situation. But I also don't think that it's helpless either. So it seems like there's a lot of doc's that have the idea that it's either everything is gravy, I don't need to do anything for marketing or I just need to do some bare minimum of marketing to check the box, but everything's gravy. I've got so many patients coming in doesn't matter. Or oh my gosh, something like COVID-19 or the Great Recession happens and I shouldn't do any marketing because there's nothing I can do to change it. I just don't think either of those are a good spectrum. You've been on either side of it. So how do you feel--like you talked about, we started doing those Facebook Lives when things were at their worst in the middle of March 2020. And like you said it started to have an impact. So how do you feel about the idea of that, while there's nothing people can do to change their destiny, If it really is that bad for the next two years?
YOUNG 11:03
Yeah, no, I think you can. And you know, the other part of this is, I'm 60 years old, so I'm on the tail end of my career. And I was seeing this pressure coming from the university that I wanted to respond to, because I have a competitive spirit. You know, I started my practice from scratch back in ‘93, right out of fellowship, and built it up. And I want to leave it in a better place, you know, I don't want to leave it, where we are on the level that we've always been for years and years. And so I was willing to make this investment at age 60. Whereas, you know, 10 years ago, I wouldn't have made that kind of investment, but I think where you will individualize your plan for the market because Des Moines is different than Dallas, which is different than New York, which is different than Chicago, right? All those are different areas of the country that need a little different tweaking and the density of fertility doctors, you know, like Dallas or Houston has way more fertility doctors per square mile than Omaha.
JONES 12:09
And the markets are different. And the practices are different. You know, for one of your earlier projects, we did a video campaign about your patient approach style and your partner's patient approach style. I can't just take that and copy that to the next group over. That came from the plan when we got to know you and we got to know your partner and the culture of your team and thought, Okay, what are their strengths, not trying to replicate the exact same thing that we did somewhere else, but what are the strengths, what are the needs, and it was about that. And I don't even know if I've told you this yet, but we won an award for that video. We won a Telly award for that video.
YOUNG 12:53
Is that a made up award?
JONES 12:54
It's some huge award. So there's probably hundreds of categories, but you've got companies like Microsoft and Amazon and Wendy's, and you got really huge companies. And the award we won, I think, was business to consumer, but I still have to see what the exact segment was. But you know, but that was because it was authentic to you. I used to think awards were just corny agency things. We didn't even submit it, the videographer did. And so now I think it's cool because we won one, but that was but that was because it was authentic to you all, and I didn't try to have Don Young be someone different. I just found the angle that your patients have always liked you for and just made a way to have more people see it so that they refer to you.
YOUNG 13:47
And I think that's important--you know, my partner and I have totally distinct personalities and how we approach patients, which, as anybody who's brought in a partner after being by themselves for a long time knows, it's kind of like marriage without dating first. And so it's a little rough at first, but then you kind of get used to each other and find your way. And some people never do that with partners. But we've been able to do it for a long time now, but I think you guys interpreted that very well in the differences between Dr. Cooper and I, our personalities.
**COMMERCIAL BREAK**
Do you want your IVF lab to be at capacity? Do you want one or more of your docs to be busier? Do you want to see more patients at your satellite office before you decide to close the doors on it? But private equity firms are buying up and opening large practice groups across the country and near you. Tech companies are reaching your patients first and selling your own patients back to you. And patients are coming in with more information from the internet and from social media than ever before--for good or for bad. You need a plan.
A Fertility Marketing System is not just buying some Google ads here, doing a couple of Facebook posts here. It’s a diagnosis, a prognosis, and a proven treatment plan. Just getting price quotes for a website for video or for SEO, that's like paying for ICSI or donor egg ad hoc, without doing testing, without a protocol, and without any consideration of what else might be needed.
The first step of building a Fertility Marketing System is the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. It's the cornerstone on what your entire strategy is built. You don't have to, but it is best to do that before you hire a new marketing person, before you put out an RFP or look for services, before you get your house in order, because by definition this is what gets your team in alignment. Fertility Bridge can help you with that. It is better to have a third party do this. We've done it for IVF centers from all over the world and we only serve businesses who serve the fertility field.
It's such an easy way to try us out. It's such a measured way to get your practice leadership aligned and it's a proven process to begin your Marketing System. Without it, practices spend marketing dollars aimlessly and they stress their teams and they even lose patience and market share. Amidst these changes that are happening across our field and across society, if you're serious about growing or even maintaining your practice, sign up for the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic it’s at FertilityBridge.com or linked here in the show notes. There is no downside to doing this for your practice, only upside. Now, back to Inside Reproductive Health.
JONES 16:23
And so I'm trying to build a world class firm--that is not easy to do. And so I don't think that we are a world class firm, I'm trying to get there. I heard one person say marketing is throwing the ball and the practice has to catch it. And now I'm saying, well it doesn't matter if I'm Tom Brady, the practice can't catch the ball. They don't care. You don't care if social media engagement goes up. You don't care if we have an award winning video. You care about new patients and some people don't even care about new patients! They only care about the number of procedures. And so to do that, to actually be a firm that can help someone get from point A to point B to really increase those volumes and almost guarantee it is not easy. And so I don't pretend that we're a world class firm. Yeah, I'm self aware enough to know that I'm working my tail off to build it and our team is getting bigger and our team is coming from the community and they're working their tails off to do it. What do you think that we lack in?
YOUNG 17:33
Well, obviously a choice in hairstylist. It might be worth a trip somewhere, you know, maybe go to New York City to all those fancy places for a haircut, Griffin.
JONES 17:42
So both you and Sam Chantilis make fun of me for my hair, but both of you said that you remembered me because of this. So that's a little marketing!
YOUNG 17:53
Yes. And Sam and I have known each other for a long, long time, both trained in Texas. So weakness-wise, oh, I know what the weakness is! It's obvious what the weakness is, how much you cost! Because you’re pricey. Yeah, that's your weakness.
JONES 18:09
The one bad thing that I want people to say about me is that I'm expensive.
YOUNG 18:16
You know, when, years ago, I was talking to a cosmetic dentist friend of mine, and we were talking about my practice and he asked me how much I charge for inseminations. And I told him and he's like, you need to charge more because if you don't charge more, people aren't going to think you're any good. So the next day I went back to the office, I raised our prices by 50% on inseminations, which meant we went from $100 to $150 at the time, and nobody ever batted an eye. None of the patients ever even batted an eye about it. So with the marketing, I guess.
JONES 18:52
Yeah. And I don't do it for that reason. People ask me how much does marketing cost? I know that that initial offer is $600 right now, maybe in a few months or a year, it’ll be $1000 or 15-. That's what I know. And I'll tell you the rest is I know it. But the reason why we do it is because we are looking at what is what's the overall end goal, the overall end goal is attached to new patients procedures and revenue we're trying to get there. We're not crossing things off a bucket list. So could I charge less money and just do an overall service and just go to the mean, as opposed to the individualized practice needs? I could, but when you look at how many in any given group meet the mean exactly, in a situation like this, it's almost always zero. And I just know that, yeah, I could probably have a shorter engagement or I could probably have engagements of a certain amount and just it's like the cable bill for people. I don't find that fulfilling. I like knowing that we are moving the needle on real things. We're making more money then we're costing. Yeah, we--sometimes we’re the more expensive guys sometimes with the cheaper guys, but that we're moving the needle. And I think doctors always have that question mark. Business owners always have that question mark of is it worth it? That you've come out and said, I'm expensive. I think others that you've mentioned in this interview would say the same thing. But you've still moved from one engagement to the other. So why is it worth it if we're so damn expensive?
YOUNG 20:30
Because again, it's because you're a sub-specialist like we are. Every town has marketing businesses. I mean, that's a part of any town in America--it has marketing businesses. Not every town in America has a fertility clinic and fertility doctors are sub-specialists. And so you have that subspecialty in marketing of fertility clinics, which is unique. You could probably expand into plastic surgery clinics and use your same model with plastic surgery because it'd be very, very similar, you know, as another subspecialty that you could be a marketer for without too much trouble.
JONES 21:12
People say that to me sometimes they say, well, there's only 250-300 independent privately-owned groups in all of the US and Canada. That's it. That is a tiny niche to call on. So people say, why don't you open up to another division of healthcare? Aren’t you trapping yourself into a box? And to me it's not like locking in a closet. It's like the closet from Narnia! It is a whole nother world. And every time we figure out one thing, I want to figure out the next thing and I want to do it until we can tell somebody that if you do this exact thing, we can guarantee a range of this exact outcome. And we're getting fairly close to that. But you know, if you start off with one problem, which is community management for fertility centers on Facebook, and then I start doing other social media, then start doing Google ads, and video, and then we start helping with call center training, and then start helping with follow up and reporting. And until I can throw the ball so well, that even almost the lousiest practice experience could catch it, as long as they're willing to participate in the process, then I feel like we're not world class. So I would rather go deeper than infertility and keep going deeper than expand to another niche, like plastic surgery.
YOUNG 22:32
Yeah, I think the other part of this is that--and I think he made this comment to me is--you know, the doctors and then the staff have to buy-in to marketing. You know, you have to be willing to take that step like that Indiana Jones movie--you’ve got to be willing to take that step over the chasm. And then once you do, then you get more comfortable on the marketing side of things.
JONES 23:01
I'm kind of glad you brought that up too, because one of the things that happens in the beginning when I'm talking with someone is they'll often say, talk to my marketing director. And from the first diagnostic that we do is, I want everybody in the room, we can go down to one person. You're not involved with all the project management stuff, you're not involved with all of the social media training stuff. But when it's the beginning, it's our brass and your brass in a meeting and that still needs to be true. Even though now we're starting to work with really big groups and in that case, it's like, oh, wait until I have a relationship with one of the founding partners or wait till I have a relationship with that other young partner that listens to our show all the time and just is really hungry and is actually a fan of our stuff. I'll wait ‘till I have a relationship with the marketing officer. I'll wait until I have a relationship to the CEO because of that buy-in. So what would you feel like it would have happened if I didn't require that, if we didn't require that in the beginning and just just started a conversation with your office manager, what do you think would have happened?
YOUNG 24:08
It would have fizzled out over time. Because I've experienced that before with other things, you know, redoing the website or whatever, it fizzles out, but that's where I think where you bring that comprehensive approach in, fits better. I've always had radio sales people calling on me, or TV sales people calling on me and want me to do a TV commercial or radio ads or whatever, you know, and it's the same spiel every time. And you may do it for a little bit, then you just kind of fall off the wagon with them. It's hard to sort of quantify some of that advertising, too.
JONES 24:45
That's true, whether it's a single doc practice or a multi partner group like yours, or a large group with lots of partners. It's true, no matter the scale, especially when we start to talk about things because if you actually want to make a real difference, if you want to have a real impact, you have to have that total buy in. And it can't just be one person, like the marketing director putting their neck on the line, because then as soon as something is inconvenient or weird, or the first iteration doesn't work that great, then they panic. They're not going to put the rest of their capital out there. And the whole thing can go kaput in a worst case scenario or the best case scenario, it just kind of has okay results. And I don't want the marketing director or the office manager to put their neck on the line at first when I know that something is going to have to have a more dynamic solution. So I would rather get everybody to buy in, to have it be part of their idea, so that it's better set up for success. And something like you know, you doing that live show, there’s all types of different solutions that we could do or could have done. But if it's your office manager, like having to bring you an idea like that, it's just not gonna happen or it's gonna happen once and fizzle out or-- And so you've actually stayed a part of the process more. Do you feel like you’re too involved sometimes?
YOUNG 26:18
I think maybe I've had a little more involvement than my partner, but I knew that going in that would probably be part of that. You know that I've always done the business side, that he hasn't had an interest in that. But I think maybe some of it, like with the Facebook Live, I've done more of that than he has. It's not on his priority list every Wednesday lunch, you know, whereas it is on mine.
JONES 26:43
That’s a good point. There are some partners that just aren't into it. I try to flush out who is and who isn't from the beginning. You know, now we're working with 12 doc groups, 20 doc, 25 doc groups, and there's no way it will get all 18 partners in on something. But I really try to get Okay, who is really gonna be involved here. And I just try to get as many as I can sometimes it's four and sometimes it's nine, but you try to find out who those people are. And of course you never truly truly know until you've been doing it for a long time. And as you know, in your case, Dr. Cooper doesn't care until the day that he does. And that happens sometimes, where some all of a sudden somebody cares. So I just do my best to flush it out from the beginning. I try to run my business in a way that people would say good things about us as at ASRM or PCRS when I'm not around. And I don't give out referrals. We’ve got so many case studies on our website. We're doing something like this where people can watch it and listen to that. I don't want to give out your cell phone number for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is you shouldn't be doing my selling for me, you shouldn't be doing my consulting for me. I also think it's taxing on the relationship. Like right now, I'm withdrawing from the bank pf Don Young to ask you to do this. And I'd rather only do it once.
YOUNG 28:17
It’s my Friday afternoon wine time!
JONES 28:22
So your wine time doesn't get interrupted, so that your racing time doesn't get interrupted. And so I rather just do it once and not give people your cell phone number. But what would you say if people and--let's say they're just at they're either at the foot in the door, often they're thinking about just doing the $600 offer or we've done that and we've diagnosed the high level what they need and we present a plan and then they're thinking, Well, what are they like? What would you say to them?
YOUNG 28:49
I think that you guys are fairly blunt. You could probably even be more blunt on Hey, you need to fix this like pronto. But I think it's a worthwhile step for fertility clinics because I think--we did not experience it for several years, but almost all other fertility clinics are in a competitive environment, you know. And like it or not as a doctor, you know, this is a business and you are competing for patients and marketing is how you win that battle. It's how you, not just on the quality of your care, communication, all that but you have to have that extra edge which marketing will bring you against your competition. Yeah, I would tell people to go ahead and take the step, especially the initial one.
JONES 29:44
So other than cutting my hair, which now I can't even do--I can't even do in COVID times! And other than being cheaper, which isn't going to happen either because I'm still building out this team and I'm bringing some great people on, so that ain't happening. So other than those two things. What would you want me to change or do?
YOUNG 30:09
I think, you know, one thing people forbid, to maybe make them more aware of is the cost of the Facebook and Google Ads stuff. So you know, all of a sudden, you don't open up your credit card bill and see a big surprise. You know, maybe say, Hey, you're going to be seeing these kind of dollar amounts on your credit card each month to prepare them for that kind of stuff.
JONES 30:36
So that's all that's all agreed upon in a budget beforehand. Do you feel like we didn’t--and it's in this statement of work or what budget we go up to--so do you just think we don't communicate enough?
YOUNG 30:47
Yeah to make that a little more clear numbers wise. And then, I think also tell people, you know, billboards aren't going to work in New York City or billboards aren't gonna work in Charlotte, North Carolina or radio ads aren't gonna work, you need to do this. And I think I've learned a lot on that. I mean, I've heard it from my daughters who are young--I mean, they aren't that young, they're 30 and 38--but, you know, on that social media par,t that has been the thing that I think is struck me the most over my career now, especially this last 10 years, is the whole social media aspect of medicine. And, you know, the reputation management part, I think is huge.
JONES 31:33
And neither of those things are going away.
YOUNG 31:36
Yeah.
JONES 31:37
When people say they're doing social media, it's like saying “we do the internet.” It’s like we do whatever that--social media is just a slang for the current state of the internet. You can do OB/GYN outreach, you can do reputation management, you can hit every layer of the funnel. It's a good point.
YOUNG 31:59
Yeah.
JONES 32:00
Yeah, any other jabs you want to take? I've really appreciated that you took a half hour and had this conversation. I also have enjoyed working with you a lot for the last year. Our team is very fond of your team. Any closing thoughts that I didn't ask or jabs you want to take?
YOUNG 32:20
You’re BSing me again, as usual!
JONES 32:25
The first time we ever spoke you said I was BSing you because I said I was from the Midwest because I'm from Buffalo, New York.
YOUNG 32:32
And yeah, that is not the Midwest!
JONES 32:33
So if anyone from New York City watches this, you tell us what you think. Well, I appreciate it, Don. Thank you so much!
YOUNG 32:44
Hey, Griffin?
JONES 32:45
Yeah?
YOUNG 32:45
Glad you got to talk to me.
JONES 32:48
It's your pleasure, Don.
YOUNG 32:50
Goodbye!
***
You’ve been listening to the Inside Reproductive Health Podcast with Griffin Jones. If you're ready to take action to make sure that your practice drives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society, visit fertiltybridge.com to begin the first piece of the Fertility Marketing System, the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. Thank you for listening to Inside Reproductive Health.