We’re taking a break from our usual show today! On this episode of Inside Reproductive Health, our own Griffin Jones talks about the Fertility Patient Marketing Journey, a recap of a recent blog post he wrote that can be found here: https://www.fertilitybridge.com/inside-reproductive-health/2017/10/17/fertilitymarketingfundamentals2018. From the initial touchpoint with potential patients (strangers) to how to continue patient delight post-treatment, Griffin offers his tips on how to make the most out of each phase.
Want to dig into the journey more with your clinic? Sign up for the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic at FertilityBridge.com.
**Please note that the below transcription is for accessibility and SEO purposes only. To learn more about the Four Phases of the Fertility Patient Journey, please visit the article above.**
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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.
JONES
You've got me on the show today, there's no guest, I'm going to be talking about the four phases of the fertility patient marketing journey, I want to focus on some of the things that are in our wheelhouse as a company at fertility bridge and give you some of the workings and experience and expertise that we apply when we actually work with clients.
Before we get into the four pillars of the patient marketing journey. Today's shout out goes to Dr. Jean O'Brian. She's an REI with Shady Grove, one of the people that reached out to me that I haven't met in person to talk about the show, give me some ideas for topics compliment past episodes. And I really appreciate when you do that, if you've come to this show, without us ever having met in person, I love to give those folks shout outs.
Today we're talking about the four pillars of the patient marketing journey, because this is the most fundamental way to connect marketing to sales. Whenever you're viewing marketing as an expense, or whenever it's not bringing the return that you want to it's because it's not completely connected to sales. We just wrapped up the Super Bowl, how many crappy s commercials Did you watch, that aren't doing anything to drive sales that are spending millions and millions of dollars on creative and distribution, we don't have the luxury to do that in our field. And I always felt on the hook for sales. Even when I was only working on a particular marketing channel. Even back when I sold radio ads. Back when I did social media just for local businesses. Even back when I was just doing social media for fertility centers, I always felt on the hook for sales. And so I wanted to build a system to extend it, which is why I chose this vertical. So today we're going to be talking about how these things connect.
The reason why there's four phases is to take something that's really complex and to at least present it simple. You have a challenge, just like I do have air too far on the side of clarity, and you risk accountability because you make it too simple and it's not accountable. Or if you err too far on the side of thoroughness, you confuse the hell out of people, and it isn't easy to understand. And whenever I mess up, it's usually on that end. So the four phases allows us to zoom out and look at how each phase walks in from marketing to sales, and then zoom in on the particular pillars, when we need to fix them when we need to measure them. And when we need to improve them and be accountable for them.
The first phase of the patient marketing journey is strangers to leads, you might say new patient inquiries or requests for appointments instead of leads. But it's the same thing. These are people that are completely unfamiliar with your practice, your services, your company that then go on to inquire about something strangers two leads is the first. The second is leads, okay, now they've requested an appointment, or they've called but we still need to get them in for initial consult. So the second is leads to initial consult. The third is initial console to treatment, converting them. And finally after they go through treatment, they're delighting their experience afterward post treatment. Strangers to Leads, Leads to Initial Consult, Initial Consult to Treatment, Post Treatment to Delight.
The fertility patient marketing journey that we're talking about today is not the complete patient journey. It's the phases that take place immediately before, during and immediately after your time with the clinic. The actual patient journey looks like a whole bunch of squiggly lines through a labyrinth. This looks like one column followed by another followed by a third followed by a fourth. The other note that I have to say what we're talking about now is only one fertility patient marketing journey. egg donors have another women freezing their eggs, LGBTQ plus patients, they all have different journeys. And so to say same sex males come to find you a different way and then same sex females. So the phases are the same thing. But the pillars within each phase are different, and how they're applied are different. So this is only one patient journey, but it's the most common.
Strangers to Leads is typically what you think of when you think of marketing, one of the things that I'm getting you to do is thinking as of this only as the first phase, and not all of marketing or business development or sales, because it's a holistic progression that flows together. And if you only think of the first phase is marketing, you're going to be sabotaging conversion and delight after later in the phases. So if you hire a marketing agency, this first phase is what they're qualified to do. Don't expect them to be able to help convert IVF and help with sales later down the line. Because the vast majority of marketing agencies are built to work on this first phase. And they do it for all kinds of businesses. This, again, is strangers to leads. And the pillars that fall within the strangest two leads are paid media, local listings, online reviews, your brand brand continuity, the user experience of your website, how you appear on organic search your content, informational events, and your outreach to referring providers to the objective here is to get as many qualified eyeballs that need your services and get them to take an action. So you want to reach as many people that might be qualified as possible. And then you want to convert them to leads, here's a tip optimization is different from maximization. So you could just put out an offer that says free IVF cycle sign up here, and you get lots of leads, that would be maximizing, but you, you want to optimize, you want to get people off the fence so that you can help them but you don't want to do it at the cost of helping them through later phases. If you make some sort of promise to early on, that you can't keep, then it's going to impact conversion, it's going to impact satisfaction, it's going to impact how they deal with your team. So you have the same challenge that I do, where we can help any Fertility Center that follows our process. But if I focus too much on the end prize, which is more profit, more revenue, higher volumes, and just a happier experience, if I focus too much on that, then it's like, Okay, go ahead and do it. And I take people's eye off of their role in the process, and they don't fully understand their role in the process. So you get into it. And then they think, Well, where's the magic, and then there's buyer's remorse and dissatisfaction. And the same is true for you, when you're setting the expectation of what's going to happen. At the end of us, the goal is a live birth, the goal is a happy baby. But if you focus too much on that, then inevitably, when the hard things happen, the billing, the extra appointments, the painful waiting, then that really impacts people's ability to stick with it. So I personally want happy clients, I don't care about happy prospects. So I will brutally set expectations. But if I err too far on that side, I might discourage them and lose--and they lose sight of the prize. So when I err, it's always on that side, I don't want you to err too far on that side. But I also want you to optimize so that we are optimizing and, and not maximizing in your mind, you're thinking we've got great success rates. Now the field is advanced so much, women under 35, they do at least three cycles, and have a good prognosis, they've got an 80% chance of having a baby. But just think about that, from the patient's perspective for a second, who isn't comparing our success rates as a field compared to what they were a decade or two ago, they're comparing it to what they want to get out of it, which is a baby. So best case scenario, that means that one in five people that are coming to you 20% are not having a baby, and they're not getting what they want out of it. And so we need to be really careful about the expectations we set in this part of the journey because we need to presuade people of what's coming so that later on, we can give them the information that they need to get when they need it. But not too early. We need to give--we need to show them enough of what can happen to get them excited to go through, but not so much to where we're misleading them.
That brings us to leads to initial consult so you can get all kinds of people to call your office and to submit a contact form, but they actually have to come in for the console if we're going to be able to help them and there's a gap that happens there. It happens in your call center. It happens in the lead nurturing phase. It happens with your process for cancellation. It happens with referral source attribution. It happens with what you're sending To referring provider in terms of testing and other kits, and overall, you're welcome sequence. That tip here is that if you want more new patients, before you go spending more money on advertising start here, you can do both at the same time. But make sure that you've really dialed into the second phase, because in your inbound messages in your form submissions and phone calls is the lowest hanging fruit. And there's always problems there. So when we help with call center, for example, we see that one patient schedules for every five could be, that's the baseline. So one new patient schedules for all of the five calls that could have scheduled qualified leads, not total calls, not unique calls qualified leads is one to five, that's really low, we've got a serious customer relationship management software problem in our field CRMs. We don't have any that really integrate with EMR, there are people that do patchwork, we helped with some of that patchwork, but we're losing 25% of the online leads, that would be canceled. So you have to be careful in how you're following up with people and answering new increase because if you do it incorrectly, you will be pushy, and it will turn people off. And if you do it right, it's helpful, there is a right and wrong way of doing this. But assessing this phase two is what's going to help you bring in the most new patients the most quickly. Another pro tip and the second phase of the patient marketing journey, is you can greatly reduce your cancellation rates, not after the appointment is set. But when you're setting it, it happens at the call center.
Okay, so now we're leaving the first two phases, and we're going to the latter two phases of the four phases of the patient journey, we are leaving the land of marketing, entering the land of sales, it's not a cliff that we're jumping off of, it's a transition. And so this is what we have to pay attention to. The first half of the journey is all about pre suasion, because timing is everything with fertility patients, they're getting too much information from you, typically, they can't digest it very often. And so we want to pre swayed people educate them ahead of time is helpful as possible of what they're going to find out without telling them what it is, before we can properly disclose that to them, then we need to be able to tell them what they need to know when they need to know it, that we're going to follow up and then follow up pre suasion and education, then the time of delivering knowledge. That is what they need to know when they need to know it, then follow up. And I'll give you an example that illustrates this perfectly. This isn't the only example. But it's one that you all know well. And this might give you some more insight as to why it's such a problem. All the darn time people are calling and saying how much does IVF cost? You give them an answer like 12,000, 13,000 plus meds, they say thank you, they hang up, they call another center, they delay their treatment, sometimes why months, sometimes by years, and they might not ever come back to you at all. This is almost always negative for them. It's not good for you. It's not good for anybody. And we've also set an incorrect expectation in their mind. Because we had to fill that vacuum and answer a question that we actually can't answer. This person might need multiple cycles, they might need donor gametes. And we just quoted them $12,000 Yeah, right, then they're saying, I ended up spending 80 grand at that by spending 90 grand, they told me it was gonna be $12,000 they bait and switch me, or we just totally got rid of someone that may have just needed timed intercourse. Our receptionist can't answer this on the phone. The price of an IVF cycle has nothing to do with how much it's actually going to cost an individual. And we don't know that from a phone call. So the right answer here and how we're moving from the earlier phases to the latter phases, connecting marketing to sales, is the explanation of the process of how we're going to get them the right answer. We don't tell them how much IVF costs, we tell them how we're going to find out exactly how much their treatment is going to cost, how we're going to help them find out how they're going to pay for it. You're preparing and educating in the earlier phases so that you can deliver the time so that they don't, they don't freeze so they can move on and then later you can follow up.
**COMMERCIAL BREAK**
I would be a bad fertility doctor, because I only want to take on the cases that I know are going to be successful. I only want people to say these sorts of things about me and my company, like Greg in Chicago: "Our resources are not endless. And I think that with Fertility Bridge, there's a much deeper dive." Or Dr. Young in Iowa, "I've gotten more positive feedback from patients from anything in the last 30 years of practice." Or Brad in Seattle, "You have multiple experts on your team and for, you know, a very small price to get that level of consulting for just a couple hours would be really valuable." Okay, you get the idea.
So this is how we set you up so you are 100% guaranteed to be successful in your goal over time. It's not a magical wand. Until you do this do not pass go, do not collect $200, and definitely do not get in any long term commitments or launching issues.
You sign up for the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic at FertilityBridge.com. You fill out your Business Needs Profile, we establish your benchmarks and desired outcomes. Then we meet for our 90 minute consult. We provide you with business Intel revenue estimates and a competitive overview of the field to facilitate the prioritization of your goals between your partners and leadership team. Then we have a 30 minute follow-up, we tell you exactly what you need to audit and strategize to build your plan. I'll also give you one big marketing idea that will make you say, "Damn, that's good!" If we fail to do any of these things, we give you your money back because it's only $597.
And because I need you to be successful, because I need you to say all those really sweet things about me and my company, maybe even a gem like this one from Holly and Dr. Hutchison from Arizona, "If we didn't have Fertility Bridge, honestly, I think we would be getting closer to retiring."
There's no long-term commitment whatsoever and there's a 100% money back guarantee. Send your manager to FertilityBridge.com, have them sign up for the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic. And I will see you and your partners on Zoom.
JONES
Okay, now we're in the third phase of the patient marketing journey. This is initial consult to treatment, they've come in for that first visit. But you can't pay your staff off of initial consultation, you also can't get most people a baby from initial consults, we don't move people on to treatment, we can't truly help them, you can't run a practice. So we need to be able to do that. I'm not a clinician, so I can't tell you who qualifies for IVF. And who doesn't. I know that the specialists in the field sometimes vary greatly and their opinions of who that should be. But what I can tell you from doing this for seven years, is that many people feel that they're pushed into IVF. And at the same time, many people feel their time was wasted by not being directed IVF sooner. So our messaging and what we include in our pre education is really important. If IVF isn't right for someone, for a host of reasons, they should absolutely not move forward with it. As long as it wasn't because we weren't helpful, or we weren't clear in order to effectively help patients move from console to treatment. This is where post consult follow up is king. treatment plan materials are extremely important financial counseling, how you impact your cancellation rate and drop off from here, patient support networks, and then getting real time feedback from patients. Pro Tip follow up with patients after their initial console and follow up visits. Follow up is huge. And I know that a lot of people feel reluctant to do follow up. It is a huge difference maker. Don't be afraid to follow up but be afraid to follow up in the wrong way. Again, you can't be pushy here, it has to be a helpful follow up. And it has to come at the right time with the right message. If you need help with that just let us know.
The fourth phase is post treatment. What happens after you've successfully gotten someone from being a total stranger to take an action that leads them to your office to then convert them to treatment. You've done all of that right now what happens to make them very happy, that makes you feel really good that makes your staff feel really good. That gives inspiration to other prospective patients in a realistic way that gets them to stick with the process and create a virtuous cycle. If you're looking at the four phases of the patient journey on your phone, because you're on our website, or you're reading the article that I wrote about this, then it looks linear. But imagine that you print out and you've got a piece of paper that you bend into a cylinder. The fourth phase of the patient journey now proceeds the first forever it's a continuous cycle. And almost every REI practice owner says they want treatment ready patients, sometimes you say IVF patients, sometimes you say qualified patients. Well, as you can see from the four phases of the journey, it's what we do that qualifies them or not. But indeed some patients are more prone to move through the journey faster than others. And many of those people are those who've heard about the ups and downs from a friend that they saw Oh my former coworker or friend from college or a cousin that I don't talk to all that often went through the same problem that I'm going through now went and saw this specialist, and was really happy about it. Those are the people that move through the most quickly. So my pro tip here is, especially to those people who are so slammed in the first three phases, many fertility centers right now don't need for new patients, and some don't even need for more IVF, their lab’s at capacity. So if you're one of those folks, especially if you're one in these larger coastal cities, where this tends to be the first to happen, every provider’s max, the lab is maxed. If that's the case, if you already have more new patients, and you know what to do with in the labs at capacity, then spend almost all of your marketing efforts, stop doing the lead acquisition, stop doing most of the things in the early if it's like spending money and a particular initiative, I'm not saying don't do it, because you need those earlier things, as we talked about to pre suede and pre educate patients. So you convert them, don't stop doing them. But if you have particular initiatives toward them, if you're dropping a lot of money, for example, on advertising, change that and focus almost all of your marketing efforts on building your group of patients, the cohort that you serve each year into a community, happy patients that engage with each other, that recommend you ad infinitum. If they're not engaging on social media, you don't have a community. So when they send their friends to you, you will keep the virtuous cycle of this patient journey on repeat. But if you don't have a community that you can easily see evidenced online, then you don't really have that community to the extent that it could be. And I'll give you a note that it is harder for centers in larger areas in larger coastal cities, it is not impossible, but you have to do more to make it happen. where a lot of times with small centers in the Midwest, for example, I can look and I could say, we're going to start that fire in two months time. That's often not the case for larger centers in large coastal cities. But it's still possible, you just have to do more to actually build that for those folks.
These are the four phases of the patient marketing journey. It's marketing to sales. This is how you invest in business development is how you make sure that marketing isn't an expense, because it's connected to sales, it's only function is to set up sales, which is converting more people to treatment that you can help get a fantastic result that they're extremely happy with make life better for those patients make life better for your staff. And following these journeys. And the pillars that fall under each four of them, is how you are able to return that investment so you can further invest in your business. It's a virtuous cycle, you're either in the virtuous cycle, or you're out of it and it's a vicious cycle.
My friend, Rita Gruber, who's been on this show that many of you know, has said that marketing is throwing the ball, but the practice and she's referencing operations has to catch it. That's absolutely true. But you don't care if I'm Tom Brady, if you can't catch the ball. This is how we follow marketing efforts from the very beginning of somebody being a stranger all the way to the end, after it's produced revenue and profit, and they're extremely satisfied and sharing it with the world. It's these four phases, following all of the pillars from left to right, you can start right to left and have a more quick impact. But if you start left to right, then that's what is sustainable and scalable. So I can't tell you exactly what you should do without an earnest engagement between my firm fertility bridge and your company. But in one small engagement, I can point out two or three of your biggest problem areas just from reviewing your goals, and your current marketing from a bird's eye view. If you'd like me to do that, it's called the Goal and Competitive Diagnostic, it's linked in this show. It's linked in the blog post. And you can click through and get started because it's only $600. And we lay out the framework of everything I just told you about in these four phases of the patient marketing journey. I hope you all enjoyed this, there's gonna be a lot more content from just me that's specific to business development. And we'll still have guests on, but you're going to get more of this for me and I hope you enjoy it. And again, when you send me these emails and tell me that you enjoy it, it really makes my day. See you soon.
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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.