Ajay: Hi, Courtenay, welcome to our podcast, Founder's Corner.

Courtenay: Thank you.

Ajay: So, to start with the podcast, I always like my audience to know something about you so that they can also relate to some of the issues that you want to discuss. So, why don't I give you the platform and tell us something about you and about your company.

Courtenay: Okay. I am, I guess, a therapist in Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. I started my private practice in December, I guess, of 2019, or I'm sorry, 2021, but I worked previously in the prison systems mostly. And so I'm here to just kind of get a lot of marketing questions, and I do equine therapy and trauma and I do EMDR, and so I am just interested in getting a lot of information.

Ajay: Good. So, Courtenay, I am familiar with all the three that you said but I'm sure that my audience would have no clue EMDR. They would know trauma. So, do you mind just quickly just telling, in a minute, what EMDR, what's equine and trauma every understands?

Courtenay: Sure. So, EMDR is eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing. So, you can do bites or tapping and it helps the brain reprocess the memories from –. When we do the reprocessing, a person can do the tapping or the eye movements and it allows them to go back and redo the memory that they have of that traumatic event and then they are able to – it's able to not be so triggering or so upsetting for them.

Ajay: Okay.

Courtenay: And it's pretty impressive.

Ajay: Good.

Courtenay: And then –.

Ajay: So, is there a training for that? I mean how do you get to EMDR, yeah?

Courtenay: Yes. So, there is training. There are two levels of training and then there is actually lots of training that you can do. There is EMDRIA which is the international association. You can do it with lots of different things. There is resourcing so that you can actually help someone learn to do it, like let them learn how to be something that's gonna happen in the future so that they can have a more positive experience.

Like, if they say they were afraid of something and they wanted to not be afraid of that event, they were gonna do that event, we could help them so that they could process that event. And then you could do what they call future templates so that they could see themselves doing that event in the future and not being afraid of it. And then actually then when they did go do that event they would not be afraid of it because the brain would actually have processed them doing that event in the future.

Ajay: Good.

Courtenay: So, it has lots of research. Francine Shapiro started that technique and it's been well researched and it's worldwide. It's a really wonderful experience for people.

Ajay: So, tell me something about your process, then, Courtenay. So, I am assuming that patient comes to you, then do you recommend which therapy or do they come to you for specific therapy, like I am looking for EMDR or how does it work right now with your practice?

Courtenay: Most of the time people will come and they will say that either they are looking for EMDR or they are looking for a specific anxiety or depression or trauma, which is the things that I kind of work with.

Ajay: Okay. So, that's interesting. So, sort of they have done their research in terms of what they want and they come to you rather than come to you with a problem and then you suggest a treatment, am I correct?

Courtenay: Yes.

Ajay: Okay, okay, good. All right. I think that we have a good background. How long you are working for mostly with the jails until you started your own practice in 2019 or 2020?

Courtenay: Yes. So, I went to work for a group in 2019 and did outpatient from 2019 to 2021, to December of 2021.

Ajay: Okay.

Courtenay: And then I started my own practice all by myself.

Ajay: Okay. And that is being an entrepreneur so fantastic. I think that now we have a good idea. So, go ahead and I am here to answer your questions about the marketing that you have.

Courtenay: Okay. So, yeah, so my first question was, how do you know when to add another marketing strategy?

Ajay: Okay. Yeah. So, a lot of people, this is one of those questions where if you ask three people you may get three answers, so, but I will give you my answer, the way I do that. So, I always like to pick one channel, one strategy, and until I have saturated it I don't want to look for something else. So, in other words, I am not the one to sprinkle a little bit of resources all over.

So, the first thing is, before you start, if you have a strategy and if it is working or not working, right, that's the first thing you have to determine. And if it is working, then you want to make sure that you have totally optimized, you are getting 100 percent. In other words, if you are generating 10 patients a month with a certain strategy, if you know that, okay, this is the maximum that this strategy can give me, 10 because of whatever the limit is on the channel or anything, that's when you want to look for additional. Until you have really conquered the one I won't go to the second one.

Again, that is my approach. You may have some people who will say try many things and something will work, something doesn't work but I like to do it one thing at a time. So, that is how I suggest that you do.

Courtenay: Right.

Ajay: Is make sure that you are totally maximizing, optimizing the output from the strategy before you look into something else. Or, obviously, if the strategy is not working, right, then you have to take a step back and say, you know what, this is not working so let's try something else or can we fix it. So, that would be my approach.

Courtenay: Okay. So, how do you know when it's not working or how do you know to give up on it?

Ajay: Yeah, exactly. So, when you are launching any kind of marketing campaign, right, so you need to have certain expectations, right. So, you don't want to just launch it and see what happens, what it does. So, it's the matter of, okay, this is a strategy. So, I will give you an example.

Suppose the strategy was that I want to focus on paid advertising, right, on Google for my area. So, if that is the strategy, you would know, for example, how many searches are there on Google, right, for the keywords that say EMDR professional or anything. Those are the keywords that you already know. So, if you know that there are 1,000 keywords and generally speaking, if you are getting 5 percent of people searching to click on your ad, that is considered very good. So, then you know that, okay, if there is 1,000 and I have 5 percent, that is 50 people who come to my website, and so that is the max, right, 50.

Now, generally speaking, if you can convert 50 percent of the people coming on your site that's considered very good. So, then you know that from this program I can get up to 25. And it's not like that you launch it, immediately you will get 25, right, but that's where you know the upper limit. So, you know that if you are getting three, you know that you can get a whole lot more so we need to look at the program to see what's working, what's not working. If you get 20 and now 25, it may not be worth putting that extra effort because that is a point where I would say you are probably better off looking at the other channel, a strategy to generate, acquire more patients.

So, that is how you know, is before stepping into it and launching a strategy, you should have an idea of what to expect, right. So, if you know that I can get 50 patients a month from this strategy, then you know whether it's working or not, right. But because that number is still there, like I said, if you are deciding 50 patients based on the fact that there is X number of searches, I can optimize it, I can get X number of clicks, and then if I am doing everything right, I should get 50 percent of them who click or 10 percent or whatever is the number.

Your agency should be able to help you with that. And so based on that you know the potential, right, the market for that, and now you match your reserve with what you – because you want to start with a specific, I would say destination, right. So, if you are launching a program that's said I want to start generating 50 new patients every month, you know it's working or not.

So, sometimes, by the way, sometimes it happens that maybe the initial assumptions were wrong, but like I've always said, in a funny way, marketing is half science, half art. So, it's not a straight formula but now thanks to the digital marketing you can still have some projection. I mean before it was even harder. I've been in the marketing field for a hundred years and when I first started in marketing it was only TV and radio and print, there was nothing else, and it was very hard to measure the success at that time. Now, thanks to digital, at least you know if it is working or not, so, that is a plus point.

Courtenay: Right. That is. Okay, and that makes sense. So, after having a website, is it better to go with like Google Ads or would it be better to do social media or both?

Ajay: Okay. Yeah. So, my answer there is that the Google Ad will give you a quickly short-term benefit, right, and in the sense that you would give the Google ad and you should start to see the result literally in two, three weeks. So, you know that for fast acquisition you want to do that, Google always helps. And my approach about Google Ad always is that given that everything can be measured so easily, right, so you know exactly how much money you spent, how many clicks you got, right, and how many patients you got, so long as you're monitoring the new patient. See, so you know what kind of return it is generating for you, the Google Ad and so long as it's positive, I mean why not.

Now, when it comes to social media, generating clients from social media requires a lot of work. I mean I would rather take a more holistic approach and I would do everything like what I call digital marketing, in the sense that you want to get your site up on major keywords. You have some social media to support it. You have a lot of reviews that will give people who don't know you that's found you on the web confidence about what they will be getting from you.

So, the social media on its own, I have seen it work for some consumer products but it's a big hit and miss because unless you have a big influencer who talks about you and then no influencer will keep on talking about you, so you may even get a spike and the things will disappear. So, my thing is social media alone as a digital strategy is not for everyone, especially for small businesses.

Courtenay: Okay.

Ajay: Like I said, if you have some fashion product, you have something that it goes viral, you would end up getting a lot of sales and all, yes, and that could be a viable thing, but not for a service like yours.

Courtenay: Okay. And so with Google Ads, do you let Google do your ads or do you do them yourself?

Ajay: No, I would not let Google do the ad because Google claims that they do the ad but I can tell you the first thing they want to make sure that they make the money, right, before they will worry about you making the money. So, you are better off getting an – see, depending on how free you are. I always discourage entrepreneurs from learning how to do paid advertising, everything, but if someone else, no budget, maybe it is in the beginning, it's not that hard to learn what to do for Google ad but it's not very expensive also to hire an agency who has an expert.

Make sure that anyone who says that I will do the Google ad for you is a Google partner, and all it means when someone is a Google partner that Google has vetted the results of the projects that they handle for their clients and approves it. So, it meets Google's minimum requirements at best. So, if it is a Google partner than you want them to do that because they will run it, and trust me, if you give it to Google versus to a partner, you will be spending more on Google and you will get worse result on Google.

And I am telling you from our experience because, so firsthand experience I am telling you, and it's not like, okay, 10 years back I had that experience. Every time I have seen anyone try that, they are unhappy. So, you don't want Google robots to manage it because they will manage to get more money from you, that's it.

Courtenay: Okay. So, yeah, well, Google gets enough anyway, right.

Ajay: Yeah, exactly right.

Courtenay: They do they're own thing, okay. So, find a Google partner agency is the –.

Ajay: Yeah.

Courtenay: Okay.

Ajay: And by the way, that is not very difficult. You can go on the Google site itself, the website – if you just google Google partners, right, Google partner agencies, you will see it in your area or –. I mean it really doesn't matter where they are based, but if you feel more comfortable about being able to see and meet with the agency, I am sure that you will find a lot of those in your area also.

Courtenay: Okay. No, that makes –. And the website is kind of the best –?

Ajay: Yeah. So, yeah, your website, by the way the best return on investment I have seen is the website, doing the right thing on the website, optimizing it, making sure that you start to show up higher and higher on the search engine for major keywords. Because the challenge with that is that it takes time, so that is slow, so that's the challenge where you will find that it's a relatively slow process. The result is unlike paid advertising where you can start to see the results in two weeks. But over a longer time that will be your best cost-effective strategy for that.

We have seen companies spending $3,500.00 in the beginning when they were barely making $2,500.00 in sales, and then over a period of time the sales went up to a million and they were still spending 35 and the sales were up to three million, we are still doing 35 on doing this Google search engine marketing that I am talking about bringing your site up. Versus if you had a paid advertising and suppose you got $10,000.00 by spending $100.00, then by definition, $100,000.00, you have to spend $10,000.00. A million you have to spend – you can just do the math. So, your cost will keep on going versus a return on investment on if you are found doing a good job with the website marketing will always give you the best return.

Courtenay: Okay. Right. So, what are like the three best return on investments for like your smallest amount? So, I guess one would be the website and the Google Ads?

Ajay: Yeah. So, I would say one would be definitely the website. You have to have a website because that's where your potentially patient journey starts.

Courtenay: Right.

Ajay: They will check your website, they will find out about you, right. So, you have to have a website, definitely an investment. The second, I would say, investment, and time of asking or having a company, whatever you want to call it, and also it's not that expensive also, you have to have a stellar, what we call online reputation, right. So, you need to have a site. You know that people will come to your website but before they will call you they are going to check your online reviews, right. So, you want to make sure that you have really solid online reviews on most of the sites that people visit when they are searching for a healthcare provider, when they are looking for it.

Google is, of course, the king of it, Google is number one, but then you have Rate MD and Vitals and all these others, Yelp, Facebook because, again –. So, those are the things, you want to make sure that you have good reviews on all these platforms. So, that would be the second thing you have got to do. And by the way, if you have said I can only do one of two, right, website or reviews, I would say get reviews because people will check your reviews before they come, and if you don't have review it is almost as bad as bad reviews because that is how they get the validation. Now over 80 percent of the people do it that way.

So, those two I would say is very important, and the third piece I would tell you is important, interestingly, it is sort of marketing but not marketing, is measuring your satisfaction of your patient regularly, and the ones who are – and that way you would also know who is very happy, who is not happy, right. So, you can take care of the ones who are not happy, you would know what is triggering it so you have that information. But also, the ones who are very happy, now you can ask them for referral. So, the referral from happy patients is really a great I would say source of new patient acquisition. But in order to do that, of course, you need to know who is happy or not happy, right.

/and you want to increase the number of your patients that are happy and the best way to do that is you measure and someone who says I did not like my experience, then at least now you can reach out and you can address. And most of the time, unhappy customers, in your case, the patients, they become your biggest supporter, advocate if they were unhappy and you took care of them. I mean, believe it or not, that has a bigger impact than doing a great job all the time.

Because if someone is unhappy and you took care of them, they know that you care and they never forget that, and this I have seen forever. And I used to be in the restaurant industry, in the marketing, obviously, we saw the same thing. It's like one happy customer will tell maybe another person. One unhappy person will tell 10 other people about their worst experience in a restaurant. But the unhappy customer who we took care of, they would also tell 10 people how good this place is because for some stupid thing you give them, a Coke free or a dessert free because they were unhappy with something and all of the sudden they just go gaga.

Courtenay: Right.

Ajay: But you want to know, right, who is unhappy and that's where the measurement will come.

Courtenay: Okay.

Ajay: I would say those three things, if you are doing that you should have a thriving business. I won't even worry about a lot more right now. You have a good local business. I mean what is the radius, I mean how far people will drive to come to see you?

Courtenay: Probably 20 miles, maybe.

Ajay: Yeah. You don't need anything else for 20 miles. Just doing your website marketing, good website and marketing your website. Make sure that you are getting reviews on a regular basis, and have a satisfaction measurement program so that you are also – you are getting the idea of who is – you can recover unhappy patients and then ask the happy ones for referral. You can automate all this process and I think so long as you are doing that you will have a thriving business.

Courtenay: Okay. Yeah, and so do reviews, get someone to do a review on Google or on somewhere.

Ajay: Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. You can ask your patient what review sites they go to, right, and they will tell you, but generally speaking, for healthcare providers we have seen Google, Facebook, of course Yelp, although luckily Yelp is not as much. And then you have WebMD, Rate MD, Vitals and Health Grade. So, these are for healthcare providers in general that I told you. Your patients may be looking at the different platforms. So, you can just talk to them and I can guarantee you that Google will be one, I am sure Yelp and Facebook, these are the three that are always there.

But if they are checking on Health Grades or Vitals or WebMD and all those things, you can't to make sure that you get reviews there also. Because the people, by the way, who are checking Yelp or Facebook versus the ones who are checking WebMD, the ones who are checking WebMD are really serious. They are really in the process of deciding who to select. So, that's what you want to have reviews on.

Courtenay: Okay, definitely, all right. That is very helpful. I hadn't thought about the reviews so very helpful.

Ajay: I mean the typical patient journey is they have a need, they find out about you one way or another, right, so they either search on the web or they talk to their friends or relatives, but they will find out about you, unless they find out, then, of course, you don't exist so they can never come. And then they will check your website and if the website gives them, like, okay, I would consider this doctor, then they will go and check your reviews and if they are happy with that then they will contact you. Just trust me, that's your very standard patient journey these days in their selection process.

Courtenay: Okay. Awesome. Well, you kind of answered the rest of my questions.

Ajay: Good, good.

Courtenay: Yeah.

Ajay: So, good luck with your entrepreneurial journey. I mean I did that. I was in corporate world for literally 20 years before I started my own business, so I am always very excited and I'm always proud when someone takes that challenge and becomes successful. So, wishing you all the best, and I have always said in my podcasts, if ever you have any specific question, don't feel like you have – we are not attorneys, so you can always call and say, hey, I want more advice and we are here. We will tell it to you and we don't charge by the seconds or minutes or anything like attorneys.

Courtenay: Oh, well, thank you.

Ajay: Okay. You're welcome. Yeah. All I am saying is if you have some question, we'll answer it and it's not like we'll ask you to pay out something. But I am very vested in seeing my audience become very successful, that's my only goal.

Courtenay: Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. This has been very, very helpful.

Speaker: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Founder's Corner Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud. If you are interested in being a guest, be sure to visit our main page at www.gmrwebteam.com/thefounderscorner.