Introduction to Doctor Talks and Tim Bouchard

So it's about providing the strongest bridge between the patient and the provider as possible. And one of the ways we see this is in short form and long form video from the providers themselves.

You know, they're not always going to be out actively marketing. It's not their job. But they do have very strong reasons for why they went into a certain angle of their practice in their profession.

More patients, more authority, and more freedom. I'm Brett Gregory, founder of Doctor Talks, where we're democratizing the creator economy for doctors.

Welcome to the show. Welcome back to another episode of Doctor Talks. I'm your host, Brett Gregory, where we are democratizing the creator economy for doctors.

And I am really excited today. We have with us Tim Bouchard, who is the owner and CEO of the Luminous Marketing Agency. He's got a great take on marketing and how doctors, how you can just build trust with your own authenticity.

we're going to be talking about Be The Brand, patient-centric marketing. How doctors can build, trust, authority, and practice growth by becoming the face of their brand.

So Tim, thanks so much for being on with us. Welcome to the program. Yeah, thanks for having me. I love doing podcasts and content. We're gonna do a little bit of a swap, so that should be fun, and I'm excited to talk to your audience.

And for any of you doctors listening, I am always recommending podcast swaps. If you host your own, even if you have your channel, you don't even have you own podcast and you wanna interview another doctor, have them interview you so you get in front of their audience, it's a really efficient use of time and a great way to be the face of your brand.

And on that note, tell us a little bit about how you came to be CEO of Luminous, Tim. Yeah, so Lumenous is a marketing agency that was founded in 2010. I had a partner, we started in the logo and design and web area and evolved into full-scale marketing in mid-2010s.

We kind of hit our healthcare stride in late 2010s when we really realized that Brand played a big part in building trust in the healthcare space differently than it did in consumer marketing for products and typical services.

And that really blended well with our approach to understanding audiences in marketing and wanting to go after their viewpoints and pull that into a brand strategy.

What Patient-Centric Marketing Means

So it just kind of worked out well. We have a few other things that we like to take special care of like web compliance and all these other that come along with healthcare marketing.

But really what we do is we just specialize in helping practices acquire more patients and grow their practice through building good patient pipelines.

All right, so let's talk about building a good-patient pipeline. So why do patients trust doctors who show up authentically online more than practices that feel like faceless or corporate?

Yeah, it sounds really elementary, but it's because you understand the patient and where they are. And also, I think there's two ways that patients look for providers.

One is they have a problem they need solved and they're aware of it and trying to seek out someone to help consult and address that problem. The other is they don't know they have a need for, let's say maybe like elective types of procedures.

Um, I always use orthopedic for this because orthopaedic can be very much like fix a problem or it could be, Oh, maybe my quality of life could better if I had a knee replacement and I wasn't slow around my grandkids or whatever it is.

Right. So, so a lot of times it's about getting in front of people in a way that connects with them, not only to. give them comfort and security and assurance that you can help them, but also sometimes educating and putting yourself in front of people to realize that there might be someone out there that can them with something they didn't realize could be helped with.

It's about really meeting people in the moment of where they are in their research journey, or maybe even if you want to just think about it globally, their life and where are they in life, and what might be important to them too.

So think how that plays into brand and communication strategy, which I'm sure we'll get into as well. Definitely. I mean, I love the concept of patient-centric marketing, but let's define it.

What does patient centric marketing actually mean and why is it becoming so important for doctors today? Yeah. So I don't mean this to make anyone self-conscious, but a lot of practices and doctors as they should be are very proud of their certifications, their procedures and protocols and their perhaps stature in the market as the number one provider or the only blah, blah blah.

You know, and those are all important things. Those are decision-making and validating things, but they don't necessarily resonate with someone looking for healthcare services.

So if you flip the script onto the patient's viewpoint, the audience viewpoint for your marketing and your brand communications, you start to uncover more things that are important to them.

Maybe it is playing with their grandparents, maybe it's not having pain in a certain thing, proximity to them or sometimes it's even, you know, having a generally female staff if it is more over on one side of the equation or whatever it might be and developing content and brand promises that match that patient's viewpoint versus your mark that you've created from a competency and certification standpoint, which all doctors have competency in certification, right?

So what you're really trying to do is differentiate yourself with how you connect with patients, how do you understand those patients. So patient-centric marketing being talking to your patients, but doing so by deeply understanding them, right?

And that's correct. So where are the biggest mistakes that doctors are making now when trying to market themselves online? I would start with the website because no matter what you do with search marketing or social marketing, which also has compliance things that come along with it, especially in the Med Spa space, it's about what your first message is and how you're making people find information on your website.

There's multiple different ways, whether someone's being referred or finding you for the first time, you have to have slightly different messaging for each of those types of patients, but also just making it easy for them.

They might not know a lot about what you provide, especially if you start to get into things like cancer treatments or really complex topics they might just be investigating for first-time.

So your content has to be very patient friendly, not very clinical.

Common Website and Messaging Mistakes

That's one way to address that hurdle and easy to navigate. And then of course, there's the top actions that someone might have to do and putting those in front of them as quickly as possible.

Scheduling an appointment or consultation. Maybe it's paying a bill or getting into their client portal. assuring them that your forms and things like that are all compliance, that they aren't worried about sending information through your website to you.

So if you can understand what the top needs are of that patient audience, your web site can solve those. And that's one quick way to start building trust, because if make it easy in the web and browsing and research process, That's a subliminal mind trick to say, This will also be easy when I start working with the doctor, when i work with their front office.

When I go through their procedures and their protocols, it will be just as easy as they made this experience for me. It's very subtle, but if you take that approach, you are thinking about what they need first and not what you want to say first.

So you really want to create that frictionless customer experience as much as possible. Okay. Well, let's get back to then the authenticity, patient-centric marketing.

So why is authenticity becoming one of the strongest competitive advantages in healthcare? So it's about. providing the strongest bridge between the patient and the provider as possible.

And one of the ways we see this is in short form and long form video from the providers themselves. You know, they're not always going to be out actively marketing.

It's not their job. But they do have very strong reasons for why they went into a certain angle of their practice in their profession if they love the orthopedic side because they could help people live better and move better.

If they went into vision it's because the care deeply whatever it might be and if you can tell that story it really connects with people because at the end of the day there are a lot of doctors and providers that can do the thing that you do.

But how you approach it and how work with patients might be the tipping point of someone selecting you over someone else. And if you can put your personality approach and purpose out there authentically through video, which is a great way to do it, short form or long form, it makes a huge difference in converting interested or researching patient prospects into actual appointments for consultations.

So, and now, does that mean doctors have to dance on TikTok? Cause I know when I talk to a lot of our doctors, they just said, I'm just not gonna do that.

And so what does mean exactly? What do they have do? Well, think the two different ways. On the short form side, it could just be something like a generalized story of how they help someone and how it made them feel that week.

It could be a 30 second video. So patient success story. Yeah, and not even such in the case and yes, those for sure, but this could even be very much more high level.

You know, just like it was great to see someone come in and I addressed their issue this way and it just, they left with a smile and that's really all that mattered to me this week.

Something where it builds up why it matters for them to be part of the practice. Long form wise, it might be about how you got into the profession, some of things that have meant most to you, why you believe that this is your protocols, can help people better than others.

That's where you might get into more long form. And if you can pull in a client with a, you know, written sign off that they can be on video too, then that might be an even better way to tell a patient story where can do it together, the provider and the patient.

Authenticity Through Video and Personal Branding

So there's a lot of ways to create content, long form, short form. One of my favorite ways, and in talking to so many doctors, there is a fear trepidation around getting in front of a camera and creating content.

I find being interviewed on a podcast tends to be incredibly easy. 99% of the doctors that I'm talking too, when I am recommending that they create a content and they say, I can't do a presentation, or at least it takes me a really long time to put one together, but ask me questions, and I'm ready to go immediately.

And so I encourage everybody to get interviewed, whether it's on a channel or a podcast, where you could even have someone in your office interview you.

You might find it way easier to create a lot of content and a good kind of the content that the search engines want, which is frequently asked questions and answers.

So a lot of doctors feel uncomfortable being on camera or being the face of the brand. What do you say to those doctors and how do get them to create content?

Well, everyone's going to have to see you eventually. And I do like the idea of, of course, the audio stuff is definitely in play and that should be a key thing too.

Especially if you can do, there's lots of different ways to do appearances. You can even think back traditionally, sometimes you would even have, and this is still a thing that's done, morning shows would have providers come on and talk about whether it's like breast cancer awareness month or it flu season or, you know, A lot of those are still in play too, but if you think about what short form video can do on social media for you, if have a marketing team or marketing agency working alongside you.

If you do short things. And honestly, I think where a lot people's apprehension is, they think they have to have it perfect and it has to be overproduced.

And I'll tell you what, if you put two videos out in one super produced and one looks like someone just held their phone up and said, hey, I had a break in my day.

I want to tell everyone about this experience I have with the patient and how it made them feel and made me feel when they walked out the door. That selfie video that has a cabinet in the background and a fluorescent light in top corner is going to perform so much better than the produced piece.

I think we've all been conditioned with our exposure to video on social media that the more produced something looks like, the it's trying to influence you.

And the less produced, more authentic it is, and more you can actually believe and buy into the idea that this person cares about what they're saying.

In short, no one cares how much you spent on your camera. Yeah. It's really true. And they don't, and they're not expecting you to look like, you know, a professional newscaster or an actor or actress, whatever level you think you're holding yourself to.

They want someone that cares, that's willing to put themselves out there because they are about to out themselves there by scheduling a consultation and wanting to engage with you potentially about a life altering or life supporting healthcare service.

Absolutely. And so we've been talking about social media, but why is video and social right now so important for building patient trust, or how important is it?

So think about from the trust standpoint, There's two ways people find you. They'll actively be seeking out a service. Think of search engines are now AI responses.

So they're going to be coming through a research phase where they are not seeking a doctor specifically. Social media allows you to, through both promotion and organic posting, build a repository in your profile of video clips of you talking about what you do, who you help, and who have helped.

your location, where you are, things in the community that you believe in that might connect with them. But from a promotional standpoint, it's becoming one of the easiest ways to get in front of your target audience at an affordable rate with the right type of targeting and get your message in your face out in-front of people that may need your service.

There's still always, you know, for the, we deal a lot with small and medium sized independent practices. So we don't have the large regionals that are doing your TVs and your, your large event sponsorship and commercials on radio.

We deal more with the small practices that. Making their own path in the market. so for them, it is about kind of creating a differentiator. Do you want to go to the faceless competitor or do you to come to The Authentic Independent?

And one of the ways you have to put that out there is putting yourself in front of people. So social allows you to do that. Not only does it allow you target and put yourself out in the front people, but you get to control the narrative and you deliver the message.

And that's a huge trust building factor of how that can help. Now, do you think patients connect more deeply with stories or personality and real human communication than say like polished advertising?

I would say so from a decision making standpoint. You can get someone's attention with polished advertising, but if you want them to actually buy into getting the consultation, I think that's where the authenticity really comes into play.

You want to lead with a professional brand, right? That professionalism still speaks to, okay, this person has been around, they know what they're doing, but the idea that someone will choose you over someone else might really just come down to like emotional relatability.

Yeah, and that was going on to my next question about how smaller private practices can still compete with large healthcare systems by building a stronger personal brand or can they?

And even if you take the provider out of it, the front desk experience and the location experience can be a differentiator for smaller practices as well.

Because they can take a personal approach. They are working directly with people. The staff isn't so large that they're not going to remember people when they are coming in through the door.

Overcoming Camera Shyness and Building Trust

You're in the healthcare maintenance side of things. Think like dentists, vision, primary care. The more personable that experience is and the smaller you are is actually an advantage over the larger healthcare system run organizations because you can build more personal bridges.

And in those practices, lifetime value of a client is really important because they're not doing a ton of high ticket types of procedures. It's more so routine healthcare services.

Do you have a case study that you can think of, just off the top of your head, of one of you doctors who was able to follow these kinds of directions and was to achieve some results that they were really happy with?

Yeah, so the best one we have, and this is maybe why I go to orthopedics so often, but we've a local mid-market orthopaedic group who has something like 30 plus providers now, which is much more than when they started with us back in 2016. We went through two iterations.

we actually did our first website with them in 2015 and it was very service-based at that point. There wasn't a lot of video involved. We did an iteration of that website in 2019 and we flipped the content into provider forward content pieces and video pieces, and the dual provider and patient testimonials.

And one of the best ones that had the most play on social media was actually a blind man who lost uh had fingers had had an issue with his fingers they were able to repair the fingers so he could still play piano wow because that was the one thing that he loved to do was he love the music he loves listening to it you know when you have content like that and this person was on video they bought into it you can put that out there and what it does is it doesn't just say like we fix hips or we can you help you when something goes terribly wrong it's that remember that the reason that we do what we is to maintain your lifestyle or to improve your life style and that pulls people and says like like I really do like, I like what they did for them.

Or if you think about it more like the hip replacement or just movement, having total joint types of procedures. I'm aging. I have the ability to do this.

It's an elective surgery, but I really want what they've done for other people. So for them, we had time on site increases. We had video watching statistics now where we were keeping people on pages minutes instead of seconds.

And with the campaigns that went out, the traffic like 3X, 4X over the first couple of months of that site being up. So they had already seen an improvement in site traffic on the site, but when the campaign's went and it was led with patient stories and the doctor videos that are on each one of their profiles, The time on site shot up, schedule and appointments shot.

And really what it is, if you can keep people in your world, it actively encourages them more to take the first action. That's great. So let's go just slightly deeper on that note, because a lot of doctors worry about looking salesy online.

Just to the doctors listening, how can they market authentically without damaging trust? So I think that just goes, if you just go back to the patient centric rule, just flip everything back patient-centric, you're not selling hip replacements.

You're now boasting that you are the number one hip replacement provider in the market. Your providing quality of life or your providing. support for someone's family on the pediatric or primary care side.

We are here to support you, keep you healthy and keep your quality of life high. So if you think about your messaging, and it may take something like going back to like a brand strategy session where you could think what your brand promise is.

Case Study: Orthopedics and Patient Stories

Is your band promise to be the number one technical or largest or whatever, or is it actually to always be improving people's lives in whatever sector of healthcare you are?

And if you tailor your video content or your audio content, or blog posts or social media posts to the idea, of that brand promise of helping people and their viewpoint, you won't ever come off salesy.

You're gonna tell stories about the patient who had his fingers saved so he can still play piano and enjoy the audio that basically drives his life. That's amazing.

And so on the flip side of what are some mistakes that you see practices make that unintentionally may create distrust online? The, I'll go back to the website again.

It's usually creating friction or not thinking that the patient experience doesn't start when they're doing something on their own versus doing directly with you.

The patient's experience does not start where they reach out to their front desk or schedule the consultation. Starts when the search for you, starts when you look up on social media and it starts where you go to your website.

So if those aren't aligned in their messaging and their content threads, Uh, and it's a hard experience to understand what you do, who you help or how to get started.

That's, that's most of the things that we fix for people upfront is unifying that ecosystem and reducing the friction. From there, it turns into what's the best message.

What are the channels to advertise in? You know, what are best conversion points? But most things. Sometimes the easiest answer is the first one you miss.

Is the website too hard to use? Is it the message of boasting about us and not saying what we do for patients? Sometimes it's just that easy. Sometimes just getting the fundamentals right can make all the difference.

You mentioned channels. What channels or platforms are currently the best opportunities for doctors to build visibility and trust? It depends. Well, there's two angles to this.

There's the advertising angle and the content angle. Trust building has to be done on social media. Think, you know, Facebook is on its way out depending on who your audience is.

If you're serving an aging audience of millennials plus, facebook can still be very good for you if you are serving young adults or people coming into their adult, you know, think early Gen Z's are up through millennials.

You might be able to play a little bit more on Instagram and you may be to go over to TikTok, but you don't have to do the dances. You know, we do a little bit in child care.

It's a bit off topic, but it's still like a care-based industry. Just something that we've done since 2015. Parents are starting to come up through the TikTok generation now.

People having their kids in their 20s aren't on Facebook as much, so we're starting shift our advertising and video work over more to the Instagram and TikTok side than the Facebook side.

So it's just you have to kind of know based on age group and what your message is, where you're going to fit in there. The more video you do, Instagram and TikTok will be better.

And then depending on your age, Facebook could still be in play. Search itself, remember, is an inbound channel. So there are some things you can do with your Google business profile page, like utilize the updates.

area of that page and post things about community events. Or if you have blog articles, you can utilize that and keep that up to date. You can post up-to-date photos in there.

Avoiding Salesy Marketing and Reducing Friction

So there's some things you could do on search. But if we're trying to build trust, it's the website and it social because you deliver messages through those.

Whereas on Search you're kind of like bringing people in through links and subtext. As we come to an end here, what's one thing doctors can start doing this week to become more visible and trusted online?

Outside of taking a good hard look at your website and being honest with yourself, if it's about you or your patients, let's put that one aside, but they should do it.

I would say talk to your front desk staff and say, What are the common problems that people are coming in with in terms of working with us? Is the website hard to, yeah, what are the friction points?

And then if some of them are about just understanding things that you do as a practice, create a couple of short videos that talk about ways that make it easy for people and put those out there.

You don't even have to boost them. Just organic pieces that could be out. So take baby steps. you don' have come up with a podcast series or video series, or you dont have shoot the client testimonial right away.

But find the easy things that are important to patients and create a 30 second video, hold your phone up or have someone from the front desk help you out and just shoot something that's a very simple answer to a common problem.

Where do you see healthcare marketing headed in the next few years? It will probably be less about search. and a little bit more about leaning back into traditional media.

It sounds very cyclical, but one of the things to keep in mind if we can drop a bit of AI conversation into this, is that AI is sourcing citations from across the board.

Its social media profiles, its news websites, it's videos on YouTube. Again, if you do your short videos, you can put those up on the YouTube channel.

YouTube videos, Instagram reels, those get crawled by search engines now. So these are all more indexable citation worthy pieces that you can put up. If you think about it from an AI standpoint and from a human standpoint, the more areas that show up in, The more relevant your practice will be or your name will in something like localized AI search.

Best Channels and the Future of Healthcare Marketing

And that will still affect traditional search too. So it might be something where you start to see more PR outreach and not just the shortcut of digital marketing that's been done for the last 10 or 15 years where we can throw money at Google ads, Facebook or Instagram ads.

Whatever it may be, display ads even used to be a thing. I think what's going to come around is we're going see the opportunities back into joint content pieces on local digital publication websites, visiting the TV or the radio channel once in a while, making sponsorship connections, getting involved with schools if you're in primary care, dentistry, vision, something like that.

Because all those little citations are going to amount to a reputable practice that AI can source and then mention in answers. Love it. Patient-centric marketing.

This is how you can build trust, authority, and practice growth. Tim Bouchard, where can listeners learn more about Luminous and connect with you? Yeah, our website is luminous.agency.

We have a patient pipeline blueprint. It's a little session where we run people through their patient journey. Lumenous dot agency slash blueprint and I'm on LinkedIn.

I am super active. Just look up Tim Buchard from Lumnus. you'll find me. And if you wanna hear Brett on my podcast, it's Healthcare Marketing Edge, and I'll have his episode out soon too, because we're doing the swap.

We're doin' the Swap, Healthcare marketing edge podcast with Tim Burchard. Tim, thank you so much for being here, we appreciate you. This was great, thanks.

That's a wrap for this edition of Doctor Talks podcast. we'll see you on the next one. If you found this episode valuable, please consider hitting the like, subscribe and leave a review.

It really helps others find the show. And if you're ready to get known, get booked, and get more patients now, visit DrTalks.com forward slash connect to sign up for free and start getting booked on podcasts today.

We'll see you next time.

Tim Bouchard

Video Marketing for Doctors: How Authentic Content Builds Patient Trust