Functional Medicine Marketing: How Doctors Can Attract More Patients Online

Setting Realistic Content Expectations 0:00

than none. So I would say start realistic, don't overdo it and be like, I'm going to get something out every single day. That's probably not going happen. We both know that. Start with a couple two to three times a week of getting something on social media. And email is probably the place where I am a little bit more firm and tough love. If you are not emailing your patients or your list of people, whoever that is, every week, you're behind. Don't panic. 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 to doctor talks podcast. I'm your host Brett Gregory, the founder where we are democratizing the creator economy for doctor. And I really excited today to have my good friend, Daphne Cohen, founder of Daphnia Cohen.com, who is absolutely amazing at helping doctors grow and elevate their business. We have all kinds of conversations on a regular basis about how to help you.

attract new patients and clients online and get them to come to you. And she is an absolute, just absolutely brilliant at this. So I'm so excited for our conversation today. Daphne, welcome to our show. Thank you for having me. thank you so much. For our listeners who haven't had the opportunity to get to know you yet, tell us a little bit about you and your company and what you do. Great. Well, I am amazing. I was kidding. You are.

Introducing the Show and Guest 1:23

It's true. I can attest to that. You can't take yourself too seriously, right? It is true So yeah, I've been in the digital marketing space really specifically for functional integrative providers for the last almost 15 years now. And it is kind of the bread and butter of business is helping providers and practitioners of all walks of life, really figure out their business, help it grow, Help It Scale, get their name out there online. And it's been obviously amazing. I'm so grateful. It's so fun.

We absolutely love what we do. and I think for me, it is just also very mission based. Like I feel like every time we help someone help people, It feels important and impactful for us. Yeah. ...and I know that you and i have this in common, but we're very health oriented people like living a really Healthy, you know, happy life is important to us. And so like every time we can kind of help providers do that for more people and more patients, I'm like, we're doing the good work. So I am going to stand by that, for now anyway.

Yeah. And if you go to Daphne's website, that's DaphanieCohen.com, you can see she's really got kind of the who's who of. The integrative and functional medicine, doctor space that she helped so many really prominent doctors really grow their practice. So I just want to jump right in and ask, so if there are. millions of unwell people out there who need help. Why are there so many thousands and thousands of incredible doctors barely filling their schedule or just relying on referrals to survive?

What's actually going on here? Man, what a loaded question. There's a lot going on there, but if I really speak from my honest experience in speaking to thousands, I think at this point, providers of providers over the years, it's couple things.

Why Doctors Struggle With Marketing 3:08

And the key things that stand out to me is that usually the person holding you back is yourself. Yes. So if a doctor is like, oh, they can, and they give me all these reasons why, say the thing that it actually is, which is that you think that, you can't because you don't have the time. You don' have to bandwidth. Everyone else is doing it already. They're doing a better than you are. It's saturated. Where do I start? I'm like, these are all you problems, but that's okay because we can work through them and I love you still.

But it is exactly that. it's like a self-limiting belief. Yes. I say this too, they're a doctor. I can do what they do, right? So you can't beat yourself up for not knowing how to do this whole thing that you didn't go to school to learn to and you haven't been doing. And so that's fair. But that kind of why I feel like we're both here is like, we know actually that there is no shortage of people who need help. There is enough room for everybody times like a million. That's genuinely my belief. So if that is something that, you know, something you've been grappling with, I need you to know that And you're not alone.

We're all our own worst critics. And yes, I've been working with doctors for over 15 years. I got over 3,000 doctors on the Doctor Talks platform. There's been so many times where I had to have the conversation of how incredibly valuable you are. You went to school for six, eight, 10 plus years. They didn't teach you marketing and that's okay. So we're here to help with that. And you've done an exceptional job. Be honest with me here. The one that I hear the most is, everyone already doing what I'm doing.

So, that's what get all the time when I am trying to tell doctors, oh, you should be a guest on podcast. And they're like, wait a minute, isn't everybody else already do that? So is everyone else is already what you're doing? Is that just a more comfortable excuse than admitting, I don't know how to put myself out there? Yes, I mean, we're tough love people. I think that's why we get along so well. We're going to just say it as it is. It is a little bit, and I say this with love, it's a bit of a cop out.

saying that you don't know anything about it, and then also saying there's too many people doing it doesn't really make sense either. So I think at the end of the day, it's a little bit of an imposter syndrome thing too, right? Being like, where's the line of me being a clinician, a provider, treating patients, then dabbling in this online marketing world and marketing space? Am I an influencer? I don' want to be that. Where is the lines for them? And I hear that all the time, like, oh, this person is doing it so well.

And, I'm like that person, is nowhere, they're not even anywhere near what you're actually doing. So, that's also the kind of like is the comparison of joy and also of success. I think if you are comparing yourself to someone who is not seeing patients, They don't have a brick and mortar. They're are not actually, you know, have background in clinical care. Like you can't compare apples to like broccoli. We're even talking like So I see that all the time and it's like, put your head down, water your own grass, focus on what you're building and don't worry about what everybody else is doing even if it was true, right?

First Steps for Doctors Starting Online 6:33

Even if there was no, even it is like there's one spot left for one doctor to talk about MCAS, it like okay, so what? Just put you head and be that doctor, its fine. Yeah, no, I love it. So, okay. Let's talk a little bit of tactics and action orientation. If a doctor's starting from zero and feels overwhelmed, what are the first three moves they should do in their first 30 days? Sure. I would really ask them to stop and think about what exactly it is that they want patients to come to them for. Like what is, and let's say hypothetically, you are not maybe seeing patients right now or you're not accepting new patients.

What is the number one thing that someone in the world should come you and do? Is it to buy a book? a supplement, a course? Is it that you maybe don't even want anybody else to do anything and you just want to get on more podcasts? What is your number one thing that if everything went perfectly, it would happen tomorrow? That's really, if you don' t start there, you are going to be lost. You are gonna be like cruising through space trying to 100 things that don t really make sense. So you have to ask yourself what you actually want.

The key here is Not what does everybody else want for you, not what you think everybody wants you to do, but what do you really wanna do? Is it about money, is it growth, legacy, work-life balance, bringing on more people onto your team so you don't have to work as much? You have answer that really honestly first and foremost before you do anything else. The second thing is, where are you in that? Have you been doing that, has it been successful, have you started to make a move to get to that thing?

You have to be honest with yourself and you might not like the answer every time. And then I think the last thing I'll say, and, you'll love this, is you need to get AI. Like if you feel that lost, if confused, need you to download Claude and start telling Claud all your feelings and where you're at and let it help you out and give you a virtual hug. Because realistically, in this day and age, this conversation would have been different like three years ago. But today? Gosh, you can tell Claude, I don't like this.

I didn't want to do this, and I even don' like AI. And I'm unsure. All the things. Then just say, five minutes a day, tell me what I can do. Claud will tell you. Tell me to build my practice, attract patients online right now. You're 100% correct. We're seeing a major shift and so many doctors are moving into AI and doing it successfully now, And those tools are just so powerful and it's incredible. So going back to getting online, so how often do doctors realistically need to show up online to start seeing traction without burning out?

Sure. If we are talking about social media as an example, which is usually one of the first things they ask, you don't have to be on there every single day.

How Often to Post and Email 9:19

I'm going to say something that's kind of obvious, the more you put in, then the you get out. But you do not have be an influencer, jumping off a balcony into different shoes and then twirling around with a cape to come see me, I am your doctor. It's consistency over quantity. I would say if you can manage to get a handful, three things out a week, that's a really good place to start. If you could only start with two, two is better than none. So I'd say start realistic, don't overdo it and be like, I'm gonna get something out every single day.

That's probably not gonna happen, we both know that. Start with a couple two to three times a week of getting something out on social media. And email is probably the place where I'm a little bit more firm and tough love. If you are not emailing your patients or your list of people, whoever that is, every week, you're behind. Don't panic, don't freak out. It's not hard to do with AI also, but it is so important. I cannot emphasize this enough. And it does not matter if your list is a hundred people.

It doesn't matter. If it's a million people, you have to stay front and center and you to provide something of value as regularly as you can. This is actually, I would say that doctors, when I speak to providers, they're more worried about the email piece than the social media piece. Like they are like, What if they unsubscribe? And I'm like, okay, like worst things will happen, right? Like if you provide value, which you have a lot of in here, they're not going to unsubscribe. And if I do, it's okay.

Like we're, not losing sleep over Susanna leaving your email list. Okay. We need to just start to get consistent and provide value. And if you do that, then you'll start see that things actually shift in a way where you feel what people need more of. You actually can't know what works and what doesn't work. If you don't start somewhere, you have to have the data. So just, start. Just start do something. We're totally on the same page there. I love the idea of three posts per week and then emailing patients the weekly newsletter.

Of course, I'm a little biased. So I am a big proponent of being a guest on podcasts, but sometimes even that can be intimidating for doctors who don't know where to start. what I found is that doctors, you can have someone in your office literally interview you. You can use Claude or ChatGPT to come up with 10 questions and you sit in front of your Zoom and hit record and have them interview. And in that one episode, come with those three social media clips that you could put out and put that on your email newsletter every week.

two hours a month or less. And I think you're right on with that. I love it. So I have to ask you, Brett, because you are the king of this. How many podcasts are you producing each month right now? Because you literally are like, I can't do it, and then they're like full blown, have a show and they are on iTunes.

Podcasting and Efficient Content Creation 12:28

Oh my goodness. In six years, we've produced 7,500 episodes. What we figured out and having worked with over 3,000 doctors, I've spent so much time. I remember 15 years ago when I was trying to help doctors come up with a signature talk. And I sort of came up that concept because back in the late 90s, dating myself, used to host a live talk radio show. And it came up with the concept of a signature talk. And so I would speak to doctors about coming up the signature talking. What I realized is they thought that meant.

I had to take six months and come up PowerPoint and do a 45 minute talk, like I was doing it, preparing for a Ted talk and what I realize is that exact same doctor and that same topic. If another health professional doctor or even their friend or coworker simply asked them the top 10 questions, they would be ready to answer those within five minutes or less. And that's where the concept of doing these interviews and being a guest, whether it's on a channel, which does not have to be a podcast or a It's so easy for them to create a significant amount of super high quality content.

And in like one or two hours a month, they could have enough content for all of their social clips, their email newsletter. It is way easier and there's incredible side effect is it's actually really fun. They like it. That's my favorite part. If you just had to pick one platform for a practitioner to focus on, where would you send them and why? For social media, it would be Instagram, for sure. I mean, I don't think there's a person I've met in the last two years where I'm like, oh yeah, your people are not on Instagram.

That's just not it. And I will say this, TikTok has changed a lot in a good way. It used to be 13-year-olds doing their weird dances, and I dunno what it's all about. Now it not, right? All my girlfriends, almost 37, so I'll just say it, because everyone's guessing. But all my girlfriends are like, look at this TikTok. And you know this, it's all like it mom's now. It's like 30, 40 year old plus like just, like most of my clients like avatar patient or customer.

Best Platforms and the Power of Repetition 14:53

So TikTok's up there, I won't lie. I still think that Instagram feels like what Facebook used to feel like for people where it was like really easy to use and it safe and everyone's on here. and so it still kind of holds that. But I would still say Instagram for now So going back to, again, the pushback that I get for that, because I agree with you, I think it is Instagram, but that's when the doctors say, it's too saturated or I'm too busy. And so what are they usually misunderstanding about how the online space actually works?

Yeah. First, what I'll say is that when somebody puts something out on Instagram maybe 20% of their followers are going to even see it. Oh, I would think less than that. See it. Then another maybe 10% are going to actually like engage with it, probably less in that, right? So you have to remember. I mean, think about this. You have a thousand people on your email list. A good healthy open rate is like 30%. Oh yeah, that's a lot of people that didn't open it. So you have to remember it's very similar for social media.

That's why repetition matters. In fact, people have said to me like, are we talking about this again? Like this is I'm like we're talking See it like they didn't see it so you could really take one topic in fact There's someone online who does this really well I find her account to be painfully boring, but she's crushing it because she only talks about thyroid That's the only thing she talks out she repeats the same thing in different formats in a different hurt every day, right? Like every date, something different.

But it's it works because most people didn't see it the first time, or the second time or third time. I mean, if we if make it really simple, marketing is touch points. So you have to be repetitive. so you cannot ever worry about someone being like, Oh, gosh, we're talking about this again. In fact, This morning in Slack on my team, someone was like, oh man, this client hasn't sent me new videos. And my other friend, she was just reused the same thing you posted a month ago. She's like oh my gosh, you think that's okay?

And I'm like yes, yes. You can post it 25 more times and nobody's ever gonna look at it and be like wow, I can't believe they used that video again. Nobody, it's not gonna happen. Right. No, I couldn't agree more. Okay. So if I could tell all our practitioners this truth, the money's in the list. I'd much rather have 10,000 email lists than a hundred thousand Instagram subscribers. Email still rules. What would you say to that? I agree. Yeah, and I think if you're not, as a marketer, a marketing strategy is a little bit of everything.

And if can handle it a lot of, everything, right? Like just depending on where you are. Email is the king. I mean, but here's the thing, I find that the best way to grow email is through Instagram right now, you know, and that might change, right? Like it changes all the time, But we have gotten most of our new email leads without paying for ads through instagram. So both matter because even if let's say you got a thousand new emails on social media via instagram every month and you never emailed them, doesn't matter.

so you gotta do both. Are you able to share a specific client success story around that? Like who's crushing it right now and how are they doing it? Yeah. Oh my gosh, of course I'd love these. And I actually have a lot of case studies on my website. Great. Yeah, and I like those because people ask, right? They're like, well, how do I know that my investment? Sure. Of course. So there's a doctor that we work with.

Email Lists, Instagram, and Client Success Stories 18:38

Her name's Dr. Becky Campbell. I don't even know what she's up to right now. It's well over 200,000 followers. When we started with her a couple of years ago, actually maybe like three years. I mean, I don't even know if she had 20,000 maybe, maybe not, but it's consistent. She has 325,00 Instagram followers. There you go. She's, well, she's wonderful. I mean, it's hard to not follow. She is great. And Instagram doesn't do her justice. So cool. You would love her. Okay. Nice. Yeah. But she is just, really on top of it.

Like she was very collaborative. She's trusted us a lot. And also she is like, I want to try this. I think this will do well. She gives us ideas and she's like let's do this, let do that. So it has been very collaborative, which typically is going to be the most successful structure. What you'll see is that there's actually not a massive variation of content on her account because she's very good at saying this one thing did really well. We're going to keep doing that. She doesn't get the FOMO of like, oh, well, everyone else is doing something different and they're doing it this way.

I don't care at all. They don' pay my bills." So she's like, I'm just going to keep doing what I know is working. And when it stops working, we shift and we pivot to something else. So, she is easy to work with in that way, right? She's just like I care about what does well, let's do that. I do not care what it looks like. Are you able to share specifics about how she grew her email list and what was the campaign and how did it work? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of things here, right? So, obviously, everybody has a website, if you don't, but you really need to call me.

But if have a web site, you have Google Analytics on your website. You got to look at where your traffic is coming from because the honest truth, too, is that even if were doing nothing on social media but had decent SEO, getting 5, 10, 30, 40,000 visitors a month, should be converting those people somehow. Whether it's a pop up or a free thing right so she she does both so, she has a lot of blog content so her SEO is good she gets a. Lot of organic traffic from Google so we're growing it from literally just random people who find her on Google.

And also we do use many chat which I know a, lot people are familiar with right, so it like a comet mold and get a link to my free mold guide and. So we're getting people from Instagram onto her email list, which I actually just had a conversation this morning with someone about this who was like, yeah, I feel like my people don't really think that email this growth is happening on Instagram. And I'm like you're probably not doing it right. Because the truth is that if you can provide a lot of value and education and build trust, they will give you their email address.

I see it literally in your day. Yeah. Yeah, so you're helping Dr. Becky Campbell grow her email as she helped her grow, her Instagram following, which is amazing to over 325,000. You also helped to grow. Her email list using a tool called Manny chat. And so when people will comment, they'll reply to a comment. It's a plugin to Instagram and then you grow your email lists that way. That's huge. I love that concept. Do you have any other case studies you can share with us? Yeah I do. I'm not going to say her name, because I don't know if she would want...

That's fine. Fair. All good. Becky's my homie, so. Yeah. So actually, this is one of my favorite ones. And you know this to be true too. A lot of doctors, they are seeing patients. They have their clinic. Some are virtual, some in person, and some both. That great. and a lot them have supplements. they sell supplements, right? Some of them private label their own. some of just sell thorn, designs for health, whatever. And 99% of the time, I'm like, hey, how are your store sales going? And they're like well, they are fine.

It's just my patience buying, right? I am like okay, can I get my hands on that because I can seriously increase this revenue. And it was just be patience. They are so stuck on this. And they're like, I'm like okay, but like if your patient Joe normally spends $1,000 a year and I can get him to spend five, are you going to discriminate against Joe's money because he's your patients and not a new person off the internet? I don't think so. So what we did was we have a client who has a whole store.

She has successful practice. And we started incorporating product spotlights once a month. So we would say, what are your best selling products? Educational. There's no discount, there's not coupon. Here's all these really cool things about this product. It's private labeled, right? So it's like, this is why I hand picked it. The quality is high. This is not something you can go buy on Amazon. We started doing that once month Every other month we started running a sale. Hey, 15% off was store wide or, you know, 50% of your first subscription, whatever, just different things like that.

We added a pop-up on the website, 20% on your order. So we're growing her email list specifically through her store. Year over year for the last three years, we've increased her stores sales by almost 25%. Which equals how much in dollars? So last year we did almost $500,000. in her store, supplements alone. This is not her practice. These are not IVs or ozone or red light therapy. Just supplements and still almost all just patients. So even though, you know, because you have to remember this too.

It's the internet. If somebody's like, oh, I need vitamin D, they're probably not going to go to your really niche store and buy vitamin. They're going go on Amazon or Walgreens or whatever.

Improving Trust and Conversions Online 24:18

But for your products that are more unique, Perhaps there's enough and we did we widen the gap of like non patients who were buying, which is great. But at the end of the day, patients actually want to buy. They forget they run out. I don't remember. You're not sure what this thing does. but if you can hit even just your existing patient base, you could absolutely easily increase your store sales. And so that's given her obviously more dollars to reinvest back into marketing the practice in the business.

Sure. So just doing that one product spotlight added an extra a hundred grand a year coming in. Easy. That's amazing. What's one simple shift a doctor could make today that would immediately improve how patients perceive and trust them online? Yeah. I would say Remember to over communicate remember. Okay, and this is I'll give you a really specific thing assume people know nothing because something that I hear from doctors Oh my gosh all the time. Oh, my people are very savvy, you know, they know more than your average person I'm like, okay, so do I but You still got to break it down for me.

Ok, right. So we got assume. People know Nothing Right. And then you still build value on there. So let's say, for example, you have a supplement store and this is actually something that we do really regularly is even just updating like the hero, just the Hero image, right? And what is the HerO for people who don't know? The banner that you see right when you get to a store. So you go to the- A website, an online store? A web site, yes. Yes. You go the www.ilovesupplements.com and there's that first thing you there.

Imagine you know nothing, imagine it's the first time you're seeing it. Does it tell me exactly what I should be doing? I can tell you that most of the time the answer is no, right? So how do you update that? First call to action, Live longer by buying this, right? Shop now. It's very straightforward. You'd be so surprised at the stuff people have on there. I'm like, I can't even tell this is a store. So you have to make it as easy as possible for people and really try and get them to click one thing straight away.

you cannot have four calls to action. People get confused. it has to be mobile friendly. Most people are on their device or not on a desktop. Even just updating something like that, is low-hanging fruit. The other thing is if you can't email your list every single week, email them once a month with a product spotlight. Make it about you. Hey, everybody asks me, what do you take in the morning? What is your favorite supplement? It's huge. They want to follow you because you're You're a doctor, you're amazing and they want your information and sharing that just works exceptionally well.

This is amazing. Okay. We're going to finish up with kind of a quick lightning round. I want you to rank in terms of importance on a scale of one to 10. Let me give you a list of things. So A, social media. Ten. Oh, okay. B, email marketing. 10 point five. C, confidence. Oh, you're killing me. I know. This is so fun. You know what? I'm going to say eight because you can build on that. I'm going to say nine, because also I think if you become more confident in what you're saying and doing, your authenticity naturally is where it needs to be and gets to 10. Oh, I want to stay 10 to everything.

SEO, search engine optimization. Okay, this one I feel better about. I'm going to say you can be at six and still be very successful and SEO doesn't happen overnight.

Lightning Round and Closing Contact Info 28:08

So your goal should always be to grow maybe one number every quarter or something, but you could be a six, and you'll still very be successful. Love it. Now this is sort of an asterisk to that one because now SEO is happening in AI, like in cloud and chat GPT. How about AI search? So what people don't realize is that how you rank on Google for SEO is carried over to AI, right? So if you're adding blog content, articles, case studies to your website, Google's crawling that, picking it up, AI is doing the same thing.

So it's just as important. And I would argue that you actually get more out of your effort now, because instead of it just being Google, it is also AI. Love it. Fabulous. Yeah. Six, seven. Love It. Daphne Cohen, thank you so much. This has been absolutely incredible. How do people get a hold of you? I was just going to say my whole phone number because I thought that would be funny and that's ridiculous. No, absolutely not. My mom isn't hippie. So my name is spelled weird, but it's D A F F N E E Daphne Cohen.com.

Honestly, if you type in Daphnia into Google, I'm the only one that comes up because no one's name was spelled that way. You can find me there. I want to Instagram really actively and you can email me from my website and I'd love to talk. Um, like making friends, so feel free to reach out. We'll put the links in the description. Daphne Cohen, thank you so much. This has been brilliant. We appreciate you. Thanks so