How Doctors Can Attract Better Leads With Better Messaging

Introduction and guest welcome 0:00

I would say it's the most expensive bad advice in functional medicine. So if you're sending all of these leads into a broken system, you are going to get people that are ghosting your discovery calls or no showing. They're tire kicking, they're not ready in the funnel to commit to you. I think what people need is better matched leads. And I personally would rather get 20 leads that 12 are converting than to 200 and only three are converted. 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 the Doctor Talks podcast. I'm your host, Brett Gregory. The, I am the founder and we are here democratizing the creator economy for doctors. And today I really excited to have a good friend, Ali Chandler, founder of Upsell Health, tell you all about why your funnel isn't broken. It's your lead. So Ali, welcome to program. Thanks for having me. Oh, thanks so much for coming on. Tell us for our doctors who are listening a little bit about you and your background. Sure.

So yeah, I got into the functional medicine industry because I actually was sick myself for 10 years and was bed bound at the age of 26. I have a whole healing story behind all of this. Yeah, long story short, I went on a backpacking trip in Europe, found out years later that I got Lyme and it took me a very long time to find the right functional medicine doctor to start healing. So I did a lot of research and, you know, did, uh, a, to get where I am now.

Ali Chandleru2019s health journey and background 1:37

But in that process, I actually got into this industry because one of my doctors I worked with on the Lyme was the person that created cell core biosciences and micro formulas. So came full circle. My background in the industry is. with Dr. J. Davidson, worked with Cellcore as their head of content. I was head-of-marketing and events at Microbiome Labs and then sprouted onto my own business. And I've worked a ton of people that do podcasts with you guys. So yeah, it's been great learning and I'm feeling 99% better now, so I am happy that I can come back and help people who were like me.

Glad to hear that you're 99%. Doing great. Yes. Good to hear. Well, what a journey you've had. And so tell us right now, we're talking about your funnel isn't broken, your leads are. I see this a lot with a of our doctors where how doctors can fix their messaging and their lead magnets and they're off for stack to attract those high quality, ready to convert patients. So tell first off, are most doctors blaming their funnel when the real problem is they don't understand who they are talking to? Well, I think to back up even before that, a lot of doctors don't have a funnel even.

Sometimes you come in and you're like, do you have, like what are you selling? Do you a signature program? do have email automation? So sometimes there's a gap and they don t even know what a sales funnel is. And so that's an easy fix, right? We can set that up pretty, pretty easily. But yeah, there s a lotta doctors who are further along who Maybe I've been doing it for the last 10 years, and nine times out of 10, if someone's saying my funnel isn't converting, I'll take a look at it. And the mechanics are fine, the setup's great, everything on the tech side looks good, but they've built it a demographic that's very generic.

So it's something, they think they're being specific, so they might say, like, health conscious women, 35 to 55, And they are like check, that is my demographic, we nailed it, But what I like to do with people is do a really deep dive with avatar and you know You can have this beautiful landing page design You couldn't even have a good copy But if you're not super clear on the demographics and the psychographics of your ideal avatar so for example

Why generic funnels fail 3:56

like What are they Googling at 3 a.m.? What're they stressed about? What's the emotional state they're in when they are landing on your page? Have they been to 12 other doctors? You know, what have they already tried? Where do they shop? you know you have to really deep dive into who your ideal client is and not just like this basic information. You really have make it tangible. So what I like to tell people to free resources Answer the Public is one of my favorites because you can put in any topic and it'll tell you what people are searching.

So that's great. Is that AnswerThePublic.com? Yes, exactly. Okay. Wow. Great. It shows you exactly what People are typing into Google. That's a great source for SEO, but also to understand your avatar. There's another one I like that I believe you can do a free trial on Spark Toro, T-O-R-0, and that actually lets you understand what your audience is reading, following, what YouTube videos are they watching, What are the engaging with online? So those are two places I would send you if you're hoping, like say, you know, I want to work with Lyme patients who are like this age and this, demographic.

Well, can go even deeper with those resources. Wow. That's great. I love that specific answer, the public.com spark toro. com. Do you have any specific examples of like a customer, a doctor who came to you where you, you mentioned like they didn't yet have a funnel. And so it was their very first try, maybe just a specific example off the top of your head, what you were able to do for them. I would say it's not a doctor, but it is a company. So I was working with Dose is one of my clients right now.

And you probably have seen their ads, the turmeric shots. What is DOS? Okay. Turmeric shots? Little turmeric shot. Their ads are all over the place, like drinking shots, you can drink a shot of turmeric. Like a wellness shot, ginger and all of that. Exactly. So they launched on the consumer side first, and they came to me to launch on The Healthcare Practitioner channel because I've obviously done that for the last 12 years. And so they didn't have any funnels at all. One of the things I did with them was to identify, okay, well, we need to think what credentials are you targeting?

Where are your practitioners going? So I got them this past December to A4M, saw you there. Great. The American Academy of Anti-Age and Medicine. Exactly. And got them a booth there, and I actually was able to negotiate a sampling program. So if anyone was listening and was at A4M, if you got little samples in your hotel room, that was from me. Wow. Yeah, so we created a whole funnel by identifying, you know, the functional medicine practitioners would probably be at that conference went through the sampling program and then did a hole nurture series.

So they were super excited with the results and all the feedback that we got from there. I love going to conferences at doctor talks. We go to maybe 12, 14 conferences a year where we have a booth. I call that old school marketing that works. It gets you in front of your target audience. And I know there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast who also want to target doctors. Maybe it's for their, they have, uh, course for other doctors or other practitioners. That's one of my favorite things to do, but you really took that to another level.

Not just going to the conference, but then adding another way to really get in front of everybody with your specific product. Exactly. And I spent about 12 hours stuffing those bags, like I had so many paper cuts on our hands and the team was like, we love this idea,

Targeting better-matched leads 7:38

let's bring more people next year. We were in this room for so much hours, and we got amazing feedback, so it was great. That's great. Well, yeah, we, I love that you really roll up your sleeves and get it done. All right, so is getting more leads actually one of the worst pieces of advice in marketing right now? Okay, I have a controversial take on this. I would say it's the most expensive bad advice and functional medicine. If you're sending all of these leads into a broken system, you are going to get people that are ghosting your discovery calls or no showing.

They're tire kicking, they're not ready in the funnel to commit to you. So I think what people need is better matched leads. Personally, I would rather get 20 leads that are 12 are converting than to get 200 and only three are converted. So what I work with on people is let's narrow it down. We're going to do some marketing that's going turn off a segment of people because you're not speaking to those people and they're ready to commit to working with you. That's okay. You don't need to appeal to everyone.

You know, this is something I tell people too when practitioners are like, well, I work with anyone who has digestive issues. And I'm like that's way too broad. Like that way, yes, you need to really niche down and say like new moms who have SIBO, who, are tired and they have two kids and want to spend time with them. That's going to still be a big enough market for you because your landing pages are going speak right to them, they're going read it. They're gonna say that 100% me. I'm ready to go.

So I think. When I've had these conversations, these exact conversations. Cause I have the same way. I always tell everybody you, you need to really be specific on your niche. Typically the pushback I get or the fear I should say is, well, I don't want to be pigeonholed. What do you tell in response to that? Well, I think in just in my experience, you're actually going to make less money the broader that you are. So even for me, as an example, i've had people approach me to do marketing for them sort of in the wellness space, but not I only work with big clinics and practices and supplement companies.

That's pretty much it. And so I could do marketing for them, but it would pull me way out of everything that I'm focused on and everything I am doing. So I like the most hyper-targeted. If they approach me and I, like, you're a little bit outside, I just don't work with. And so the referral side of that I think is what is great because if you're a very specific, you know, topic and content in person, You're actually going to get a lot of more word of mouth referrals that way too. And that's what's happened to me.

So I it's not worth it. You think you are casting a wider net and you gonna catch more people, but you just going catch like a broad group of people who aren't. They don't feel like you speaking to them and that what people need to hear in the industry. Right, yeah, now I see that all the time. Initially, a doctor might say, oh, I want to work with women over, you know, between 35 and 65, and that's just way too broad. The doctors who specialize, like you said, in something like SIBO, women and menopause who also have SIBo, make way more money because they're specific.

And so, going back to the pigeonholing, you actually do want to pigeonhole yourself in that regard. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing because it tells the customers who is right for you. And you generally, I would say just across the board, the doctors who do that make more money, they get new patients, and they can genuinely help more people.

Using social listening to refine messaging 11:24

Yeah. If I ask you a question, if you're a practitioner I'm working with you, i always ask, what do you want to be known for? If someone says you are the blank woman or the Blank Guy, The Lime Guy or The Liver Lady, like you have to have this little tagline In order for people to know, like, this is my person, because then your conversions are going to be so much higher. People are gonna look at it. It's a no-brainer for me. Like you're going go from, I don't know like a 5% conversion to maybe like 40% just because people are, yeah, that's me, okay.

I'm in, you know? They're gonna be, it's no brainer for them. Love it. Why do some funnels that look perfect on paper completely fail in the real world? Okay, so I think what goes wrong is that people are, there's a lot of noise in our industry, right? So there are a lots of people doing what practitioners are doing, what brands are going, and there is a a of advice. But I thing people starting to build from templates and they are forgetting one important thing which to me is the pain point of your client.

So if you're like, oh, I would really love to do a mold course just because you like the content as a practitioner and you are like I think I could create some good videos from this, but you aren't thinking about what is your Lyme patient's biggest pain point. What are they struggling with? What's the one thing that's keeping them from the rest of their lives? You really have to know that. and build your entire funnel around that pain point, otherwise you're just another mold course, right? There's tons of them out there now.

So I think having these patient conversations also have a couple of suggestions and something called social listening. I would say actually Reddit is an amazing place to do social listen and that's where you learn your avatar, your industry. You can also do social listening for your brand. So you can kind of tag your branding if anyone's talking about like, you know, Dr. Talks or Brett Gregory, like you could have a notification sent to you. What do you have to specifically do on Reddit for effective social?

I would look up words that you found from answer the public. What are your mold people searching, right? Grab some terms from there, put it in Google, get on a couple of Reddit threads off of that. And then you're reading the comments because these are, your avatar speaking directly into Reddit, Right? It's a great resource. So you were like, Hey, what are my, What am I mold? People struggling with you find a Couple of reddit posts. The other thing you can do, which is a little bit more old school is Facebook groups.

So join a couple of mold Facebook groups, read the comments, the issues these people are having. I love how Facebook Groups is now old school. I mean, I still use Facebook groups, but I think there's, you know, Circle is really popular now and there are other platforms. But yeah, don't love Facebook Groups. Yeah, no, dating myself. I started Facebook marketing in 2009. So yeah. It still works though. Yes. And so now do you have any specific examples? Like give me a client success story. Yeah. Oh, I have a great one.

So one of my clients, her name is Sinclair Canale, Detox Nation. We know SInclair, great. Yes, we love her. I've been with her for about five years and we're launching a new brain course right now. New content, We haven't really touched this avatar and it's a little bit different because we are targeting more of the high performers, the CEOs. we've kind of been in the chronic illness space. so we were switching to a New Avatar. And so what I did was I joined a whole bunch of Facebook groups that are like performance and, you know, CEO support and all of these.

And, so, what did, was, I pulled word for word what people, like what questions people are posting in these like CEO leadership, Facebook Groups. I searched for the word brain, right? So I can sort if anyone's saying like thinking or cognitive. And so that was, you started with the ideal customer, CEOs, high performers, whether male or female, like high income, so they can afford your services and they probably need them too. So that's a great place to start.

Lead magnets, quizzes, and email nurture 15:48

Sorry, continue. So then once I'm in their groups, I am where they're hanging out, which is the important thing, searching words like brain or like, brain fog, and copying and pasting exactly what issues they are having. Hey, you know, i used to be really sharp and having trouble thinking, any of you have this issue, then i'm looking, the great thing about this is you can look in the comments and you see competitors. You can see what supplements they taking, what resources they recommending, so not only can you pull their exact issue, put that into the landing pages that I'm creating for Sinclair, putting it into email sequences, you know, into FAQs.

They're seeing their own language reflected back to them, but you can also do a little competitor research while you're there. What are they already using? Because then you could actually, you know, objections they might have like, hey, if you are already supplements like this, here's why our course is different. And you don't have to name the competitors. You can keep it general. But I think the best thing to do is to hang out where your ideal avatar is hanging out and use their language back in your marketing.

And so that's a great example of going from, okay, I can help women between the ages of 35 and 65 to I help female high-income executives, entrepreneurs, CEOs, founders. And with brain fog, that's a much better, more specific target market who can afford your services, probably needs them. And then you need to get their specific language and you could do so by going into their, the Facebook groups and doing the search. That's great. I love it. Okay. So our lead magnet, secretly training people not to buy from you.

Okay. So another controversial opinion. Love lead magnets. I think you should have a few. First of all, what is a lead magnet for those who don't know? So if it leads a PDF or a quiz or checklist or something that you're offering for free to your audience in exchange for their name and email, typically. Right. So you want to build your email list. This is like the biggest thing that I recommend over social, over anything else, because you're going to own those leads forever, right? I want just pull on that thread for one second.

If you've never heard the phrase, the money's in the list, Just write, just memorize that phrase because what would I rather have a hundred thousand Instagram subscribers or a 100,000 email subscribers email? Email subscribers. So we worked very hard to build a, you know, now it's a 900,00 person email list. That's worth. way more than 900,000 Instagram subscribers. Sorry, continue. No, I agree. And I think people a lot of times can get locked in this like vanity metric on social. They want to like appear to be popular, which you're doing great if you have all those followers, but you could lose that in a second.

It's also harder to convert on Social and there's a lotta reasons why, yes, build your email list. Yeah, so I think lead magnets are great. I thing people fall into the trap of it's almost like they become a discount brand because they're sort of like, oh, I really need people on my list or I need sales. So they are giving away too much for free. My tips for this, your lead magnet, Should be like a five to 10 minute read. It should be a quick win and it should open up a bigger problem than they came into it knowing they had.

Right. So you want to say like, Hey, you know, maybe we're doing one on brain fog for Sinclair. For example, You could give them a couple, Maybe take this one supplement and see if it works for you. But then you know, in this specific example, do you have a lead magnet on brain fog? We do. Okay. Yeah. And can you just give some like, details about how well does it convert? Where do the leads come from? Yeah. And then what does that turn into in terms of new patients and client revenue? Yes. My favorite type of lead magnet is actually a quiz or self-assessment.

So we have brain self assessment so you can check your own. Do you use a specific software for that? So we do PDFs and we outgrow. So some people like the old school, it depends on your avatar, they might want to print it and fill it out by hand, so we have a PDF. Outgrow is what we use for the quiz. Is that outgrow.com? Yes, I think it's .co. I use Typeform for my personal business. Yeah, so we just create a quiz they can self-assess. They can really see their score is probably going to be pretty bad because they're here for a reason.

And then you create this gap where it's like, okay, well, I just bombed this self assessment. I really need help. Now I'm worried, you know? Right. I got in the lowest score range here. So you kind of create this urgency through these lead magnets of what is my next step? Like, what do I do? Do you have any examples of a client that you did something like that with where how many leads did you generate and what did that turn into in terms of revenue? So there's a client that I worked with where we put a lead magnet on the website.

And I want to say we got over the course of eight months, we maybe got like 8,000 leads just from sitting on a website, so actually all of us kind of, it was a very basic like detox tools, lead, magnet, and all do okay, I don't know if this is going to convert. And we actually checked like a month ago and we were like, Oh my gosh, this actually crushed it for us. Like, look at all these leads. So I had, that's a lot, 8,000 leads is a. Yeah. Yep. Then what did that turn into? So this was for Dr. Josh Hellman.

He's Emerson Dementia, Harvard trained MD. What we did with it was we had some of the people that downloaded this, I actually started reaching out to them via email because we had like a nurture series. So it did convert to him for one-on-one patients. And then we have some sales for some digital courses that I built for him. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but the best thing that did was I started following up via e-mail. Hey, saw you downloaded this lead magnet. How's everything going?

Just kind of checking in the emails I got back. It was like I made myself into a little salesperson for him. So then, you know, and granted, I don't have a ton of time to do that all day. But the conversations I did have, Hey, like, did you know he's doing this FDA approved for compassionate use program? This sounds like a great fit for you. Or I can direct them to different of his maybe free resources if they don't have money. I'm like hey, we have a $17 one hour lecture. Why don' you try that?

Yeah. so you can really do a lot even if they go through your nurture after your lead magnet if you have someone on your team who can directly reach out and

Finding the right patient fit 22:48

say hey just wanted to check in what did you think how are you doing that people want like i know we're all ai and automations and that's amazing and i love all those things but i think adding a personal touch to it can bring you to the next level I spend a little time every single day doing personal outreach. And LinkedIn happens to be, you know, a big part of our platform, but I sent like 20 emails yesterday and it was, so that personal, outreach, that human touch, and I schedule one-on-one calls with people all the time.

That's how we reconnected. I was like, Hey, let's chat. Exactly. How's it going? Yeah, so no AI needed, and the AI is great for augmenting and getting to that step, but that human connection is absolutely critical. Okay, what's more dangerous, having no funnel at all or having a funnel that attracts the wrong people? I would say if attracting the wrong people is a harder fix. So I think if you just don't have a funnel, that's easy. You hire someone, you have someone come in and build you a final check, we're done.

Right. You're going to be dumping a lot of money into ads. You are going keep your team busy with these ads that aren't converting and you'll probably feel like you're making progress even though you are not because you have all of these assets out there. So, you know, I've had clients come in who are like, yeah, we're spending $5,000 a month on ads, and I'm looking at their cost per lead and their conversions and We have to stop this right now. Like, let's reconvene on strategy because we can make money without that big of a spend if we have the right funnel, right?

You're going to have referrals, you're gonna have organic traffic, or you can have a lot more coming in. So I would say, yes, if you just don't have funnel that's fine. You'll hire someone, and you'll get it going. But having the wrong funnel is just, yeah, your gonna be wasting a little time and money on that. What would you say like right now today are your doctor clients biggest challenge? I would say what I'm seeing across the board now is finding the right guitar, the patient. So a lot of clients are spending a ton of time on discovery calls with people that it's like, you're not a good fit for this company.

Right away, if I read their email, I'd know this isn't probably going to work. So I think one of the things that is really useful for that, is knowing yourself as a practitioner. So, and we had talked about this a little bit, but I had developed practitioner and a patient archetype, which when I'm working with clients, I am helping them go through their own archetypes system and understand who am I as practitioner, who are the kind of clients I like to serve. creating like this kind of two-way matching system, I think has been really helpful for them to understand.

Oh, like I guess I should work with clients who really care about the labs and the data and biohacking. It sort of gives them a little bit more information. Yeah, that's one thing that it's just finding the right fit. And a lot of that has to do with how you're marketing all the things we've talked about, are you using the language? Yeah. So I always ask. doctors did when we were having this discussion, when I used to have a marketing agency for doctors, I would ask them, give me the name of one perfect client and, you know, of course, protect their, their information, but who's, who is your perfect?

The one that if you could replicate this client, just you would be in heaven because they, they do everything you tell them to do there. They always pay, never complain, and they refer all their friends. Who's that client and what are their, what's their specific pains and fears and frustrations and wants and aspirations.

Closing remarks and how to connect 26:48

And that's the avatar. That's what you're talking about. It's your exact perfect match. Yes. Absolutely. Yep. Love it. Great. Ali, I really appreciate you. How can our doctors who are listening, get ahold of you if they want to learn more about how you could work with them? Yeah, so if you go to upsellhealth.com slash start here, it's probably the best place because that'll have all of our assets. We're launching an app in a couple of weeks that is going to be a patient practitioner brand matching system.

So you'll get all that information. Start here. You can take our practitioner archetype quiz. It's free. Will send you some more information on what your archetypes is. But yeah, I would just start with our website. Upsallhealth is probably best to reach us. Amazing. Ali Chandler, founder of Upsell Health. You can find her at upsellhealth.com forward slash start here. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing those incredible nuggets and wisdom. We appreciate you. Thanks for having me. It was great talking.

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.