How to Not Get Scammed by Marketing Companies

Pras Murthy

Yeah. Thank you so much. Excited to be here, I’m looking forward to it.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah. You know, whenever I talk to my doctor group of friends here, and whenever we talk about just marketing in general, I think there’s a bit of like, a groan, because I think a lot of doctors have been honestly taken advantage of by marketing companies, who throw words out there and maybe some promises, and then you find out it’s 10 times more cost than it really should be. So can you kind of talk to as to, why that might be?

Pras Murthy

Yeah, for sure. I think, from the medical perspective, it can be hard to think about, but equate it to like the quack doctor, right? So, you know, a patient out there could have gone to multiple practitioners who weren’t really doctors, just like prescribed them something. It didn’t work. And now they’re burned on the idea of medicine, but not because of any fault of medicine, but just ’cause the person who was practicing, that was either taking advantage of them, or just misguided in what they were explaining. So, to help doctors understand this a little bit better, I equate internet marketing to the Wild West. Like there are no rules, there’s no regulations, there’s no standards, there’s no licensing or degrees required. So when you talk about, like you were saying, they realize it’s 10 times more. 

Well, okay. So if I have company A and company B, and one of them is 10 times more, a logical doctor would think, well, they must be 10 times better, or at least five times better, right? Or even just better. But in reality, the prices are just what people wanna charge, the work that they do is just the work that they say that they’re gonna do, and doctors have almost no way of verifying that that work’s even being done. So it’s very different than any other industry. If you go to the store and you buy something, you get the thing that you’re buying. If you go to a digital marketing company and you buy marketing, you don’t really know if you got what you were supposed to. And I think that’s where a lot of the frustration comes from, because like you said, they’ve been burned. Like it’s too late now, where someone’s getting their first digital marketing experience, they’ve been through like three, four or five companies. And it gets worse every time, until you find someone you trust, in my opinion.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah, absolutely. I think trust is a big factor when it comes to any companies. But I think, especially marketing companies, because I think there’s three main bullet points here that physicians get marketed to. So one, I think we’re marketed to in a way where, there’s terms that are thrown out there, that a lot of doctors just aren’t familiar with, right. You know, Google AdWords and SEO and stuff like that. And then the second thing is that, doctors, we don’t wanna necessarily, demonstrate our lack of knowledge. Like, well let’s make an appointment to see what this is all about. And three, there’s no comparison pricing and no benchmark pricing for physicians. And so yes, all we can do is judge on the value. 

Like, if this company B is 10 times more, then Company B must be better? You know? But, I don’t necessarily find that to be the case. And so, that’s one point. And then the other thing that I want to kind of touch about is I think when we talk about marketing, marketing is not really marketing, in my opinion. So I think that, especially from a professional physician point of view, I want everyone to understand that if someone’s gonna give you a review or a Google review, however many stars it is, that’s there forever, pretty much. ‘Cause Google owns the internet and once it’s indexed and once it’s in there, it’s in there forever. So your great-great-great-grandchildren are actually gonna see that review. So, I think marketing to me is also, sort of, a bit of a legacy. You agree with that?

Pras Murthy

Yeah, absolutely. So, a couple of things to unpack there, but for sure when you think about marketing, marketing in a traditional sense means increasing your opportunity for more sales. So, usually in a company there’s a marketing department, there’s a sales department. One kind of feeds into the other. Well in a traditional medical practice, there’s not a sales team, you know, unless you’re talking about a big hospital or something like that. A small practice, it would be almost weird for an individual practice to have a sales team. So, kind of marketing and sales gets pulled together. And what I most commonly hear is that people just want more new patients, or they want to be higher, more visible on Google. Right? And so, those aren’t necessarily marketing, like you said, because marketing would be aiming to increase your traffic, or to increase your visibility, which then should lead to more opportunities for new patients, but might not necessarily just equal more new patients just because you do it. 

So there’s that side of it. And then there’s the brand marketing, which I think is closer to what you’re describing as your legacy. And hopefully for a lot of the listeners in your summit is that they are looking to make names for themselves, or to build the names of their practice, or to be known as an expert, or to just gain some more relevance in their particular field. So, all of those are also forms of marketing, where you are basically marketing yourself or you’re marketing an idea, and they will not necessarily directly lead to more new patients in the door, either, meaning in a one-to-one scenario. So that, to our first point, that also makes it more confusing because now you’re paying for something where you can’t attach a necessity or an end result to it. Like, “Oh, if I spend $1,000 in Google Ads, I get five new patients.” Doctors, I think can wrap their heads around that if you show them the numbers. 

But if you say, “Okay, you need to spend $1,000 a month in marketing to build your brand or to grow your legacy,” now their ability to evaluate that, and if it’s successful or not, I mean, they can’t wait for their great-great-great-grandkids to see what they find. So they kind of have to make those calls now. So I think part of building your legacy is protecting your reputation online and making sure that all the good you do in real life is being represented in your online image. And that can be your own website, your own videos, your own summits. You are putting things out there into the internet world that will be there forever. Then when someone looks you up, they’ll get a taste of what you did, either with your career or your life, however you wanna describe it.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why I think, you know, I think we should really put positive things out there that we’ll kind of want to be there forever. You know, a lot of times I do see some negative things, and this is normal, I think for social media and blogs in general, sometimes when you’re itching to say something, it may not be the smartest thing to do. And that’s what gets a lot of people into trouble. You know, you see a lot of young doctors and residents and medical students and fellows and stuff like that, posting things they’re not really supposed to. It’s really out of our tumultuous time, like the pandemic. 

Right? So, there’s a lot of stuff out there that we’re gonna look back and just think to us, well, why did I even post that? And I’ve done that, you know, I’ve been on Facebook for over 10 years now. And I think that, looking back at some of the old stuff like, “Wow, why did I even put that out?” And it’s not really the legacy that I really want to put out there. Right. And so, you know, when patients first meet us, it’s on the internet. It’s not in person. Right. And I think that’s what needs to be the mindset for every doctor is, what is on the first page of Google when they search for me? And whatever is on it, that’s the line of communication that really comes up. And so, I think, let’s try to understand this from a patient’s perspective. Let’s kind of walk through what a patient is gonna potentially see first, and how that leads into the doctor’s office.

Pras Murthy

Yeah, absolutely. So, I think there’s kind of two main paths you can trace from a patient’s perspective and what’s going on. And before we jump into that, I wanna repeat what you just said about, you know, posting things, maybe in the heat of the moment, or pre-professional,

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah.

Pras Murthy

where then they can come back to haunt you. I think a good rule of thumb, that I try to teach kids even, that are paying attention too, is, as a business, don’t post something online or on social media that you would not want to be the headline of your local newspaper, right?

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

That’s a good one.

Pras Murthy

If you would be uncomfortable with it being front page news in your local area, then it’s probably a good idea to wait, see if cooler heads prevail, because all the context gets lost when it gets looked up a year later, or when someone decides to quote you or take a screenshot and spread it around. And in the personal world, okay. Who cares? There’s stuff going on all the time. People forget. But in a professional setting, something like that can create a really negative impression of your practice or you, as a practitioner. So let’s dive into that.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yup.

Pras Murthy

I think the most common one is a referral, right? So someone tells me, “Dr. Ruan is amazing. He’s a great internal medicine doctor. You gotta check him out.” So the first thing I do, I pull out my phone and I type your name in to get your information. And I think one of the areas that private practice owners need to think about is that, we all love referrals, everyone says their best form of business is word of mouth, right? But in this day and age, people don’t refer your phone number, your address, your website. This is not information that people have handy. They simply tell their friend about their doctor and then the internet takes it from there. 

So, if I want to call your practice, I’m gonna look up your business profile, which means I’m gonna see your reviews. If I wanna go to your website, I’m gonna Google you, and I’m gonna see what other things are listed right there. So, I think the first path is you get a doctor’s name, you throw it into Google, you may just be looking for their phone number or their address, but in reality, Google is gonna show you a whole bunch of stuff. And any doctor that’s had bad press knows this feeling, right? I type in my name into Google and this stupid article from three years ago from this thing that I wasn’t even at fault for pops up

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah.

Pras Murthy

because it was archived in some newspaper, along ago. So, there is that idea of, okay, they’re not just gonna see what you want them to see, they’re going to see whatever Google shows them, you know, for better or worse. And, I think you used the word baseline, or you kind of explained that first impression. Now, everyone knows the internet has lots of stuff on it that’s not true. And we can all wrap our heads around that. But, whatever they see in those first couple of seconds forms the baseline opinion. And then how much work you have to do from there to win them over is gonna be predicated on that. So what I mean by that is, if I type your name in, and I see 300 reviews, 4.9 rating, I see multiple articles about all of your accomplishments, my baseline impression of you is very high, even if all those things were fake, right? Even if they were falsified, I go in to interacting with your business with a really good impression of you because you’ve controlled your online presence. 

Meanwhile, the opposite- this is a more realistic scenario- I see some bad reviews, I see this mediocre article, and now I come in with a lower baseline impression, even if it’s all fake, even if it’s all wrong and not true. And it’s not that you can’t win them over, but from the patient’s perspective, it starts to poke holes, or it builds this really airtight case that you’re the best in the business and I should come and see you. And it doesn’t matter what kind of doctor, or really what kind of business you are, you know, if I search for a product on Amazon, and there’s all these negative reviews and I start reading them, even if they were written by a competitor, I’ve got question marks in my mind now, and I might not buy as quickly, and I may need to go do some more research. So, it’s forming that first impression. And I want to make sure I’m answering that question before we dive into the other path that I see that patients go through.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah, absolutely. So, that one has another caveat to it that I don’t think a lot of doctors think about, is that, let’s say that this patient is dissatisfied, either with the front desk or with the doctor or whoever it is, and so they’re gonna be looking for other people who had similar experiences and stuff online, and there is a legal ramification to this, the likelihood of a lawsuit is substantially higher. So, recently I was doing a CME event for the company that provides for my malpractice, and there’s a whole section on understanding the patient journey when it comes to reviews and stuff like that.

And there’s a whole thing dedicated to like, even if your practice is absolutely full and you’re busting at the seams, you do really, really well, your reputation management still has to be dealt with, because it just takes that one case, or one negative review, or one negative article, and then all of a sudden it attracts all the other negativities. And that’s usually what they see in the court of law, right. And I think that’s, that’s really, you know, it’s really not just about the patient coming in the door, it’s about perpetual value, whether it be positive or negative, that’s within the front page of Google. Right.

Pras Murthy

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s easy to strike fear in doctors by talking about the negative or, you know, the lawsuits or what I said about the bad reviews, but it is equally valuable in the opposite direction. So the thing you can control is you can go out and get good press and get positive reviews. And like you said, there is this, it’s kind of this, it’s like dominoes, I would say, but they fall, but it’s more than that. It’s like exponential. Whereas, they used to call it the Yelp effect in restaurants. So, if I read about all these amazing reviews and I see all these pictures, I’m so excited to go eat at the restaurant, I will have a better impression of the food and the food will taste better. And I’ll agree with those good reviews I read. So it’s kind of like, preformed opinion.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah.

Pras Murthy

And like you said, when someone has a bad experience, they go looking for anyone else to corroborate the bad experience they had. And then it kind of turns into this thing, like you said, it attracts itself. So it’s definitely important to consider, and there’s not always something you can do about it in the moment. But I think going back to that legacy comment, it’s like, you wanna manage this over the course of your career. You wanna build this and stay aggressive on it because volume will win out. So yeah, hey, maybe you got that one bad review or you got those five people that were on your case. 

If you’re consistently combining and gathering the positive reviews, you’ll have 100 or 1,000 of those, and people will also consider that. You know, if you see 900 reviews and a 4.8, you don’t go digging for the bad reviews, you just see the overwhelming majority support. But if it’s 10 reviews and 2 are bad, you can kind of, latch on to what they’re saying and be a little more aware of that. So I agree with you, this idea that kind of, positivity brings positivity and negativity brings negativity. In our world, it’s important for new patient acquisition. In your world of course, you have to think about real legal situations, you know, and other things like that.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Yeah, absolutely. ‘Cause even in Texas, our state board actually has advertising guidelines that you can’t violate, you know? And I think we tried to give away some tickets to NFL, stuff like that, in exchange for likes. Well, apparently that’s against the Medical Board advertising guidelines. So, there’s a lot to think about on when it comes to marketing. But you know, also not all marketing companies know that. Nor do they understand that there possibly could potentially be a risk where the Medical Board, if you don’t advertise in a certain way, you know? And so, let me ask you this. So, there’s a lot of review sites out there. So, for doctors, there’s Zocdoc, there is Healthgrades, vitals.com, U.S. News, and then of course, Google. And so, what do you think is really the platform to really kind of concentrate on and focus on? Or is there one, or should it be kind of all of them?

Pras Murthy

Right, so theoretically, you want your reputation to be solid on everything that’s out there. You know, whether that’s realistic or not. Now, even still, if I had to pick one place for a review to go, I’m always picking Google. So, if you’re gonna give me one review and I get to put it anywhere, I’m dropping it in Google over and over and over again, until that score is so much better than my competition, that I’m overflowing with good reviews and now I’ll go and I’ll put them elsewhere. In reality, you know, you might want to build up your WebMD and your RealSelf and different things like that. But to me, usually that’s not where people are gonna go, unless they’re doing a real deep dive. Whereas, the Google score they’re gonna see, even if they’re getting directions. And so along those lines, I would also encourage people to search their practice or their name, and see what other listings are high up on the page. 

Meaning like, the first three on the organic search or on the map, because that’s also what people might glance at. They’re not gonna go digging page two, page three, you know, unless they’re doing some research. So, you know, we all think of Yelp as a review company, but I’ve always considered them to be a really good SEO company. And what I mean by that is, anytime I look for a business, their Yelp page shows on their Google listing, like in the top two or three. 

So, as a business owner, that forces me to deal with Yelp because I know that other people are seeing it, and if I have a terrible Yelp score- you know, again, thinking of more restaurants and services- but if I have a terrible Yelp score, they’re gonna see that right below my website, or sometimes even above my website. And then you think about Facebook, that shows up very highly these days too. So, these huge internet companies, they know this and they know that if they can get themselves to show, when someone’s looking for your business, now you have to engage them. So, I guess to answer your question, I would say, okay, make the list, Google your practice, and arrange that list by what order you find them in. If WebMD is not till page four on your name, probably a lower priority until all the rest are solidified.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Oh, so we just go to Google and see. That’s the best part, can see exactly what’s on the first page, Now that’s actually a brilliant strategy.

Pras Murthy

Yeah, you

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

So,

Pras Murthy

Oh, sorry, I was gonna say,

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Go ahead.

Pras Murthy

you do what your patients would do, right? You put yourself in the shoes of your patient and that’s what they’re gonna see. And they have no context, they’re just gonna believe what they see, for better or worse.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Right so, when you work with practices in your company, for example, and then you’re coming in and you do the whole assessment, and then let’s say you see that there’s some reviews and they’re not reviews of the doctors or the review of the front desk and the back office, like this one-star review is someone who worked here like 10 years ago, right. And so, how can doctors sort of, defend themselves in that situation, from a marketing perspective?

Pras Murthy

Yeah so, the old sports analogy, you know, the best defense is a good offense. If I’m flipping that around, you know, forgive me. But that’s the point, which is we’re all gonna get bad reviews, no matter how good a job you can do. The fact that internet reviews are anonymous, by definition, means that anyone can leave one. So, why wouldn’t your competitor go on and leave a negative review, right? So, we might want to shed this idea that if we just do a good job, we’ll get tons of good reviews, and we only would get negative reviews if we’re a bad doctor. So that can be hard, especially for some that are more old school or came up in a generation before online marketing. 

That’s a hard thing to break, right, because criticism of doctors is meant to come from like, other doctors and medical professionals that understand, what malpractice is and isn’t, and you know, the risks involved in medical care. Once you open up internet reviews, like you said, your receptionist could be rude to me and I leave you a one-star review, and that can literally impact a patient’s choice in a provider, when it has nothing to do with anything. So, yes you can deal with those situations when they arise, but the most stress-free approach is just to constantly have positive experiences being documented. And then, when a negative one does roll in, or let’s say you anger a group of people and they attack you online, you can weather those storms. So, in a perfect world, you build up your positive reputation so strong, that when the punches come, they don’t really matter as much. If you’re not there yet, then you wanna start this process early, in preparation for the future. 

For better or worse, most doctors only wake up when they get that negative review, and then they’re like, “Oh, shoot, I need to do something about this.” So, it’s a little late at that point. But the idea is, if you take it seriously before it’s a problem- I mean, I don’t have to preach to doctors about preventative medicine, right- you deal with it when it’s easier to handle, and then you can handle those situations later. But if you’re asking more specifically, like how do you do that? I’m sure every doctor would like to do that, getting your staff to buy in from day one. When I work with my clients, generally speaking, the ones that have the best reputations are the ones that care so much, that their staffs know that they care, so that when they tell them, “Hey, we need to ask for reviews. This is what we do. This is our sport. This is what’s going on.” It kind of builds that culture. And I think you might see this with some of the younger docs that came up in a Google review generation. From the moment they open their practice, they are like, “How fast can I get to 100 reviews? How fast can I get to 500 reviews? Mom, dad, sister, leave me reviews. I need them all.” Right? They come in with that energy. 

And I believe in those practices, they build a culture of, what we do here is we do a good job, and then we get our patients to talk about it by leaving reviews. A lot of doctors that I talk to, they want that, but they don’t have the buy-in from the staff or the front desk or the assistants. And so they’re left caring a lot, but no one else really cares that much because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t really affect their daily life. Your receptionist’s daily life doesn’t change, her pay doesn’t change based on your online score. So, whether that’s getting them on board with incentives or just putting in that energy, if everyone in your practice is on the lookout for good reviews all the time, the problem will basically take care of itself. And then you can just focus on what tools you’re gonna use to make it easier. Whether you’re gonna text them, or email your patients, or are you gonna have QR codes? It becomes like, a matter of just how you do it, instead of like, “Oh, this tech service is gonna save us.” You need that buy-in from the ground up in any practice that really cares about this stuff.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Oh, it’s such a good point. So the next question. I’ve had so many mixed answers on this. I’m really curious about your thought. So what about the one-star reviews? Is it wise to answer those, or is it wise to leave it alone? What do you think?

Pras Murthy

Yeah. Great question. It does depend on the context. In general, I suggest to reply to every review that you can, five-star or one-star. And if possible to reply with even a personalized response, I think that kind of shows next level. So, short of the content of the one-star review, I like the response because you can turn that negative situation into a positive opportunity. And what I mean by that is, if you respond without getting in a he-said, she-said sort of environment, without deflecting blame. So if you just offer a short, polite response, you don’t admit fault, but you acknowledge their discomfort or their pain point on whatever it was, you let them know that it wasn’t typical, and you invite them to reach out to management or to come back in to make it right. So, what I try to tell my clients is, you’re not replying to the person that left the negative review. Their mind is already made up. They already came in. 

When you’re writing the review, you are speaking to all the people in the future that may read this review. And if you don’t respond, they will only get one side of the story. So, when I’m that patient- we talked about that patient journey- and I’m like, okay, let me go check out the reviews- we all read negative reviews first, for the most part, right? It’s just like how we’re built- so, I see you have some negative reviews, I go to read them. If I read the review, and then I see that the business replied; They were polite, they offered a solution, and they reached out, I’m thinking, “Well, this is my worst case scenario. If I have a bad experience, somewhat they’re paying attention, so that’s a good sign. They are gonna try to make it right, so that’s a good sign. And literally, if everything goes wrong, it looks like this business handles themself well.” So, it’s not just the act of replying, it’s obviously how you reply.

Whereas if I go to a business and there’s a one-star review, and then the owner is firing back, like, “Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. This is crazy.” I’m thinking like, “Whoa, my worst case scenario is if I don’t get along with this person, it could be contentious.” So, I encourage replying there, and then replying to the positive reviews is just the feel-good experience, right? Like you get a good review, that makes you feel good. Share that positivity, thank people. And it shows that activity. And I think that you’re basically demonstrating, “Hey, look, we know we’re not perfect. People are gonna have a bad experience every now and then, but this is how we deal with it, when you do.” And sometimes you’ll actually get that person to change the review. You don’t ask, don’t ever ask them to change the review. 

But sometimes if you respond quickly, you know, more often than not, a negative review is about being heard. You know, the patient had a bad experience, they tried to tell someone in the practice, they felt like they were dismissed or not listened to, so they go home and they tell the world about it online, ’cause that’s really their only recourse. So when they feel listened to, I’ve seen so many scenarios where they go in and update the review or delete it, and they say, “Wow, someone actually reached out to me and tried to make this better.” And they took it down. And if not, like I said, don’t worry about it. You are replying to future viewers to give them both sides of the coin.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Well, that’s a brilliant point. It’s not just that one moment in time, it’s demonstrating the value that you want to provide, and I call it demonstrating intention, right. And so, if your intention is pure, which you can tell when you respond to those, then it’s great, you know. But then, like you said, I think it’s very situational. There’s some of them we just wanna be really careful about. And some of them, we might wanna reach out to them first personally, to address that as well. But how many times have we seen the one to five star reviews? All the time. And a lot of times, it has to do with just very basic miscommunication, that was really nobody’s fault. But once they feel like they’re listened to, and that’s what we want- and that’s true for any business I think, right. All right, so final question for you before we jump off. All right. So, marketing is sort of this big black box for a lot of people. You have Instagram and Facebook and that’s just social media and then you have your website and then you have blogs and stuff like that. And so, it seems very daunting to even come up with this content, and so, what should doctors do in terms of, should we outsource this content? What do we keep in-house? How do we segregate that?

Pras Murthy

Yeah, really, really good question. And a really tough one for most doctors to answer. I mean, if they could do it themselves, we wouldn’t even be in business. So, a couple of things that I’ll preach now, first I wanna tackle the in-house versus outsourcing. That completely comes down to your staff, their capabilities, and not just their capabilities, but being realistic about how much time they have. So just because they can do something, doesn’t mean they should, unless that’s actually the best use of their time. So if you have a big staff, you have someone that can do social media and they’re doing a good job, that’s great. That’s like the dream scenario. But if asking them to do that trades off from other job responsibilities, or they can’t quite keep up, or they do it for a few weeks and then they trail off, that’s actually doing more damage than you can. 

So, I think being realistic about what you and your staff can do. And then almost as important, is what you want to do. This shouldn’t be a drag. If you’re gonna run your Facebook page, make it because you want to run your Facebook page, and you’ll do a better job. If you don’t wanna run your Facebook page, you won’t do a good job, no matter how hard you try. So kind of splitting that up. And then, when you talk about evaluating that, the number one thing I can tell your listeners is consistency. 

Whatever you do, be consistent with it, and then once you are, you can work on how to be more consistent, or do more. But, people get ramped up, right, they watch a podcast and then they’re like, “I’m gonna do all this digital marketing.” And they go for it for a month and then they burn out, or they fizzle out. And then really, like you said, it’s not about one moment in time, it’s about the long run, it’s about 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and the presence that you’re building. So you don’t need to dive in and burnout, you need to find, okay, what can I do on a consistent level that’s not really a drain on my time or energy? And then, see how you can do more. So I equate it to working out or exercising. 

Like I probably shouldn’t work out 10 days in a row and then take six weeks off, right. That’s probably not going to give me the returns that I want. If I’m only gonna work out 10 times, let’s just phase it out and do every three to four days over those six weeks. I’m gonna see better results, even though it’s the same amount of effort, in theory. So, what you can do in-house consistently, great. If not, you can go find a company to help you, and hold them accountable in the same way. 

So like, okay, we’re gonna set this goal, we think we can be consistent with it, and then once you find yourself on autopilot getting that done, now you push. So okay, we’re doing three posts a week, no sweat. Now let’s see if we can get to four, and keep up that consistency. We’re updating our website once a month with a new piece of content, now let’s see if we can push it to maybe, three every two months, and keep that consistency going. Because it’s not about any individual gain, it’s about, if you do that over two years, you’re gonna have a tremendous amount of content. And if you keep pushing yourself a little bit further, like working out, you start to see those returns and those gains. And so just be honest with yourself. The price points can be scary for some, but you’ll find that basically every price point out there, it’s just about what you’re getting, and if it’s actually helping you towards your goal of being consistent with the online presence that you wanna build. 

So you can pay someone $50 for a Facebook post, and you can pay someone $500 for a Facebook post. There’s no right or wrong, as long as they’re matching what you want. Like if you just need generic posts and $50 will get it for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. But you are working your way up a consistency ladder, where hopefully someday those will all be custom posts and you’ll be doing them, and you know. So that’s kinda my answer to you is, you wanna just scale up and never look back, hopefully. And that’s how you build actual presence.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Excellent. Thank you so much. So Pras, how do people find you? How do people find Doctor Multimedia?

Pras Murthy

Yeah. Great question. So obviously, doctormultimedia.com, the doctor is all spelled out, D-O-C-T-O-R. You can also look up, I do a lot of podcasts, you know, on these topics, they’re on our website. You can find them as Practice Growth with Pras. But more than anything, if you’re interested in learning more, we always say that advice is free around here. So you can go to the website, you can leave your information, you can call our 800 number. 1-800-679-3309. And just let us know your situation. I have gotten, probably better results by just being honest and upfront, probably because of what you have said, and telling people, “Look, you don’t need our service.” Or, “What we’re doing is not right for you. You need to go find blank.” Or they don’t even know how to ask for what they want. 

And sometimes that’s just where the conversation needs to start, and we say, “Tell us about your practice. And then we’ll worry about our services. Don’t worry about what we do. We need to figure out what you have going on.” So, if you just want that consult or just want to learn more, want someone to look at what you have. Along with being honest, the other place where we do really well, is we will critique what you have. And you know, there’s no one better to check a doctor’s work than another doctor, no one better to assess your marketing company than another marketer. And then when it’s not the same repetitive stuff, you guys get spammed every single day, when it’s real stuff that you can relate to, that’s I think where people start to pay attention.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being on. It’s been a wonderful chat. And thank you for being a real and just honest.

Pras Murthy

Yeah. My pleasure.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

I think we really need that, especially in this time of pandemic. Especially when it comes to marketing and stuff like that. Because what I found is that, a lot of people have opened up shop and are really trying to go after medical practices. And a lot of it just is not very, how do I say this? Honest. A bit of dishonesty. And I think that it’s really refreshing to kind of hear someone talk about it from a very practical sense and not real salesy sense. So thank you very much for that.

Pras Murthy

Yeah, no problem. Just on that note, just so all you guys know, marketers look at doctors and they see dollar signs, right? Like that’s just what they equate it to, they raise their prices. You know, we only work with doctors, so it’s a little more normalized. But, just know that that is your reputation out in the world and be prepared for that. So like you said, just find someone you trust or that’s being honest with you and the rest takes care of itself, because you can understand where they’re coming from. And that’s my advice for doctors too, when they’re marketing themselves, be authentic, be who you are as a person and as a doctor, and you’ll attract the right kinds of people.

Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.

Awesome. Well, thank you for so much for being on this summit. I appreciate your time.

Pras Murthy

My pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Ruan.