The 6M Healthcare Marketing Framework – Watch This Before You Hire a Marketing Team!

Speaker Introduction and Welcome 0:00

We're very happy to welcome our next guest speaker. We have with us this morning Mr. Rakesh Reddy. He's the co-founder of Orange Carrot Media. he's a leading healthcare marketing strategist and a regular speaker at startup and business forums. Known for his hands-on expertise in patient acquisition, hospital branding and digital transformation. Rakesh shares practical, actionable insights drawn from his work with hospitals, clinics and wellness brands. His engaging talks help healthcare leaders and founders navigate the digital landscape with absolute clarity and confidence.

A very warm welcome to Mr. Rakeesh Reddy. Good afternoon, everyone. That was a great talk by Dr. Mani Vannan. It was surprising talk that I was not expecting to hear today. It is great to hear about marketing and branding from a doctor himself. That's refreshing to here. It's reassurance, the work that we do every day that is helping the doctors personally and also through their business. Before me, it was Shingran sir who talks about the three Cs, a real lecture. Thank you for putting that in a simple structure.

And that's what I want to do today as well. And then my goal today is simple. I just want to keep it super simple, so what I want do today, is to give you absolute clarity on marketing strategy.

Why Marketing Needs a Clear Framework 1:24

So why I wanna give the clarity is because marketing strategies is a vague word that we use in our industry for every single activity that they do. That is easy to say, and that is what it is in the market today. Everything is marketing's strategy, But in reality, most of those marketing strategies are just marketing activities that are neither integrated with a strategy nor helping with laying the foundation. So I have the clarity today to give you clarity on the marketing strategy. So I'm not going to bore you with any structure or any textbook formulas.

Today, I am going tell you one story. One story, that's it, to give you complete clarity on marketing strategies. You might be a solo doctor who is practicing by yourself. Or you might have your own clinic with a few doctors along with you. This framework will help you how to think about marketing strategy. So the story here for me is when I met with Dr. Baylor. Dr Bayler is a podiatrist, a foot and ankle doctor from New York. Before him, in the last seven, eight years, I worked with many such podiatrists.

When I meet with him I was surprised because of the clarity that he had. He's not just a regular podiatry who wants to see the patients. He had clarity in mind on what kind of patients he wants look into. And what made me surprised was, towards the end of the conversation, he told me, Rakesh, I think now you should know one thing, that I'm not going to accept insurances. So that put me in a very uncomfortable situation when he told me that because till then I never heard of any other doctor saying that to me directly that he wants patients who can pay out of their pockets not thinking about insurance.

So, that was the ultimate challenge that I faced a couple of years ago when I met with him. So that is the story that I want to share with you all today, so that you can think in structure. Anything that, you think instructors trace with, that actually cut you out from noise, especially in this age of social media. where you can see the reels with unlimited scrolls, unlimited content that is put out over there. At the end of maybe half an hour or one hour after consuming the full content, it is nothing.

It is just endless scrolling. There was no structure to the content you consume. And then we keep on consuming that content because it's easy to consume on our mobile devices. So that was the ultimate challenge that I had a couple of years ago. So that is the reason in this age of social media where there is a lot of noise, you don't need random tactics on the name of strategy. You need a no-nonsense framework that you can think through. There are many frameworks in the world that can help you out.

We can pick any framework, but why I'm using the word framework is any frame gives you structure, just like the three Cs.

Market: Defining the Right Audience 4:46

So a structure is important to think. especially in marketing because there is no barrier to enter into the marketing field. Anyone can be a marketeer, anyone can a marketing guru overnight. So the thing that you got to look for is a structural thought process. Whenever you have a structure thought processes on the high level strategy, it doesn't matter whether you are implementing marketing for yourself or whether a team is working for you or a consultant is looking for, you know what they're talking about.

You know where they are with their strategy, whether they just flopping the things out or they talking the real concrete strategy. So that is the reason I wanted to talk about the 6M Healthcare Marketing Framework today. Now, I understand that you might be thinking about why six M's. Now there is a deeper meaning to it that I want to talk about it later on, but the most important thing is the story today. So let's dive into this story. I just want keep it super simple for you today So the first M here is market.

It's obvious. Some of you may be from the marketing background here. Now you might think that I might be talking about the first page of a marketing 101, but still that's the most important thing. You got to know your audience. I'll tell you an example as well, so that you understand. As I said, when I met with Dr. Baylor, he told me that he's going to do only the laser treatments. That's when, I was surprised that yes, such a great clarity on his market, on audiences. So it took me quite some time to understand, to digest whatever he was talking about.

But that's my job as a marketeer to to him. So that actually opened up a different thought process for me. Understanding the market is much more important because a patient who has a foot and ankle condition going to a podiatry is totally different from a foot and ankle conditions from the last three to five years were struggling with the traditional treatments. Going to the doctor again and again spending money on top of it, it is an agony that they are going through. So the patients who are suffering chronically for three or five year are his audiences versus rather than any random patient who is suffering from a foot or ankle condition.

That itself is a great insight to define your target audience. So that's the absolute clarity that you need to get even before jumping onto any marketing activity, the random activity that can think of. Are you even targeting the right market? Because if you run in the wrong direction, It is very tough to come back to point zero. It takes a lot of effort, time, and acceptance to comeback and then to target the right audience. So here you have to start, whether you're a marketing team or a consultant or anyone, the first thing that you need to have the clarity is, are you targeting the audience?

So once you define your audience, then the next obvious thing for you to do is the messaging. are you getting the messaging right out there so the first part the 1st M that's where Dr. Bela was great explaining me about his target market but when it comes to the 2nd M he was all over the place so that is where I noticed even though he had clarity in mind he couldn't implement what was in his mind. That's where he failed and then he quickly jumped on to doing some random marketing activities, trying to get patients who are looking for laser treatments.

Are these patients even looking laser treatment? I don't think so because most of them are not even aware of the laser treatments for foot and ankle conditions. So they were just calling his office, looking a podiatry, his receptionist would say that they don't take insurance, and then that's where the phone call ends. And then he was suffering from not getting patients to his clinic, even though he is having the advanced laser techniques to treat the patients who are suffering for three, five, 10 years.

I have seen some patients were suffering 20 years as well. So that is where it was all gone to the task so even though he knows what he wants but he couldn't implement the messaging is the most important thing that's the second M that you should be thinking about once you define your market so you Like you have to define your unique value proposition. Unique value propositions cannot be something great or different. In the services industry, you can be your own UAP. It is just you've got to convey it.

Now, as the previous session said, Everyone has their own way of conveying the message. So if you can convey the messages in your own ways, you will be targeting, talking to your audience. Because that is what in our mind, that's the energy that you'll be putting out there.

Messaging: Positioning and Clearing the Clutter 10:11

Definitely your energy will meet the right audience, so that the thing that we need to keep in mind. So exactly you got to speak in clear language because patients doesn't understand most of the medical terms. They are not aware, but they are definitely aware of symptoms, the pain that they're going through. So not getting into much of messaging, so this is what we got when we onboarded him, this what I have seen. You can see when he onboard him he was more of a Hicksville Podiatry. So that's the name and then I asked him why did you choose Hickville podiatrists name.

He said I know I'm in the Hixville area of New York and I am a podiatrician that is what I do. Then I said okay great and asked what is we treat the root cause. You know he told me I not going to give any medicines to to suppress the pain I'm going to treat the root cause so that the paint won't come back again and he said now he wants to do the laser treatments and also you can see here now is talking about the minimally invasive cosmetic foot surgery so he's all over the place on one hand with his brand name he is taking about his a general proactory on the other hand he stocking about that laser treatment is on your hand is stock in the world the cosmetic food surgery.

So then I told him you know you got to choose your market you already chose your markets so now the messaging has to be right. You got to clear the clutter and then you can see the weird image in the back end. Now, this is a desktop image. Just imagine how this looks like on mobile devices. That's a clutter. Even though if someone wants a laser treatment, they'll just bounce away to someone else. So even though in his mind he has a clarity on what kind of market he wants to target, what kinds of audiences, and what patients he want to treat, but his messaging was not right, everything was cluttered.

Now that might be a FOMO right like you know focusing on one thing now makes you feel like, you are losing the other market but trust me just focus on what your audience want, what you want to treat first then the positioning happens. Messaging is always about positioning you yourself as an expert in that field in the market. So once you position yourself, definitely the rest of the things will follow. So what did we do next? So this is what we did. We cleared the clutter and we renamed the brand name from Hicksville Podiatry to restore podiatry and laser center.

So we put the message right away that we are a laser Center and then we just removed the location name we Put as a restore and we came up with the headline restore, renew and regenerate. What do we mean by that is you know we're just telling anyone who is coming to the website saying we Are We are just treating the laser treatments. That's it. Still, he was adamant on putting the cosmetic foot surgeries. We did it, but we kept it at the bottom, after giving a good white space here, a breathing space, so that the first message goes right.

And then at bottom he wants to highlight this. No drugs, no injections, surgery, and no side effects. So, see, this is not just a website redesign project. So anyone can do a website redesign, a good developer can a web site redesign. This is more of a structural thought, output that we got. After understanding his market, after getting the messaging right, we cleared the clutter, and then we caught the message right for this doctor. So that is what I mean by whenever I said messaging. You got to be crystal clear with your messaging, Yes, you can have four more.

You can how many other things, but get one thing right first. And then you add whatever the rest of the things that you want to add. It can be secondary or it can anything else. The primary thing has to be focused. So you clearly see the before and after. We cleared the clutter, we got the messaging right. So that is what I mean when I say you got to think about your messaging. Messaging is all about positioning you yourself in the right way. Whenever we see many clients every day, one thing whenever we ask them who are your competitors, directly they would say the top one, two, three businesses in market.

They would we are competing with them. In reality, they are nowhere near to them and they will never reach to maybe in the near future. That might be for the next 10-20 years unless and until they have that kind of budgets to spend on. So what do I mean by the positioning is you've got to choose your right audience, you got get your message right and then you need to Clearly aware of where you are standing in the market today so that you know your strengths and more importantly You know, your weaknesses so, that, you don't play on your, weaknesses you play only on Your strengths so That's the story of messaging so.

That is the power of getting the messaging right so Once you got your messaging, right then you've got to focus on medium As now Sir said, you can choose the medium that you want to choose. You can do a bit more research and then see which medium, here medium meaning platform, platforms such as YouTube, Google search, websites, anything else. Even billboard can be a platform. When billboards can a medium for you. I'm not talking just about digital. So far I am not just talking about just digital, it is exclusively for any brand.

So the medium can be anything. It can Google, it can social media, offline. Can be referrals. Why I put referrals here is if someone is referring you, make sure they are using the right words describing you. If they describe something about you and then that is not reality, then whatever the referrals that you are getting is actually anti-branding for you It is not working in the right way and then it is just taking away the reputation that you've built so far. So you got to choose the medium. You can choose it by two types.

Medium: Choosing the Right Platforms 16:48

One is the media that your comfortable with. Number two, do a bit of research, see where your audience are and define the meeting. Two ways you can go either way. So, that's what I was just saying, focus on channels that matter most to your audience because that is what you want to do over there. So we choose YouTube as a primary channel, primary medium for racial poratry because it's a huge education component that we need to create on laser treatments that he is providing. Market is not aware, market is ready for him, his patients are not ready for any kind of laser treatment for the foot and ankle conditions that he was treating, especially without insurance.

Putting out of pocket is very tough to convince any patient. So we cannot just convince them over the phone whenever they call for a regular podiatry services who accept the insurances. So that's the reason we pushed him. He is the most camera shy doctor, so very tough for him to come onto camera. But now we told him that now, we will make you comfortable. Don't worry. You got to do a bit of it. Now here we tried initially. You can see here that is just one of his patients. We just put a white board talking about it.

Now that says, my 10 years of stubborn toenail fungus finally is gone with clear nail program. So we just took those photos first. Which just pushed them to get few content out with the real patient testimonials. He was comfortable. And he was feeling good looking at the messaging that we are putting for him. And then we did some kind of a stock photo images with them. And we just put as a slide shows. Then after looking at the stock photos, he was like, I need to feel real. I want to get on the camera.

So that's when we put him on camera, He did a few videos here, maybe a 30 second video. We pushed it out. That's why it is under shots, not under main videos. And recently, he told me that he's going to stop video production because he is not comfortable. Then I put him to come onto Zoom. And then I started asking him a few questions. He was very happy to answer my questions, and then, I just recorded the whole conversation. We did the post-editing, then he was really happy looking at the output.

I'm giving you this example because even I am a camera shy person. It used to be very tough for me to go onto the stage or to talk in front of camera. So you got to find a way. You got a test different things and then see which one is going to stick for you. Now where you will be much more comfortable because you are all medical professionals, you're not some TikTok dancers who will just be producing the content. So you just focus on creating the awareness, just treat it like talking with other human being.

You don't need to look good. you don' need have a great background. Just make sure you have good quality audio. That's all it matters. Here I even bled out the backgrounds here. So it is not a professionally shot video. the purpose of this video, the objective of the work is done. So we put the content out there and we move forward from here. Maybe after a few videos he might become comfortable again to do much more video content. That is what we did and that is how you can think whenever I say the medium, messaging.

And here you can see, this is a screenshot directly from Google Search Console, which is the platform that is given by the Google that tells you what people are searching for you for what you're ranking on Google. So maybe a year ago, he was ranking for Podiatry Near Me, Podiatric Hicksville, Foot and Ankle Doctor Near me, foot and ankle doctor Hickesville. And then we complete, after changing the messaging for him, we completely transformed his positioning from a podiatrist slash foot an ankle Doctor to a laser specialist.

You can see here, these are the top 10 keywords that people are searching and visiting his website. That's where he's ranking on Google. Six or seven of those keywords are of laser, laser laser. So initially, I told myself it doesn't matter what kind of lazer.

Money and Measurement: Spending and Tracking Wisely 21:38

this brand, this doctor should rank for all kinds of laser treatments. And then we can filter out whether the patients are qualified or not. So our first objective was to position him from a photonautical doctor to a laser specialist photonic doctor. That is what we achieved. You can see here that last three months versus previous three month. impression of the visibility that he got and then the previous three months there was no visibility for laser related keywords for him. So that is what I was talking about whenever I said you need to know your audience.

The audience that we defined was the audience looking for the laser treatments not someone who is looking just for a foot and ankle conditions. And again, this is another graph. I filtered out the laser here. You can see that's the last six months versus the previous six month. That's almost a 750% increase in laser-related search terms for this doctor. So that is just a complete transformation from just the photonautical doctor to a laser specialist. so that what I mean, you have to choose the messaging right and you medium.

So that's exactly how you need to think about the medium, then only you will be able to reach out to the right audience with the message. The fourth one, the money, is the most important part. This is where I see a lot of practices throwing the Facebook campaigns, Instagram campaigns or SEO, thinking that SEO is for free. But in reality, that's one of the most costliest marketing activity because it takes a lot of time. And maybe running billboards, running any other campaigns that has nothing to do with the strategy.

Just imagine running a Facebook campaign with a first screenshot that I have shown you. What happens, you are putting money behind a platform to get the users to come to your website where messaging was totally wrong. So let me just go back. Just imagine people just coming to a website, where you are spending 10,000 rupees a day. It is just a waste of money. People looking at this, they look at it. Maybe they might scan. They might not even read nowadays. It's just people's scroll, top to bottom, bottom to top, try to understand who you are.

The messaging is not clear. Just bounce off. That's a just waste money behind any campaign. Obviously, the campaigns won't work. Any media buyer, any marketing person who is great at launching a campaign won be able to help you if the messaging isn't wrong. There is a fourth money, like the fourth M which is really important because if you do not choose a strategy, if just choose an activity, the money will be wasted. If you are lucky, campaigns will work. That would be the most dangerous thing if a campaign works without a strategy, because you don't know how to replicate the success.

And then the frustration starts. Then you start throwing good money behind the bad money, hoping that it would work because it worked at a certain point of time. So there are no real insights, it is all the noise. So if something works for you without a clarity, make sure you don't take it as a positive outcome. Just try to analyze it, why it worked. If there is no concrete foundation to it just make to sure to scrap it. Don't put more money behind it before it becomes a bad money for ya. So, focus on channels again that matters most to your audience.

If your audiences are on YouTube, if you put more money behind Instagram, it is not going to work out for you and vice versa. You've got to test different platforms, check the data, and then make sure where you are getting more traction and also the patients that you're going to get to some kind of a post survey so that understand where your patients are looking for you. That's how you can actually define the right platforms for you. It's a continuous testing, but still there has to be a structure.

There has be structural thought process. So that's the fourth M that I was talking about just to choose strategy, not to chose activity. If you choose activity, you are throwing the money away behind those random activities. The fifth one is measurement. This is one of the most M because Whenever you put money behind any campaign or whenever you come up with the right messaging, produce a lot of content. See, money doesn't mean you just put behind paid campaigns. Even you can put the money on producing the content, now buying the good camera, buying a good microphone for yourself, and then your time itself is money.

So just make sure you're putting it on the correct messaging right content first before amplifying it with the paid campaigns. Do not amplify anything that has no concrete foundation. So anything you can't measure, you cannot scale. Just remember that. If you get any PDF dashboards or anything, that you don't have the insights in it with just numbers, just treat it that, whenever you are not able to measure it, it is something that cannot be scaled. For example, if you look at the last 30-day data, and then if the whole traffic is increased by 100%, if we don't know why the traffic has increased, then that data is good for nothing.

we need to know why and then see if there is any random activity that might have given you that kind of a spike you might a featured in a PR article you may have featured on a TV or maybe some testimonial blown up so do not treat any of the random spikes as a great success because you cannot replicate it that is not a part of that foundation which will eventually collapse You gotta measure it, you gotta track what matters. So tracking what matter is always important because if you just track how many likes you got on Facebook, how may followers you've got, that might be a good metric but that may not be great metric for you to track.

Because lot of times those metrics won't tell you what to do next. So which matrix tells you what to do next? The first metric could be a search behavior changes. That is what I was talking about earlier. So this is a what a Search Behavior Metric looks like. Look at all the search terms that people are looking for.

Momentum, AI, and the 6M Wrap-Up 28:38

See if there are any non-relevant search term if people looking. then you need to refine. If it is correct, then amplify it by putting money behind it. if it's wrong, your messaging is wrong. People are finding for you for wrong reasons. So make sure people are for right reasons first, before you amplify. Amplifying something which is not right, you are doing a disservice to yourself. You are de-branding yourself, doing an anti- branding activity that you're not aware of. So once you measure the things, once to make sure you get the momentum, that's when I see most of the practices just either slow down or stop the marketing activities believing that we did the market great and then they just feel like marketing is done.

But in reality, marketing is a continuous activity. It is not a one-time activity whenever you get momentum. That's where you should think that you test new things. The best never rest. So just keep that in mind. You've got to evolve from there. How can you evolve? That happens only when you're testing new thing. Make sure the primary thing, the primer message works for you. Then look out for something new to test for every quarter. Do you know what your team or what you are testing in marketing in the next quarter?

If you don't know, that is something that you should be asking a question to yourself and to your teams. Once you test, definitely there might be learnings from it. Learnings can be positive, learning can negative, but there will be a learning. If you can pull that learning out, the insights from those learnings, and then take an action based on those learnings, you evolve. That's how brands are built. So that's the consistency that Sarva was talking about earlier, that brands have not built overnight.

Brands evolve over a period of time. Businesses evolve all over the period time, And then people started recognizing that business as a brand. So you cannot just tell anyone a random name and say it's a great brand. Brands are built in your audience's mindset. It is not a tangible thing. If someone doesn't recognize your brand, either that person might not be your right audience, or your brands are not built yet. So if you want to build a brand, just remember it has to evolve, the business has evolve over a period of time as a Brand.

So that's how the great brands are built, that is how great Brands survived, thats how Great Brand are continuing till today. so that the momentum. So far, we got the momentum. Now if I stop my talk here, I would be doing a disservice. So I wanted to do one more thing for you. I just want to talk about, just reiterate whatever I said, the 6Ms, The Market. You got to know whom you're targeting. The message, as I told you, laser treatments versus general traditional foot and ankle treatments, that is the message that you need to be aware of.

And in the medium, the platform where your audience are, just do not throw away money before testing few things you got to create the content you need to have the right message up there first and then measure just remember whatever the things that you cannot measure you can not scale it everything can be a random activity Now, what we call in marketing, the strategy is called a spray and pray strategy. You keep on spraying and you keep praying and hoping that it would work. It's not going to work out.

And finally, you get a momentum. That's when you should be charging up to test new things for every quarter so that you learn new thing every So here you can see, that's the graph. That is the organic traffic. You can say the line was flat from last year, July, till this year. Almost April, almost now 10 months, nine months. The graph was black. Why it was flagged? Because we were in the process of getting the messaging right. We were the in process creating the content. So you need to have certain kind of patience.

in creating this whole process. And then we got the momentum in mid of March and then in April we pivoted and in May we continued the pivot and this is July we found a new peak. That's the moment that we've got. So we might be thinking of testing new things right now. I'm just showing you this graph so that you understand the whole processes, the 6Ms that I spoke earlier. So the hidden accelerator right now for you all, the new kid in the block is now, especially after COVID, patient search behavior pattern is changed.

Everyone searching for Google doctor, depending on Google Doctor, just to analyze every single thing, fast forward to 2025. then there is a chart GPT doctor phenomena. It not only helps you to identify the symptoms, but also analyze the treatments for you and also compares the different doctors, their profiles online and then tell you which doctor to choose from. And that is making the search behavior, the user's numb not to think much about it, just to know, OK, that's the final result. This is the doctor that I'm going to get my treatment from.

So just remember that in your mind. The tool that you've got to use is machine assist, the seventh M, which is a tool. the AI definitely embraces it. It is not going replace you. it is going help you So I am not gonna bore you with it You all know chartjpt, perplexity, cloud, Now automate everything using AI as much as you can. Use AI wherever you, can use your human intelligence to correct it to make sure it works for you. So you have an action plan. Whatever I said, I'm not going to bore you with this.

Like why I choose 6M? I'll end this with 6MM for marketing, M for medicine, and for medical. Professionals like you, who are in the medicine field, now always young, you can remember the M, the six M's. That's why I choose the 6M as a framework for you to think. You just don't need random campaigns. What you need is a smart framework, 6Ms. what you'll need a right tool, which is the AI right now. That's a great tool. You need the right partner. It can be your team, it can a consultant, or it could be an orange carrot.

So with this, I'm going to leave you with the 6M framework. I hope right from Monday, you're going implement it. So, I wish you all the best and thank you Medical for arranging such a great seminar series for three days. Thank you for being here today.