#26: Sales Funnels and How They Help To Grow Your Practice on Autopilot

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Steve: Does this situation sound familiar to you?

You have been successfully growing your medical practice through word-of-mouth referrals and retaining your existing patients; you have a healthy online reputation, experienced staff and things are going very well. However, you have lately started to realize that referrals may no longer be enough to sustain your practice in the long run, or your competition is starting to get more aggressive online… and that is concerning you…

You want to try some online marketing and lead-generation tactics, but you are not too sure which strategies to implement and what approach to follow. Well, today we are going to cover the foundation of online marketing – the sales funnel – what is it and how it can help you grow your practice on autopilot.

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Intro music

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Huyen: One of the most common questions that I am asked by clients is, "What's the most effective marketing technique that will get me leads?" Unfortunately, the question is impossible to answer. It assumes that there is one technique that will turn someone who has never heard of your business into a paying customer. I wish it was that easy!

Even if you spend thousands of dollars to drive qualified traffic to your website, it's unlikely that these visitors will be ready to buy your product or service right away. Rather than looking for the one marketing technique that will get you patients, instead think about how your marketing and sales efforts can work together to put your prospects on the right path. A sales funnel can accomplish just that.

Steve: So What is Sales Funnel?

Simply put, a sales funnel illustrates the ideal journey that your prospects go through on their way to becoming your customer. While you may market your products or services to thousands of people, only a small percentage will be engaged enough to turn over contact information and become leads. Of those leads, only a fraction will become patients.

Here’s the sales funnel explained in its simplest form: The path website visitors take on the way to buying your product or service. Some people never leave the top of the sales funnel – the beginning of that path - and never employ your services despite their awareness, while others reach the very end of the funnel and become a paying client.

There are 4 stages of the sales funnel: awareness, interest, decision and action. These four stages represent your prospect’s mindset.

Now here’s the good news… You have influence over how many people reach the bottom of the sales funnel.

Huyen: Why is a Sales Funnel so important?

Here are several top reasons why you should have a sales funnel for your practice…

According to Google, do you know that out of 100 people looking online right now, only 3% of the market is looking to buy or book right now, 17% are just gathering information or we can call them “window shoppers”, 20% of them are aware of their problems but not actively searching for solutions, and a whopping 60% of people are not even problem aware.

Steve: As you can see, the majority of prospects or website visitors don’t book the first time they see you (up to 97%), and it can be due to a variety of reasons…like; they are not ready yet and still researching, or they don’t know you that well. Thus by offering an opportunity for them to get to know you better via an irresistible offer as part of the top of your sales funnel, you will be more likely to capture their interest, and capture their info before they leave your website.  And this will give you the opportunity to warm them up and start driving them through the funnel

Huyen: A sales funnel helps you build relationships with prospects and nurture them until they are ready to be your patients. Relationships are the fundamental aspect of all types of businesses (both online or offline, referral or partnership building)

With a good sales funnel, you will spend less time closing a lead because these leads will have been nurtured along through your sales funnel already, and 90% sold on what your sales funnel is providing even before they come and see you.

For example, we have clients from all over Australia and even internationally. We have clients in other cities or countries who never met us in person, but they have been nurtured through our sales funnel with the content that we offer in our sales funnel, so when we finally get a chance to talk to them on Skype or over the phone, they feel like we already know each other. The conversion into sales is much easier than cold traffic.

Steve: Now here comes to the most interesting part:  What Types of Sales Funnel Will Work For Healthcare Practices?  Well, we have 2 of the most effective ones for you.

The first one is Foot in The Door Or The Front End Offer Sales Funnel

Foot-in-the-door is a more sophisticated form of persuasion and a sales technique. The principle is this:  Start by asking someone for something small. If they comply with your first small request, they will be more likely to respond to your next and bigger request.

ChangingMinds.org explains it this way: FITD offers work by first getting a small yes and then getting an even better yes later.

Huyen: Enquiring about your core services immediately, can sometimes be a big commitment for prospects… a long hard decision depending on what your core service is, especially if it has something to do with their health or appearance.

If you can take a portion off of your core services and narrow it down and give them a mini commitment to that smaller portion of your core service, it will be a lot easier for them to commit.  And then once they have had a taste of your services, you can build trust and authority with them, and then you can go from there moving forward with your larger total service offerings.

Steve: The first step in any sales funnel is the irresistible lead magnet, the lead magnet has to target the pain of your patients. What do they hope to get from your services? What are the things that cause them pain or discomfort, and what can you do to relieve them? it should speak directly to your potential patients and be impossible for them to resist.

For example, a chiropractor might offer a free guide for alleviating back pain at home. For someone with chronic back problems, such an offer would be irresistible. In this ebook or guide, you need to have an irresistible foot in the door offer to get prospects to enquire about your low end service to acquire a taste of your service before introducing them to your core services.

For example: Initial Consultation and Examination Plus Chiropractic X-rays (if necessary) for only $45. Save over 80%

Huyen: Some surgeons will question this front end offer because they don’t have any low cost services that they can offer first before their core service… which is the surgery.

If that is the case, you can follow the same strategy when it comes to lead magnet, by offering some valuable content to get prospects to know you and then present an irresistible FITD offer to get prospects enquiring about you.

"7 Things You MUST Know Before Considering Breast Implants". (This title is just an example, but this type of offer would provide the lead with some valuable information, and position you as an expert and trusted authority in that field. And inside the PDF of that content, you can present an irresistible offer, for example free 3D simulation consultation. The tip here is to outline exactly what they would get from the consultation, show more value so they can see that your offer has so much value that they can’t resist but take you up on this offer. The offer should be for a limited time, and not available forever or on the website so it creates some scarcity.

Steve: To help give you a proven formula, we’d like to introduce to you our signature 4 Step Sales Funnel Building Formula

Step 1, is the front end offer, the initial offer that you use to attract potential clients to your business.  This is Defining Your Frontend or Foot In The Door Offer and Value Ladder.  This is characterized by…

• A low value limited time offer to create scarcity (7 Days is a good amount of time)
• Identifying your ‘value ladder’ such as the higher value service or the core service, for understanding the range of service offerings.

Step 2 is setting up the Sales Funnel, which includes 2 webpages and 3 follow up emails

Set up a landing page to feature the front end offer and capture info from prospects

Include a thank you page with an additional special offer to encourage them to book right now. And then set up 3 emails as part of an automatic follow up sequence that are sent after the 1^st day, 4^th day and 24 hours before 7 days are up to those who have signed up.

Huyen: Step 3 is to setup Targeted Facebook & Google Ads

These Facebook ads are set to target areas, demographics of the prospects that you want to attract

Target keywords that users are using to search for your services or products via Google Ads

And Step 4 is to call the lead ASAP, and book them in for their appointment after they opt in for the front end offer.

Call them within 5 mins and the latest is 30 mins when the lead is still warm, a day old lead is already cold one.

Are you stuck thinking about what your FITD offer could be… need some more examples?

We compiled a list of 20 good FITD offers to give you some inspiration for your own marketing campaign.

Please go to www.onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/fitd-offers and leave your email info and we will send you this list. Or you can check out the link in our show notes below.

Steve: Our second favourite sales funnel that we’d like to introduce you to, is the Automated Webinar Sales Funnel.

This works really well when you want to build up your authority and trust in prospects for your core services.

When it comes to a serious treatment, prospects will most likely need more in-depth information than just what is provided on a webpage. And they would like to know more about your knowledge and experience even before coming and talking to you. They want to know if you are the right doctor or surgeon for this important procedure.

Huyen: This one engaging webinar can change everything for you. And we imagine you are asking - Why automated?

Well we know our audience today very well, healthcare practices simply you don’t have the time and energy to manage a complex system…. Instead you want a system that can be set it and forget it.

An automated webinar is a pre-recorded video streamed in real time, which will help free up your time. Unlike a seminar or live webinar, where you still have to trade time for money, the automated webinar system helps take yourself out of having the events live, it is not up to you and your one single time slot, your audience can come from anywhere around the country or even the world can join anytime that is convenient for them.

Steve: Automated webinars also allow you to teach potential prospects valuable information that solidifies you as an expert in your field. New patients need more compelling reasons as to whom they choose for a particular treatment, even when given referral choices. With webinars, you can address all three critical elements in human buying behaviour psychology “Know – Like – Trust” and shorten the trust building window to as little as a 45 min webinar.

Plus, these webinars are great for maintaining existing patient relationships. Educational webinars on various health topics offer the opportunity to develop and support relationships with your existing patients by educating them on the complex topics found in the medical field in an easy to understand format.

Huyen: Webinars can also help nurture and grow your referral contacts and establish you as the trusted source for referrals to turn to regardless of what your competitors are trying to whisper in their ears every day.

With webinars, you can still stay at the “top of mind” position for your large network of referrals without spending time on following up in person with everyone.

And finally…you can generally promote your high ticket items such as medical treatments or surgeries subtly through the webinar.

Steve: Your BEST webinar presentations get recorded and put on autopilot…generating 24/7 revenue for your practice. You can then scale your practice without being in “hustle mode” all the time.

One of the best aspects that I really like of webinars, is the fact that they can be recorded and archived for an unlimited time period, so they can keep bringing benefit to your medical practice for an indefinite amount of time.

That is why… the importance of using webinars to grow healthcare practices urged us to produce this….

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Webinar Promo

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Huyen: If you’ve ever thought of building an automated webinar, that is the course for you.

Mark Cuban (American businessman, investor and one of the investors on TV’s hit production Shark Tank) once said…

 “Unless you have a reliable, duplicatable, scalable and consistent way to bring potential customers in. You don’t have a business, you have a hobby”

Mr. Cuban also said. "Learning accounting, learning finance, learning marketing, the more you can pull together, the quicker you can make decisions, the more competitive you can be, the greater advantage."

Steve: What a great quote to wrap up today’s episode.  And so true.  The ability of automated webinars to give you a reliable, duplicable, scalable way to grow your patient base can take your business to the next level.

But before you go, what I want you to do is to pick one big takeaway that you learnt from listening to this podcast, and set some time to implement it into your practice. Let us know how it goes… was it successful? Was it easy to implement? Send us a message… we’d love to hear from you.

Huyen: If you liked this episode and you want to stay updated for the latest strategies to grow and scale your practice, subscribe to our Podcast Channel and you will never miss a beat!

Thank you very much for listening, and see you next time.

Bye!

https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/webinar-marketing-system/

 https://onlinemarketingfordoctors.com/fitd-offers