Ben Lynch: Alright, alright, alright. That's my best Matthew McConaughey impression. Anyway, it's episode 335. Let me invite some guests. G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode.

Peter Flynn: It shouldn't be that the marketing agency just does everything for you because you know your niche better than they do.

Ben Lynch: Pete, you called out marketing agencies kind of like this in a live workshop recently. Now, I'm not sure if you realised at the time that they were actually in the room.

Jack O'Brien: Well, I think it was a bit of a stitch-up. From my opinion, the number one mistake clinic owners make when it comes to working with an agency is a lack of definition.

Hannah Dunn: The still image performed better. That was interesting, but we got more followers from the video.

Jack O'Brien: Discounts on Google Ads, yes or no? On Google Ads, it's much less common you need to run a discount. That's not a yes or no answer.

Hannah Dunn: It depends. It was a no for now, and it may change to a yes now we're trialling it. You're good at this Gartner.

Ben Lynch: You and Hannah is your PR.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah.

Ben Lynch: This episode will be right up your Allie if you're looking to get more new clients using a marketing agency. We're diving into how marketing agencies can help you grow. And trust me, you want to hear Peter's take on the simple report you should expect that holds them accountable. Plus stick around for when Jack talks through how to track your return on investment. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinics, policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And, in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. It is episode 335. Welcome back. Good to see the band is back in the studio. We have Hannah Dunn, Director of DOTS, an OT service in Melbourne and Queen of the Paper Diary. How are you doing, Hannah, this close to Christmas? Yes, it does feel chaos, but coming at together. Yes, just steadily calming. I hear coffee makes life better. Have we convinced you to get onto coffee? No. Having one finished school and on school holidays definitely makes life easier. 2026, we're going to get you onto coffee, that's for sure. And Jack O'Brien, back in the seat after a little R&R. I realize after many years of working with you, I think the saying, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is after you. Because you need your rest. Otherwise, you'll get angry.

Jack O'Brien: No longer at home for a couple of weeks now.

Ben Lynch: You were a little hot under the collar in the last few episodes. You were having a lot of rants. So it's good to have you back. And Peter Flynn, we all know him as he's 1% better every day. Pete, good to see you here. We're going to be talking all things marketing. Welcome. Lovely. Thank you. to have you on. Before we dive in, a couple of things across the desk, Jacobra. Number one is, if you're new to the pod, we wrote a book in 2020. It's called Grow Your Clinic. You can get a free PDF copy. Head over to our website or on our socials to get a link. You can get a physical paperback, as is in my hands, for some Christmas and New Year reading. A warm welcome to a few folks that have installed A11y into their clinics. Claire, Giuseppe, Miriam, Paul, Gareth and Nat, thank you for testing out A11y. And also, I got this really nice message the other day from Chris, who's a member in CME, gets consulting with us. He said this, I've been busy changing patient management systems. And when I looked back in the last 18 months, I realised I had lost $66,000 in did-not-attends and cancellations because we did not have proper tracking and oversight or policies in place. He said, for me, having A11y means the data's all in one place. It's sitting there ready to go instead of manually pulling it out of my patient management system each time. It'll also help us create, store, and share policies for all our clinicians, which makes it so much easier to get the standard consistent. And when we're ready to go to that second location, we will be well prepared. So thank you so much, Chris. J.O.B., on your desk, anything of note?

Jack O'Brien: Yeah. Welcoming a few new members to our community, Alliecia and Beck. Beck's a physio in my neck of the woods in Newcastle. So super warm welcome to those. And I know we are currently at the time of recording and when this is released for those who are considering making the leap into business coaching. This is the time to do it before Christmas. We have a few spots available for our end of year deal, so please do. If you want to get in touch, it is me, jackatclinicmastery.com. Send me an email, that is jackatclinicmastery.com, and I will make sure that you get a head start on January. It's just a great time to be working with clinic owners, Ben. I don't know about you, Hannah and Pete, but the best clinic owners, the ones that we're working with that are proactive, that are heading into Christmas with a sense of calm, sense of a plan, and just ready to get after it in January, is Getting me excited.

Ben Lynch: It is. Hannah, you spoke to it last episode about the year in review and how it's such a great thing to reflect, sharpen up where we're headed moving forward. You've done yours. Yeah. What are you hearing and seeing from clinic owners, Hannah, around their finalisation of 2025 and their preparation for 2026?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think just that they're excited moving into January because they did that preparation maybe a month ago to really get January looking really good. And so that's been a really big change for a lot of the clinics we coach around that mindset of January being a quiet time. Great point.

Ben Lynch: Very good point to be prepared ahead. The end of year checklist really we suggest kicks off 1st of October and really prepares you to finish the year strong. Catch that previous episode that we did in the relevant asset or checklist there that you can use. All right. Today though is a little more on the marketing focus. I think most clinic owners feel like if they could just get more new clients that they would unlock some growth. And it normally leads them to outsourcing it to a marketing agency, either because they have a skill or a time constraint. In any case, they believe that perhaps this could be their answer. Which is fair enough. I think it's a smart instinct to leverage your time and outsource to relevant people with those skills. But the catch is, the moment you outsource it, you step into this entirely different world. Perhaps, where at worst, you're being taken for a ride, and at best, you're tolerating mediocre performance for far too long, and it's not so obvious. Now, we assume agencies get healthcare. You assume that they'll stick to the advertising standards that we have as healthcare professionals. Perhaps you assume they're going to stay on brand, use your tone of voice, and you assume that the reporting they send you, if at all, is meaningful and not fluff. Why wouldn't you? They're trying to do the right thing. But the reality is that most agencies, they don't live in our world, and they don't carry your risk of being a professional in business, and they don't speak your brand of voice or tone of voice. When results are happening, they tend to take full credit. But when things dip, suddenly it's your fault. It's things on the front desk. It's seasonality. It's everything but them. Meanwhile, you're stuck paying the bill. So today, we want to unpack this. Not to dunk on agencies, though that's a pretty critical opening. but to help you see the blind spots because the second you understand what's actually happening behind the curtain, I think your marketing becomes way more effective, way more compliant, and way more on brand. Now, Pete, you called out marketing agencies kind of like this in a live workshop recently. Now, I'm not sure if you realize at the time that they were actually in the room But I heard that you ruffled some feathers afterwards once it did become apparent, and then a bunch of clinic owners came up to you saying, hey Pete, that's exactly the thing we've experienced. So let me ask you this, why do you think so many clinic owners end up getting taken for a ride by marketing agencies?

Peter Flynn: Well, I think it was a bit of a stitch up that no one told me there was going to be a marketing or marketing agencies or people representing them in the room when I went on and just absolutely unloaded.

Jack O'Brien: Should we blame Daniel Gibbs for not giving you the heads up, Pete? Yes.

Ben Lynch: He would say blame the system, not the person.

Peter Flynn: Anyway, it was Shane Davis's fault. But that said, basically, what I talked through in that was around the experience that I had early on with the marketing agencies and the experience that a lot of clinic owners have when they come to me and they say, look, I've been doing this for years and I don't know if it's working, if it's not working. I'm getting told it's working great, but at the end of the day, I don't know what to look for. And I think the real reason why they can get taken for a ride is that they don't know the right questions to ask to help to hold them accountable. Because it shouldn't be that the marketing agency just does everything for you because You know your niche better than they do, right? You're always going to know your niche and your brand better. And it shouldn't be that you do everything because you're paying them to run it. It has to be a team effort and you have to be working together in collaboration and partnership. And I think it's the lack of education and understanding with some clinic owners, not that they should have this, it should be given to them by the agency to allow them to work together in a positive manner.

Ben Lynch: So where do you start then? I have had these experiences. I think Jack, you have, and I'll be interested in yours in a moment. But Pete, just maybe take us a little bit deeper there. What are some of the things that they ought to understand so that they do ask the right questions?

Peter Flynn: I think the first thing is when someone says something that's too good to be true, often it is. And if I think about the sales pitch on the front end that a lot of people will get from a marketing agency, and I've had this one from multiple marketing agencies, obviously they had a good coach there, but they would say, Google Ads, it's like turning on a tap. So when you want more new clients, we just turn on this tap. But what you have to let us know is when are you getting too many new clients. So we need to turn this tap off just a little bit, okay? And if you need to turn it down, we can, but we can always turn it back up. See the flood of new clients coming again. How does that sound? You're like, fantastic, unreal.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, tell me to turn off the tab. It sounds great.

Peter Flynn: My PVA is 2.2, but we're going to get plenty of new clients. So we're sweeping up a great business here. And what happens is three months in, the tap doesn't seem to be really working. And so they sit down and they now start to say it's this and it's this and those guaranteed results. Well, you know, it's the economy, it's time of year, it's the competition in your area. And I think that's the challenge is because the promise is often so high in order to have such a high percentage of conversions on the front end. That's where When I'm talking to people about our ad service and we sit down and I say, look, I honestly, I can't promise you results, but I can promise you that we're going to sit down and have an honest conversation when things aren't working well. And we're going to sit down and we're going to go through things when they are working well. And we're going to be upfront and transparent with you. I think that's the key thing that you need. It's no one can guarantee results, but everyone can guarantee transparency.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point. We would often want and expect a marketing agency to give you a report. Typically, it's on a monthly basis of, here's what's happened this month. I've had those sorts of reports where there's all these beautiful numbers and the lead is buried. At the end of the day, as a clinic owner, I just want new clients. Did I get the bookings? Jack, when you've dealt with marketing agencies before, especially when it comes to reporting and justifying the spend, what are some of the mistakes you see clinic owners making perhaps when it comes to analysing the effectiveness of that investment?

Jack O'Brien: But from my opinion, the number one mistake the clinic owners make when it comes to working with an agency is a lack of definition. And so there's this misalignment on what means what. We talk about this thing of conversions, this magic marketing word. And if you as a clinic owner think a conversion, as you should, if you think a conversion is a new patient who steps through the door and pays you for that consult, If you'd call that a conversion and yet an agency defines a conversion as someone who accidentally completed a form on a landing page. They're going to tell you you've made X conversions but yet you haven't seen anyone walk through the door. And so there's this misalignment of definitions and so getting on the same page when it comes to definitions around what is a conversion, what is the client acquisition cost, what is the lifetime value, these things all really matter so that we can ultimately measure the effectiveness of the work we do. But get your definitions right, folks.

Ben Lynch: Hmm. So Pete, how do you go about clarifying that for clinic owners, this distinction between some of the stats you see in doing ads for people, conversions as Jack's pointing out, and ultimately what Haneke is about is new patients, you know, on the priority list or in the, in the diary.

Hannah Dunn: Yes.

Peter Flynn: Well, the most common conversion error that I see when I look at an account that's been working with someone is they're bidding on their own brand name. And so that's like physio fit bidding on physio fit. And so it says they're getting new clients at $10 each, but it's really just return clients looking for your phone number or looking to reboot their session online after canceling or they need something else. So for any clinic owner listening to this, if you're doing Google ads, make sure number one, your clinic name is a negative keyword. don't let anyone tell you that you should bid on that or you should let that come through. It's just straight hard no. If they're searching for you, they'll find you.

Jack O'Brien: Okay Pete, I'm going to play adversary. I don't like the phrase devil's advocate. Let's play adversary here. So what if some of my colleagues, let's call it competition, I say my competition are bidding on my clinic's name and so they're showing up at the top for my clinic's name. Shouldn't I be in the race?

Peter Flynn: Good question and that's what people will often get told by their marketing company. In a product-based business, it's quite common to do that and that does work quite well because it's a commodity. But in a service-based business, if someone's searching for you by name, right, this is either a client that's been before and so if they accidentally click through into the other physio clinic down the road, they're going to land on the page and be like, oh, this isn't the right one. As many people see when they run Google ads, they suddenly get heaps of phone calls for people looking for other clinics. They're like, how does this happen? It's because you're bidding on other clinics' brand names. And so in a service-based business, it's just things to stay away from because if someone's searching a brand name, they want that brand name because there's a personal relationship there.

Jack O'Brien: So, what you're saying is the searcher or the prospective patient might be deceived but they'll realise their error and ultimately they're going to track down your clinic because they're searching for your clinic specifically. So, you don't have to play the bidding game because they'll find you eventually. Yeah, 100%.

Ben Lynch: Hannah, what's your experience been with marketing agencies? I know you're exploring expansion in the new year for your clinic, two new sites to add to the three existing. And one of the key capabilities that you spoke to previously was our ability to attract new clients probably means some additional investment in the marketing side. What has your experience been with marketing agencies and perhaps how are you looking at it moving forward?

Hannah Dunn: Hmm. We haven't engaged a marketing agency before. We have looked at it previously, but when I started to talk about what the expectations were around what they needed from us and what we were already doing, I felt like we were going to have to be giving them the content that we were then approving and it felt like I was double handling. And I feel like CM provides a lot of support around. Yeah. marketing and being able to understand it a little bit more. We definitely will revisit it if we feel the need, but at the moment we do our own social media. I think listening to Pete talk makes me think about when we talk about accountants, like there can be good accountants out there as long as you're meeting with them regularly and having that rhythm. So any of those external providers, we need to ensure that. we have those regular meetings and understanding what the expectations are, what the definitions are and all of those things we just spoke to. It's a really great point.

Ben Lynch: You know, I love alliteration, right? And I was just thinking through my own experience of marketing agencies and learning a bunch of mistakes in the early days. and still sharpening up as we go on. And there was a couple of categories that I found myself coming back to the experiences that I had, the questions that I had, and it was around the reporting stuff. I'd like to go a little bit deeper on that with you, Pete. The results side goes hand-in-hand, but to your point of what they promise and how we track that we're actually getting the results and the return on investment kind of ties in with budget. The other ones around regulations, if you would. So many folks that listen in are governed by a body that has advertising standards that you must meet and you'll get in trouble if you deviate away from that. And then, Hannah, you brought up rhythms as well. What are our rhythms for connecting with these folks? So, Pete, if we just come back to the reporting side of things, what are the essential ingredients to a good report that a marketing agency could give a clinic owner to put their investment in context?

Peter Flynn: The challenge with a lot of reports is that they give you everything and if you've ever looked through a marketing report, sometimes these things are like 50 or 60 pages long and you got impressions and demographics and really what the clinic owner wants to know is what did I spend? What did I get for that spend tangibly? Where was it spent? So an understanding of how that was spent to achieve that. And what are we doing next? And I think if you can tick those things, that's all that needs to be in there. So for example, we might say, all right, a clinic owner, you spent $1,200 this month. And depending on which PMS people use as to how we can track things, but let's say they use something like a Cliniko and they link out to Cliniko's booking site so we can track that more effectively and we can say, okay, we got 13 clients this month at just less than $100 ad spend per client. Reasonable results, I'd say, if you've got a decent lifetime value on the end of that. We then want to know what were the search terms that people specifically Googled in order to achieve those because, again, if the clinic was PhysioFit and the search terms were PhysioFit, there's zero real conversions there. But if they're searching for physio near me, physiotherapist Mowbray, physiotherapist appointment today, physio Adelaide. those things, we can see that they're likely real true conversions because they're brand agnostic in what they were searching for. And then we would want to know, how are we going to continue to improve this? So we might look at some of the metrics further up the line and go, hey, our click-through rate is 4%. We'd like it to be above 5%. So we're going to work on our headlines in order to improve the congruence between the keywords, the headlines and website and ideally then get more conversions from that.

Ben Lynch: And so, Pete, just for those that are earlier on in their journey, what you're saying is we have a headline on an ad. We've spent money to get this in front of people on Google, as the example. And we want to see how many people will click on that ad and then visit the page on the website. And that's the click-through rate. And we're trying to get that to 5% or more. so that more people see the booking page and then there's a percentage of those that will then book. Is that correct?

Peter Flynn: Correct, yes.

Ben Lynch: Okay. And so you've articulated that really nicely when it comes to reporting. J.O.B., you've worked with a lot of clinics in early days of their journey in the Elevate program, where we support clinic owners that are really opening their doors to 30 to 40k revenue per month, where money's really tight. The decisions seem like, you know, almost life and death type of decisions for their business, that is. How do you help them make sense of their investment in marketing and even encourage them that this is a worthwhile thing for them to grow? Because sometimes I feel like, I don't know if I have the money to grow, but getting new clients is so essential to growing. So talk us through, especially those early stage clinics and how you advise them to think about engaging marketing agencies.

Jack O'Brien: Well, you want to think about how many new clients do you need? How many additional new clients do you need? And what are you willing to spend to acquire those new clients? And so that acquisition cost, CAC, client acquisition cost, should be a function of the lifetime value of that patient. Let's use round figures. Let's say a patient is financially worth, to your clinic, $1,000. Patients are priceless, but economically, they're worth $1,000. in this example. And so, if a client's worth $1,000, what is the CAC that you are willing to spend? And I'll say ballpark 10%, right? Again, round figures. So, if a client is worth $1,000, should be willing to spend $100 to acquire them. And if you need an additional 12 new clients to your clinic, you should be willing to spend 12 times 100, it's $1,200 up to that. Now, of course, we want it as close to zero as possible, but we have to sometimes invest to generate a return. And so that's how I would encourage clinic owners to think about it, Ben. I'm interested, Pete, does that maths stack up in your experience?

Peter Flynn: I think the math's there. It depends on the stage of business someone's in as well and the type of clients that they work with. If you were to think about the person who's going for aggressive growth and I've got a few of those clients I'm working with at the moment and they're happy to spend 20 to 30% of the LTV even sometimes up to 40 to 50 because they're just trying to grow so fast. And in their mind, they've got a therapist there on a salary, right? So, they're paying that person whether they're seeing a client or not. They see a lot of value in getting them as busy as they can as quickly as they can with the idea that they can scale that clinic, they can keep those clinicians happy because clinicians aren't happy when they're not busy up to a certain point. It's like Goldilocks to the porridge sometimes. but getting them busy and then they can scale back that marketing cost and have been a period of sustainability and profitability.

Jack O'Brien: I think Ben, another way to think about it, you mentioned like how do we help early stage clinic owners to think about this. If we transition to the agency cost or the cost of having someone else help do your ads for you, usually there's a flat fee or retainer and a percentage of your ad spend and so if it's round figure somewhere between $700 and $1,000 a month to get help to run your ads. Can you run your own ads for $1,000 of labor cost per month? Could someone on your team with that level of expertise and that level of productivity and that level of depth of industry knowledge and awareness in the marketing space, could they run those ads for across that 20 hours a week, give or take, 20 hours a month? And the answer is probably no up to a certain point. And so it would probably cost your team more because of their inefficiency and inaccuracy to run it in-house. So at that point, it makes more sense to get someone else to help take care of it out of the house.

Peter Flynn: This conversation with someone this morning actually, and we mapped it out and we said, look, it's roughly going to cost about $700 a month for myself and for Clinic Mastery to look after your accounts. We're not outsourcing these overseas. We're writing them ourselves. We're doing it all ourselves here. You're getting people who understand the industry, who understand marketing, who understand your business and healthcare. And I broke it down, $700 a month is $161.54, rounded up, the last cent there, per week. And I just asked, what is your appointment fee for a 30-minute appointment as a therapist? And they said $149. And so, realistically, seeing one appointment for 30 minutes per week, or trying to do the Google Ads by yourself, trying to do the setup, trying to manage these things, trying to keep up with all of the updates that Google has, I'm like, do you feel like we'll be able to do that better than you and get a better result? And they're like, yes. I'm like, if you were to just reallocate that half an hour per week to one client, you're almost in a better position all around.

Ben Lynch: So Hannah, I'm interested then to hear your story and reasoning behind not going with a marketing agency. You spoke to some of it there before, but for a lot of listeners, they're making the same decision as you. So just unpack it for us. I had a number of people during the week say it's so good having Hannah on the podcast. this year, to hear a different perspective of a different clinic. And I think that's one of the benefits of working with clinic masteries. You get these different perspectives to maybe challenge the status quo, challenge the thinking that you have. So just bring us into your world for a moment as to how you think about marketing, because it sounds like you're doing it in-house. Perhaps you don't even have much of a need to get new clients beyond what you've currently got.

Hannah Dunn: I think that is the key, understanding what is the reason behind why you want someone external to do it or what the goal is of your marketing. And for us with NDIS and the position in which we'd had, we don't at the moment touch wood feel that we need new clients. We have quite long standing client relationships and. we still hold a wait list and while we want to service those families, we also are getting new referrals in. So for us, we aren't necessarily needing that intake just yet. That may change with us opening in Geelong or if we end up opening in the eastern suburbs and that may be a time in which we need to look at doing more. What we really find is that we want a space for clinicians to be able to see what we're doing in clinic, and we also want to be able to show families what they'll get when they come into clinic. So for us, our team creates social media posts, posts them into a Slack channel, and then one of our team, who it's their portfolio and really enjoys this stuff and is much younger than me, It puts all of that together and schedules it and posts it. So that is working for us at the moment. We've played around with paid ads. We actually just recently played around with a still image of recruitment and a video image for recruitment and posted them at the same time. And so we're very novice at all of this, but looking at the data that came through on the Instagram dashboards, like the still image performed better. That was interesting, but we got more followers from the video. So it depends what the goal was. We had more click through on the single image, but if our goal was followers, then the other one did better. So really no idea what I'm talking about, but just trying to learn as we go along. And at the moment, whatever we've needed, it has worked to support us with what we've needed at this stage. But I know that not all clinics are in that same position.

Ben Lynch: You bring up a good point though, we're giving quite a strong lens to marketing to get new clients. It's not particularly an issue for you, but when it comes to getting new therapists and team to support and serve those clients, that is an issue for you. And for a lot of say NDIS-based clinics, the war for talent is on. And so your ability to attract quality candidates and the quantity of applicants is so key to it. Practically, are you seeing clinics use Google Ads and Facebook Ads in their recruitment, and to what degree have you found it being effective recently?

Peter Flynn: Google Ads, no, because if you're competing on Google Ads, basically, you're now competing with Seek and things like that, and their budget is going to be far larger than yours, so I wouldn't bother with that in the slightest. If you're doing it on meta ads, I have Not many clinics have done it well, but I've seen recently. But if you've got a strong offer, that's where Meta works. If you've got a strong offer, Meta works well. So if you have something that you believe is far better than any of the competition, then Meta is a fantastic way to get it out there. But if your job ad is relatively similar, like nothing wrong with it, but relatively similar to everyone in your area and everyone on seek, the chance that Meta is going to work for you is quite low. Why would someone look at this and go, wow, that is so much better than what I'm currently doing or currently on or what's out there? You go, Hannah.

Hannah Dunn: No, I was just going to say the other thought for us though, along those lines is just that brand recognition, like just getting in front of more people that when we're on seek, we are hidden amongst everyone else. Whereas when we push those ads out, potentially we're getting just that secondary or third view and it's starting to play a bit more on people's minds if they are thinking about. when they're moving. It's a mental availability.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I like that play I was going to credit Byron Sharp with the mental availability there. So, what I was going to say though is this conversation isn't just about Meta or Google Ads, but about using agencies to help with Meta and Google Ads. And so, I would challenge clinic owners to think about whether you could get a recruitment agency and typically, you know, they'll charge upwards of 10% of someone's salary sometimes. So, we're talking $8,000 plus Or could you get some help from a marketing agency because ultimately recruitment is marketing? Or could we run our own ads? And so this is the point when it comes to like, is something expensive? Well, compared to what? Like Facebook ads is cheap compared to like buying a supercar or buying overseas holiday. Running ads is pennies on the dollar and so it's all relative. We could pay a recruitment agency $10,000 or we could run you know, $300 worth of meta ads or we pay $500 for a Seek ad and Seek is probably just going to run Google ads for you anyway. So it's all relative and that's where we need to, you know, do the sums of like, what do we want? How much are we willing to do versus how much are we willing to outsource it? And ultimately, what is the return on investment? And, you know, when we're talking about agency, you want to think about the agency cost plus the ad spend. Does that provide a return on investment? And if yes, it's like well, how many new clients do you need? Like how big is your credit card limit? Let's go because it's just a maths game at that point.

Ben Lynch: It's a really great point that you mentioned before, Jack and Hannah, you referenced it as well. Essentially, what is the outcome we're trying to achieve here? And if we talk in a client sense, it's number of new clients. And what is the increase from the current state that we want? And then we reverse engineering from there. Whereas we see it a lot. I think a lot of clinic owners will just go one step in front of the other, they'll say, I need more new clients. I'm going to invest in this." And then they go for it without actually ever knowing, okay, I want an extra 10 a week. What would I need to spend? How do I work back? Who's best to do it? So we're just reversing the order of thinking and decision-making here. Not only does it apply for marketing, it applies across the board in your team systems and all of the decisions because every decision is an investment decision. What I want to know, Peter Flynn. What did you say that really got underneath their skin? What was it? Take us into there. I want to hear more of the details because it sounded like the sort of presentation that resonated with the audience and annoyed a lot of the providers around the room. Not that that was your intention because you were just talking about this is the narrative I hear every single week. Take us into the detail. Give us a little bit more of the substance of that presentation. What did you cover?

Peter Flynn: Well, I think the thing that got under people's skin was the tap analogy. That was the one that everyone came up to me and said, that is exactly what I was told, right? And then the excuses thereafter and essentially the frustration that they had with maybe a lack of transparency. So that was the main issue.

Ben Lynch: So they're the two things. It's kind of, we're going to promise the world and deliver an atlas. And we're going to not give you the reporting or we're going to, you know, bury the lead in the reporting. If you can find the needle in the haystack, be super impressed by the glossy report. But just wondering, is it leading to new clients? They're kind of the two key things that it rests on as to where clinic owners can be taken for a ride when working with marketing agencies.

Peter Flynn: Look, to just dive into it a bit deeper, it's who's actually writing your ads, because you want them written by someone who understands your industry relatively well, at least, and you don't want them outsourced. VAs are fantastic, but they're not going to be the right people to write your ads with emotive headlines, specific descriptions. It's unlikely they'll understand the ARPA or the SPAR regulations for doing this, and so you see ads that say specialist and all these other things. They sometimes quote testimonials. So there needs to be a good understanding of your industry. There needs to be a good understanding of what is important to you and that's conversions. They need to understand the different practice management softwares and how Google Ads can work with them from a conversion perspective. But it's understanding how these things interplay, right? And you might not be able to get the exact conversion, but what's the closest step back from there? Because it's not an impression. It might be someone that spends 20 seconds or longer on a book online page that you've embedded into your website. And we can track that as being a high likelihood that that person has gone down that path. But we also need to be specific that it's not a conversion, it's an indication of a conversion. And those two things are very different numbers, if that makes sense.

Ben Lynch: Going back to my alliteration of reports, regulations, results, and rhythms, this fits under the regulation side of things, as you mentioned around writing great headlines, great offers. You could have a really compelling offer. But the other side of that is they start to do things and say things, the agency that are against the standards or regulations that we operate under. And this is an issue and it's where perhaps they start, you know, things aren't working so well, they're not getting the results. So they start to stray away from these guidelines in order to try and get better results. And in the process, make your brand look bad, and maybe at worst, do something that's just not allowed. So, let's come back to you writing great offers and great headlines, because that sounds like it's the critical piece here. I want to know, how do you write these great headlines, and who writes them? Coming back to your point of, is this something I do in-house? You said, don't hand it over to a VA, a virtual assistant for those following along. So, who should write these offers and how do we write them so that they get results, which is bookings?

Peter Flynn: Well, I feel like marketing agencies don't get desperate and do that often.

Ben Lynch: I've had it happen to me. No, I have. More than once. More than once. I don't know if they've done it for clinics, but I'm sure they have. Anyway, keep going.

Peter Flynn: More often, what I see is it happens from the start and it's just a lack of awareness. And you only notice once you see the ads or someone tells you, hey, you're breaking the ARPA guidelines. If you're a physio, other physio clinic owners are really quick to let you know.

Ben Lynch: Physios are great at getting one another out.

Peter Flynn: They are, aren't they?

Jack O'Brien: We've got a syndrome like physios all behind us.

Ben Lynch: They're paying attention to too many other people's businesses and not their own.

Peter Flynn: Anyway, continue. That's right. We're not putting too much shit on the physios and the physios themselves. No, no, no. Everyone's got their quirks. The question there being who should write the answer. Yes, and how.

Ben Lynch: And how do you write, like, what are the essential ingredients that you find are actually working to get bookings? Not just like cute theory, but practically.

Peter Flynn: Well, importantly, your headlines need to have your keywords in it that you're bidding on, which can be really annoying if your keyword is physio near me. So, then you have to figure out how can you include that in a way that sounds natural so you can say something like, experienced physios near you and Google will pick that up as being close enough to the keyword. But it's understanding that you have to use those keywords in order for Google to see your ad as being a valuable ad which means it will cost you less impression to rank higher essentially. So that's an important part of it. And then you have to blend that with what's the ideal client avatar we're after. So I'll ask people to send through their ideal client avatars. And then from there I can see how they write what they write. I can see how they write on their website and we sort of mold all those together. And I always like to think of it as some of these headlines and descriptions are for Google. That's important. Some are for the clinic owner and then from what they want and then some are for me. And they're the ones that are really pushing towards conversions from things that I've seen work with other clinics. So something for Google, something for the clinic owner and something for me.

Hannah Dunn: And you make a good point about websites. Cause I know Pete, when you're doing your ads, you often will review a website as well and give tips to those members to make sure that it all aligns or at times do that. And I think sometimes people just think about the ads and not making that align with a website. So then you're directing someone somewhere where it may lose them at that point.

Peter Flynn: Yeah, it's a challenge, right? Because we can see sometimes the ads will perform well from a performance perspective, but then the conversions aren't there and it's an important part of the whole equation is having a website that converts, right? Because you can have the best ads in the world, but if the website is really slow to load or it's you know, they're trying to be everything to everyone or they're trying to advertise, you know, all kinds of different things on there. It can get really challenging at times and the message can get a little bit mixed up. And so that is an area where I think clinic owners can often improve a lot. And typically when we work with them, we'll try and give them some easy tips to just improve the experience on the homepage especially. And just thinking about When someone lands on here, how can we get them to click that book now, request the appointment or call now button before they do anything else?

Jack O'Brien: go, Jack. I was going to say it's interesting you say that, Pete, because sometimes the buyer's journey can take more than just like click an ad, click book now. Sometimes we want them to immerse themselves in our authority and becoming familiar with the therapist. We know often some of the most trafficked pages are like our therapist's about us pages or problems we solve, treatments we offer. So it's almost like a good website and maybe we're going down the website rabbit hole. Pull me out, Ben. Pull me out if you need to. Sometimes we want either to people to book straight away or to immerse themselves in our ecosystem to then book eventually.

Peter Flynn: Potentially then what I wasn't clear enough there is the person whose website isn't great. It's how can we have those changes to get them to book now rather than having to rebuild an entire website. Right. Yeah.

Hannah Dunn: And I think as we've spoken in the coaching group a bit more about this, something that TB has been talking about has been that quality of client that he's getting and the lifetime on that rather than just the number of clients coming through the doors and that some ads do get those one-off visits, whereas, you know, really looking for those longer lifetime or five sessions or whatever it is when you're at physio and podiatry compared to paediatric OT, who is more of a lifetime sort of link. It's a good position, Hannah, right?

Ben Lynch: Yeah, Hannah, what's your take on TB in terms of one ad platform's better than the other?

Hannah Dunn: Just trying different headlines and trying different ads to see what actually resonates better with those longer term clients versus one offs, which I, from the discussions, I believe like those higher percentages of discounts tend not to have the longer term clients tend to have that shorter interim. Whereas something that's more specific about runner's knee or whatever is happening tend to have maybe a bit more longevity in there.

Ben Lynch: Look at you learning about physios, hey?

Jack O'Brien: I know. I didn't think OTs knew that humans had lower limbs. I thought you'd have upper limbs.

Hannah Dunn: I know. It's amazing what I've learnt through CM.

Jack O'Brien: I'd love, Pete, your perspective. Just for listeners' clarity, TB is Tony Beecroft, one of our coaches, owner of Melbourne Sports Physio. I'm Jack O'Brien, sometimes known as Jacobrin. We've had that interesting query come through the podcast. But you're right, Hannah. I think often we – a good analogy I describe to clinic owners is you get what you fish for, right? And the bait that you use will determine the fish that you catch. So, different platforms will often dictate the necessity or otherwise for discounts. Pete, I'm curious on your perspective, maybe just yes or no. I know you love a good yes or no question. Discounts on Google Ads, yes or no? Discounts on Facebook or meta ads, yes or no? On Google Ads, it's much less common you need to run a discount.

Peter Flynn: That's not a yes or no. Very few clinics, but some people do use them and they just want to test, will I get a better result on Google Ads if I run a discount? At the same time, will I still get a strong lifetime value off the back of that? Because that was someone who is likely already to have a strong lifetime value because they're Googling it to solve the problem. But if I was to have a 30% off or 40% off in my headline that they can see compared to everyone else, does that tip that in my favor? So I'll be able to report back soon. We've only launched a few of those recently. That's not a yes or no answer.

Ben Lynch: It depends. I like it. Do you know what is funny? Cause it's like so much of this is highly nuanced and it is depends, but we like to get to it. You know, you got to land on something.

Hannah Dunn: I think I'll interpret Pete. It was a no for now and it may change to a yes now we're trialing it. Ah, look at that. You're as good as Hannah as your PR. Yeah.

Peter Flynn: No, it's yes or no. Come on. Oh, that's good.

Hannah Dunn: Come on, you're closer.

Jack O'Brien: Yes. I've got another comment here around agencies. I think we often get hung up on the cost of an agency or cost of done-for-you services and we think, oh, we're doing it ourselves, it's free, we save the money. It's like, well, yes, but it depends, to quote the great Peter Flynn. It may save you dollars but it will cost you time and time is money. Often, when I'm speaking to clinic owners and talking about marketing strategies and particularly when it comes to marketing agencies, usually, you've got a lot of cash flow but you're quite time-strapped or you've got all the time and white space in the diary, but you're quite cash-strapped. And so typically, you'll sit on one side or the other. Now, if you've got heaps of cash and heaps of time, then look, you're welcome to apply as a coach at Clinic Mastery. But typically, clinic owners will have either plenty of cash or plenty of time. And so if you're someone who does not have much time, you are strapped, there's not a lot of expertise in your clinic, but there is some cash surplus that you're willing to invest. Time is money. And if you want to speed things up, then that investment may indeed be worth it, despite the fact you could, quote, save that money and do it yourself and burn time in the process.

Peter Flynn: I think everything to what you said there, everything's an investment decision in business, right? Right. And you always have to say, like I was thinking about this from just a pure investment perspective of it's not just comparing doing this investment to nothing, it's doing this investment to this other investment. So I want to know which is the better out of the two options rather than just it be the only one option. And so this is probably where a lot of clinic owners should think about it. It's not free to do it yourself because let's say it takes you, even if you're pretty fast, then you can do it in 30 minutes per week, right? I'd say the average clinic probably spends about an hour a week doing these things. So let's say you do it for an hour a week. If you were to see clients during that time, then what would you generate during that time? $261 if you're a physio, according to the latest report. It's not free to do it yourself. Now, if you love doing it and you really want to learn it, then absolutely. But I think it's understanding it from that perspective. I learned to do it because I love it, but there's plenty of things that I don't love doing and so I outsource them. So you just have to understand yourself and understand that from an investment decision.

Jack O'Brien: And even loving it and learning it is an investment decision. You are investing your time, which in a physio context is at least $261 an hour, and the same is true across all allied health professions, give or take $250 an hour. If you are willing to invest in your own time learning it at three or four hours a week, you're investing the equivalent of $1,000 a week of your own time and you're welcome to do that but eyes wide open, you could probably get the help done for $1,000 a month, not $1,000 a week.

Ben Lynch: Pete, if you were to describe what the ideal clinic owner avatar is for you in working with as a version of an agency, at least an outsourced option for clinic owners to have, especially the digital side, digital paid marketing done for them, what are they doing? I guess a version of what are the best clinic owners doing when it comes to outsourcing to marketing agencies to get more new clients?

Peter Flynn: I think one, they're clear on what they want, so they understand their market and their client avatar. Their website is fast, so there's no issues with the speed on the website. If someone has a slow website, people just click off if it hasn't loaded after three seconds. The website is clean. It's very simple. It's straightforward. When you land on that front page, you know exactly what they do and why they do it. doesn't expect miracles, but when we sit down and have a conversation around what is a reasonable expectation from Google Ads, and often, depending on the clientele, just before I was talking to the podiatrist and said, look, if we can meaningfully achieve 80 to $100 new clients over the first three months, How does that sound to you? And we just talked through because another agency had said we can get them at $15 to $20. And I said, look, if they can actually do that, I would go with them. I just don't believe that's realistic. So I think it's someone who can look at it and understand what it's going to take and realistically what it's going to cost.

Ben Lynch: So on that point with marketing, so often we need to be doing a lot of different tests to see what works. It's not like we magically have one formula that works every single time. So how do you frame up and talk to a clinic owner at the start of their journey about this willingness to test a few different things, knowing that some are not going to work, but the learning that we get sharpens us up moving forward for a better cost of acquisition.

Peter Flynn: I think most clinic owners get that inherently. Okay.

Ben Lynch: You don't find it's an issue?

Peter Flynn: It's not really an issue. I think we talk through, we're going to make a hypothesis at the start or multiple hypotheses and some of them are going to work and some of them are not going to work. And the ones that don't work, it's important that we're fast and we move on that and we adapt as we go. something that I often say is we work with a lot of clinic owners, so we're fortunate to see what is working with other species, OTs, podiatrists, physios, osteos, etc. at the moment. And so, I like to think that every single month, the more clinics we work with, the better we get at making a hypothesis like this.

Ben Lynch: Hannah, for the clinic owner that's sort of similar to you in background where maybe they do have plentiful new clients, maybe they're not running with a digital paid advertising strategy at the moment, what do you think they might be thinking or any questions they might have so that there's some value here that they don't just go, well, I'm not really doing it right now so this doesn't relate to me, but it might at some point in the future. What do you think they might be thinking and what questions perhaps do you have for Pete while he's here?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I think ultimately I would, for us, like the position I'm in, is that we heard from Pete about the Instagram dashboards and so just started trying it. I think even just getting a little bit familiar with any of those areas is really helpful because I think we will need it and we don't know what's coming ahead of us. So, I think just listening to these talks and picking up whatever you can. I think there's some terminology like bidding on words that are confusing and all of those things, but understanding that and just knowing that that is what the marketing agency to, and having some of that terminology to even go to is super helpful. And we did do a previous episode on some of that terminology a couple of months ago, which is a good place to go back to if you haven't already heard that from here and just to be able to tip your toe in.

Ben Lynch: Well, it's a good point, Hannah, because we've seen a lot of NDIS-based clinics in the community, speech, psych, OT, some of the physio clinics as well, really freak out this year. about changes to the NDIS. They're living in this uncertain world. We've also seen a number of them never really have to think too much about the marketing side of things to acquire clients, and now all of a sudden in a bit of a frenzy. Pete, I'm sure a few of those have come through your inbox. What's your advice to those folks that perhaps haven't had to think about this or aren't thinking about it because they're sitting reasonably pretty with a wait list or new clients don't seem to be an issue at the moment? Is it something that they should just be doing ongoing or are you only suggesting paid ads for when you have a need? When you're turning that tap on.

Peter Flynn: Yeah, when you turn the tap on. I would say I wouldn't be running paid ads if we had a waitlist, right? I'm running paid ads when we have a need for clients in the here and now. And when I say here and now, probably let's say you were going to bring someone on in six weeks time and you go, we need to start building up a bit of a waitlist and some utilisation, probably six weeks beforehand is when I would start to think about that. But I think the reality is for a lot of clinics that have never had to advertise before, We don't know exactly what's coming. We do know that things are changing. We're seeing plans change. We're seeing things that we're told weren't going to happen kind of sneak through in different ways. I think in all likelihood, there will be more competition over a smaller grouping of funding over the next one to two years. And it's going to change the environment from a new client acquisition perspective. I would say, relatively drastically. But with that comes the advantage of, well, that should also make the recruitment market better. And as a clinic owner, I would prefer to refine how I get new clients versus having to really refine how I get new team members and really sometimes being at the mercy of team members who are moving on because they can get a better offer anywhere they go.

Ben Lynch: It's going to be interesting to see how the market continues to shift. That's interesting to hear. Yeah. So you're not running paid ads if you've got a wait list, if you're sitting pretty with new clients at the moment to get new clients, specifically to get bookings. Can I make the distinction of using ads to amplify perhaps some of your organic socials or just trying to maintain some awareness in the community? Jack, I know you've done a lot of work on this recently. One, would you even make that distinction? And if yes, would you pursue it? Jack, I'll throw to you first and then get Pete's reaction.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, look, I would say it's a luxury. It's a nice to do. But yes, amplifying your content, there's a lot of nuance to it. It's not just open the app, click boost. In the first instance, you'll be donating 30% of the ad fee to Apple. Yes or no, Jack. Yes or no.

Hannah Dunn: That's a no, I'll translate.

Jack O'Brien: Yes, you should amplify your content and you should not donate to Apple. They don't need your spare change. But it does two things. It creates some awareness in clients that are not yet clients of your clinic. And it creates more authority, more awareness. And so for those clients that are already a part of your clinic, it helps them to trust, it builds trust. It helps them to remain loyal as much as loyalty is a relevant metric. It helps to ultimately to build the lifetime value of a client. And so, yeah, look, it's not the frontline way of generating clients. So that's why it's a luxury nice to have, not a must have. Pete, you're nodding. Is that a yes?

Peter Flynn: It's like more of a no nod. Oh, it's a no nod.

Hannah Dunn: The up and down is a no. Okay, this is no.

Peter Flynn: It's upside down mod. I would say for most clinics, from my perspective, I'm agreeing with it being a luxury in terms of for a clinic whose marketing budget is constrained, let's say below $5,000 a month. I would want that really targeted to a direct call to action type marketing. As you become larger and larger, I feel there's more and more value from a branding perspective. And the larger game you're playing, right? How big is the game you're playing? Exactly. And so that's probably the way that I would look at it. And most clinic owners who come to me have a marketing budget below $5,000. And that is a question they ask. And at that scale, it's not where I, if it were my money and my clinic, it's not where I would spend it.

Ben Lynch: We can unpack this on future episodes as to how to do that, that's different from perhaps the direct ads for bookings. Oh, we've got some really great episodes in the pipeline into the new year. It's the festive season. We're going to get maybe one or two more recordings in before the end of the year. And then we've got a massive start to the new year. I'm pumped for it. Hannah, Peter, Jack, thank you so much for your insights. We'll see you on another episode very soon. Bye-bye.