Marketing Through StoryTelling and Google My Business

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In this episode of Marketing Through StoryTelling and Google My Business,  Barbara and Jessica discuss:

-Where does the company name “Tulip Media Group” come from?
-How do you decrease the cost of acquisition?
-How do you increase marketing through Google My Business?

Key Takeaways:

” Get your storefront ready.  Make sure your website is ready to have visitors. If your storefront is not ready, then there’s no sense in doing paid advertising or blogging.” – Jessica Embree

Connect with Jessica Embree:

Website: https://tulipmediagroup.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicaembree/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tulipmediagroup/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/TulipMedia/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tulipmediagroup
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TulipMediaGroup/

Connect with Barbara Hales:

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/DrBarbaraHales
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist
Website: www.TheMedicalStrategist.com
Email:   Barbara@barbarahalesmd.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TheMedicalStrategist
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/barbarahales

Books:
Content Copy Made Easy
14 Tactics to Triple Sales
Power to the Patient: The Medical Strategist

TRANSCRIPTION (118)

Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of marketing tips for doctors.

I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales, and today, we have with us, Jessica Emery. She is an international best seller, a story brand guide, and a marketing specialist. She specializes in helping businesses grow all over North America. With clear and impactful market marketing strategies. Please give us a welcome to Jessica Emery.

Jessica Embree: Thank you so much for having me, Barbara.

Storytelling

Dr. Barbara Hales: Nowadays, storytelling is the buzzword. Can you tell us a little about how you decide what stories to tell? Based on the audience that you have in front of you?

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. It all comes down to what problem you are trying to solve for your customers. In the medical field, that is usually pain. They’re having mental or physical issues. So what problem are you trying to solve and tell them a story on how they’re going to get that treatment or how what success looks like at the end, they have less pain, they can play with their kids, again, without having any pains in their shoulders and back. So it just tells the story that will resonate with your customers.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, that makes a lot of sense. And it also seems to me to be a lot like case studies. Would you agree to that?

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. I think that’s why case studies, referrals, and testimonials are so important, especially in this field. People need to hear that they can be reassured that the treatment they’re going to get from medical practices is what they’re looking for at the end of the day.

Tulip Media Group

Dr. Barbara Hales: Sure. So your company is called tulip. How did that come about? And how did you choose that name?

Jessica Embree: So tulip media, our founder and CEO, is originally from the Netherlands, so they’re known for their tulips over there. And when we had to rebrand back in 2018, we were known as the people with the tulip jacket. He used to wear this tulip jacket all over tradeshows because that was our brand. So tulip media just felt very natural to us. And we are a marketing agency. So media fit in as well. From there, we were Tulip Media Group.

Cost of Acquisition

Dr. Barbara Hales: Make sense. How did it go from having a COA of 40,000 to 4,000 In just a few months? And maybe you can explain to our listeners what COA is, and is there such a thing as getting down to no amount of money?

Jessica Embree: You’re always going to have a COA or cost of acquisition, is what we call it. So how much does it cost you as a company to get a new client? And before the pandemic hit in 2019, we realized we had a huge problem. We were spending 1000s of 1000s of dollars going to trade shows called calling, calling people who weren’t having the problem we were having. So they didn’t need help with marketing. They didn’t need help with their print advertising. So we were using a push strategy instead of a poll one and helping people raise their hands at the end of the day.

So overnight, we completely flipped out. We were doing our marketing strategy, stopped doing trade shows, started going online and doing paid advertising on social and Google, and started doing blog posts, so we could have a library of content that was valuable to our end users the day. And we redid our messaging on our site too. So it resonated with our core customer.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, we always feel that content is important. Regardless of whether it is audio like a podcast, like what we’re on now, or video or, you know, just a blog post to read because people enjoy getting their information in different ways, as you know. And another thing that feeds into what you just said is that doctors and health professionals need to stop and figure out how much a lifetime value is for aging patients. So that you can understand what spending means to you and what it looks like.

Jessica Embree: Exactly.

Dr. Barbara Hales: What strategies do you recommend for a customer report client retention?

Jessica Embree: So retention is interesting because, as you said, everybody consumes content differently. So how do you keep top of mind with your customers? And in the medical field, we’ve seen everything from PPC advertising or paid advertising, as we call it. We’ve seen print advertising.

So many health professionals use magazine newsletters to send out to their target audience to keep them aware of some health tips some recipes, depending on what type of doctor you are, to keep that top of mind. So retention and giving good service while keeping top mind are the two most important things for retention for your practice.

Attract Clients Through Google

Dr. Barbara Hales: Have you used Google to attract your clients?

Jessica Embree: So we do at to look media, what we call a keyword and competitive analysis. And what we do is we peek behind the curtain and discover how our customers find us on Google. So are they typing in marketing agencies near me, are they typing in how to make a magazine near me, and we’re using those keywords to fuel our paid advertising?  And we do the same for all of our clients, too.

So we had someone who was a chiropractor, and it wasn’t just chiropractors near me, it was how to get rid of back pain, how to sit better at my desk that these ads were starting to pop up and they go, You know what, yes, I do need a chiropractor. Yes, I do need help getting my shoulder adjusted. So it’s not only talking about what you do, but what services and success look like in those keywords.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Moving forward, when doctors are starting to realize that they need a side hustle, whether it’s additional services or products that they are recommending to their patients that are in sync with the type of services they provide. Or even if they’re transitioning from insurance, paid medical practices to that where it is, concierge marketing will be so important to let patients know who they are, what they represent, and what they provide.
Moving forward, it’s also going to be important because it no longer means that you could only have clients who are local to you. If you have products, you can be promoting those products to anybody, you know, across any geographical border.

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. And that’s the beauty of PPC advertising or paid advertising. You can expand that region. You can use those product names. So if someone is searching for a product like that, you pop up on Google because you want to be the first one on you want to be on the first page of Google.

I think someone on your previous podcast said the same thing. There’s no sense being on page 25. And no one’s going to find you. But if you’re on that first page, you have Google’s beautiful Google reviews. People are going to come to you a bit more.

Increase Marketing

Dr. Barbara Hales: Absolutely. Have you noticed that in the last few years, professionals see the need more and more to market themselves?

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. I think COVID changed the landscape of this industry with more and more people doing consults online instead of going into an office and meeting with their health professionals. So people are used to Zoom meetings, and people are used to doing more stuff online in the medical industry. So digital marketing is becoming more and more prevalent in this industry because people are now finding their information online.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Absolutely. How do you discover your core client using your story brand?

Jessica Embree: Tulip media is a story brand certified agency. It’s one of the reasons we were able to get our cost of acquisitions down because we stopped using messaging that didn’t work. And we started using messaging that resonated with our core customers. So we do an exercise every quarter, saying, What problems are we providing to them? What are the solutions? What does success look like for our clients? Is it getting the cost of acquisition down for our clients? Is it getting them more leads or in the medical field? Is it helping people have less pain? Is it getting them healthier, returning to their life without waking up with sore shoulders or backs, or what have you?

Dr. Barbara Hales: You said that tulip is certified; who is the one that certifies tulip?

Jessica Embree: So story brand, the name comes from Donald Miller. If anybody’s read building a storied brand, Donald Miller started a program that allows agencies or people to get certified in this methodology. And we took the plunge back in 2020. Because we realized this works for us, we want to provide this service to other clients. And we’ve had clients not only in the medical industry but the insurance industry has seen great results just changing their messaging on their site so they can convert faster.

Dr. Barbara Hales: That’s great. So for a person who is not marketing at all or is just venturing out, putting their toe in the water, what two helpful tips would you give them that they could implement immediately?

Jessica Embree: Get your storefront ready is number one. So make sure your website is ready to have visitors. And if your storefront is not ready, then there’s no sense in doing paid advertising or blogging for organic growth, so get your storefront and messaging ready on your website or Facebook page. If you have a Facebook page, that’s perfectly fine.
The other part of that is to get Google reviews. Especially in this industry, word of mouth and reviews are very important. So make sure you have good Google reviews, ask your clients for referrals, and ask your clients for reviews. That way, when people go on your site, they can be reassured that, yes, this is a reasonable practice. This is who I need to go to; they know what they’re doing.

Dr. Barbara Hales: How does a Google review differ from the review that a doctor might get on various rating sites or Yelp?

Jessica Embree: You’d have to be on Yelp, Reviews like Yelp but the nice part of Google reviews is if I type in practice near a chiropractor near me or a physiotherapist near me, a bunch of different companies will pop up, but so will their Google review. So it’s right there in front of them. That’s why Google My Business is such a powerful tool because it is integrated with Google when doing those searches.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Do you strongly advise businesses to register with the Google business site regardless of whether they’re medical or not?

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. It’s a great way to start, get that credibility, get that word out about your business, and people love reading testimonials, regardless of your industry.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Absolutely, that works well. Do you have a suggestion as to which of any automatic sites to acquire ratings from satisfied clients?

Jessica Embree: The nice thing about Google My Business is you can give that link right to your customers. So maybe after every time a customer visits you, you send an email saying, Thanks for visiting us, please leave us a review. And you can put that Google link right in there. So if you want to have if you have an automated email system, it’s just a matter of putting that Google review link right in it.

Dr. Barbara Hales: And which automated email system do you like best?

Jessica Embree: I like MailChimp, but I know medical practices use other payment methods in their system. So whatever system you’re using for payments, etc., you can use that. Just put that link in that payment email.

Reach Jessica

Dr. Barbara Hales: It makes a lot of sense. So for those who have been hearing you today, and they say, I would like to hear more from Jessica, I would like to see what she has to say for me. How did they get in touch with you?

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. If people are interested in learning more, they can go to TM dot media, and Forward slash double sales. And this is a landing page for our best-selling book that you mentioned. This is where they can get a free chapter, buy our book, or if they want to talk to me for free, they can do that and book a call using our Calendly link.

Dr. Barbara Hales: So you are providing the possibility of getting a chapter in your forthcoming book?

Jessica Embree: Absolutely. It was released last year, and it was a best-seller called Double sales, zero salespeople. It’s Tulip media’s journey from how we went from that 40,000 costs of acquisition to 4000. And we recommend to all businesses how they can do the same thing for their business.

Dr. Barbara Hales: That’s great. So you have ongoing books, depending upon practices that say, I’d like a chapter.

Jessica Embree: We have a free chapter that anybody can download on that page.

Dr. Barbara Hales: We enjoyed listening to your talk today. For those people just tuning in, we’ve been speaking with Jessica Embree, who is a tulip media member. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. You’ve been listening to Marketing Tips for Doctors. Until next time!