EPISODE 499: Return on Ad Spend with Michael Woll
Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Mastery Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry.
Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] All right, Michael, welcome to the show today. Excited to dive into Meta Ads. Uh, and before we get a little bit of your backstory, I, I just wanna frame this episode for, for folks. Uh, you know, everybody's on a different continuum as it relates to ads and what, what, uh, Facebook ads are, Meta ads, Instagram ads.
But we're just gonna probably go with Meta, Meta ads. Uh, that's gonna encompass Instagram and Facebook. Uh, so for our audience, just to set the, the tone there, um, you know, I'm, I'm of the age in marketing where I remember, uh, the Wild West of, of Facebook ads before it was even really Instagram ads. And, uh, things have changed over the 10 to 12, 15 years, but it can still be very, very effective.
It just looks differently. So, uh, with all that, Michael, introduce yourself, uh, where you're located and some of that, and we'll dive into it
Michael Woll: Awesome. Yeah. So thanks for having me on, Kevin. My, my name's Michael Woll. I [00:01:00] am the co-owner of Posted Social, which is just a full service digital marketing company for, uh, local service businesses.
And yeah, I'm here to talk about meta ads. It's something that I've been doing myself for over half a decade now. Um, I didn't have any formal training in meta ads. I don't even know if that exists. Uh, I just started running it for businesses, uh, across industries too. So not just- Mm-hmm ... chiropractors. We run, we run it for all types of different businesses, which I think is actually an advantage 'cause you get to see, you get to see why things work.
You don't just memorize that certain things work for this type of business, you see why. Uh, and, and that's really the approach we take. So - I'm really excited to get into that because I think ads in general, but meta ads specifically, are something that a lot of people are kind of scared of in a sense.
Mm-hmm. They feel, uh, very scary and, and unknowable. And I think there is a very easy first principles approach you can take to [00:02:00] it that makes it easy to understand, and something that you can actually, um, make work for your business, which is a huge unlock for anyone, so.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah, you mentioned formal training and, uh, I wonder, I, like, uh, I'm not formally trained in marketing.
Uh, I mean, I, I definitely have taken courses. I went to the Content Marketing Institute. I've done a bunch of things outside of that, but I'd, I'd love to just pop in a local university's marketing degree program and, and- ... see what they're learning, you know? Like, are they just still learning marketing theory and certain things like that?
Are they actually diving into, like, Google Ads and social media ads or, you know, I, I would be fascinated by that.
Michael Woll: Yeah, I would too, because there is certainly a technical component to all this. There- Yeah ... there is a playbook that there's certain things you need to do, and if you aren't configuring things properly, you aren't- you're missing things, that's gonna affect you.
But in my opinion, and this may rub some people the wrong way, I feel like you can learn what you need to learn [00:03:00] about marketing from a few books-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: maybe a few YouTube videos, and then just doing it.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Woll: Failing
Dr. Kevin Christie: a lot.
Michael Woll: Yeah, and especially now, everything changes so quickly that if you just have a good infrastructure for testing things and you're willing to make mistakes, that's gonna help you way more than, in my opinion- Yeah
formal education.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Well, that's true. I mean, I, I used my clinic over the years as kind of the test lab of stuff that would work and not work, and that's ultimately how we, we started MCM. Um, but I wanna, I wanna dive in. Uh, we connected through Tony Kotakis, and as a reference, um- You c-, uh, our audience can go back to episode 371.
That was from May 16th, 2024, where I interviewed Tony, and it's just a really good story of how he's been building and investing in his brand and his clinic. Uh, he was, um... In, in that episode he talks about, like, he was one of our early c- coaching clients. We coached for a couple years there, and then he kinda graduated from that, and now he's in our East Mastermind, and [00:04:00] he connected, uh, you and us to- together, and you've really helped him grow, uh, which has been awesome.
And then you were kind enough to do a webinar for our Mastermind group, which was, was really impactful, and, and then that's when I wanted to have you on the show to, to dis- discuss some of that. So, um, you guys are based out of St. Louis, right? And you've been working with Tony for, for quite a few years now.
Michael Woll: Yes. Yeah, we're, we're probably 20 minutes away from his practice, and- Mm-hmm ... Tony, I mean, he's awesome. He's like a unicorn guy, uh-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah, for sure.
Michael Woll: He, he loves what he does, and he's great at it. I met him, I mean, I've known him for quite a long time. I worked with him, actually, when I was an athlete before I got into, to business at all.
And then when I started wanting to get into marketing, I reached out to him and was like, "Hey man, if you're willing to just pay for the ads, like, I'll work for you. You don't have to pay me anything. I just wanna test all this stuff out." And he was super excited, so one, one [00:05:00] year I was hurt, so I wasn't playing, and so I literally just spent like eight months every day in his clinic with him building all this stuff out, experimenting, testing tons of stuff.
And yeah, it's been awesome. So he was the first person I ever worked with. I learned a lot. We learned a lot together, and now what we built back then is a major driver for their business now. Mm-hmm. And they- Yeah, it, it is- ... they're obviously much bigger.
Dr. Kevin Christie: It's been cool to see how big they've grown. It's been cool to see how big your company has grown with helping people out, and it's been really cool.
And so I wanna, I wanna dive into it. One of the things you spoke to our group about was kind of the, the five stages o- of all this, right? And, and, you know, 'cause a lot of times, uh, chiropractors or just businesses in general will say, you know, "Ads don't work for me," and, um, you know, they, they, they have a lot of different issues with that.
They're reluctant to spend money. Uh, I wanna actually, uh, interject real quick here before we dive into that. I actually just, um, I wanted to set the tone on this [00:06:00] too because, uh, you know, the ads don't work thing, and then people get a little sensitive about the money they have to spend on ads and stuff.
And I actually just interviewed Greg Crabtree again a couple days ago before you and I interviewed this, so, and that episode will actually come out right before yours does. And so I recommend the audience listen to that one again. And, and he is, like, dead set that a business has to spend 10 to 12% on effective marketing, and that, you know, marketing spend is everything from, yeah, it m- it might be your Mailchimp, uh, subscription.
It might be, uh, networking in the community and MD launches. It, it, it definitely could be content marketing, ads, Google ads, uh, the whole website stuff, SEO. I mean, it goes on, but he's just like, businesses have to understand that you have to spend money on marketing, and when you're not getting enough of the market share, you're, you're going to struggle.
And so this is my kind of long preamble on, on that question of, like, ads don't [00:07:00] work, and I think a lot of times they, they don't realize there's really, like, five- areas where it could go wrong, right? Uh, so- Yeah ... can you talk to that a little bit?
Michael Woll: 100%, yeah. And before I get into that, I will just say on the more holistic marketing approach- Mm-hmm
I agree. I mean, I think whatever that percentage is for your business, I think it's something that can change depending on how important growth is for you. If you're trying to grow very quickly, well, you might wanna allocate more of your, of your annual revenue towards marketing. Mm-hmm. Um, and vice versa.
For us, there's, there's really, like, two main types, uh, of marketing, and we're talking about paid media, which is, you know, you put money in and you hope to get leads out. It's oftentimes, like, the quickest ROI. It's very easy to track, but it also is one of the riskier ones because-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm
Michael Woll: You know, if it doesn't work, you just burn cash, and you don't really get downstream benefits from it.
So [00:08:00] paid media is very important, and a lot of people are scared of it because it is somewhat costly. I will say that on the organic side, which is websites and organic socials and content marketing, all that kind of stuff, those are, like, longer tail returns where it takes a bit more time. But I would recommend people focus there first because it makes all the paid media more effective.
Um, and that's something we can talk about later on how exactly
Dr. Kevin Christie: that happens- Well, uh, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're speaking my language. Um, you know, I... Our whole thing with MCM has been content marketing and, and using, uh, a lot of the digital vehicles to get it out there, and doing it consistently.
And, you know, whether that's getting videos on YouTube and posting on Instagram with Reels or Meta or Facebook, and then obviously even- Mm ... posting on Google Business Profile and putting, uh, you know, blogs and services pages on your website, and making your website a content platform. I mean, that's just exactly what we talk about, and you...
I always go back to, like, [00:09:00] what Gary Vee would talk about, is you gotta consider your s- your company a media company, right? So yeah, you're a, a chiropractic clinic, but you should also be a media company where you're a leading educator in the community. And, and I'm- Mm-hmm ... so I'm glad you said that. That's kinda like the, the beginning foundations of all this, right?
Michael Woll: Yeah. You're, you're a great example of it, and you do a great job, and I think you've seen how... We were just talking earlier, you've seen how that's benefited your business.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yep.
Michael Woll: And it's not... You don't do it necessarily to try to sell people stuff, but- Mm ... through the organic content, they just understand and see that you are an authority in this industry.
Mm-hmm. And they naturally lean towards you. I think for chiropractors specifically, and I'll answer the question about the paid media in a sec, but chiropractors specifically, any doctor, like, there is a certain trust bar you have to meet before- Yeah ... someone is willing to come and do business with you.
It's just the reality of, of business in, in the healthcare field. And I think organic media, um, [00:10:00] especially like organic social media, is the best way to build that authority. But we, we do, at Posted, we make an analogy, your organic marketing is kinda like, uh, wearing a set of armor-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: that's made up of, like, your organic social media, your website, your Google Business Profile, all these things, and one chink in the armor leaves you, leaves you exposed.
And so you really wanna have your website, business profile, organic social medias, all that needs to be somewhat tight and cohesive, so no matter where someone finds you online, they get the same feeling across the board, and that feeling ultimately should be, "These guys are legit. I trust them. These are people who I, I wanna go see."
So yeah, that's a little aside on, on the organic- Mm ... marketing side of things, but it is super important Um, on the, the paid media side, specifically meta ads, yeah, so we, we make an analogy for meta ads that it's like filling- trying to fill a bucket up full of water. And every time you fill the bucket full, you get a new customer.
And when [00:11:00] you spend money on ads, you're basically paying for the water to come into the bucket. And usually what happens is when you start running ads, there's a lot of holes. Mm-hmm. And so you might get a lot of leads, but no one actually shows up. People might start showing up, but none of them buy anything.
And so what meta ads r- does, and, and really any paid media, is it forces water into your bucket and exposes issues really in your sales process- Yeah ... that if you tighten up, they can become a, a huge, huge new patient driver and, and revenue source for the business.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yep. Yeah, and it's fascinating because, um, I'm gonna just gonna kinda go down what your five stages were that you, you taught us, which is, yeah, you're gonna get your impressions.
Um, and I'm gonna have you kinda speak to each, uh, in a second here. Yeah. And then you're gonna have your leads that actually, uh, s- raise their hand. And then you're gonna have your bookings, like, okay, they scheduled, uh, an exam. And then you're gonna have the ones, the fourth is they're gonna show up. [00:12:00] And then fifth, yeah, there's that sales component.
Even if you're an in-network provider and coming in, like, there's... You, you have to elegantly and professionally sell them on maybe a treatment plan of two times a week for four weeks or something, and they have to be bought in on that- Yeah ... uh, or they, or they'll drop off. And so we'll see that. And a lot of times what happens is, um, there's, like you said, there's a chink in the armor on, on one of these.
But let's, let's kinda dive in from the impressions and, and talk about that a little bit, and then we'll go down that, that funnel.
Michael Woll: Yeah. So the, the top stage, like you said, is impressions. This is just a metric that indicates how many times your ad actually shows up. Mm-hmm. So anytime you scroll on Instagram or Facebook and an ad shows up, that's being counted as an impression.
And this is the first level we look at because your cost to get impressions, it's measured through, uh, cost per mil or abbreviated CPM. Mm-hmm. Just how much it costs you to get 1,000 [00:13:00] impressions. That is, for all intents and purposes, how much it costs you to advertise. Yeah. And this is something that if you do a good job on organic media, organic social media, it makes a huge difference.
Really great companies have cheaper CPM generally, and if you just set up a brand new account and you start running ads, it's gonna cost you a lot more. And, um, yeah, this is one area that if you can get this lower, it improves the efficiency of the entire rest of the funnel. So impressions just counts how many times your ad actually shows up in front of people.
If you... The goal is to get that cost as low as humanly possible because it makes everything else run smoother. Yeah. So in the bucket analogy, it, it would essentially be the utility cost of water itself filling up the bucket.
Dr. Kevin Christie: That, that makes a lot of sense. And so we, we gotta get that going, and obviously you mentioned, uh, we wanna look at that number.
And that's where, like, [00:14:00] having someone like yourself look at it and say, "Yeah, we're doing really well with this, uh, cost... You know, CPM, or we're not." And we gotta- Yeah ... look into why that's happening and adjust and, and split test and all those fun things that a chiropractor may not wanna, wanna do, right? Um, so, uh- Yeah.
So, like, people get the impressions. Now, I guess you could have a situation where your CPM is good and you're getting the impressions, but then you look and you say, "Well, for the amount of CPMs we're getting, I don't feel like we're getting enough leads." Uh, th- that happens, I, I imagine. And so would that be like, okay, we gotta work on the, the copy of this ad or the video of this ad or the audience of this ad?
Like, what's, what's the story around that?
Michael Woll: 100%. Yeah. So as we move down funnel here, uh, we're basically optimizing for the conversion rate between every stage. And so if you, if you have a good CPM, that's usually $30 or lower- Okay ... I, I [00:15:00] don't think you really need to worry about it. And as soon as you establish that, well, now the, the next constraint you have to worry about is, okay, a lot of people are seeing the ads.
How do we get more of them to become a lead? Mm-hmm. And a lead is simply someone who gives you their contact information. So for a lot of chiropractors, you're probably pushing people to a landing page or just a native meta lead form that collects- Mm ... their name, email, phone, uh, maybe a few other things.
So yes, when, when you're trying to get more impressions to turn into leads, there's a lot of things that you can, you can do to change that. The biggest one is improving the offer on the ad. It's like- Mm ... okay, if, you know, if we give someone or we make something sound really awesome, more people naturally are going to want that thing, and that, that is completely independent of how well, how good it looks or how good the copy is or the landing page or anything like that.
So we tend to focus a lot on the offer. What are we actually showing to people? [00:16:00] Once you have that locked in, then there's, there's a ton of levers you can pull to get more leads in the door. Usually just to, like, really get on the, the ground level with this- If you wanted maximum leads, all you would do is set up a meta lead form, and you'd ask for their name, phone, and email, and that's it.
You'll get a ton of people in the door. Um, now all that's gonna do, Kevin, is, like, push the constraint to the next stage in the funnel, so you'll have to deal with that later on. Mm-hmm. But basically at each of these levels, you can, you can raise or lower the barrier to get to the next one. And so the goal is figuring out how high we need to raise the barrier at each stage to get the highest quantity of, of high quality people-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm
Michael Woll: um, without having to waste a ton of time on, on low quality people. Yeah. Yeah. Now, and leads is one of the big areas you start to see that.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. That, that's where the, it really gets fascinating from, like, a strategy standpoint of, yeah, we [00:17:00] want- Quantity of leads, but the leads to be of qual- of a certain quality, and that can be an inverse relationship if you're not careful.
And so we ... Yeah, and you mentioned, like, Meta has the leads form or you could do a landing page on, you know, have a, a contact form on a landing page. Another strategy I, I see people do on landing pages is, is, is you could have a unique phone number on that landing page that when they call it, it still goes to your office, but at least it's tracked and say, "Yeah, that-
Michael Woll: Yeah
Dr. Kevin Christie: this, these people called our office from this landing page," which the only way they got to that landing page was from that, from a Meta ad, right? So that's how you can decipher out that.
Michael Woll: Yeah. A- and just to give people a couple-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: different tactics that they could use themselves. So again, the, the way to get the highest quantity of leads overall is going to be a native Meta lead form that just asks for contact information.
Yeah. It'll take someone literally, like, two seconds to submit that, and that will get you the highest quantity of people. Now, moving to a landing page, [00:18:00] what's gonna happen is you're gonna start to see lead costs. Generally, they rise if you move off platform. So you'll have less overall people coming in, but they will be generally of higher quality overall.
Mm-hmm. And one thing I would just watch if you move to a l- a landing page is the drop-off from people who click to go to the page and those who actually wait for the page to load. Um, these are different metrics that you can look at inside of Meta. We've moved clients away from landing pages because they took too long to load, and we would see, like, 60, 70% drop-off rates, um- Gotcha
from clicking the link to actually waiting for the page to come in.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Perfect. And then so there's- Yeah ... then there's a dollar ... So on the leads part, there's a, a dollar amount per lead that you look at as well, correct?
Michael Woll: Yeah. Yep. So the main metric you're gonna be looking at here is cost per lead, which just measures the efficiency with which you're able to generate leads.
Mm-hmm. And, um, usually when we are working with a, a client, we'll have a [00:19:00] max cost per lead that we can afford to spend. Yep. And so again, the goal is, like, if, if the max CPL, cost per lead, is $30- Mm-hmm ... well, we'll find out how close can we get to $30, uh, or actually how, how much lower can we get from $30 while maintaining a high percentage of quality leads.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Gotcha.
Michael Woll: And different businesses will have different desires. Some-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: would rather take 100 swings and get eight hits. Some would rather take eight swings and get seven hits. It really just depends. Mm-hmm. Um, so this stage, going from impressions to leads, you can make- You can have such a different variety of barrier to entry here to r- to really control how many people you're getting.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. No, that's, that's fascinating. And so then obviously the lead raises their hand, they fill out the form, um, whatever, and then you gotta, you go with the booking part. And-
Michael Woll: Yeah ...
Dr. Kevin Christie: there, I wanna mention one thing, and then I'll let [00:20:00] you take over on the booking side. But, um, if you are a in-network with every insurance practice versus a cash practice non in-network with any insurance, uh, that inherently could probably, I shouldn't say probably, inherently will, uh, lead to maybe less bookings than, you know, if, if you're out of network versus in-network.
Because like, uh, you know, you, you'll say you call that person that filled out the form, and w- some of them are gonna have the question, "Are you in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield?" And when you say yes, great. When you say no, that they might have a little bit of a, a snag there. And so then you gotta make sure that whoever, and I'm gonna let you take over here in a second, whoever is handling what's called, let's call it the booking phase, is well-trained in all that.
And so, uh, dive into the booking phase, things we're looking for, things we're monitoring.
Michael Woll: 100%. So yeah, you, you hit it right on the head. So now we have leads. We have [00:21:00] a lot of people who gave us their information. The next stage is how efficiently can we convert these leads into bookings? So the main metric that we're going to use at this point is the lead to booking percentage.
So just the percentage of leads who end up booking an appointment. A couple of the main things you can do here to really improve this number, a- and this is one that- This is where a lot of campaigns die, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. I talk to a lot of business owners who say what you said at the beginning of this, which is, you know, "Meta ads don't work for my business."
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: And every time I hear it, it, it hurts my soul a bit because obviously they work for... They can work for any business.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: And a lot of, a lot of people have experiences where they get a ton of leads- Mm-hmm ... a very high quantity of leads, and, uh, you know, they just, none of them actually convert into patients.
And that is disheartening. Yeah. I've had that situation myself. You call 100 people, literally none of them [00:22:00] answer. You get yelled at. People are like, "Why are you talking to me?" And it can make you think that, uh, the campaign just won't work for you. And so this is the stage that we usually have to spend the most amount of time with businesses- Yeah
and really dial it in. So right off the bat, a few things anyone can do to really make a huge improvement here, the first by far is what we call speed to lead. It's just- Mm-hmm ... the speed with which you contact a lead after they opt in. Um, contacting can be across any channel, so you can call them, you can text them, email, whatever you wanna do there.
We generally recommend calling specifically for chiropractic clinics.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: Just good to get, get on the phone with someone. It builds a lot of trust that you can't do over text. Mm-hmm. So if you can call someone within five minutes of them submitting their form, uh, you have a much, much higher chance of getting that person to actually show up.
The, the numbers there are pretty dramatic. It's like you, you're literally like eight times more [00:23:00] likely to get them to show up than if you waited a day. So- Mm-hmm ... everyone can do this part, which is just call them as soon as they come in. Yeah. That's gonna be the biggest thing. The other super easy and simple hack you can do when it comes to calling is what we call double dialing.
Mm-hmm. So the, the lead comes in, you call them, they don't answer, um, wait for it to ring about three times, hang up, and call right back. What this is gonna do is- It's going to break through any sort of like do not disturbs, which I literally have my phone on do not disturb all day just 'cause I don't wanna get distracted by it.
Um, so if you call back the second time, it shows the person that you are actually intentionally calling them. Mm-hmm. And the, the rate with which people pick up on the second call is four times higher than when they pick- than the rate that they pick up on the
Dr. Kevin Christie: phone- That's- ... first call, so. That's fascinating.
Uh, that's, that's good. Um- Yeah ... perfect. And then obviously that, you know, that person needs to be [00:24:00] trained in getting them, uh, qu- you know, answers questions, things like that. You know, I know that- Yeah ... um, when we were in Bar Harbor, Maine for our mastermind, we had the Scheduling Institute come in and talk to us about sales, which we'll get to here on this show in a second.
Uh, but a big part of what the Scheduling Institute does is, is a, is a lot of phone answering and phone training, and like, they really hit it hard. And I know Tony ended up working w- with bringing them in to train some of his team on that because, um, he's doing well on, on, on all these things, but wants to get even better on that, on that, uh, phone conversation part of it.
And I know it's can be very important, uh, when training a front desk or whoever's calling the leads.
Michael Woll: Yeah, a- a- and really, I mean, the, the basic with any sort of sales is you just wanna identify what their pain point is-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: and show them that you guys have the highest likelihood of helping them solve it.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: Um, a- and so I would certainly recommend you have a basic script. Different clinics and businesses will go about it different [00:25:00] ways. Yeah. Some businesses will have one person who handles all the calling and lead management. Mm-hmm. Some, like Tony's, for example, everyone on their team contributes. Yeah.
And so when leads come in, anyone on the team can call them, and so they obviously have a script- Mm-hmm ... so that there's a somewhat consistent process going on there. Yeah. But really when it comes to this part of the funnel, again, this is probably the trickiest part.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.
Michael Woll: You wanna essentially try to cut down the time between when a lead comes in and when they book their appointment.
That is, like, what all this is trying to do. So calling them quickly, making sure you're following up with them after you call them if, if they don't answer. Mm-hmm. Just sending a text, sending an email. We like to send a couple over the first three days, just while we're, we're, while we're front of mind.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.
Michael Woll: And the other thing you can do as well is once they submit the form, you can redirect them to book themselves. Mm-hmm. So if you can call them quickly, you follow up with them multiple times throughout the first three [00:26:00] days, and you redirect them after they submit their form to book, you will do probably the 80/20 of this stage, and I think you'll have a lot more success getting these leads to actually-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah
Michael Woll: uh, book appointments.
Dr. Kevin Christie: What's the strategy when a lead comes in at, like, you know, 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night? Is that a rebooking, or do you just call the next morning?
Michael Woll: Yeah, yeah, great question. So when they come in, for our clients, we'll have an automated text that goes out. It'll, it'll say, uh, off the bat, "This is an automated text"- Mm-hmm
because people now just, they see through it if you try to act like it's real, and- Yeah ... no one's obviously texting you at 11:00 PM. So-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: they'll say, "Hey, this is an automated text from so and so. Just wanted to let you know we got your form. A member of our team will be reaching out in the morning."
Yeah. You know, "Talk to you soon." And that's it. And then- Love it ... uh, then yeah, next morning you come in, shoot them a call. If they don't answer, just send them a text and be like, "Hey, just saw you came in last night. When do you have a minute to talk?"
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yep, yep.
Michael Woll: Pretty simple. Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Christie: So to refresh, um, yeah, w- [00:27:00] we gotta look at the impressions.
We gotta make sure that that's working, and, and you can look at that and see if it is. If that's going well, you go to the next one, and you look at the leads. Like, okay, we're doing good with cost per leads. All that's going well. You go to the third, bookings. That's where a big time, uh, issue happens. And so a person could be theoretically running great ads that are getting great impressions and great leads and then failing miserably here, and then saying ads don't work.
Uh, so we gotta lock in that, that third part there in the bookings. And so say we do. We get them, we get them to show up to the office. That's the fourth thing, 'cause there are gonna be people that book But don't show up. Um, this is where I'm always fascinated with, uh, Joey Coleman's work on Never Lose a Customer Again, and he has the eight phases and, and one of those phases is that kind of buyer's remorse period he talks about.
And so what are you doing from a patient experience [00:28:00] standpoint to where they have booked the new patient exam but they haven't come in yet, right? So they're, they're booked out a couple days in advance, and there's a couple days for them to either lose the desire to come in or, or whatever. What are you doing to try to offset that?
And we, we coach a lot of our clients on things you can do elegantly, uh, there. Um, but let's have you speak to the, the person does show up or, you know, you know, some strategies between booking and shows and then that showing, uh, stage.
Michael Woll: Yeah. Yeah, so this is a super important one, and frankly, most of the businesses we work with, this isn't generally a massive constraint.
And, um, I'll get into some strategies that we have used to make improvements here. But if you just think about the stages that you just went back through, if you go back to that bucket analogy, um, as the water's coming into the bucket, the holes in that bucket are going up, and up, and [00:29:00] up. Mm-hmm. So the first hole is going to be getting impressions to leads.
The next hole is gonna be getting leads to bookings. And then finally, th- this third hole will be getting these bookings to actually show up. And so I'm happy we tackled each of these stages in this way because really you can't... it's hard to resolve the fourth hole if you have- Yeah ... a hole right in the bottom of the bucket.
So you really do have to start from the top and work your way down. By the time we get here, you're getting people to book, uh, you're calling them super quickly, they opt in, you get them on the, on the books immediately. Again, one of the biggest things you can do at this stage now, so they booked, you're trying to get them to show up, is shrink the gap.
Mm-hmm. So we tell, we tell our clients not to allow anyone to book out more than 10 days from when they came in. Um, so- The sooner, the better. The sooner, the better 100%. 100%. Yeah. And people, it's not even that they don't wanna come in, it's just stuff comes up- Yeah ... they forget about it, whatever. They start feeling better.
100%. When they come [00:30:00] in, that is when you have the highest likelihood of getting that person to, to actually show up and stay as a customer. Yeah. So you wanna shrink the gap as much as possible from when you talk to them to when they're actually coming in. The other thing, and this is a pretty basic one, you obviously wanna send a confirmation message- Mm-hmm
a couple follow-ups. If you can send, like, a calendar invitation, that helps. Just to make sure they don't forget. People are super busy and don't have s- uh, a lot of attention span nowadays, so you wanna make sure you're staying front of mind. And then the third strategy is by adding, like, a sweetener. So basically raising the stakes or the anticipation for the appointment.
So some ways we've seen this, on the stakes side of things, you can charge, you can collect a credit card when you book them and charge, like, a cancellation fee or a late fee- Yeah ... or, you know, a no-show fee. I know a lot
Dr. Kevin Christie: of clinics doing that now, and doing it successfully.
Michael Woll: Yep. And, and that's just one of the ways.
Obviously, if you do that, you're gonna have less people book, [00:31:00] but you'll have a much higher of them show up. So there's a lot of strategies you can implement to, again, shift- Where the biggest drop-offs are in this, in this kind of funnel. But another way you can do it that will not affect your booking percentage at all and will just lead to higher amounts of people showing up is you can offer them, like, a free shirt or something when they come in.
And so the strategy here would be, you know, the day before the appointment you just say, "Hey, this is, you know, Doctor- Dr. Christie. Super excited to meet you tomorrow. Just so I know, what- what size shirt are you?" Mm-hmm. "Can't wait to, can't wait to meet you." And now this person, like, it just raises the anticipation for that a little bit more.
We've seen that make a huge difference when people have- Yeah ... issues with show rates.
Dr. Kevin Christie: And that kind of goes back to some of Joey Coleman's strategies is- is- is some elegant ways to make them feel like, "Yeah, I, you know what? I made the right decision by scheduling that appointment. Uh, I'm gonna make sure I get to that."
And, uh- Yeah ... yeah. That's what's... I, like, just contextually I [00:32:00] love, I love this and, and overlaying with some of the other things that we've taught at MCM is just the fact that- This can be a really good pressure test of where you're maybe not f- you know, doing well with it, right? So if you get, for instance, some leads and bookings coming in but you can't get them in in four or five days, like I always talk to chiropractors who are like, they'll say, "I- I've got a lot of new patients and then we can't..."
Almost like a badge of honor. It's like, "I, I can't get anybody scheduled within a week or two weeks." And it's like, well, that's a problem. Like, we gotta solve- Yeah ... that problem. Like, that's- Yeah ... not a badge of honor, frankly. It's like... And, and I'll, I'll dive into it, and they're like, "What if we waved a wand and we hired another associate?
How many new patients do you think you'd be able to schedule that, with that associate?" And they're like- Yeah ... "Oh, 10 a week." And it's like, "Well, there you go." And like, 'cause if you're not getting them in within a period of time, you're losing a lot of them, and that's just lost money that, uh, you gotta, you gotta figure that out.
So this really pressure tests it [00:33:00] if you can't get them scheduled in a period of time. Um, but yeah, so okay, that's the show part. They have to show up, and we wanna prime them to get, to come in. And then that's gonna then lead... Yeah, obviously they come in, and that's gonna be the, the sales component of it.
And again, that's what we brought in the Scheduling Institute to talk about because the sales part definitely is not just when you sit down to go over what their insurance covers and doesn't or what it's gonna cost them or what the treatment plan recommendations are. That's a big part of it, but it's leading all the way up to it, and that was one thing that the Scheduling Institute talked about i- i- is there's a lot of steps into that where they, you know, the patient experience.
How nice is the staff? How nice is the office? How good is the doctor? What's the bedside manner? What's the level of care you're offering? What's your confidence? Uh, you know, like there's a lot to it. Yeah. And then when you actually sit down to go over it, there is a sales component to that, and that's where you probably [00:34:00] see a lot of clinics kind of fail or succeed, correct?
Michael Woll: Yes. Yeah, for sure. And one thing I just wanna really touch on at this point is a lot of people I talk to in, in healthcare fields, so like- Mm-hmm ... orthodontics, chiropractors, PTs, all, all these types of fields, a lot of them have some s- uh, a little bit of a discomfort at first when it comes to selling, and that shows up, that first rears its head on the lead-to-booking side of things because- Mm-hmm
they feel bad about like calling these people or texting them- Yeah ... and they don't wanna bother them. Or when they come in to, to, you know, they show up to the appointment, they feel bad offering them, uh, their services. Mm. Like, they feel bad trying to sell them on something.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: And so this is one of the, the biggest kind of mental barriers we, we tend to run into.
And I think the reframe here before we get into some of the logistics around the sales part of this is- This person has a, a problem that [00:35:00] they reached out- Mm-hmm ... to you for help with. And so in my opinion, and what we, we talk to a lot of our, our businesses about, is you have a moral obligation to do whatever is required to help this person.
If you truly feel you're the best equipped to help them, which I know, you know, most of the people we talk to truly believe that, that's why they built their business, well, then you should do whatever's required to, to help that person. And so that's gonna mean you're gonna have to follow up with them a couple of times, not because they don't
They're not answering you because they don't wanna come in or they hate you. Uh, you know, they just have a lot of stuff going on, and they're not- Yeah ... thinking about it all the time. So you need to follow up with people. You need to, to, and do so happily, not feeling like, "Oh, you know, I don't wanna bother this person."
It's like, no, this person needs your help, so you have an obligation to, to do what's required to help them. And then when they come in too, uh, I think the easiest thing when it comes to sales that you just truly offer people what you think is best for them, and that'll ... Like, it comes [00:36:00] off that way too.
When you make a sale to someone and you offer them something, they can tell if you truly believe in what you're offering them.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: And if you do, then again, you have an obligation to make that offer to that person- Mm-hmm ... because you believe it's gonna help them. So I think that's the biggest, really the biggest roadblock as we move down funnel here, is just people's false beliefs around, um, selling a- a- and moving people down the funnel.
Um- Yeah ... so y- as soon as you get over that, everything else gets a lot easier. So I just wanted to point that out. Um, yeah. 'Cause it, it is something we run into a lot.
Dr. Kevin Christie: It, it, it is, and, and, and sales is part of it, and it can be done very ethically and elegantly and not browbeating and, and not, uh, overselling and not doing anything like that.
And, uh, that would be a whole other topic, but it's definitely something where it's important because if you do well with this, then your cost per new patient on that really gets good, and then you can [00:37:00] start to say, "Yeah, I can spend X amount," which I'll, I'll ask you here in a second. Mm-hmm. "You can spend X amount on ads, and it makes sense because I can show you that I got five new patients and, and such."
And, and what I wanna do is, um, I wanna move on from the sales part and that. Uh, what, what I recommend, and, and I'll at the end le- have you guide them to them, but you have a cool thing that's called a paid ads calculator where they can kinda work backwards from revenue per patient and do all that. So I, I recommend they do that.
The one thing I want you to, to define for us and go over, because a lot of people are gonna hear lifetime value of a patient or a customer, and that's great, but you talked about more of like a 30-day, 90-day, which is a little bit more of an accurate thing you wanna do. Um- Yeah ... so can you, can you dive into that for me?
Michael Woll: 100%, yeah. So for- Most people are probably listening to this. Um, whenever you talk to any marketer, they're gonna talk about [00:38:00] ROAS, return on ad spend, as like the, the golden metric. And, uh, last week when, when I was talking to the MCM group, that was something that we dived into and spent considerable time really demystifying what that- Mm
term actually means. So when you hear return on ad spend, what they're assuming is lifetime value, which is how much a patient's worth to you over their entire lifetime. So that might be- Yeah ... 20 years, and they're comparing that to the cost to acq- the cost of acquiring them. And for businesses like ours or, or like most of the people listening here, what's more important to you is, is cash flow.
Mm. So we can't spend $100 or $1,000 to get someone in the door and wait 20 years to get paid back for that. Um, we need to get paid back much, much more quickly so that we can continue to grow the business, continue to invest in ads, and push everything forward. Mm-hmm. So what we look at is we focus on the cash collected over 30 or 90 days, [00:39:00] is really the benchmark that we're using for, uh, measuring the efficacy of a campaign.
So that means is the new patient comes in, and this is different between cash and, and insurance practices, uh, and really it kind of differs from every clinic compared to others. But we wanna look at if someone comes in, how much are they spending with you in, within 30 days, and how much are they spending with you in 90 days?
Mm-hmm. And our goal is to basically make- Make the campaign such that they spend at least what it costs to got that, to get that customer, they spend that with you within 30 days. Because then what you have there is you're essentially breaking even- Yeah ... on what it co- on getting new patients. And so if I gave you a button that was like, "Hey, every time you press this, you get a free new patient," well, I think a lot of people would do that, and this is a way you can actually build that out.
So yeah, we focus on, for most chiropractors, it's, it's a 30-day cash collected return, and then we [00:40:00] compare that against ad spend. And, you know, whenever we have someone who's at one-to-one, that's fine. It means the campaign's kind of paying for itself. But we have, we have clients who will have a, you know, an eight-to-one-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm
Michael Woll: 30-day return, which you can just imagine that every time you put in a dollar, 30 days later you get eight back. Mm-hmm. Well, that is something that now, like you talked about pressure testing, you can just put so much money into that campaign-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: that first of all, you'll figure out exactly where every single constraint is in your sales process.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.
Michael Woll: Right. And then if you go through and fix that, now this constraint becomes like hiring more doctors. Mm-hmm. And then it's getting a bigger space, and then it's getting another space. And so-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah ...
Michael Woll: um, paid ads, if you do it this way, where we're not just burning money and seeing if people come in, but, like, we're doing a much more methodical step-by-step analysis of what's going on here.
Yeah, yeah. There is, in my opinion, no easier or more predictable way to scale a practice Um, because you essentially get [00:41:00] rid of any sort of acquisition costs around new patients-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: which means you can get a ton of new patients for basically free. Um, which obviously helps- I'd say- ... any sort of practice
Dr. Kevin Christie: that's good. No, and it's a good way of putting it 'cause a lot of chiropractors will hang all their hat on is like, "I don't need to spend money on marketing because I g- I'm a referral-based practice," which is great, but that usually limits itself to one doctor, and it can be hard to have a second doctor, and that second doctor make a really good living.
Uh, so then if you can do something like this, it's almost like, uh, free marketing, which is great. And, you know, part of why I wanted to have you on, 'cause we could've spent an hour talking about ad creative and, and all that stuff, but- Yeah ... I wanted people to understand that, uh, creating the ad is just one part of it.
It's more to it, and you guys, uh, uh, at Posted Social, I can attest you do really good on the creative side, so that's good. And maybe we'll have you on another time to talk about that. But I wanted to have you on because, like, I needed people to understand, like, there's more to this than just what [00:42:00] the ad looks like or how it's delivered.
There's stages to this, and you have to have that, um, foundation there. But, uh, one last question. Let's just say the chiropractor's in a moderate-sized town or city, right? They're not in New York City. Yeah. They're not in Boca Raton, Florida. They're, they're in a normal area. What's kind of the minimum ad spend that they need to really consider starting with and then growing, just to, you know, to actually start to get a little bit of return on that spend, uh, in that first 30 to 90 days?
Michael Woll: There's a calculation that we use that I'll just walk through at a high level, and then I'll give you just, like, some example numbers- General, yeah ... that you could try. Because it is gonna change. Mm-hmm. Different environments, different locations in the US, beyond the US, depending on how many people are there, depending on how many people there use the meta platforms or within the age range you're looking at, it's gonna change.
So we would say you definitely need to spend enough that you're meeting your CPM metric [00:43:00] every day. Mm. So what that means is if our CPM, our cost to get 1,000 impressions, is $30-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm ...
Michael Woll: we need to spend at least $30 a day. Gotcha. Perfect. If it's $60, we need to spend at least 60.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.
Michael Woll: And that's just because if you're getting less than 1,000 impressions a day, you are just not gonna have a ton of people flowing through.
Mm. And so, um, it is one of those things. Now, frankly- I would say you wanna spend, like, twice your CPM value- Yeah ... because you really wanna just get a lot of influx of, of people flowing through. Mm-hmm. Once you have people flow through, the whole thing gets better on the meta side on its own. Yeah. Because it'll figure out what types of people react to the ads, who's coming through, and all that kind of stuff.
But-
Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm ...
Michael Woll: I would say as a starting point, figure out what your CPM is. It's usually between $30 and $60. So when we bring on clients, we recommend they start no lower than 50 or $60 a day.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Perfect. Awesome.
Michael Woll: Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Um, thank you. All right, so, so [00:44:00] lastly, how could they reach out to you, uh, find out more, have a conversation with you, and, and how this could be a potential fit for their practice?
Michael Woll: Yeah, so the first thing I'd recommend everyone to do, um, whether or not you wanna work with us at all, is I would go to our website, posted-dash social.com. And under the resources tab, you'll see the paid ads calculator that, that Kevin was talking about. This will allow you to plug in real numbers for your business and just see what's possible for your ad campaign.
Um, it'll also show you how much you can afford to spend for leads. So- Mm-hmm ... go there, plug in the numbers. I tend to start at the bottom and make my way back up. It's laid out like the funnel is, so if you start at the bottom, you can put in, like, your customer values and then work your way up from there.
So I would do that first- Mm-hmm ... to see how much you need, how much you can spend to get leads. And then if you're wanting to really invest in paid ads, you're trying to scale your practice, and you're willing to spend at least $2,000 a month in ads- [00:45:00] Mm ... uh, in ad spend, at that point I would recommend potentially reaching out to us, and we can walk you through how we'd go about building that out.
Dr. Kevin Christie: Perfect. Love it. Mike, this has been great. Um, thank you so much for the information and for the resources. I know you and I will be talking a lot more, and, uh, we'll have to have you on for a part two.
Michael Woll: All right. Thanks, Kevin.