Articles

As a kid, I never understood “old people” when they talked about how time flies.

But since turning 40 (gasp!) this year, and having a packed house of 4 active, amazing children, I’m definitely starting to get it.

It makes logical sense if you think about our experience of “time” as relative.

Meaning when you’re 5 years old, a year is 20% of your entire existence. But when you’re 40, a year is just 2.5% of your life. (And gets less as every year passes)

“Time” is a funny thing that gets a bad rap in sales/marketing. You’ll hear things like…

“People have a shorter attention span than goldfish.”

“No one reads long amounts of content. It has to be SHORT!”

“No one reads copy at ALL. They ONLY read the headlines…”

And while I have no clue how scientists can draw an accurate comparison between a human’s “attention span” (whatever that even means) and a goldfish’s, I know from experience that “keep it short” is not a tried-and-true requirement in marketing or sales (and can actually hurt you).

Take this email for example. You’ve read this far. You’ll probably read the rest. You’ve read longer messages I’ve sent. And you’ll probably read future messages that hit your inbox.

Why did you take the time to do it? Because I definitely don’t keep my messages short.

You took the time in part because the information I provide has proven useful to you. And in part because it’s somewhat entertaining.

My most profitable word, and a concept that can be highly beneficial to your practice as we move through the new year – “Infotainment.”

I did not coin this term. But I have espoused it to grow my business. And it’s time more practices embraced infotainment as a way to court and convert new patients.

​

Information is key to helping your patients make the right decision. Uninformed patients may choose a sub-par provider, or choose not to move forward with a life-changing procedure at all.

You have good information to share. Top docs, great technology, produce amazing results, customized approach for your patients, the whole bag.

The challenge with information is that it needs nice wrapping. And I’m not just talking about pretty design. (Heck you read my emails and the most “design” you ever get is a photo of my kids or a meme if I’m feeling feisty).

Tone, energy, words, angles, hooks, analogies. This is what I mean by “wrapping.”

This is where the entertainment part comes in. Information wrapped in entertainment gets consumed, engaged with, acknowledged, adopted and influential.

Because you must capture attention before you deliver information. And that’s what infotainment does.

While the prospect of chocolate covered broccoli doesn’t sound appetizing in the literal sense, that’s the basic analogy for infotainment. It’s attractive, looks tasty and also delivers your vitamins.

Limited attention spans don’t stand a chance against quality entertainment. For example:

During the Christmas break, my boys and I watched 6 of the 9 Star Wars movies. They’re all 2+ hours long. Somehow our sub-goldfish attention spans managed to become engrossed in each epic film, start to finish. How is that possible? They’re entertaining.

When you combine entertainment with information, you have an attention-stealing 1-2 punch that allows you to CONNECT with your prospects in a way that other practices could never dream of.

You gotta think about this – 40% of Gen-Z are using TikTok as their search engine instead of Google. Why? Their search results are infotaining.

Meaning infotainment is not a nice-to-have feature in your communications. In 2024, it’s a prerequisite if you want your marketing dollars to be spent efficiently, and for your ads to do the heavy lifting you need them to do.

If you want some infotainment examples, look at the most popular podcasts. Joe Rogan is a great example. Theo Von. Shawn Ryan. All get on with interesting guests who share good info, and it’s wrapped in the container of the hosts entertainment skills.

Check out some of the people you follow on Instagram that you consider to be the most useful. They’re likely infotaining you.

Fox News and CNN are both examples of infotainment. And while I’m a fan of neither network, they do decent business with their own infotainment style.

“But Troy, we’re a medical practice, not podcast hosts!”

Yeah I know. The way I’m talking about infotainment, you:

• Don’t have to be a trained actor
• Don’t need to look like Brad Pitt
• Don’t have to do TikTok dances
• Don’t need thousands of dollars worth of equipment or staff

I am none of those things and still manage to info-tain the market on a quasi-regular basis.

The infotainment bar is low in this industry because most practices aren’t consistently doing it (if at all). Huge opportunity for you when you know how to do it right.

Once you know how to infotain your prospective patients, you’ll be in a league of your own.

I mentioned in my last message that we’re doing a coaching masterclass on how to write story-based emails. During that training, we’ll dive more into the infotainment approach, along with the proper ways to apply infotainment to your marketing.

If you’d like to be part of the exclusive group of marketers discovering these advanced secrets to elevate your practice in the new year, reply with “2024!” and I’ll get you more details.

T-Cole

Hope your new year is off to a great start! 2024 arrived in tune and on time, just like I like it.

If you’ve been reading my messages for the last few days, you know I’m digging into trends and opportunities I see coming down the pipe in 2024.

I talked to you Friday about the value and importance of Covert Content, even gave you examples you can put to use on social media.

And while I’m a huge fan of social, my favorite and most profitable form of Covert Content is Story-Based Email Strategy.

Which is the way I email you. (Like this email you’re reading right now).

How do we define a Story-Based Email Strategy?

• CONTENT – Most of the messages have a story – from my life, a friend, a client, something in the news. And/or include analogies or comparisons to help you understand the context.
• FEEL – They read and feel primarily like I’m telling you a story, not like serving you an advertisement.
• LOOK – Going back to our definition of Covert Content – does this look like a marketing piece? Not really. There’s no header, no fancy fonts, rarely any images. In fact, it’s STYLED to look like an email a friend or colleague would send you.

Does it READ like an ad? Not in the normal sense. Because the goal is to educate / enlighten / entertain you, which builds the trust and rapport we all want. Then when the time comes that you need sales coaching or marketing help for your ophthal practice, you’re comfortable (and even excited) reaching out to us.

That’s all on purpose. And all those reasons contribute to WHY you’re reading it now.

Benefits of Story-Based Email Style:

• Look / feel like you wrote it to a person (vs. blasting out a mass message)
• Stays below the marketing radar
• Builds trust / rapport at scale
• Keeps you top-of-mind among prospective patients
• Recapture leads that haven’t booked a consult
• Sets you apart from competitors (no one else is doing this)
• Cost-effective

Could you imagine having patients contacting your office saying, “I love your emails!” That’s what happens when you shift to the Story-Based Email style.

The added benefit for you is that you’re already in the story business. You create stories for patients every day. Another reason I recommend adding this to your quiver for 2024.

I’ve been emailing this way for 7 years, and it’s been highly profitable for my firm. I’ve spent countless hours practicing the craft. And I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars studying under amazing copywriters and marketers to hone these skills.

Until now, I’ve not taught how to do this lucrative style of email writing. But this year, we’re doing new work to reach new levels, and I’m pulling back the curtain.

So in 3 weeks, we’ll be taking a group of practice marketers through our Story-Based Email Methodology:

• How to write these messages
• How to design them for maximum impact
• Crafting eye-catching subject lines people can’t help but click
• Where to find your stories and how to log them so you have a ready “story bank” anytime you need them
• Ways to smoothly include in a call to action
• Which topics to avoid like the plague
• How to do all this efficiently
• And more…

If that interests you, reply with “What’s the STORY?” And I’ll get you the juicy details.

– T-Cole
​

PS – Story-Based email has been our most profitable marketing channel. Tomorrow, I will share with you our most profitable WORD. This is a word that will be key to you having a dominant 2024, whether you’re doing a ton of marketing or very little…

The holiday shopping season is always a stark reminder of how every day, hundreds of corporations are vying for our attention.

And yes I’m talking about advertisements, but that’s not all. It’s all the subscription networks on your SmartTV – Paramount+, Disney+, Peacock, Netflix. And the app alerts you constantly receive on your phone from social media, news apps, and more.

Think about it – even YouTube, your go-to email app, your local radio station… they all want a piece of the hottest commodity on the market – Your Attention.

(Not-so-Fun Fact: Companies like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok employ teams of psychologists whose sole job is to make their apps more addictive. To keep and increase your attention.)

And in the same way, you’re trying to get the attention of your prospective patient. And you leverage these media channels / apps to do it.

Think of social media / google / radio / tv / various media as attention aggregators. They get the attention, then they direct that attention to companies that market on their platforms (I.e. your practice).

Once THEY have attention, they can direct it to you. Once YOU have your prospective patients’ attention, you can direct it to the action you want them to take.

Anyone who can’t attract attention, does not pass “GO.” They’re not even in the game.

If you consider how much NOISE is out there… and how it’s going to get even noisier in 2024 with the election noise…

The question them becomes, “How can we send a SIGNAL that cuts through all that NOISE?”

This is where Covert Content comes in.

The term :Covert Content” is loosely defined as “Brand materials, messages and creative that fly under the ‘Marketing Radar’ of your target consumers.”

Our minds are insanely powerful assets. They keep us breathing, keep us safe and keep us from getting completely overwhelmed by the never-ending stimuli that bombard our senses literally every waking moment.

(Think about it, you wake up, check your phone, and there’s ALREADY notifications from news, email, social media, the weather app and calendar reminders. It’s truly every waking moment…)

How do our brains keep us somewhat on track amidst this battle for our attention?

By subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) sorting through the noise to attempt to identify what is important (i.e. what demands attention) and what can be ignored.

You look into a vast forest, and suddenly see movement 100 yards in the distance. What does your brain do? Tells you to discard everything else, focus on the movement and figure out what it is.

That’s great for forests. But in our day-to-day lives, we’re essentially looking into a vast space of millions of moving objects, and our brain is attempting to do the same type of sorting.

One way the brain does this is with what we call our Marketing Radar.

Gary Halbert was one of the greatest direct response marketers of all time. He shared a perfect example of the Marketing Radar as it relates to direct mail (and this can apply to any medium).

Gary would remind his clients and his student repeatedly, “Most Of The People In America Sort Through Their Mail While Standing Over A Waste Basket!”

He talked about how when people get their mail (actual physical snail mail), they stand over the trashcan and sort it.

The piece with a handwritten address and stamp on it goes in the “open” pile. Looks important, may be from someone personal, worth my attention.

The piece with a printed promo for 0% interest for 6 months, in a legal envelope with computer printed address label and metered mail stamp – right into the trash. It’s marketing garbage.

(This time of year is a prime example. My wife carefully sorts through the mail to ensure no Christmas Cards accidentally end up in the ‘junk mail’ pile…)

If we entertained every message that came into our personal ecosystems, we’d never make it out if the house. We need our Marketing Radars to survive.

When you think about it, our brains sort social media posts, internet links, commercial messages and emails in the same way Gary described sorting snail mail.

“Is this marketing?” YUP. Keep scrolling.

“Is this… something else? What is this?” Interesting… stop and pay attention.

And so goes the “digital sorting” method.

Unfortunately for a lot of practices, important messages and information are discarded by prospective patients simply due to bad packaging. It looks and smells like marketing. And they scroll on.

​

So how do you package your marketing message in such a way that it gets through to your prospect patient? You use a Covert Content delivery mechanism. So prospective patients not only stop the scroll, but actually consume and are influenced my your message.

There are many ways to do his. We run a number of advanced Covert Content campaigns that have cut lead costs in half or more, literally overnight. (Example – 2 weeks ago we plugged in a new “Covert Content” piece of ad creative and dropped lead costs from $110/lead to $15/lead in a one particular campaign).

The details of these advanced campaigns are reserved for our private clients. But here are 3 easy ways to get you rolling with Covert Content on social media. And I guarantee as simple as these are, almost no one will try them. So if you do, you’ll be ahead of the game for sure.
​

1. “Real-Time FAQ” – “What do I post social?” You’re hit with questions from patients all day long. Next time this happens and you think “That’s a common question…” pull out your phone (or have one of your team come in with a phone) and film a “Real-Time FAQ.”

ex. “Hey, just had a lovely patient ask me a great question – X. This comes up a lot, so I want to address this with you…”
​

2. “Info in Caption” – Using images you capture in the office is great. But a lot of times those images need to be contextualized or explained further. Hence the “Read Caption” sticker or note on your Story.

For example, this is a good tip for anyone who likes to post pictures in the OR, holding stacks of premium IOL boxes. That might be a flex to their fellow surgeons (idk if it is or not), but the challenge is that prospective patients – the target audience – don’t know what they’re holding, or why it’s important.

So explain it in the caption – “these are custom lenses, each one is ordered specifically for a patient, which means today is a day that 11 people are going to get their vision back, it’s a celebration day at our practice, etc etc.”
​

3. Memes and GIFs – Funny. Sharable. But the biggest benefit with memes and gifs is when done correctly, they shed new light / perspective on a situation. They give people a new angle from which to perceive a decision, which is persuasive.

These modes of communication (yes, that’s what they are) can be incredibly powerful in that way. But again, it has to be done right.

Meaning it needs to make you think ever so slightly. Look at your favorite meme pages. The content isn’t obvious. It’s not a celeb smiling with a caption that says “Me after LASIK.” It needs more depth than that to make it clever and memorable, but not so much that it requires intense concentration.

It’s a fine line. But if you just stop to think “WHY did I think this meme was clever?” You’ll start to get a feel for it.

​

OK, that should be enough to get you started. And if you want to go deeper on these strategies and use them to your advantage in 2024, you’ll wanna be sure to check out the message I send on Monday (New Year’s Day).

We have something very special, exclusive and useful for practice marketers in the new year. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

Have a great NY weekend. See you Monday…

Troy
​

PS – In Monday’s message, I’m also gonna spill the beans on my all-time favorite Covert Content medium – Email marketing. Don’t miss it.

As we wrap another year and take a glance in the rear view…

WOW it’s been a wild few years, hasn’t it?

Remember that time you were coerced into closing your practice literally overnight? That was nuts.

But you took action and figured out a way through. And your reward – a prosperous 12-24 months (depending on your market) of refractive surgery volume that had the essence of the “good ol days” of LASIK.

Yet now, like a ruby-slippered protagonist gazing across the technicolor Land of Oz, it’s safe to say…

“We ain’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”

More accurately, we ain’t in 2021-22 anymore.

During the initial wave of the “Refractive Resurgence,” marketing your practice was fairly straightforward. Get in front of your prospects, showcase your brand and the trust you have with your patients, and book the consult. Get em in the door and do your thang to get folks on the books.

But we’re in a different time. The refractive wave has faded, the economy has dipped, and it’s yet again a strange new world. The only constant is change.

And the playbook from a few years ago doesn’t work nearly as well anymore. At least not on its own.

So let’s talk about 2024.

Big changes are happening in the marketing world. For example, Google is changing how we get answers to our questions in search. So is TikTok. Social media is changing how attention is gathered. And we’re seeing major shifts in the types of brands that are exploding (and those that are falling by the wayside).

Not only that, but we’re moving into a contentious election year. You wanna talk about added distractions in the marketplace… we’re gonna see em this year.

All that said… you STILL have folks in your market in need of your services.

You STILL have people who can afford them at your premium price point.

And you STILL have people in your market turning 18 every day and reaching ocular maturity (and people turning 45 every day needing RLE, and people turning 65 every day in need of laser cat sx…). So there’s an “evergreen” element to the market that can benefit you.

The question is: what pivots do you need to make to take full advantage of the current opportunities?

You know how to pivot. You did it during the plandemic, and look at you now. You made it out on top, even stronger than berfore. You prospered from the shifts you made.

So what’s your move now? Well, that’s what we’re talking about this week and next. I’ll be messaging you about the opportunities in the market / marketing / sales / comms that you need to take full advantage of in 2024 if you want to dominate.

​Keep your eyes peeled on your inbox tomorrow, where we’ll dive into the rise of “Covert Content” and how you can double your lead volume from certain ad channels by adding 3 specific types of “Covert Content” to your digital marketing mix.

See you tomorrow…

– T-Cole
​

PS – If you clicked the Ejector Seat link by mistake and want to make sure you don’t miss a message, reply and let me know, and I’ll get you sorted out.

PPS – If you have specific questions about marketing / sales going into 2024, hit reply and ask away. I personally read every reply.