007 Kevin Harrington: Barbara Gets Interviewed by a Shark

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In this episode, Barbara and Kevin discuss:

The importance of mapping out a plan based on a client’s needs.
How hiring a medical strategist with the experience of owning a practice provides a deeper understanding of the patient’s needs.
Understanding how to navigate the fine line between marketing and compliance requirements of the FDA and HIPAA regulations.

Key Takeaways:

Getting ahead of the competition requires boosting search engine optimization, increasing their ranking, getting their message out and strengthening their brand.
They’re promoting health and curing patients, but they’re not necessarily very knowledgeable about the latest techniques in developing business strategies.
The three most prominent challenges professionals encounter today are time, understanding business strategies and regulatory compliance requirements.

“My mission is also to improve communication between patients and the healthcare community, which would foster improved patient understanding, engagement and compliance.” — Barbara Hales

Transcription

007 Kevin Harrington- Barbara Gets Interviewed by a Shark

Kevin Harrington: Hi, I’m Kevin Harrington, an original shark from the hit TV show, Shark Tank. And with me today is Barbara Hales, MD, author of Content Copy Made Easy. Now Barbara, great to have you here today.

Barbara Hales: It’s a pleasure to see you today.

Kevin Harrington: All right. Great. I want everyone out there to know a little bit about you, who you are and what you do. So just give us a little overview.

Barbara Hales: Named America’s Leading Medical Strategist, I’ve been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS- Fox, PBS, even cited in Newsweek. As a health expert, I help professionals get their message out to help promote themselves-

Kevin Harrington: Ah.

Barbara Hales: How to market effectively using healthcare marketing.

Kevin Harrington: Healthcare marketing. So, you work primarily with doctors?

Barbara Hales: That’s correct.

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: All types of doctors and healthcare facilities. But as a Medical Strategist, my mission is also to improve communication between patients and the healthcare community, which would foster improved patient understanding-

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: Engagement and compliance.

Kevin Harrington: Gotcha. So, no matter what kind of doctor, MD, chiropractor, dentist, you’re going to help strategize on how to communicate your message out to the marketplace. And is this positioning them as experts in the market, or are they getting leads, publicity? How does it all work?

Barbara Hales: What we do is we sit down and map out a strategy for them-

Kevin Harrington: Okay.

Barbara Hales: According to their needs so that they are getting ahead of their competition, they are boosting their search engine optimization, Increasing their ranking, getting their message out and strengthening their brand.

Kevin Harrington: Ah, nice.

Kevin Harrington: So Barbara, you seem very passionate about what you’re doing and I know you’re a doctor yourself and you’ve given up your medical practice to help other doctors now build their practice. Is this a very fulfilling part of your life?

Barbara Hales: Absolutely. I’m so passionate about it. With so many new challenges that doctors are facing, it pains me to see the stress that they’re under. Burnout is higher than it’s ever been before. Doctor patient relationships are eroding and private practices are having financial difficulties, forcing them to sell their practice to local hospitals or worse-

Kevin Harrington: Oh, really?

Barbara Hales: Even just closing their doors.

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: Unfortunately, that leaves patients in the dark, unable to choose the medical care and treatment options that is most appropriate for them.

Kevin Harrington: Right. So doctors, they’re very smart people. They built a business in many cases, but they don’t know all the tools that are available to them to advance their business sales and increase their business in any either kind of mathematical formula or geometric or any way really. So you come in, you help them get ranked better on Google, you’re working some of these new digital strategies it sounds like.

Barbara Hales: Yes, absolutely. Doctors are great at what they do. They are healers, they’re promoting health and curing patients, but they’re not necessarily very knowledgeable about the latest techniques in developing business strategy.

Kevin Harrington: Okay. Are there other people that do what you do or how do you differentiate your services over others that are out in the marketplace?

Barbara Hales: Well, of course there are other content marketers in the health field, but the thing that makes me different is that I was there walking in their shoes.

Kevin Harrington: Gotcha.

Barbara Hales: Okay. I have had a very successful medical practice in obstetrics and gynecology-

Kevin Harrington: Oh, wow.

Barbara Hales: For many years. I know how to build a business from the ground floor up and how to effectively market to patients to make it successful.

Kevin Harrington: Right. So that to me is the big difference is that you walk the walk, talk the talk because you are an MD, you built a practice, used these techniques in your own practice. Now you’re teaching other practices how to use what you’ve already learned and put them to use in good order. So the challenges that they may be facing on a day to day basis, you’ve already experienced them and now you’re going to help them overcome them. Right?

Barbara Hales: Absolutely. But the thing is also, let’s face it, why would healthcare facility or a doctor employ a routine business marketer who may not understand medicine and healthcare regulations when you could partner with a medical strategist who can help you with all of your health marketing content?

Kevin Harrington: No, I agree. It totally makes sense. And so you have some good testimonials of some doctors that you’ve worked with that you’ve helped them increase their sales?

Barbara Hales: I have a lot of doctors who have become very successful. But what I would like to discuss is the three biggest challenges that professionals today encounter.

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: The first one, in terms of marketing, is obviously their lack of time.

Kevin Harrington: Okay.

Barbara Hales: And the second one is that they may not be aware of the business strategies that work the best for them. And the third is they may not be aware of the typical strategies and tools today that may in fact be against the FDA and HIPAA framework.

Kevin Harrington: Oh, okay.

Barbara Hales: So that they don’t want to breach those guidelines.

Kevin Harrington: You keep them in legal compliance, right?

Barbara Hales: Exactly.

Kevin Harrington: Okay, that’s good. Because it’s good to be advertising, but you don’t want to do things that you can cross the line and get you in trouble either, right?

Barbara Hales: Absolutely.

Kevin Harrington: So that’s important. So the story here, it makes so much sense because a normal advertising agency typically doesn’t have doctors that are on their staff. You have been there, developed a lot of these techniques and so it was this why eventually you then decided, as you saw the success you were having with these techniques in your own practice like you said you want to now devote your time to helping other doctors use these techniques?

Barbara Hales: Absolutely. And what I’ve done for doctors is that I have written a book called Content Copy Made Easy. And in fact, I also have a course under the same name-

Kevin Harrington: Wow.

Barbara Hales: Content Copy Made Easy with easy to digest modules that participants can go through at their own pace and ask any questions that might arise.

Kevin Harrington: Yeah, so you’ve mentioned a couple of things that you do and I know we’re going to tell people at some point here to reach out and give you a shout, but before we do that, you’ve talked about building brands and getting higher ranked on Google and using digital marketing and things, but let’s go back to the building of the brand. You’ve got a couple of tips that you can, we could talk about, that you recommended. Is writing a book, one of the things you suggest, for example?

Barbara Hales: Well, I do recommend writing a book. There’s a book in every one of us.

Kevin Harrington: Okay. I believe that for sure.

Barbara Hales: And doctors have a lot of information that they’d like to impart to their patients. So writing a book is good because that distinguishes you from your colleagues. Patients perceive you as being the authority in your field when you have a book.

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: You all do the same techniques and procedures, but you are the one that wrote the book.

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: So, you are the one that’s more important than the guy who has no office down the street.

Kevin Harrington: Oh, I love it. So now, there’s probably some doctors out there that are listening and watching and they’re thinking maybe about working with you. And I think that’s a great idea because they can talk doctor to doctor. All right, that makes a lot of sense. What are some parting thoughts or some encouragement that you might give somebody that’s out there right now that’s thinking about working with you?

Barbara Hales: Okay. What I would like to tell people is that it does not have to be overwhelming. What you need to keep in mind is that the information that you put out there and the messages that you would like to convey just have to be relevant to your listening audience.

Kevin Harrington: Right.

Barbara Hales: They have to be interesting, unique and engaging. And, ,most importantly it has to be in sync with your services.

Kevin Harrington: Okay.

Barbara Hales: When you’re talking and you’re telling people information, you want it to reflect what it is that you personally actually do with your patients.

Kevin Harrington: Right. So can someone that’s out there if they’ve ended up doing business with you start kind of in the slow process, they don’t have to like do a complete overhauls, if they want, right?

Barbara Hales: No, absolutely. We sit down and we map out, according to the needs, the strategy that they would like to start at progressing from there. And if they decide that they would like to have marketing in place but they don’t want to get involved with doing it, then I just take it over for them so that they don’t have to worry.

Kevin Harrington: Oh, I love it. So you can help them, teach them how to do it themselves or you can do it done for you or you can just kind of take it over and make it happen?

Barbara Hales: Absolutely.

Kevin Harrington: Unbelievable.

Barbara Hales: Absolutely. And what I would like to say-

Kevin Harrington: Yes, yeah, please.

Barbara Hales: What I would like to say is if this is right for you, then contact Barbara@themedicalstrategist.com. But what I didn’t even tell you-

Kevin Harrington: Okay.

Barbara Hales: Which is very exciting, is for those people that are watching the video today- we have a bonus.

Kevin Harrington: Oh, wow.

Barbara Hales: Yes. And that is what we’ll do is publish the interview that you as a doctor and I do together or a guest blog will be published with your byline. That increases visibility, widens your audience, and with back links increases traffic back to your site.

Kevin Harrington: Oh, I like that. So it’s about content creation because the more content you create, the more distribution you get, the more activities coming back through your websites and portals and lead generation and all of that. So it’s you wrote the book on it, you preached it and built your own business using these techniques. You wrote the book on it and now you’re ready to share it with anybody out there. That’s amazing. Barbara@themedicalstrategist.com?

Barbara Hales: Correct.

Kevin Harrington: Barbara Hales, MD.

Barbara Hales: Thank you so much.

Kevin Harrington: Thank you for being here and thanks for listening to today’s show.

Barbara Hales: Thank you.

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