In this episode of the Marketing for Doctors podcast, host Bob Migliani interviews Dr. Ted Sees, a successful optometrist with specialty practices in Rockford and Belding, Michigan. Dr. Sees shares insights on why specializing in optometry is crucial in today's competitive market and how marketing plays a vital role in attracting the right patients. From social media strategies to community involvement, Dr. Sees discusses the evolution of marketing in his practice and offers valuable advice for doctors looking to enhance their marketing efforts. Tune in to learn how Dr. Sees leverages social media, engages with his community, and empowers his staff to drive growth in his specialty optometry practices.
In this episode of the Marketing for Doctors podcast, host Bob Migliani interviews Dr. Ted Sees, a successful optometrist with specialty practices in Rockford and Belding, Michigan. Dr. Sees shares insights on why specializing in optometry is crucial in today's competitive market and how marketing plays a vital role in attracting the right patients. From social media strategies to community involvement, Dr. Sees discusses the evolution of marketing in his practice and offers valuable advice for doctors looking to enhance their marketing efforts. Tune in to learn how Dr. Sees leverages social media, engages with his community, and empowers his staff to drive growth in his specialty optometry practices.
Bob Miglani:
Hello, hello, hello, everyone. This is Bob Migliani and welcome to the Marketing for Doctors podcast. I've got a terrific guest today. His name is Dr. Ted Sees. Hi, Dr. Sees, how are you?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Hi, Bob, I'm doing great. How are you?
Bob Miglani: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for joining. So Dr. Sees, tell us a little bit about you, your practice, what you do and how you got here. How did we get here?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Okay, so I have two practices, I am in located in Rockford Michigan, and I'm also located in Belding Michigan as well they're about 20 miles apart. I worked when I first graduated I worked corporate for about six years. just didn't find any passion in that and decided I wanted to open up my practice on my own. My wife is an optometrist as well, so she is my sidekick by far and is a big helper in all of this. But when we opened up our practice, we knew we wanted to do more than just refractions, more than just glasses and contact lenses. So we geared our practice specifically for specialty, whether that be dry eyes, ortho-keratology, myopia management,
Bob Miglani: Why? Why did you do specialty? Tell me the why.
Dr. Theodore Sees: Well, I say this to my staff and I say it to a lot of people who are going into the world of optometry. It almost kind of is a little bit of a dying profession if you don't specialize because you can go anywhere online and find someplace cheaper that you can get your glasses. You can get your exam on your phone. You need to specialize to set yourself apart and it's just way more fun than just doing refraction. It is the passion of why I do what I do. It is fun legitimately.
Bob Miglani: Yeah. Yeah. So if you, if you talk, let's talk about that for a second, let's unpack that. I, is that, I mean, I see this everywhere, which is that primary care is becoming commoditized, right? There's more competition, not only from, you know, doctors graduating, but online, as you say, and others. And so if you're going to pivot, you've got to pivot into kind of specialty care. And the reason is because there's less competition. And like I said, it's a lot more fun, but it's also very hard. How do you attract these kinds of patients? So let's get into marketing for a second. This is what our audience is interested in. Talk to me, is marketing a bad word, by the way, for doctors, for you? Was that a bad word initially when you first started?
Dr. Theodore Sees: No. I mean, when you open up a practice, Everybody thinks you have tons of money and you can shell out all kinds of money for marketing, but it isn't essential. It is definitely necessary, especially if you are trying to specialize in something because you need people to understand what your value is and what it is that you can bring to them. If you're just presenting yourself as another optometrist who has glasses and contact lenses, there are seven other places that they're going to drive by to get to your place, they're not gonna go to your place. And so you need to market for sure.
Bob Miglani: You need to get the right prospect and the right customer, right patient to you. If you don't speak up and say something, they are not going to find you. Correct. Right. And then, and then I guess so, so, so you looked at it as a way to survive in the business and to thrive in the business for sure. So what was your, you know, so marketing is not a bad word. Okay. It's a way to educate patients to find a good doctor like yourself. Uh, and how do you do it? How do you do, how did you start with marketing and give us an idea of where you were beforehand and kind of what your evolution has been, what you learned in your journey of marketing as a doctor.
Dr. Theodore Sees: With marketing, there is a lot of trial and error. I mean, you can do so many things, and you can get very overwhelmed, and you can spend a lot of money. And I have. I mean, I've gotten overwhelmed. I've spent a lot of money. I have honed in on what works, and I put my money into that. But I have done everything from billboards, to mailers, to radio, to TV, it goes on and on and on. But it has evolved more to specifically gearing the patients that I know that are going to need my services. So I've found a lot of help with Facebook. Social media is really big. Your website really needs to tie in with your Facebook. Your social media posts need to match with your website, which matches with your Facebook, which matches with your Instagram. You really need to apply that. And then there's external forces too, like Hoot is fantastic. It kind of does some of the work for you, which, is another thing that you need to consider when you're doing some sort of marketing, because there is time that's involved. Do you funnel that out to somebody else to do that? Do you do it in-house? Just remember, if you're going to be doing in-house, it's a lot of work. But it has evolved for sure.
Bob Miglani: Yeah. So let's talk about the old school and the now. It sounds like billboards and mailers and that, they don't work anymore right now, right? Or do they? Do they still work or not much?
Dr. Theodore Sees: I would say not much. It's hard to measure for one. And today's viewership is not staring at a billboard. They are staring at their phone. Exactly. It's not that. Now, I'm not going to say that some of that doesn't you know, the saying is how many touches that you need before somebody actually thinks of you before that they want to, you know, visit your services. And that might be one of the touches. It is not the selling point, though.
Bob Miglani: Right, right, right. I heard a phrase the other day, you need to be omnipresent. which means you gotta be everywhere basically. And I think the number of touches in our business or what we've seen is seven. You need seven touches to convert a customer in some way, shape or form. So yes, I guess a billboard could be, but they're expensive and you really don't know what you're getting per se. And are they hitting the right audience, right? That's the other thing. Like there's thousands of people might be going by a billboard, but in your practice, are those the potential candidates for a myopia treatment? Correct. Maybe, maybe not. Likely not because you're, it's like the gunshot approach, right? Just, you know, big, big barrel versus targeted approach, which is digital. So mailers, you know, I've used mailers over the years. And again, you get the list from the post office. I just find it like time consuming And I feel like I'm wasting money. You know, it's all the stamps, all this stuff. I don't know. And, you know, I did it with my wife's practice quite a bit. We used to do this magazine that was in our town. And I never did. It was like a coupon kind of, not coupon, but it was one of those that had all the businesses in the pizza shop, the dry cleaner, everything. And then I always wanted to cover. because I figured people would open their mail like I do next to the garbage bin in my kitchen and look at the front cover and throw it out. You know what I mean? So I did that for a while. That worked really well. And then videos on YouTube and things like that. But the transition has been great. So tell us a little bit about your social media learnings. What have you learned by engaging on social media with your marketing? Tell us a little bit about that.
Dr. Theodore Sees: Well, we use a lot of Facebook and Instagram, and we try to post things that are applicable to our patients. Because we are specialty, we try to continue being forefront on each of those specialty things that we do in the office. remind people that if they need a service that is of that specialty, they know where to go. It's easy. We try to push our patients to like our Facebook page because your best customer is your patient. And your patient, if you do them well, they are going to refer many other patients to you. So Once again, if they like your page or if they comment on something, that's going to boost your exposure. And so we really encourage our patients to do that. We encourage our patients to give us reviews. They're not going to give it to you unless you ask. And you got to just be kind of forthright. People like to help out if you ask them. If they did a good job, they really do genuinely like to help out. So we really try to hone in our current database And I know if you're starting up, it's a little bit harder, but we really kind of hold in our current database because they are our best walking billboard, to be honest. And they're going to be telling everybody about our services and the experience that they had.
Bob Miglani: Yeah. So let's talk about your Facebook for Instagram. Do you post yourself or do you have a service? Do you have somebody, your staff do it? How do you do it? And then when do you do it? How often do you do the posting social media?
Dr. Theodore Sees: So there's a number we all kind of rotate in our office, we all try to do because you can't have the same person's perspective all the time you try to, you got to make it a sort of balance where if everything came from me it would look really technical which is kind of boring. You need some personal touch. We try to do a post, probably once every three days for sure. And, you know, it's a mix of my op management, it's a mix of vision therapy, there's, there's a mix of everything. But you got to have that personal touch in it as well. Same thing with Instagram, we're trying to post as frequently on our Instagram as we are on our Facebook. Yeah.
Bob Miglani: And so is it you or your staff person? Is it you or your staff person? I mean, it's a mix, but do they, so your staff person, for example, you have staff person in your office and you say to her or him, you know, say, Hey, go ahead and post something. And then they take like a photo or a video or like, what are they, or they just do it or you have to approve it.
Dr. Theodore Sees: It can be both. Generally, I trust them. Generally, I trust them. If they are questionable, they'll send it to me, and then I'll put it up if I feel like it's necessary. But sometimes they like just to have to send it to me, so then I just post it for them. Whatever's easiest for them. Sometimes just generating that content is the hardest part, to be honest.
Bob Miglani: Yeah, yeah, I think it can get overwhelming.
Dr. Theodore Sees: So some people do funnel that out. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just there's a little bit of a cost that and I don't mind doing that personally.
Bob Miglani: Yeah, yeah. And I think it gives you a gives the patient a view of the doctor. Like it's, it's the doctor doing it, you're going to have to see it's the doctor doing it or a staff person doing it. Um, you know, I guess the other thing is in terms of, um, content, like, what do you say? Is it just like, give us a sense of what the content looks like. Just give me like a recent one that you've done or something. Just get an idea.
Dr. Theodore Sees: Oh, one of the things that they had talked about or I go on a lot of other Facebook pages and I kind of steal their some of their content. I mean, it's it's there and it's shareable. Right. You know, a couple of sites that I will visit, I will I will pick up something about how it's simple. You know, how do you care for your contact lenses or. Will glasses make your kids vision worse, you know, simple things like that. So it's a little bit engaging, because there's a question with an open ended question. Not everybody's going to blow up that post, but some, some will.
Bob Miglani: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a great way to think about it. Because You know, I read, I don't know if you read Don Miller's book, Story Brand, but really game changer book. And one of the things he talks about is, you know, people care about like five things, right? They care about surviving, thriving, finding a love in life, like, you know, love and connection, finding meaning and purpose, and finding a tribe that you kind of belong to. And so most people's brain power is consumed by these things. So if anything else doesn't fit into that narrative, you're not gonna make sense. So it's really important to talk about the problem that the patient has. And so if you talk 75% about the problem and 25% about the solution, you're doing great things. Most people, when they do content for social media, I think what they end up doing is talking about the solution. Hey, me, me, me, me, look at me, check me out. We solved this problem. We solved this problem. It's really not about us. It's really about you, the patient. We're trying to serve you in a way that's valuable to you. And so talking about the problem of like, you know, asking, you know, these questions patients have in their head, if they have myopia, if my child has myopia, hey, does gasses solve the problem? Why can't I get glasses? If my son has myopia, why can't I get glasses? Right, that's a fundamental question that they have. So that's great, that's really useful. When you look at the week, at the end of the week, let's say, do you kind of like think about, oh, how many posts do we do? Or is that like, you just look at it next week?
Dr. Theodore Sees: And then you kind of- I generally look at it next week. I just, you know, I have a reminder on my phone and I generally post when that reminder goes off. So I don't usually miss too much. So it's generally pretty, pretty upkept.
Bob Miglani: So is marketing today mostly social media or is it, I mean, I know we, we do, you know, the chair to conversion marketing kind of thing, but it goes on a patient's cell phone, but tell me is, or is it other things? Like what are the other kinds of things you're doing in marketing?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Well, there's some other behind the scene things that I really want to highlight, too. I mean, getting involved, I know it sounds silly, but getting involved with your community is huge. You know, it's it's the belonging to your local chamber, to your Rotary Club, your Lions Club, people who see you. Now, I live in a kind of a smaller area, so it's going to be a little different than if you live in downtown Manhattan. But if people see you out and about contributing to the community, that is going to be a big helper too. I cannot underscore that. I can't say how much that is because that's really important. We do a couple of things with our local schools too. We reach out to our pediatricians. We give free eyeglasses to kids who are less fortunate. So there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that goes on that's very important that people will notice. Yeah, we Sponsor a baseball team, you know, those things. Yeah, sure. And those are good. Those aren't directly going to help me as much as like some of the direct Facebook, social media, but those are all very important as well.
Bob Miglani: Yeah. What do you, so I think that that's that surround sound marketing. is really important and being a part of the community because it's sort of that one touch, second touch, third touch that they see. And then they kind of see your name and it's like everywhere. And it's like, oh yeah, I know this person. I have one guy in my town and he's a real estate agent. And I kid you not, everywhere you look, it's his name. And he's on the shopping carts of the grocery stores, you know, the little thing on the shop and you're pushing to the, he does all the ads on the magazines. He does billboards, he's everywhere. And he's a celebrity in our little town. And it's really nice, actually, to see that. And I've seen that with my wife, who's an optometrist, as well. She does a lot of posts on Instagram about her trips that she does outside of her job, her work. She went to New Zealand and she did a bungee jump thing. And she posted that and all these women in the grocery store are stopping her like, oh my God, what are you doing? Is there like a midlife crisis? And so much, you know, it's like fun, right? And she's like explaining all of this. So it's actually important to be yourself. right? Not just be this corporate brand. And I think what happens sometimes is when doctors kind of farm this out is that loses its authenticity. Don't you think? Like if you would just have somebody else do it, it's kind of like, hey, they're just going to do this one post that they use in a hundred other doctors across the country.
Dr. Theodore Sees: Very cookie cutter. Very cookie cutter.
Bob Miglani: Right. And it doesn't resonate with the audience. And people kind of know it's like, okay, you churned it out with someone working as a freelancer or whatever, putting it together. So tell me, what's the impact of all of this? Do you think your business has grown as a result of marketing? And what specifically do you think that has helped in your business grow?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Yes, I think the marketing has helped tremendously. Certain aspects, one of our goals is to be not carrying as many insurances and dropping as many insurance as possible, relying mostly on specialty. And we're getting closer and closer to that goal because of this specialty marketing. If you think about it, if I were to post on Google or Facebook as a general optometrist, once again, that's not going to attract the people that you want. If you're trying to grow a specialty practice, that's what you should be gearing towards. And so it has definitely helped grow in our specialty aspects more than anything. Yes, we still get the mom and dads who they see that we're treating their kids well, and so they want to do glasses and contacts or something with us. So it kind of works double when we see a child come in and they see the success that they're having. And those specialty ones, when we can do those specialty things, it's fantastic because those are just easy referrals because nobody could help them in the past and now they're getting that help. So it has definitely helped me out in that specialty regard.
Bob Miglani: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, I suppose, the big question of If you think about vision plans or insurance plans, I guess some people will call some of them as a marketing tool, right? Where you get on an insurance plan, like a VSP or whatever, and they're bringing you patients. And so it's kind of they bring traffic to your office. Therefore, you can, you know, so I guess I suppose, is it is it the case that you really can't get rid of all of them, you need some of them to give you some of that traffic? I mean, how do you see that? How do you see that world?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Well, you got to find the balance. I mean, if you there are many doctors who are completely dropping insurances. And, and I would say that if It might be a little more challenging if you're starting off, you know, might be more challenging. And I, and I applaud the doctors who can do it and who do that very well. That's great. That's probably everybody's goal. But, you know, sometimes you do need those patients in the chair to get that conversation going to start about, I mean, you need that patient in the chair to first start talking about myopia management or start talking about specialty lenses. But with that being said, you have to kind of pick and choose which insurances are gonna be the best for you. You can't, you gotta value your time. Would you rather see five patients in an hour or one or two? Give that patient way more specialty care, way more time, and just feel better about yourself at the end of the day.
Bob Miglani: Right, right, right. Also, yeah, I guess the other question is that staff, right? If staff is so hard to get, And if you have us, talk to us about the power of having a practice that aligns to your interests with staff and hiring people and all that. Tell us about that.
Dr. Theodore Sees: So yes, that is a huge important thing when you're doing anything special. You can go to a lot of places and find a staff member that does a great job as an optician, but if they aren't on the line with what your goals are as far as an office goes, it might not be the best fit. We like to do specialty training for all of our staff. So when somebody calls up and asks about myopia management, They have a good idea of what a good response to be. They're not going to know all the details of the sciences behind it, and I don't expect them to, but they're going to have a good idea of a confident answer or to refer to a specialist who can get back to them to give them that answer that they need. But they have to be on board. It is a whole office sort of thing, because once you have that backup with the staff, it's just the conversations started from the second they come into the into the office.
Bob Miglani: No, I love that. And I guess the other thing is that, has marketing helped you recruit better associates or staff members? Because people, I suppose, want to work in a place that's thriving and changing, right?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Yeah, no, I agree. That's a good question. I wouldn't say that directly because a lot of people, let's say if you're hiring an optician who's already been an optician for a while, generally, from my perspective and from what I've seen from my experiences, I'll hire somebody in. And even though we're clearly stated we're specialty on our website, I mean, we still do glasses and contact lenses, but we're very open about our specialty. I won't know until later afterwards that they're like this is so much more interesting, and much more, you know, they find it more value to their profession because they're just expanding their knowledge, and this is a side of how much they knew nothing about.
Bob Miglani: Yeah. They want variety. People want variety too, right? They don't mundane job. It's like, you know, all right. So let's, let's talk about just a couple more questions as we, as we close up soon, Dr. C just, um, there's a lot of tools out there, right? There's a lot of, as a practice owner, you are being kind of asked to deploy lots of different technologies in your practice, right? This is kind of an issue with EHRs, and certainly we see it in Ahud and others. So how do you view all these technologies that are coming to you. Do you kind of like check them all out or you kind of like close the door or like you kind of look here and there? I mean, how do you what, you know, a lot of doctors sort of say, oh, my God, I've got a lot going on. I don't have time. to deploy these new strategies, like social media, for instance, or Facebook, or Instagram, or another tech in my office, because I'm just so, quote unquote, busy, right? And not like you're not any busier, or less busy. So what do you say to that doctor when they're saying, you know what, I can't, I don't have time for all of this stuff?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Well, I mean, that's a good point. Everybody can get overwhelmed in their day-to-day job, but to be honest, without some of these things, I would still be just as overwhelmed. I mean, it does free up some of my time so I can overwhelm myself with something else. But I met you guys at an expo and I know I needed to level up my marketing, my constant reminders about specialty stuff. And so, This was a platform that worked pretty well for me and I knew it would kind of do the work behind the scenes that I would not have to do. I knew it needed to be done and I just needed somebody to do it. What I would say is, is investigate. It takes a little bit of time. You're not going to pick up everything. Everything is not going to be right for you, but explore the option a little bit, get a little bit of information about it before you close the door, because there are a lot of opportunities out there. And there's a lot of potential too. You just kind of have to, you have to free yourself up a little bit. You have to work more on your business, not always in your business.
Bob Miglani: I love that. I love that. I love that. That's the owner and operator dilemma. It's like, I'm so busy. I'm running the business. And that's, there's a big problem. So as we close up, actually, this has been really amazing. Thank you for this. Give us maybe one or two pieces of advice for doctors who want to do marketing better. What's the one or two things that you recommend for them to do like today?
Dr. Theodore Sees: I would find if you don't feel like you have the time to devote to your social media, your Instagram, your website, find the opportunity to find the right program that's going to be able to do that for you. You just really need to get that clear brand, that clear message across to your patients. and start soon. If you really want to do it, you've got to dive into it. You can't dabble. You have to dive into it. If you don't have the time, find somebody who can. It will pay in the end if you find the right person and they give you, there's good feedback, there's good communication between the two. It'll be very fruitful. You just got to give it a little bit of time too.
Bob Miglani: Yeah, that's perfect. And I love that. So I think social media, you're 100% right. I think it's just more about, you need to become also a thumb stopper, right? In a way, people scroll into their thumbs. And so when they see Dr. C's face, they want to stop because he has something interesting to share. So I love that. That's fantastic. Dr. C, thank you so much for your time. For those of you Well, you want to learn about where can we other people find you and if they want to ask you for advice and follow you, Dr. Seuss, where do they find you? What's your, do you have a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram where they can find you or LinkedIn or something?
Dr. Theodore Sees: Tell us. Well, the easiest probably would just hit me up on my website with rockfordfamilyeyecare.net or you can do beldingfamilyeyecare.net or you can find us on Facebook. It's just pretty simple there. Simply up there.
Bob Miglani: Perfect, perfect. Actually, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Until next time, everybody, have a great rest of the day. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Thank you.