What Achilles Tendinopathy and Abruptly Switching Your Marketing Strategy Have in Common…
So, I have achilles tendinopathy…
Update 9 months later: STILL have achilles tendinopathy… now in BOTH achilles :(
Which kinda sucks.
Pretty much missed hiking and backpacking the entire fall season, which is pretty great here in Spokane.
Because part of my recovery is exercising my calf and achilles.
I’ll still be able to bike, squat, stair step, snowshoe, walk, and even ski throughout the winter.
But you probably don’t care that much about that.
What you care about is HOW I got it, and what that has to tell you about your marketing strategies.
Ok, so about a year ago I was walking the trails along High Drive on the phone with my dad, and thoughts: “Huh… the bottom of my feet hurt, like, A LOT”.
It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time I told anyone else about it (my dad got an earfull about it).
And a few months and 3 different new pairs of shoes later… the pain was STILL there.
In fact, it had gotten worse; I could barely go a quarter of a mile before it started acting up.
So I made a big shift…
I bought some of the polarizing Five-Finger “toe shoes”.
Its like a sexy tuxedo for your feet…
Now, I want to make one thing very, very clear:
I am hyper aware of how ugly these things are (and how terrible they smell…)
HOWEVER, I love walking around barefoot, and these things are the next best thing.
The science isn’t quite as strong as it was when they first came out, but like all minimalist shoes the principle is the same: your foot was designed for walking, and a lot of shoes just get in the way and actually make that harder for your body, not easier.
And best of all, they WORKED:
The pain on the bottom of my feet went away
My knee pain also wan’t half as bad
I was able to do light trail running and hike all spring and summer
And I was careful too… I read online that it is such a sharp transition that you have to SLOWLY adjust to the shoes; too much too soon will just result in injuries.
Well, by come August, I suddenly notice that that achilles pain I had waking up wasn’t going away throughout the day.
And with the Christian Mcaffery injury fresh on my mind, it dawned on me just what I had done to my body.
I stressed my achilles in order to relieve the pain on my foot.
Not only did I probably not transition slowly enough, but those steep hike sprints I was doing were putting a tooooon of pressure on my achilles.
And instead of paying close attention to any pain in my body, I just ignored it and thought my lower-leg problems were behind me.
And boy was I wrong.
(honestly I am so relieved I still will get to ski a little bit this winter…)
With all that said… what on earth does this have to do with your marketing strategy?
Suddenly switching/cancelling marketing strategies can make everything worse.
The primary concern in healthcare marketing is customer/patient acquisition. And the most common digital marketing channels for patient acquisition are SEO, Google ads, and social media.
But while each can be excellent, they all come with their own strengths and weaknesses.
No matter which one you choose, you’ll encounter something that will, pardon my french, be a PAIN IN THE ASS:
SEO requires posting high-quality, unique, optimized, non-a.i. blogs every week for months on end…
Google ads are a money drain unless you are constantly testing, assessing, and tweaking who and what you are bidding for PPC ads
Social media is, well, let’s be honest, it can be the most exhausting and soul-draining of them all (there is a reason I outsource it to Jaclyn Baker!)
And if you choose to hire an expert to handle it for you, then each will cost money. Which is perhaps even more of a P.i.t.A, but I digress…
Without immediate results, you’ll be tempted to shift to something else.
It’s the classic “the grass is always greener on the other side” syndrome.
You tell yourself: “Maybe it isn’t working because it will never work for me. So I’ll try something else!”
And while I sympathize with your urgency, the temptation is just that: a temptation.
The temptation for some trick or shortcut to growing revenue.
Abruptly saying: “SEO content isn’t bringing more traffic… lets try social media ads!” or “email is taking too long to develop close relationships with customers… let’s hire an influencer instead” isn’t usually the best idea.
Which is why I always suggest that, before you radically alter your marketing plan…
Talk to an expert.
There are lots of reasons a marketing channel may not be performing like you hoped:
Maybe it needs another channel to support it…
Maybe the marketing channel is reaching people at the wrong stage of your funnel…
Maybe there is some small piece missing that will make it all start working…
And yes, that means TALK to them; reading their blog posts isn’t enough… no matter how readable and delightful they may be ;)
This is especially true if you are doing the healthcare marketing yourself.
You work in medicine. I am guessing you would always tell people to actually talk to a professional instead of just doing whatever Chat GPT or Web MD tells them to do.
But what if you are already working with an expert, and the marketing channel is not performing?
Then my advice stays the same; it is better to get a second opinion than throw away all the work that has been done!
Because it could be that the “expert” you hired wasn’t right for the job
Or that the whole marketing campaign needs an outside perspective to see what is right in front of you
Or maybe there is something you have been doing that the other expert did not know about that is affecting the performance of your marketing
Take it from me, perhaps the solution is NOT getting a whole new set of footwear.
Perhaps the solution is just taking an extra 10 minutes each day for a couple of weeks to stretch the calf, extensor hallucis longus, and plantar fascia!
And maybe, just maybe, talking to an expert and sticking it out would avoid way bigger injuries down the road!
In other words…
