Social Proof: Your Missing Link to Attracting Ideal Clients or Patients [Episode 109]

Hello, my lovelies. I wanted to keep today's episode very short, just like last week's. I try to mix it up with like longer, in depth, meatier episodes, and then just like short things that you can implement right away to see an immediate impact. And so today's episode is all about one of my absolute favorite topics, which is social proof.

Uh, if you don't know what social proof is, it's literally just proving that you do the thing that you say you do. So sure, Google reviews and things like that are definitely one way of showing social proof, but I'm going to dive into a couple more. Hey,

welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions. And you didn't go to school to learn how to be a full time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So let's come hang out while we chat all things easy in your marketing and my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a I get to more dream patients and clients. Yes, please. My name is Dr. Kimmy and I'm a pediatric and prenatal chiropractor in Virginia and I listen to holistic marketing simplified.

All right. So back in the days of yore, when I first started doing Instagram, really, you could get away with like just daily Canva graphics and stock imagery with little, just like health tips and facts galore. And like you were probably going to do, do pretty well. Well, the difference is now, and I, and I actually think this is a good thing.

I like to think about your content is go beyond, like, what can someone just simply Google? If someone is having a hard time sleeping and they Google, you know, how to get better sleep, then they're just going to get like a list of like very generic tips on their Google results. Right? So I'm not saying that you can't use that as a jumping off point, but where social proof comes in and really, um, I think authority, like showing yourself as an authority in the space.

Also ties into social proof is taking those generic You know, tips that you might get from Google or generic tips that even you might be teaching your patients, which like I said, when I'm saying the word generic, I do not don't equate the word generic with ineffective or bad. I just mean like what makes your take on these tips like more authoritative and more like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to listen to him or her when they're, when they're talking about this.

Just some, like, simple tweaks in your language are, like, all it takes to infuse social proof into those tips. So rather than just saying, like, three tips for better sleep, It would be three ways I help my patients get better sleep tonight as a functional medicine provider of 20 years. So you see the difference?

You're like, I am actually doing the thing I say I'm doing, which is helping you get better sleep. And then if you can add in the years part, you know, or add in some type of, um, number qualifier, whether of the years you've been doing it or the number of people you've helped or. If that's like, if you're just starting out, like maybe you can even reflect it back on like how you've helped yourself do that or how you helped even just one person do that.

There's just one little thing you can do with social proof is just infusing my patients, like my client, how I helped my client or how, like I said, it just really shows that you're actually doing the thing you say you do. And then the other piece with that is I love these really casual off cuff face to camera videos.

That you can record, they're like, so I just got through talking with a patient who, and then like start talking about the case. And again, it's showing that you're actually meeting with patients and clients and doing the thing that you say you're doing that is so much more effective for converting a silent lurker follower into somebody who's actually going to become a patient or client than a bunch of graphics that say, you know, three tips for weight loss or.

Three stretches for back pain again. I'm not saying you can't share three stretches for back pain I'm saying it's the way that you package it. That's going to be different Let me know if that doesn't make sense. The next way I love showing social proof is through really detailed case studies so instead of You know, like of course sure we still we still share graphics of like testimonials on our clients pages But that's not the only type of testimonial that we do.

When you can give a case study that has a lot more detail, then it's really going to paint the picture for, again, your expertise and authority and actually showing that you are doing the thing you say you do. So let me show you an example. I can't show you. We're chatting. Let me give you an example. Of, um, one we just did for a client.

So this is a carousel post on Instagram, but if you didn't know, carousel posts can have like up to 20 slides. Now it used to be 10. I think it's 20. It might be 15. I should really look these things up before I start recording. But you can easily Google that. So the front slide of the carousel of the case study says patient case study.

How Dr. K decreased this patient's chronic daily jaw pain post car accident. Notice we didn't say like, pretend the patient's name was, you know, Susie. Notice we didn't say Susie's story on the cover image because no one knows Susie and no offense, but no one cares. So, we were very specific, how Dr. K decreased this patient's chronic daily jaw pain post car accident.

The next slide, this is a great, this is a great formula to follow. The next slide says before care, so you talk about what were they doing before. Dr. K's patient had been involved in a car accident and she was experiencing significant daily jaw pain. Then we go into, like, if this patient had tried something else, like maybe if she had tried daily ibuprofen or physical therapy or a massage or whatever, like that's where you would also put that.

This patient didn't have any of that, so we went straight to the treatment plan, and it's like a photo of the doctor next to treatment plan, says gentle adjustments using an activator tool in her jaw, cervical spine, and upper thoracic spine. Trigger point release therapy, both orally and externally.

Anyway, it kind of goes on there to say what. The couple different points of what they did and then the results, this part is really cool. They did a screenshot of her pain indicator for the scale of one to ten, you know, it's like the smiley faces, the before and after of her pain scale, then it says results.

She reported a significant reduction in pain with her symptoms improving from a seven to a zero zero one on the visual analog scale. And then we actually showed like a screenshot of that. And then they went on to share her actual testimonial, um, and if you don't have this, you could phrase it like, this patient shared how transformative the care had been, noting that now she feels well enough to transition to a wellness based care plan, attending on an as needed basis.

She spoke highly of the treatment to her dentist and friends, shared with her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and then the very last slide says, if you are suffering from jaw pain or TMJ, book an appointment with Dr. K. She has availability next week. So you see how that brings it full circle? So while something, while saying something like how chiropractic care can help jaw pain is, is also an effective post, This is just like so super duper effective because it's actually walking you through the case study of a patient.

Now, I think this is especially important for my pediatric and prenatal chiropractors because think about this. If you have a new mom or parent or just any human, really, who have never even heard the words chiropractic in baby in the same sentence, do you think they're gonna bring their child in? Like if they come to your page and it's just like a bunch of pretty graphics?

With some stats on them, like, you know, stock images of like a, a baby, like, no, like they, they need to actually see and get an experience for what it's like to be in your office. Another social proof hack that I absolutely love is making sure that your current patients or clients Are not just following you on Instagram, but engaging with your content and leaving comments.

You know, you have some of those like all star patients or clients who would be happy to just like you would ask somebody to leave you a Google review, ask them to leave you comments. It's, it's no different. So, like I said, if you can just train your, even like train your front desk or you yourself, like train yourself to be like, Hey, while you're here, would you mind commenting on one of our Instagram posts really quickly?

It really helps us, you know, get more people in the area, the help that they need. But then what's cool is when someone comments on your Instagram post, I don't know if you've ever done this, but say you had a post about pregnancy pain, and then another one of your patients comments on the post, you know, seeing Dr.

So and so helped me so much during my pregnancy. You can, and they left that as like a comment on your post. You just hold your finger down on the comment and then tap add to story and it'll add that comment as a little text bubble over that post and put it on your stories. So it's like such a great little social proof moment, of course.

And then the last little tip for social proof that I was going to give is, like I said, just making sure that at least every six posts at the minimum, I mean, really, I'd rather it be every three posts, but I would say six posts at the minimum that you just have a photo or a video of. Like I said, you working with patients or clients so that when someone comes to your feed, they immediately get that visual image of like, Oh, this is what it's like.

You know, she said she actually does, does the thing that they say they do. I will give you one little bonus tip and it's for testimonial graphics. If you've got a really amazing testimonial, instead of list, putting the entire testimonial on a graphic. I would pick out like one really juicy sentence or maybe even two if they're shorter sentences and make that really bold on the graphic and then you can put the full review if it's longer like in the actual caption but that's usually going to catch people's attention a little more than like a really long like lengthy wordy testimonial.

We also have created I said one more tip and then I thought of something else We also have created really cool reels for our clients before where it's just a reel and it just is screenshots of all their five star reviews and The reel just says like our five star reviews don't lie or something like that It's like pop pop pop pop pop pop pop and like all the five star review reviews pop up We create those in the InShot app.

If you feel like learning an app or like learning how to edit video and all this is too much, you know what I'm going to say next. You can totally outsource this to someone else. You can go on Upwork. You can go. You know, put your front desk through holistic marketing hub and let me teach them how to do it for you.

So there's all kinds of options there. So again, I just wanted to keep this episode short, but I hope that this was really helpful and it gives you some really actionable tips that you can apply right away. This is what's actually going to make you stand out in a saturated market and make your profile stand out.

The last thing you want is for me to be able to come to your profile and be able to just, you know, take off your logo, put someone else's logo on there and it would, the page would not still make perfect sense. You know what I'm saying? You want it to be able to show your uniqueness and that you do the thing you say you do.

Hope you have a great day. See you next week. Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified, and hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast? Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce to bring you free information.

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