WP139 | The Marketing Loop You Can't Afford to Ignore with Joshua Brummel
Ready to turn your “meh” marketing into momentum? In this episode, Joshua joins us to break down the magic of feedback loops—what they are, why they matter, and how you can use them to stop guessing and start growing your practice. Whether you’re rocking a solo gig or scaling a group practice, there’s one thing that makes all the difference: paying attention to what’s working (and what’s not). From website wins to Psychology Today pitfalls to Google Ads that actually perform, Joshua shares friendly, down-to-earth wisdom—with a wink of humor and plenty of “a-ha” moments along the way.
If you’ve ever wondered why your beautiful new website isn’t bringing in new clients, or why your ads feel like shouting into the void, this one’s for you. Tune in and let’s tighten that marketing game, one smart tweak at a time. 💡
What Is a Feedback Loop?
In Joshua’s words, a feedback loop is simple:
Look at what’s happening. Measure it. Take action. Repeat.
Got a Psychology Today profile? Great. Are you getting leads from it? No? Then optimize it. Update your photo. Refine your copy. Test something new. Complete the loop.
Sounds simple, right? But here’s the kicker—most people stop after step one. They launch something, don’t measure it, and then wonder why it’s not working.
The Era of Pretty Websites Is Over (Sort Of)
It’s easier than ever to DIY a gorgeous site using tools like Canva and drag-and-drop builders. But a good-looking website is just the starting point.
If you’re not tracking site traffic, conversions, and lead generation, you’re missing the point.
Joshua puts it plainly: “If you build that great, beautiful website and you don’t measure… we’re missing a critical step.”
Think of it like building a boat that floats beautifully—but doesn’t move. Function matters. Pretty doesn’t pay the bills.
Every Channel Has Its Own Feedback Loop
Joshua breaks down how different marketing channels—Google Ads, SEO, Psychology Today, etc.—each require their own rhythm of evaluation.
Years ago, you could set up a Google Ad and let it run for months. These days?
You might need to check performance daily.
Why? Because competition is fierce, trends change quickly, and platforms shift under your feet. Think of it like steering a boat down a fast-moving river—you’ve got to course correct constantly or get swept away.
Red, Yellow, Green: Joshua’s Simple Traffic Light System
You don’t need to be a data nerd to evaluate your marketing efforts. Joshua offers a super simple way to assess any channel:
Green – It’s working well. Keep going or do more of it.
Yellow – It’s okay, but could be better. Time to optimize.
Red – It’s broken. Stop and rework it entirely.
Even if you have no clue what “normal” is for something like SEO or a Facebook ad, you can ask around, do some research (hello, ChatGPT!), and get some baseline indicators to judge where you stand.
Reality Check: Therapy Marketing Isn’t So “Special” Anymore
Joshua drops a truth bomb here:
The therapy space now performs a lot like other health and wellness markets.
What used to be a more affordable ad landscape is catching up to dental, chiropractic, and other competitive niches. That means you can no longer shrug off average conversion benchmarks and assume therapy is “different.”
For example, a 1–3% conversion rate on Psychology Today? That’s considered pretty normal now. If you're not seeing that, it’s time to revisit your headline, photo, or specialties.
Small Changes = Big Results
Joshua encourages practice owners to stop swinging for the fences and start making small, measurable tweaks.
Change a hero image. Rewrite a call to action. Test different intake forms.
Even a 1% improvement in a conversion rate can double your leads if it moves you from 1% to 2%. That’s not a typo. That’s math magic.
So instead of overhauling everything, look for micro-optimizations—what Joshua calls the “1–2% changes” that add up fast.
Build the Rhythm or Find a Partner
You’ve got two options:
Create your own rhythm. Schedule weekly check-ins with yourself or your team. Review your numbers. Tweak what’s not working.
Hire a partner who actually measures success. And don’t be afraid to ask vendors the tough questions:
“How do you measure success?”
“What metrics will we review?”
“What do your other clients see after launch?”
If a website designer can’t tell you whether their sites convert, you’re just paying for digital eye candy.
Final Thought: Don’t Confuse Activity With Progress
Just because you posted to Instagram, launched a website, or signed up for a listing doesn’t mean you’re moving forward. Joshua’s central message is clear:
“Without the feedback loop of sitting down every week and going top to bottom through all of the layers... you often won’t reach the goals that you want in this market anymore.”
So whether you're a solo clinician building your side hustle or a group practice ready to scale, it's time to stop guessing and start measuring.
After all, marketing is no longer a one-and-done game—it’s a weekly rhythm, a living experiment, and a whole lot more strategic than just making things look nice.
Show Sponsor Simplified SEO Consulting
You help clients every day—now let us help you! At Simplified SEO Consulting, we specialize in SEO and social media marketing designed just for therapists. Our team has mental health degrees and hands-on experience, giving us a unique edge in crafting ethical, engaging content that attracts your ideal clients. This June, we’re launching a Social Media Management Package—and for a limited time, select clients can get 10% off, saving up to $480! With pricing options to fit any budget, we’ll create a strategy that works for you. Claim your discount today!
https://simplifiedseoconsulting.com/apply-to-work-with-us/
Joshua’s Resources
Links and Resources
Looking for support and connection: Join the Wise Practice Community
Learn More about Wise Practice Consulting
Connect with Wise Practice on Instagram
-
[00:00:00] Whitney Owens: You help clients every day. Now, let's help you at Simplified SEO Consulting. They specialize in SEO and social media marketing designed specifically for therapists. Their team of mental health degrees and hands-on experience gives them a unique edge in the crafting of ethical and engaging content that attracts your ideal clients.
This June, they're launching a social media management package for a limited time to select clients. Giving them 10% off a savings, up to $480. With pricing options to fit any budget, they will create a strategy that works for you. Claim your discount today. Head on over to simplified seo consulting.com. Hi, I'm Whitney Owens.
I'm a group practice owner and faith-based practice consultant, and I'm here to tell you that you can have it all. Wanna grow your practice? Wanna grow your faith? Wanna enjoy your life outside of work, you've come to the right place. Each week on the Wise Practice Podcast, I will give you the action steps to have a successful faith-based practice while also having a good time.
Now let's get started.
[00:01:09] Jingle: Where she grows your practice and sheet on play. She does business with a twist of faith. It's Whitney Owen and The Wise Practice Podcast. Whitney Owen and Wise Practice Podcast.
[00:01:28] Whitney Owens: Hey, hey, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited that you chose to hang out with me today. We are gonna be speaking with Joshua Brummel, who is a marketing expert and a dear friend of mine. He's gonna chat about the marketing loop that you can't afford to ignore. When he was like, I'm gonna talk about the marketing loop.
I was like, what? What is that? So let's talk about it. 'cause I don't really understand what you're saying. So he's gonna break all that down for us and explain why it is so important. I loved this conversation with Joshua. Before we jump into the episode. I was talking with someone the other day about the dilemma that we experience as practice owners that I wanted to speak to you about as well.
This brings up a lot of tension for us, specifically as Christian practice owners, and it's how do we set our rates in a way that reflects our worth, but also in a way that is to the heart of the people we serve, right? We wanna serve them too. If you've ever felt that knot in your stomach, right, when it's time to quote your fee and you're on that phone call, or you are lowering your rate because you quote, feel bad.
Maybe you've experienced that or you're wondering, how can I charge this much and still say that I'm serving God? Look, you are not alone in feeling this way. I felt this way as well. This is the dilemma that so many faith-based practice owners face that deep desire to help people who are hurting. Then we have the guilt of asking for payment.
Especially from people that you know are struggling. You hear their story on the phone and then you're asking 'em to pay you, right? It can make it hard to live out your calling, but also find value in your work. It makes it hard to make business decisions that you need to make and also serve yourself and your family because look, if you don't serve yourself, you're not gonna be worth anything for your clients.
But here's the truth. Your work has value. And I'm not just talking about spiritual value because it's true, lots of spiritual value, but you also have real economic life changing value, and when you charge appropriately, this is not you being selfish. I wanna say that again. When you charge appropriately, you are not being selfish.
In fact, you're being a good steward of your time, your gifts, and your calling. Also, when we charge our rates to our clients, clients are more committed to the work when they're paying for it. So in a way, you're serving your client by charging appropriate fees because they're gonna do better in treatment and be more committed to the process.
So I wanna encourage you to set rates that are clear, that reflect your level of training, that reflect your niche, your years of doing this work. It's important that you are paying yourself an adequate, an adequate amount, so that you can continue to do this work. A profitable practice is a practice that stays in business.
It's not just about making a bunch of money. It's about using your profit to serve, using your profits, that you can continue to have a business that serves your clients need you, your family needs you, and God needs you to keep doing this work. So continue to do it in a way that's profitable.
Compassionate. You can have both. I am so grateful for your time and listening to me today, and I encourage you, if you haven't in a while, reset those rates or change your mindset. Think about the ways that you serve and that God wants to use this business to also serve you. Alright, now I want you to get cozy.
Or jump, jump out there with your running shoes and get your run on, or get in your car and get ready because we're about to jump into this podcast episode with Joshua Burmell on the marketing loop that you can't afford to ignore.
Today on the Wise Practice Podcast, I've got my friend Joshua Brummel, who is the co-owner of Therapy Flow, a marketing and coaching company that propels therapy practices through innovative marketing strategies and a HIPAA compliance CRM system. With over six years working in the private practice space, he has played a pivotal role in helping practice owners build seven figure businesses in driving marketing.
Success for thousands of practice owners. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.
[00:06:06] Joshua Brummel: Thank you. I think back to the first time I was on the show and you didn't use the word friend. Not that you used the word stranger either, but excited to be a friend and to be here. Happy to chat. Oh,
[00:06:17] Whitney Owens: well thank you.
Yeah. That was actually how we first met and before we started recording here, we were talking about my recent trip to Chicago. Got to see you and your wife and it was such a pleasure.
[00:06:27] Joshua Brummel: Certainly.
[00:06:28] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Well, great. Well, you are a marketing expert, so I'm excited about diving more into this field. And so we were discussing before we jumped on kind of what some topics are that we wanted to talk about and we were gonna do marketing feedback loops.
And of course I was like, what's that? So I'm excited to learn what that is and how to use this in my marketing.
[00:06:48] Joshua Brummel: Definitely. So when we think about the topic of today, which is feedback loops, and we want to zoom into that. A lot has changed over the last couple years, and especially beyond that on a marketing level and what's needed to have marketing success.
It's a lot easier to have a prettier website than it ever is before to build certain systems to go through certain procedures. And there's different types of players in this space, whether it's large companies, more solo practices, doing their side gig, more people trying to be the group practice.
There's just pressure on, on every. Perspective, big, small tools and the rest of it. This means that there's some changing processes and some changing procedures that you have to take if you still want to have success in the marketing space. And this is where a feedback loop comes into place. A feedback loop is looking at something, measuring it, and then taking an action against what you just measured.
So to share a quick example, you create a Psychology Today profile. You post it. If you do get leads, great. Maybe we make a decision about that. If you don't get any new clients from your Psychology Today profile, that's something, and you have to complete the feedback loop, which is to optimize and to make changes according to those different layers.
And that's kind of the concept in a nutshell. But we can go through the impact of it across marketing channels and practice size and such.
[00:08:19] Whitney Owens: Yes, this is great. As a therapist, it reminds me of we do CBT work. The client comes, right? We do the cognitive thought record, all that kind of stuff. And then we look at those thoughts, you know, is this treatment working, is it not?
And then we make changes in our treatment. Based on, you know, how the client presents and what they bring. So you're kind of saying the same thing. So it's like, therapists, we're already doing this, we just aren't doing it in a marketing way. And, and Joshua, you might disagree or agree, but like, I feel like so many therapists don't know their numbers.
Either their intake numbers, their client numbers, much less their marketing numbers.
[00:08:55] Joshua Brummel: Yeah, this comes up a lot with website builds and website design. You, because you can either yourself use a, a tool and get some really pretty things going on and Canva makes graphic editing easier. It's a lot easier to sort of DIY or find a partner who's a little bit further ahead and, you know, pay them to help you do the build.
But if you build that great, beautiful website. And you don't measure, right? If there's site growth, if there's new traffic growth, if there's better conversion from just the visuals compared to what you were getting before and then continue to make changes, we're missing a critical step that's really required if you want to see success with marketing in the private practice space today.
[00:09:37] Whitney Owens: Yeah, so, so in essence, therapists are wasting their time, money, and energy marketing something that might not actually be working. And if they only made a few tweaks, it could be so much better.
[00:09:47] Joshua Brummel: Yes, is the easy answer there. With that, then it, it's some of the practice owners that we talk to, they also are making optimizations and improvement.
But this is also where I say that each marketing channel on a marketing channel is like your Google ads compared to your website and SEO like your listing sites with Psychology today. Each one of those is a, is a channel that you can market your practice through Often there's a ideal feedback loop. So for Google Ads three, four years ago, that feedback loop looked like maybe a month to three months, meaning you could build an ad, you could let it run, and you might not have to touch it or even look at it, and performance might not vary for months at a time.
I. Now with what our team is finding, with the hundreds of practices that we're running ads for, that feedback loops looks more like a week to a day where we have to look at the data, we have to figure out what's going right and wrong with it, and then we have to make changes in optimizations before the next week happens.
It's a little bit like keeping a boat center in the middle of a river as it's falling fast. If you don't wanna get carried down river really quickly, you have to keep that pressure on. You have to keep. Giving the marketing channel feedback. And so ads is one of those that if you're not giving that for weeks or for months on end, it might be why performance is not happening ever, or your performance will never get where you want it to go.
[00:11:12] Whitney Owens: Yeah. So for a therapist listening, they're probably thinking what I'm thinking, how do I know if something's going right or not?
[00:11:21] Joshua Brummel: Yeah. That is within a feedback loop. We have to know what, what we call our greens, our yellows, and our reds, and that's my easy heuristic to, to understand how we want to rank this channel.
You know, red means stop, something's broken, needs to be redone, rebuilt, relaunched, whatever that looks like yellow. It's working, but it's probably not working as well as we want or as we'd like. This could, you know, be, Hey, we're getting new clients from the Google ad. But not at a good cost per lead or good cost per acquisition working, but should be optimized green.
Hey, full, full steam ahead. How can we add more momentum or do more in this category? And so off the bat, if you've never thought about your psych today or your SEO, what those things look like, you might not know even what's. A red or a yellow or a green, that's okay. But if you get those answers on paper, you have a conversation with a marketing perce professional, you ask some questions in a Facebook group, you go talk to CHATT PT right now, and you ask, Hey, what's normal for this type of thing?
And you get some brief indicators and we can maybe go through a couple of the popular channels and even share those today. But you get some brief indicators on essentially Good. Okay. And great. And then you can easily just track that. Day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out.
[00:12:44] Whitney Owens: Yeah, that was a great explanation.
'cause I actually did this a few weeks ago. Not realizing it's a marketing feedback loop, but I was curious about email lists.
[00:12:53] Joshua Brummel: Yeah, I was like,
[00:12:53] Whitney Owens: who is my email L list? I think these numbers are good, but what's the normal number of opens? What's the normal number of click rates? Thankfully I'm doing pretty good, but.
That was easy information to kind of grab. I mean, I guess if it hadn't been going well, then I would've been going to, okay, well what do I actually do to change it? And I'm sure Chap, PGPT would have some suggestions. No marketing expert. Right. But maybe a few suggestions. And I think Psychology today, that example was really good and I, it's very common for therapists.
Do you have any kind of specifics about that? Specific, yeah. Form. Yeah.
[00:13:26] Joshua Brummel: So when we think about Psychology Today, or even other channels now one thing to note, which is really helpful for a therapist doing their research, the therapy space, compared to a couple years ago, I. Looks very similar on digital marketing performance as other industries now, especially other health wellness, whether that's dental or chiropractor or other pieces.
'cause it's gone through a similar evolution over the last couple years of virtual services, of large money entering the space of competitive push. And so if we ran the same style of ad. Five years ago for a therapist, as we did for a dental practice, for instance, the dental practice would have 3, 4, 5 times the cost as the therapy practice just because of how the space is.
Those look a lot more similar today. I share that to say that means when you go to chat GPT, or you're doing research on the internet and it says you should have a. 7% conversion rate on your leads, or you should have fill in the blank. It's mostly true now compared to a couple years ago where we always like, well, that's the average across industries, but the therapy space is special.
Unfortunately, from a digital marketing perspective, therapy space is a little less special. So that brings us to psychology Today. Usually you're gonna have one lead per a hundred clicks. That's a 1% conversion rate. So if you have a hundred profile views, you should probably get about one, one lead or you know, for Psychology today, that means they're probably clicking in fully viewing it.
And it could be a little more, could be a little less depending on the situation. Or cash pay therapist experience. Less than that, if you're experiencing a little bit more than that could be because of lack of therapists in your area. So you have a competitive advantage. There could be great copywriting, an amazing headshot, some other pieces there, but a one to 3%.
Conversion rate, AK one to three leads on a hundred people. Actually reading or consuming your psychology today is pretty normal now, and we can work against that on a numbers level.
[00:15:31] Whitney Owens: Well, I got some work to do and we're done. I got some therapists to go look at on oncology today. Yeah, that I love that. I love that you just gave me the exact numbers to be thinking about and looking for.
'cause that's really gonna help me know if I need to make some changes to my profile. That's, thank you for that.
[00:15:46] Joshua Brummel: Definitely and with psychology today, I think we also have to take that number I just shared with a grain of salt because they are constantly shifting things in the backend. They also cycle their therapists in a distinct way, and a listening site especially is always trying to balance how much they're going and putting effort into getting people to view the website that their therapists are on.
And the therapists themselves. So you can have the best profile with the best specialties in a non-competitive area. And if that listing site hasn't done their work to send good users to the platform, you won't get the throughput. And because they're in a competition as well, it's all to say is like sometimes.
That is out of your hands with a listing site compared to if you're running your own Google ads or you're running your own Facebook ads, you're doing your own SEO worker network. Those channels are more in your camp to control with the decisions there.
[00:16:38] Whitney Owens: Hmm. Yeah. Alright, so you said you had some other examples for us.
I'd love to hear more about this certain platform.
[00:16:44] Joshua Brummel: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So there was a practice that we worked with, they'd been running Google ads for a long time and they, they came to us and essentially it took us about. Six months of work to really see the, the long-term good average cost per lead. And it was kind of an extreme example.
Usually doesn't take that long to get something that totally wasn't working. They'd been with about six other marketing companies previously, kind of popping from one to the other. Never seen it work and was. It was notoriously difficult, but that practice owner was, was patient. And every week our team would sit down and we'd go top to bottom, the ads, the landing page, the keywords, the targeting, the intake process, the scripting, and we'd go all of the layers that might affect performance there.
And we did that week in and week out. For six months. And although that practice owner had to use a lot of patience as they spent money on ads and went through that process and it took us about six months to what we call like crack the code on those ads without the feedback loop of sitting down every week and going top to bottom through all of the layers and saying, what are one or 2%.
Optimizations that we can make just to try and keep pushing this forward. We never would've gotten there. And although it doesn't usually take that long, in most cases, it, it's one of those things that I share without patience and the work being done, of reading what's happening and taking execution. You often won't reach the goals that you want in this market anymore.
[00:18:19] Whitney Owens: Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's tough. You know, and I think so many practice owners, I even see this in business consulting. They'll get started, but it's not going as fast as they want, or they're not getting the results they want. And so they pull out probably sooner than they need to. I mean, we see this with therapy clients too.
They start coming in. Yeah. You know, we see the potential for them, but they. They don't wanna continue to invest, so then they never get where they're gonna go.
[00:18:43] Joshua Brummel: Yeah. And another concept that might be more encouraging is going back to what we call like one and 2% changes. I mentioned that psychology today, or a hundred views, you might have a 1% conversion rate.
If we can move that 1% conversion rate from 1% to 2%, that's not a 1% difference. It's a hundred percent difference. And what do I mean by that? It is right if we get 2% more people converting, we just went from one client to two clients. And so the nice thing in marketing, once you have it built and you're looking for optimization, we're in the volume game.
We're, we're experiencing, you know, a lot of volume that we can go after, and so one, five, 10% changes make a big difference. So what that means is really zeroing in and saying, how can I make this call to action on my website page that shows up everywhere really specific, clear, and it speaks to my ideal audience in a great way.
May that might move the needle by 1%, which might double your lead flow, which is crazy. How can I change the hero image on my website and see if I can get a better conversion rate? So thinking small and looking at the finer details is hard, and it doesn't, you want to do big, giant things, but the reality is when we're trying to perform feedback loops of saying, Hey, what's working, what's not working?
And what do I need to change? It's often not everything or all of it, or most of it. It's often zooming into one or two things and making that adjustment, and you're gonna see the progress you want.
[00:20:19] Whitney Owens: Yeah. In fact, practice owners that have big jumps in lots of things, but especially a lot of clients, they hire a lot of therapists.
Usually they struggle. Yeah. Because they have too much growth, too fast, and they couldn't prepare for it. So those small changes actually are gonna be long-term growth.
[00:20:37] Joshua Brummel: It's also one of the only ways to like sustainably do this over time.
[00:20:41] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:20:41] Joshua Brummel: And you have two options. You can either build your rhythms with yourself as the practice owner or with your team, or you can hire a partner that appropriately does this for you.
So one of the things we coach our, our practice owners through, whether they're using us or someone else, so you have to ask your vendors, whether that's website, SEO, Google Ads, otherwise what their optimization rhythms are, and make sure that. The volume of optimizations they do, how they read the data, how they make the changes is appropriate for the success that you're trying to have and or you have to build those inside of your own practice.
Otherwise you're just throwing stuff to the wind hoping it sticks and it might not without finishing that feedback loop.
[00:21:25] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that part is so hard for therapists. 'cause we're not, we're not educated on this area. Like, not like you are. And so then. You think you can trust a company or what they're doing and you just don't know because I, I don't know enough to even know other than now I can sit on this side and say, I've worked with these companies, or I've seen this work for a therapist.
You know? So I bring people on the show that I trust, that I know do good work to help marketing. But I would say most of us, those things you just said, we'd be like, I don't know. You know, even if they did answer the question, I asked the right question, I still would be like, I'm not really sure about this.
[00:22:01] Joshua Brummel: Yeah. And I think that's also where the game is changing a little bit. Going back to the earlier example of a website, if you're vetting a website vendor, for instance, and we don't do like. Web web build right now. Uhhuh, uh, if you're, if you're vetting a website vendor and they don't ever measure when they build the website, whether that client received more clients or more leads before or after they did a rebrand or refresher and update, if that's not a part of their.
Of their process. That means they're just building you something pretty and they might not be building you something that actually is converting. 'cause those two things don't always line up way easier than ever before to build pretty things on the internet. And it's a lot harder than ever before to actually, I.
Write copy and build a opt-in experience that flows well in all of those things. So sometimes they're just asking those questions of like, how do you measure success? Do you measure success? What's the results that your clients get other than a, a pretty asset or a posted ad or a psych today rewrite, or whatever that looks like.
[00:23:05] Whitney Owens: Hmm. That's so important. Yeah. So I think this actually leads us really well into the CRM and what that is.
[00:23:12] Joshua Brummel: Yeah, so A CRM is a customer relationship manager, and it's a tool that lots of therapists are starting to use and is pretty common practice in most other industries. We've been providing one to our clients for almost six years now as well.
HIPAA compliant version. And what it allows a practice owner to do is a couple things. Number one, track more things in one place is probably the best way to put it, and automate a lot of that tracking. So you take your Google ads, you take your psych today, you take your website analytics, your Google My Business profile, your phone calls, right?
You can put all of that into a good CRM and have all the data in one place to look at as a practice owner by day, by week, by month, whatever that looks like. So that way you can. Make decisions about the work that needs to be done. And so that's number one. Huge. There are other elements like pipelines to track how many.
People you can convert email marketing and data on that. Lots of other pieces there. A CRM, like ours, the therapy flow, CRM, it brings a lot of the tools together across marketing and intake, email marketing, text marketing, phone calls, all of those integrations. So there's just a lot there that it can be done.
But the core, the core hope of it is it's gonna do a lot of the things that your EHR can't do, which is track. Report and perform more advanced marketing actions that UHR was never meant to do, and your spreadsheet just can't do.
[00:24:48] Whitney Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so this idea, I think I wanna hone in on is it's tracking.
What's working? Yeah. You know those marketing efforts, you can see, hey, these are coming from Google My Business. These are coming from Psychology Today. You can see which ones are working, and I see so many people look at what everyone else is doing, right? Oh, well they're doing this, they're doing this. I need to put my money, time, energy into that.
And I'm like, well, you could, but why don't you put your time and energy to what's already working? And the only way you're gonna know that is by tracking it. And so this allows that to get tracked. So that you can
[00:25:23] Joshua Brummel: continue
[00:25:23] Whitney Owens: to
[00:25:23] Joshua Brummel: improve those things. And it's one of those things that we often see a practice owner.
They say, well, I am running ads and doing SEO and I have my site today and I'm doing networking. And they kind of list all of the channels. Yep. Right? The five to eight channels. And the reality is, is simply having the channels and doing some work inside of that, that's step one. That's kind of new, Hey, have we checked the box?
And we exist in all of those places. Step two is more we have to increase the volume of action and the volume of work, the volume of spend, the volume of content, whatever that looks like if we can. And then we have to make it all better and repeat that loop again and again. And that's a another version of just the feedback loop of the actions we're supposed to be taking for marketing or other practice elements.
And so a lot of these channels. Can accept way more volume, way more ad spend, way more SEO than you think that they can to generate you leads. And so sometimes we're just scratching the surface and we hit some roadblocks on quality, on spend, on whatever else. And it's that last optimization layer that's really needed if you want to scale it, rather than always be stuck at four blogs a month and your general SEO level.
[00:26:40] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody's listening and they're like. That sounds really cool, but am I ready for that? Do I need a CRM? Like how do you advise practice centers when they're ready for one,
[00:26:51] Joshua Brummel: two things. If you're getting somewhere between 20 to 30 like leads or calls on a monthly basis, that's just an easy yes to say, Hey, A CRM would probably be helpful, and it's time to move off the spreadsheet.
And sometimes it's even less because of. Manual data entry and wanting to remove that, and it's more starting the list building work, so that way you can have them all in a platform that you can email, mark, mark it out of with newsletters or text message, and just like having that in place. So 12 months from now when you have hundreds of new contacts in there, you're ready to manage that appropriately and track that appropriately.
That's a good starting point. If you're still 3, 5, 10 people, maybe it's not worth the time or effort to put together a system. Then the other thing is if you do want some of the additional marketing tools all in one place, so let's say you're using a email marketing platform, you're using a calendar scheduling platform for intakes.
You're doing some Google My Business, you're doing social media. All of those tools, at least with our CRM, can be in a single platform. So you can save time and money by bringing those all together. You can host HIPAA compliant courses, you can do the email marketing with your newsletters. You can have a booking funnel, things like that.
And so you might not be there on the lead volume yet, but you're still using those tools and you might wanna save some time or money having them in one place. So that's just like. Spare, minimum starting point. And then the last piece is if your admin is spending tons of time doing manual data entry on a weekly basis, then that's a great indication that setting aside some time to get a different system set up will save time over the next year to years having a more advanced tool in place.
[00:28:38] Whitney Owens: Yeah. This is so great. I love how strategic you are, but also number driven and you like make it sound simple. So I, I really appreciate that about you. Is there anything that we have not talked about with marketing feedback loops or the CRM that you wanted, make sure to mention?
[00:28:54] Joshua Brummel: Yeah, I wanna just think through things through a circle.
At the top of it, it's, you take a marketing action, you go down a little bit, you measure the action you just took, and then you optimize. Action. And that's just this cyclical framework that if you don't. Take the action, measure the action, and improve the action, or increase the volume of the action, optimize that action.
We're not completing the full feedback loop, and so my takeaway for the practice owners today is maybe you need a CRM to measure. Maybe you need a marketing partner to start taking more actions. Maybe you need to put time on your calendar to look at what you are already measuring. You probably have website analytics in place.
You just maybe haven't looked at it in a month or two and then decide, hey. What actions do we need to take to optimize it? And if you put more feedback loops in place for your practice and for your marketing channels you're already investing in
[00:29:50] Whitney Owens: mm-hmm. You'll
[00:29:50] Joshua Brummel: start to see more progress. That's a great thing.
[00:29:53] Whitney Owens: Hmm. Such great stuff. Well, well you're gonna be hanging out with us at the Wise Practice Summit and speak. Yeah. So can you share a little bit about what you're gonna be talking about at the event?
[00:30:04] Joshua Brummel: Yeah, so it's another feedback loop. Surprise, surprise. But it's a, it's a big one. I call it design delegate.
Lead, the three step formula for building, marketing and implementing other team members inside of your practice or your vendors, so that way you, as the practice owner can outgrow. Manual and personally, you know, full fronted involvement in your marketing. And so that way you can be involved in the design, the delegation, and the leading process, but you might not be in the day-to-day nuts and bolts, minutiae of all of the work.
And so how do we do that? How do we do that successfully? So it feels great and it works great. Based off of your practice size and goals.
[00:30:47] Whitney Owens: I'm looking forward to that. I need to learn that.
[00:30:50] Joshua Brummel: Yeah, sounds like you're doing, doing a version of it already pretty well as you continue to grow. So
[00:30:55] Whitney Owens: Yeah, and, and then you'll have a table there.
So at Practice Center, at the event, you'll have the opportunity to talk to Joshua about marketing, learn more about therapy flow services, and if you have it. Heard, he's explained it a little bit. The CRM is only a small part of the great services that Therapy Flow offers for marketing for therapist. So if you're listening to the episode and you're like, I don't really know what I'm doing, I wanna take it to the next level, you can put it in the hands of therapy flow and they will do it for you and do great work.
So. Thank you for that, Joshua.
[00:31:27] Jingle: So click on follow and leave a review. I keep on loving this work we do with Whitney Owens and The Wise Practice Podcast, Whitney Owens and The Wise Practice
[00:31:42] Whitney Owens: Podcast. Podcast. Special thanks to Marty Altman for the music in this podcast. The Wise Practice Podcast is part of the Site Craft Podcast Network.
A collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives. To learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network, head on over to site craft network.com. The Wise Practice podcast represents the opinions of Whitney Owens and her guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only, and the content should not be taken as legal advice.
If you have legal questions, please consult an attorney.
