Spencer Brooks is the Founder & Principal of Brooks Digital, an expert digital firm that empowers health nonprofits to improve the lives of patients. He’s helped organizations such as The diaTribe Foundation scale their digital presence from a few thousand annual visitors and subscribers to over 2.5 million visitors and 200,000 subscribers. Spencer’s superpower is helping organizations get their complex, difficult-to-use website under control so they can provide the right information to the right person at the right time.

Spencer’s writing has been featured in publications such as TechSoup and Nonprofit Marketing Guide. He is a sought after speaker on the topics of digital metrics, the patient journey, getting inside the heads of an organization’s website visitors, and converting patients to advocates.

Spencer lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his wife and 2 children.

[SAM]:
Well, we did it. 2020 has finally come to an end. And we have made it out on the other side. And while there still might be a lot of uncertainty about what this year will have in store, there’s one thing we know for sure, your services as a therapist have never been more essential, making it the perfect time to ensure your private practice website attracts your best fit clients and gets them to call you. Whether you’re a seasoned clinician with a website in need of a refresh, or you’re fresh out of school needing your very first therapist website, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution. And during the entire month of January, they’re running their biggest sale of the year. From now until the end of the month, they’re completely waiving all setup fees, and only charging $39 a month for the entire first year of a new website. That’s a savings of $240 for your first year of website service with Brighter Vision. All you have to do is go to brightervision.com/joe to learn more and take advantage of this great deal. That’s brightervision.com/joe.

Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you will discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand your business, visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram @samanthacarvalhodesign.

________________________________________

[SAM]:
Hi there, thanks so much for joining me today on the Marketing a Practice podcast. Today we have Spencer Brooks as our guest. Spencer is the founder and principal of Brooks Digital, and expert digital firm that empowers health nonprofits to improve the lives of patients. He’s helped organizations such as the Diatribe Foundation scale their digital presence from a few 1000 annual visitors and subscribers to over 2.5 million visitors and 200,000 subscribers. Spencer’s superpower is helping organizations get their complex difficult to use website under control, so they can provide the right information to the right person at the right time. Spencer’s writing has been featured in publications such as TechSoup, and Nonprofit Marketing Guide, He is a sought after speaker on the topics of digital matrix, the patient journey, getting inside the heads of an organization’s website visitors, and converting patients to advocates. Spencer lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his wife and two children. Hi, Spencer, thanks so much for joining us today.

[SPENCER]:
Hi, Sam. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

[SAM]:
Can you tell us a bit about your story and how you ended up as the founder and principal of Brooks Digital?

[SPENCER]:
Absolutely. So I think my story, maybe like some other stories, it’s a combination of multiple areas of my life converging into one. So well, I guess to start, I grew up in what seemed to be a pretty normal family. I have a younger brother and a younger sister. And I don’t know, around maybe when I was 20 or so, my brother who was, you know, a normal college student, he just all of a sudden out of nowhere, lost the ability to walk, progressively. So he started to just get really fatigued and have trouble with coordination. And eventually he was confined to a wheelchair. And our family went to various doctors, we went to the Mayo Clinic here in the US, which is, you know, a huge powerhouse, obviously. And they were having trouble figuring out what was going on with him. So it’s very alarming, what was happening.

And during this time, as we were trying to get things figured out with the doctors, my younger sister, who was engaged to be married at the time, she gets diagnosed with cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And so this was a double whammy for my family. And, fortunately, my sister, she recovered, she’s living cancer free and married now, which is wonderful. And my brother is still, we’re going down that journey. He has apparently a very rare disease. But during this whole time, I just saw the big emotional impact on my family like clearly that’s a very, very traumatic events hitting one after another. And while all of this was happening, I was in school studying computer science and I was doing some freelance web development and things like that. And this was of course over a number of years.

So during this time, I was doing some freelance work and then sort of growing Brooks Digital as a digital agency and I remember having this moment where I realized that we were, Brooks Digital was helping a lot of health focused nonprofits. And I just took a look at my personal story and I went, you know what, I know what it’s like to be in the shoes of someone who this organization is helping. And they’re providing support and resources to people who are in the middle of a tough journey. And I can’t fix what’s happening with my brother, and I can’t cure cancer, but I can use the skills that I have with digital marketing and with technology and web development to help the people who are providing support. So that hopefully, the journey for that person suffering a major health event has a little bit more hope, that they can, they can go through that and maybe just have it be a little bit better. So that’s sort of how I ended up in the position I am today, leading Brooks Digital.

[SAM]:
That’s amazing, I think, yeah, I had no idea that that was your backstory. And I think that, in itself adds so much more authenticity to what you’re doing, because you are the ideal client, you are the person on the other end, you know, going through, as you said, going through those tough times.

[SPENCER]:
Exactly. And I think there’s just some empathy there that I think helps it be a little bit more than just doing work for a check. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily. But it does help me just to see, hey, this is what other people are going through, and then also have a little bit more purpose for myself and for the people around me who are working with me so that they have something that lends their work a little bit more meaning as well. So I really, I see it in a personal light.

[SAM]:
Yes. And I think often, with these sort of jobs that many of us have now where it’s, you know, predominantly online, and we’re sitting behind the computer a lot, it’s, I think there’s a tendency to maybe lose that personal aspect and to, as you say, kind of just be going through the motions and doing the job. But yeah, I think the fact that you obviously have a personal investment in it is going to ensure that your work is that much more meaningful.

[SPENCER]:
Totally. Yeah. And I think that’s, it’s one of those things that everyone’s looking for meaning in their work, certainly, and I’ve had some, some people who work with me, and they say, well, these are staff members or developers on our team, and they’ll say, there’s nothing wrong with building like a website or something for a bank. But, you know, at the end of the day, I don’t necessarily find a whole lot of meaning for that. And so I think it’s a really powerful opportunity to provide someone with maybe it’s a bit of pride, maybe it’s just some of that, again, that meaning but, you know, typically, the technology obviously spans a wide variety of applications. But to be working with, specifically nonprofits, and in our case, nonprofits that are focused on some kind of health outcome, it’s actually in the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty narrow, pretty narrow piece of the pie.

But at the same time, like going that narrow for us, and for me, was a very intentional decision so that I could make sure that we’re investing time and effort seeing the same kinds of folks, again, and again, getting smarter about how to help them, and how to make them more effective and help more people. So it was a very intentional decision on my part to actually say, well, I could help so many different kinds of people, but I’m going to narrow it to this very small segment, because I just, I want to get really good at solving their problems. And I think that’ll just make, ultimately, those organizations way more, more effective, at least at the work that we’re helping them to do.

[SAM]:
Absolutely. And I think that’s a really smart business decision. I know, Joe Sanok of Practice of the Practice often speaks about in terms of private practice, you know, the importance of developing a niche and not aiming to serve everybody, but really figuring out who your ideal client is, and then kind of homing in on that specifically. And I know he always uses the kind of phrase that a specialist can serve anyone but a generalist can’t be a specialist. So I think, yeah, having homed in on that specific topic is a very good business decision. So kind of breaking away from your story and kind of going into the more marketing side of things, we know that you specialize a lot on the user journey, and specifically with regards to how you structure your website around that. So can you speak a bit into the user journey, what it is, and how you can go about structuring your website around each phase of that journey?

[SPENCER]:
Absolutely. So the user journey, maybe a good way to start talking about this topic is, I think that you and everyone listening, you’re a part of someone’s story. And the cool thing about that is that a story evolves over time. And so a person can come to visit you, they can come to your website multiple times with different needs, because they’re on different phases of their journey. So the user journey is this concept that people progress through a story, especially as it pertains to your work. And they might go through these different phases, like becoming aware that they need help, and then going ahead and contacting you to get help, and I can go through some of the typical phases in a minute. But it provides this lens through which you can evaluate your marketing, your website branding, so that you can look and say, how would someone who is just becoming aware of their problem, what would they want to hear? What would they want to see? And conversely, someone who might be at the end, they’ve completed their treatment, or maybe they’re just getting, you know, like, some follow up care with some maintenance, what do they want to see and hear from my marketing and everything in between?

So I think that the user journey really helps, I find, to give you these, like I mentioned these little lenses, where you can almost put like, a new set of glasses on and view your website and your marketing through these different perspectives so that you’re not just locked into one sort of assumption about what somebody wants to hear from you, or, or to see from your marketing, and some some typical phases that apply, I think, to the medical profession in general. And I think certainly to therapists and to private practice owners are, like I mentioned, awareness is a typical first step. So that’s like they’re doing some sort of self assessment and online research, maybe outreach to friends or on social media, trying to figure out okay, what’s going on here? That might be like someone figuring out hey, like, I think what I’m feeling is anxiety, right? Or depression. It’s becoming aware of what’s happening.

And then the second step is getting help, right, that’s the second phase. That’s, of course, the initial contact, you know, with the private practice, or to booking that first appointment, scary step. And then the third would actually be going to receive care. And you know, that’s going to an appointment, things like that. Fourth, would be treatment. So it may be if there is like medication involved, as a part of that, that would be a stage. If they need to make lifestyle changes, that would be like a fifth step. So they’re adjusting their daily habits and routines in order to become more healthy, and then receiving that ongoing care.

And those are six different phases that someone can go through on their journey. And so if you take, you know, someone who, for example, is on that third step, which is getting care from you, so maybe that’s the person who’s loading your website on their phone, five minutes before they leave for an appointment, trying to figure out your address, like, where do I go? How do I get there? And those are like things that maybe you didn’t think about when you’re putting together your marketing. And you realize, oh, hey, what about this person on this stage of their journey, and that person could have come to your website, either last week or two weeks ago looking for something totally different. So I think the user journey is a cool concept because it breaks up this idea that a person is just a person and they come with one thing. It’s you can have the same person coming for many different things over their journey. So I think it provides a helpful tool to structure your website around and to help you see the viewpoint of someone from these different perspectives as they go through their relationship with you.

[SAM]:
Absolutely, I think that’s such valuable advice and it’s such a great way to break it down, like you say. I mean, I’m just thinking, we often encourage people to kind of build an avatar around the ideal client. So to imagine them as an actual person, you know, with a gender, with age, with specific pain points, things like that. But I think a lot of the time, we will just be focusing on phase one, as you say, which is awareness, and maybe how to get them to book. So kind of edging into phase two, but then you do kind of tend to forget about the rest of those phases and, as you said, how that same person might interact with you, but then at a different stage of their journey.

[SPENCER]:
Absolutely. You mentioned the avatar, and I think that it hits the nail right on the head, because at least in the work we do, and it’s certainly, you know, we’re helping really large organizations try to get these [unclear], like, they have multiple avatars that they’re trying to communicate with. But one of the things that we do is you take the avatar, and then each avatar has their journey. So I think it builds right on top of that concept. And it’s actually something I’ve outlined in more detail, there’s an article on the Brooks Digital site, and I think it’s titled “The secret of highly effective health nonprofit websites”. And in that, it outlines, we would call the personas avatars, same thing, right. But it outlines this idea of the journey map in a little bit more detail and why that’s important. But it sort of follows on from that idea of building an avatar and then going in and building a journey map for that so that you have more of a fleshed out idea of what that avatar is looking for at the different stages.

[SAM]:
Yes, so kind of taking it a step further. And for those of you who may be on the move while you’re listening to this, we’ll definitely have a link to that article in our show notes. So that you can go and give that a read. So, Spencer, when you’re getting inside the heads of visitors to try and understand what’s working, so kind of once we’ve improved our website around the user journey, how do we get inside the heads of our visitors to understand what’s working and to know what to stop wasting time on?

[SPENCER]:
It’s a really important question, I think because, well, as an expert, I think it can be hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has no experience in your specialty. And that’s what makes it really, really difficult. You would think that marketing and messaging and this kind of stuff would be easy. But I find that’s a huge challenge if you’re sitting here and you have so much knowledge about how your specialty works, that trying to communicate that to someone who has no concept of it whatsoever is extraordinarily difficult, because you can’t unlearn what you know. So you’re sitting there going, how do I communicate in a way that resonates to someone who has no experience whatsoever? And I think if you’re not asking that question, and if you’re just putting stuff together, trying your best, you can end up wasting a lot of time on things that no one cares about, or that, you know, there might be certain, you know, I’m not a therapist, right? But maybe there’s certain techniques or whatever that are big in your particular specialty that a lot of other therapists are doing, but that a client has no idea and they don’t know what that is, they could care less about it.

And so if you spend a bunch of time writing on your website, and your marketing materials about X, Y or Z, it’s not that that’s not appropriate. But if you don’t understand that maybe a person is not going to care about that, because they don’t even know what it is yet. And you have to educate them and so forth, it can end up wasting a lot of time. So maybe the cheeky answer to getting inside the head of your visitors is to talk to them. But I think in a different context, because when you’re providing your services, it’s a different sort of conversation. Like you’re not going to be, you know, in a counseling session and all of a sudden start probing them and asking them questions about your marketing.

[SAM]:
Probably not a great idea.

[SPENCER]:
Yeah, here’s sage advice here from Spencer, don’t do that. But so it’s in a different context, right? And I think that the wonderful thing is that, you know, as a private practice owner, you’re probably already pretty good at listening. So I think it’s just going to be about listening to different things. It’s going to be about listening to marketing signals. And what I mean by that is, so say you decide to, I don’t know, get a few people together, they could be current or prospective clients and you want to sit them down, go get coffee, or whatever it may be, outside of… coffee’s a poor example. Maybe that’s something you would do if you’re not a therapist, but get together with them in a professional setting but see if you can ask them about marketing, and ask them some questions. And you might want to, to listen for the words that they’re like, what specific words and phrases are they using? Particularly the ones that aren’t, that like, non…? They’re not the right terms, but they’re like, the layman’s terms, for particular things that you do pay attention to. What made them make the decision to first come see you? And those like, what are the reasons and what are the specific events, the triggers, that made them ultimately say, okay, I need to pick up the phone, or I need to go to the website and schedule. Like, what was the event?

And then those are the things that you scribble down on your notepad and you go and put them up on your website, and you feature them prominently in your marketing materials, using the events that prompted them to book an appointment, that first appointment. Using the words that they, the individual is using, the non expert is using, to describe their pain points, the things that they want. And those, it’s just so powerful, because the next person who comes to your website, is going to see themselves in it, because you’re using their words, and it can be, they might say, oh, right, like this is someone else’s story, or you might anonymize a story or make it more general. But hey, I am suffering from this pain point. And it’s going to be so much more powerful that way. So that’s, it starts with a simple conversation, I think it starts with listening in a different way, and listening and trying to put yourself in the shoes and inside the head of that person that doesn’t have that specialized knowledge so that you can pull out the words and the pain points and the marketing nuggets that you can use to improve your own marketing.

[SAM]:
That’s really great advice. We had Jessica Tappana on the Marketing a Practice podcast as well. And she’s an SEO specialist. And she was also telling us how, in the beginning, kind of when she was also just getting into SEO, she set up her own landing pages, and she named the one something on lines of “adolescent depression” or something like that. And then she asked one of her friends to review her website and let her know what she thought about it. And her friend came back to it and said, no way Is anybody who, like any parent or any teenager who’s actually going through depression, they’re not going to be typing in adolescent depression into Google. You know, they’re going to be typing in, you know, if anything, teen depression, or, you know, why am I so depressed, or things like that. And so she also had to kind of go back and review. And that’s when she really started getting into SEO and into the actual phrases that people are typing, because I think exactly, as you say, therapists in particular, who have so much jargon and who have so many technical terms for things often forget the layman terms for what they obviously have a different term for or have studied differently.

[SPENCER]:
Yeah, it really is the case. And it’s just so surprising. I think every profession in some way falls prey to that. The idea that you get so, is called expert paralysis, I think that’s lodged somewhere in the back of my head is as a term where you get so entrenched in your work, that you literally get paralyzed trying to talk about it to someone who doesn’t understand that. And so, and it happens to everyone, but I think especially when it comes to marketing, if you’re not paying attention to those sort of things, then you could think that something is great. And even if you show it to peers that are also experts in your area, they might go, yeah, this is great. But you do have to remember that that’s just inside your bubble. And once you put that out to someone else, it may not resonate.

And I think it’s actually, it’s particularly challenging. I was talking to a colleague the other day, and slight tangent but related tangent, I’ll get there. So as part of my work, I do study some industry trends and benchmarks for specifically the nonprofit sector and health nonprofits and what I found when looking at that data was that the cost that a health nonprofit would pay for a lead was over twice that of nonprofits in other industries. And it just sort of struck me as interesting. It’s like, what is it about this, the health sector that just makes it so much more expensive to get a lead, at least within the nonprofit world? And so I was talking to another firm that is a potential partner for us. And they do a lot of paid media, like, you know, buying ads on TV and things like that, right?

And, and they mentioned, hey, it’s part of it is that it’s just very sensitive information, like to get someone to raise their hand and say, I’m interested in a toaster, or something, it’s a lot easier than for someone to raise their hand and say, I think I might be struggling with depression. Like, that’s weighty, it’s like a serious thing. And so that’s why I think it’s actually all that much more important, especially when you’re talking about deep emotional issues, to make sure that the language that you’re using, and the the words and the phrases, and what you’re talking about, really resonates deeply with someone who actually may be struggling to come to terms with the fact that they have a mental health problem, and they need to raise their hand and get some help. And so I think that it’s even more important for private practice owners, in particular, to be able to do that, it’s important for every industry, but especially for this particular one.

[SAM]:
Yeah, I completely agree, it’s a very complex situation, even if they have come to terms with, even if they, you know, to themselves realize that they have a mental health issue, as you said, the courage it takes for them to actually step forward and admit that to somebody else, and go for counseling, is a whole ‘nother issue, and takes a lot of courage. And so, obviously, these days, there’s a number of kind of digital marketing tactics out there. What are your recommendations for how to go about choosing which one is going to work best for your organization?

[SPENCER]:
That’s a very relevant question, Sam, because like you mentioned, there are 1000s, there’s so many options out there. And, to think about this, I think the first thing even before you choose, there’s a principle that I think is super important to understand. And that’s, you have to choose a subset of those things to be really good at, or you’re going to be a jack of all trades and master of none. Because there’s just not enough time, especially if you’re just a single person, to be doing every social media platform in existence and blogging and podcasting and going to events. I suppose you could do it, you’d probably be really stressed out. But even if you did, you’re not going to be doing them well, certainly as well as someone who’s chosen to do a subset of those and to really invest in that. And I think that’s the digital marketing environment in which we exist now, is that there’s just so many people doing so many different things that in order to be effective, you really have to choose what it is that you’re going to do. And then you have to buckle down and do that really well.

So within that backdrop of thinking about it that way, I think that, and I’m gonna say this, again, you’ll probably sense a theme with what I’m saying. But if you talk to your ideal client, and you listen closely to them, and you go to that avatar and you actually have that conversation, like I mentioned, with the people that might be clients now or prospective clients, then you’re also going to be able to listen for how they found you and what they were doing. It ties all the way back to that journey map even with awareness, right, that when you listen to your ideal client, then you can create that journey map which actually includes the touch points of hey, was someone searching for me? Did they get my name through a recommendation from a friend? Things like that. And you start to be able to pull out how did someone find me and maybe connect the dots there. And then you’re able to actually narrow down some of the tactics that you use like if someone is finding you because of your social media posts, then you’re going to probably look at which platforms are people coming from the most and invest time there. It could be that there’s referrals from other local organizations, from relationships you have in the area. And maybe you go, hey, you know what, I actually need to be focusing my time and, and energy there instead of, you know, writing social media posts all the time, because this is where people are actually coming from.

So I think it does start, again, that’s, you know, kind of the main through line of my message here, is listening to your ideal clients. And then using that to inform your marketing. And I think when you do that, and then you choose a small subset of marketing tactics, that you can then be really, really good at those enough to get noticed. Because I think the unfortunate truth is that, I am just going to make up a stat, but unless you’re in like, say, the top 20%, right, or somewhere up in the higher echelons of any particular social media, or, you know, SEO or whatever, you’re gonna have a hard time getting noticed. It’s not that you’re not going to get noticed. But if you make the investment to get pretty good at something, then I think you’ll really start to reap the benefits of it. And so that’s some advice there on how to reduce that sea of options a little bit. So you can choose the things that are going to work well for you.

[SAM]:
No, I think it’s really great. And, yeah, I think it’s just kind of emphasizing the importance of, you know, delving in a bit to your analytics or your insights and actually seeing, as you said, where people are coming from, and I think, especially in the beginning, business owners tend to kind of just be putting stuff out there and hope for the best, but not really looking to see what’s actually working, and then focusing their energy on that. So, um, no, I think you’ve filled this episode with some really valuable advice. So thanks so much for that. And, again, for those of you who are maybe on the road while you’re listening to this, Spencer’s actually going to put together a resource page for you. And that’s going to be available at brooks.digital/marketingapractice. So we’ll have that in our show notes as well. But he’s basically going to include everything he mentioned in this podcast with some links to additional resources. And then of course, you can get in touch with him through there as well, if you’re interested in working with him. Otherwise, Spencer, how can people get in touch with you?

[SPENCER]:
Well, I think the Brooks Digital website is a great point for that. If you just go to brooks.digital, it’s not dot com. It’s one of those fancy new dot digital ones. But there’s some contact info there. We also publish and I publish regular articles on other podcasts like this, as well. So there’s some good resources there if you like this kind of content, and you want to keep up on it. Or you can always feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. And I’ll be happy to chat.

[SAM]:
Awesome, and we always end our episodes with this question. So if every private practice owner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[SPENCER]:
Yeah, it’s a fascinating question, I think. So people listening might already intuitively know this. But it’s worth saying that your average Tuesday morning could be the defining event of someone’s year or someone’s life, where they finally decide to get help. And so I think that as a private practice owner, your ability to be empathetic, and to deeply understand their point of view is a huge determinant in your marketing and their quality of care. Again, going back to what I was saying about just being able to listen. And so I think if you are able to weave that deep empathy that you’ve received from listening to the people, your ideal clients, and then weaving that into your branding and marketing, you’re just ultimately going to attract more people and book more appointments.

[SAM]:
Amazing. Thanks so much, Spencer for being on the Marketing a Practice podcast. And we’re really grateful for everything you’ve shared today. And, yeah, we look forward to reading more about everything you have to say and delving more into what you have to offer. Thanks so much.

[SPENCER]:
Absolutely. It’s my pleasure, Sam.

________________________________________

[SAM]:
Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want to have a print flyer designed, head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram @samanthacarvalhodesign. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.