How AI is Changing How Patients Find Your Practice

Empire On-Demand

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our free webinar, "How AI is Changing How Patients Find Your Practice, and How to Get More of Them." Tonight's webinar launches the first session in a new AI-focused series designed to help physicians and providers harness the power of artificial intelligence to grow and modernize their practices. Tonight's guest speaker is the incredible Erica Crawford, president of Influx Marketing, and she will be sharing her insights with you shortly. Tonight's webinar is brought to you by Empire Medical Training and our industry partner, Influx Marketing, who is a digital agency focused on patient acquisition for cash pay healthcare practices.

They are passionate about helping medical entrepreneurs build those practices that change the lives of their patients and thereby have a positive impact on the world. But before we dive into our webinar tonight, I did want to share a little bit with you about Empire. Empire Medical Training has been a trusted resource for medical professionals for over 27 years. Our purpose is simple, and that is to empower clinicians with the training and support needed to confidently expand into new procedures.

Our commitment to you goes beyond education. We're here to help you grow professionally and safely with a great pathway for your career. We offer training nationwide, allowing you to minimize those disruptions to your practice, and you can also earn CME from programs focused on safe, effective, and evidence-based clinical practice. Our attendees receive continuous post-training support, including live faculty sessions, and you can choose between our in-person, virtual, and hybrid learning models.

You also have access to membership packages that create an in-depth educational plan for your growth. Most importantly, though, you can practice those hands-on techniques with real patients for true procedural mastery. We do offer a collection of training academies designed for comprehensive professional development. These are structured to meet the needs of medical providers, combining that clinical education with modern learning methods.

Whether you're entering a new specialty or strengthening those existing skills, our academies provide a clear guided route to becoming a more confident and capable practitioner. All right, guys, and as a reminder, tonight we're going to use Zoom. I know Erica and I were talking earlier. She is very interactive in her webinars. So please go ahead and use the chat box, use the Q&A box to submit any questions, and we will be having a live Q&A session following her presentation. But with that, I would like to introduce Erica.

Erica Crawford

Thank you so much. Yeah, we'll go ahead and get right into it. Okay, can you see my slides okay? Perfect. Okay, so yeah, as Fallon said, what's really important for me that we do a Q&A afterwards. I love answering questions. I don't care how specific they are, even if it's down to your city, your demographic, your practice, whatever you're running into.

So the way this works is I'm going to go over my slides and go over some basic information about AI and how to utilize it and get more patients through AEO, which I'll get into in a little bit here in my slides. But as I go along, if you have questions, I want you to put them in the chat, and then at the end, I'm going to answer all of your questions, and we'll just do a Q&A, and you can ask me more. So that's sort of how this is going to go. So first off, thanks for having me here.

And we're going to get straight into it. So to start off with, we're going to basically go over these three different pillars. So the new search landscape. Search is not just about Google links, little blue links. It's about maps and social media and AI. And in this talk, we're going to cover three main pillars because a lot of people confuse these pillars with each other, but they are actually three separate ways to get patients in the door.

You have SEO, you have local optimization, and then you have generative AI. AI is sometimes called AI Search. It's called AEO, answer engine optimization, GEO, generative optimization. Different words, but these are the three pillars, and I want to explain what each one means and how they work together, and how you could basically maximize all three for the most amount of visibility for new patients.

But first, we're going to really clearly define them because you may think you know exactly what each one is, but they all have separate marketing efforts, and a lot of companies try to meld them together, but they're really different. So first off, what is SEO? We're going to make this really simple. SEO is optimizing websites to rank higher in search engines. So if somebody goes, "plastic surgeon Houston," boom. Circle it's one of our clients, by the way.

That is SEO, right? It's not the top. It's not the sponsored ads. It's not the questions that come up. It's not the AI overview. It is just the results that come a little bit down on the page that are organic results. These are SEO. So it's the foundation of all long-term visibility strategies.

We're going to get into this a little bit more, but even with the rise of AI, the numbers of where patients come from aren't anywhere close to those of SEO, not quite yet, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. But this is SEO, right? So somebody goes Botox-

Empire On-Demand

Erica, you accidentally muted.

Erica Crawford

Okay, can you hear me? Am I still good here?

Empire On-Demand

Yep, you're good.

Erica Crawford

Okay, good. Thank you so much for letting me know. So SEO might be right here, right? So this is Botox Miami. Once again, this is SEO. So what gives you another example, SEO, breast aug near me, breast aug in New York City. This is SEO. So these blue links, this is SEO, and this is the only thing that is SEO.

This is not the AI overview. This is not your local optimization. This is not your Google Maps. This is what SEO. So what brings in SEO? The truth is, is that there are three main things that bring in SEO. Every company, every SEO person, they have a different way of doing them.

But I feel like us in the tech and marketing world have all agreed that it is three basic things that drive it. One is backlinking, which is taking your website URL, so for us, it's influxmarketing.com, and it's getting other people to talk about it. So let's say at PatientNow or Symplast or Podium, they go, "We love working with our partners, influxmarketing.com," and they link my domain.

That is called a backlink. Google reads those backlinks, and they go, "Hey, if you have a lot of these backlinks, you are a trusted source, so we're going to help improve your rankings." The other one is on-page optimization. I also have technical SEO that's kind of in the same bucket more or less. A little bit different, but I'll explain.

On-page optimization, technical SEO, it's all the back-end stuff that your team does. It's how they write. I don't want to get too technical on it, but it's just how they write the back end of your website so that Google reads it really easily. And on-page SEO is a constant thing. Even when you launch your website, you're like, "Oh, well, my website launched, so my on-page SEO is good."

No, it's a constant thing because Google algorithms change all the time, so people have to go in there and update things all the time. So it's a constant effort of making sure that the code on your website is in a way that Google reads it easily, and also AI reads it easily, but we'll get into that. And then content, lots of content. Lots of long page content, blogs, FAQs, all of these things drive SEO.

So those are the three main things. It's like your backlinks, your content, and then all of the technical aspect of your website, the code itself, how the code is written so that Google can crawl it, the speed of your website so that Google passes it on something called Core Web Vitals. All of those things are the three main things, and everybody has a different approach on how to do those three main things, but those three main things are pretty universally acknowledged as the things that drive SEO.

So what is local optimization? This is what gets confused with SEO the most, and it's actually a completely separate effort. This is your Google Business profile, your GBP. This is where your reviews are. This is you on the map pack, which has a ton of value because a lot of people when they search will see you on that map pack with local searches, and they actually won't even go to the organic listing, so that's under the map pack.

So to be clear, these are Google Business profiles. You all have one. They actually appear above traditional SEO links. So we're going to get into this a little bit more, but this is things where people go, "Botox near me, lasers near me, injectables near me." They're looking in their city. They're going to see the map pack first, and this map is really important.

So some of the things that drive this, which we're going to get into, is a lot of reviews and engagement. So just another photo here. This is the map pack. This is local optimization. Once again, it is not the same effort as SEO. That's actually a different subject. So you have SEO, and then you have local optimization. They are two separate things.

They help each other, but they are actually two separate efforts because now you have an option to be on page one twice, which is the most ideal when it comes to organic search. You're showing up in the map pack, maybe. And map pack is funny. Some people scroll right past it, and some people pick, they jump on it. It kind of depends.

But let's say they do scroll, then boom, you're there organic. Now you have two impressions on page one. That is the most ideal scene. That is the best-case scenario you could possibly have for your practice is both of these optimized. Now, before I get into here, let's talk about some of the things that drive your local optimization.

Some of them are going to be what your marketing company does. There's something called NAP, which is name, address, provider information, procedures. Sorry, name, address, phone numbers. So you have to basically make sure that's consistent across the internet. There's ways to do this. There's tools like Yext that do it.

There's a more manual approach, which I kind of prefer just to make sure all the information is completely accurate. Your name, address, and phone number have to be the same everywhere. If you've had any previous addresses, even if your information was connected to a practice that you used to be part of, that has to all be scrubbed and has to be universal. So that's a huge part of optimizing local optimization.

But the biggest part of it is getting reviews. Not just the number of reviews, but the velocity of reviews. The reviews are arguably right now one of the most important parts about marketing, period, which I'm going to get into a little bit later. But a big part of your GBP and your local optimization is you have to fill it out all the way.

You have to have a lot of photos on it. You have to reply to reviews. Keeping in mind HIPAA and PHI, when you reply to review, you have to keep it a very generic answer, like, "Thank you so much for your review." Don't mention the patient. Don't mention the procedure. Even though it's funny because they are mentioning it, we've definitely consulted with some legal teams and some lawyers.

Even though they're mentioning it and they're talking about it, you can't say anything back. So you just say, "Thank you so much. We appreciate your review. Thank you for writing us a nice review." Like, just variations of really basic responses, but you should respond to every single review. You need to be getting a lot of them.

You cannot incentivize reviews, legally speaking. There's been some really big legal cases. There was a big one, I think it was like a year and a half ago in Seattle. A plastic surgeon had to pay $5 million for fake reviews. It's a very touchy subject. So you really want to get good organic reviews, and the best way to do that is to make it a whole game for your staff.

Your staff are the ones who are going to have to get these reviews, and they're going to have to be aggressive about getting these reviews. So sometimes I have practices that offer Amazon gift cards to every person who gets a review that's one of their employees, or various games, pizza parties, whatever you can do, but you have to make it so that your staff want to get your reviews.

And I would expect that you would have a new review every couple of days. It really needs to be that level of velocity because it affects a lot more than just the Google Business profile, which I'm going to get into in a little bit. But it is the thing that helps drive this the most. Not to mention having a lot of reviews, it's all good for you. It helps you with your conversion rate.

So now we've talked about SEO and local optimization. So we're on the first two pillars. Now we're going to get into the meat and potatoes here, which is the AI. So AI can generate direct answers instead of ranked links. And there's a lot of different types of AI out there, right? You have the Google overviews, AI overviews, which we're going to talk about in a second.

You have ChatGPT, you have Grok, you have Gemini. Meta just has their new AI, like Facebook, right? Instagram, there's their new AI. There's Claude. There's a lot of different AIs out there, and they do operate somewhat differently. But there is some things that we are seeing that is pretty consistent, right?

So AI is basically pulling from multiple sources, your website, reviews, forums, press, and we're going to talk about that. And it basically massively has a mass crawl across the internet, social media, further than what just Google can do by itself to pull as much information about you or about the procedure or about who's the best doctor near me or whatever the query is, and then it spits out that information.

But it's still pulling information from the internet, and that is affecting its answer. So these are some of the AIs I kind of just mentioned early. There's a lot of different AIs around there. This is just some examples of who does the best rhinoplasty in St. Louis. This is AI. In this case, it's ChatGPT.

Sometimes they'll show it like this, where kind of like these, by the way, are snippets of the Google business profile. So back to why I said your Google business profile is really important beyond just local optimization. AI very heavily pulls from your Google reviews, and then, in this case, it gave little snippets of, literally screenshots of the Google business profile, and then it gave a highlight of each surgeon underneath.

So that is an example of how it could give it, but it also can list it out in many different forms, right? You have the AI overviews, right? Who does the best facelifts in Toronto, right? Here's the AI overview, which Google sometimes gives you overviews and sometimes doesn't. It just depends on the type of query that they are putting in.

But a longer question will generally give you a Google overview, which this is an example of how it does it, and once again, it's pulling a lot of information from across the internet. Here's another one. Best plastic surgeons. So same ChatGPT again, but it's not giving me the Google business profiles, it's just giving a list. It's not consistent. The funny thing about AI...

Here's another one, best Botox in Miami, right? It also gave a list. The funny thing about AI, and this is Grok, is that it's not going to give you the same answer every time. If all of us here went and searched for something and used the same search query, we're all going to get slightly different answers because AI is searching also-- It's an interesting subject of AI in general.

AI kind of wants to please the user. So it's going to give you an answer based off of who you are as a user. Means including your past searches, where you live, your demographic, any information it can pull about you. It's going to somewhat give you answers based off of not just your prompt, but you yourself, which is a very interesting thing about AI.

So there's no such thing as ranking in AI. It's just showing up and being in the conversation as much as possible so that when people go, "Who does the best Botox in Miami?" Four out of five times, you're coming up for whoever is searching, right? That's what you're kind of going for, but there's no one, two, three, four, five.

It's really inconsistent because it depends on all these other factors which you can't fully control. So the conversation's about just showing up as much as you humanly can. So those are the three parallel efforts for visibility. You have SEO, you have local, and then you have AI, and they are all important.

So let's talk about a little bit more about how they overlap, because there is some overlap, but at the same time, they are still three very separate efforts. So SEO feeds AI. We know that for a fact, and this is a very interesting thing because you can literally rank number one on SEO for everything, all your keywords, Botox, laser, injectables, if you're a plastic surgeon or any plastic surgery keywords, and not show up on AI at all, not in the slightest, because there's more to it, which we're going to get into in a moment.

But the reverse is not true, meaning it's very rare to show up in AI and have poor SEO. So SEO is one of the many things that AI is looking at because a lot of the things that SEO is grayed out, all that on-page SEO, you know how I mentioned that earlier, there's three main efforts for SEO, the backlinks, the on-page SEO, and the content.

AI is basically saying, "Hey, for you to be relevant, for me to mention your name, those three things need to be good." So the things that SEO wants, AI wants as well. So it's typically you're not going to see somebody who ranks well. You can see somebody who ranks well who doesn't show up in AI, but you're rare to see somebody who shows up on AI who doesn't rank well.

That SEO is one of the things that AI needs. Local feeds AI. The GBP absolutely is arguably today, I would say, the most important thing about marketing, period. Because those Google reviews matter more than almost anything. First off, it's a free thing to do. It's a free thing for you and your staff to get reviews. It really is.

It's the cheapest form of marketing there is. It helps convert people when they see a large amount of authentic reviews. It feeds your GBP, so your Google Business profile can show up, but also it heavily feeds AI. I would argue that AI might pull from Google reviews the most. If it had a list of 100 sources it picks from and everything has different values, I would say Google reviews has the highest of all of those values.

And the authority bridges all three, so them all being consistent and increasing trust, it's really important that they're all kind of rolling at the same time, but that's kind of how it looks. So SEO feeds AI, local feeds AI, but it's still not enough, which we're going to get into. So as I said, good SEO does not guarantee AI inclusion. AI pools more than just that.

AI pulls more than just those things, which is where it gets really interesting. So right now, your homework right now, you're going, "Okay, I need to have some good SEO, so I show open AI. I need to get really active on my Google business profile." That should be your number one priority at all times. Once again, it's not about just the number of reviews, it's about the velocity of reviews.

I would argue and say the velocity is more important than the quantity of reviews. Meaning, let's say there's an old practice that's been around forever, and they have, let's say, 700 reviews, but it's been like months since they've gotten new ones. You're going to do better. Let's say you're up 200 reviews, but you're getting a new review every other day. Your GBP will be more likely to show up than theirs, because that velocity is super important.

So that review is really important. AI definitely pulls from Reddit. ChatGPT and Open AI has a partnership with Reddit, which not everybody realizes, but Reddit is a really important source. I'm going to talk about that a little more in a second. So you want to do all three. You want all three for maximum visibility.

So let's compare some of the results, SEO versus AI. And I think this is important because I want you to know where things stand right at this moment in time, because everybody's talking about AI like it's the only thing about marketing that's important, and I want to give you some real numbers. In today's day and age, we can track a lot of patients and where they came from.

So we can say, okay, you got 50 patients, 20 of them came from SEO, 20 came from paid ads, five came from social media, five came from ChatGPT. You could track things. So we have a client and a very large client that ranks on SEO, pretty much page one for everything in a very large city. But also shows up on AI for pretty much anything.

Anything that he does as a procedure, right, both surgical and nonsurgical in this case. If you search anywhere in his large city, he's pretty much in the conversation most of the times on Brock, Gemini, ChatGPT, best doctor who does blah, best Botox blah, best just really consistently. And so he gets a lot of leads every month.

As you can imagine, big city, lots of visibility, established practice. Do you know how many of his leads come from AI? As in the first place, like people are searching for the first time on AI. It's only about 5% at the highest. Some months it goes up to 10, but it's really closer to that six or 7%.

That means of all of his leads and all of his AI visibility, that's the only percentage that's actually coming from AI. As in that's where somebody's actually searching for the first time, looking for a provider, looking for a practice. That's not a huge number. I think that that number will change and will grow over time.

So I'm not saying it's going to always be there. I just think it's actually going to take us a couple of years for that number to get bigger. I could imagine myself here next year and saying like, "Yeah, it's 14%." It's still going to grow, but I still think it's going to take time, because what we're noticing is that most people are using AI as a validation layer.

Meaning they already found you through an ad, through your SEO, through your social media, through a friend and referral, and then they're using ChatGPT, or Claude, or Gemini to check you out. That's it. They're using it as a second source, so they're not finding you through it. Most of them are just reviewing you through it.

So now they found you, they found the provider they want to go see, and now they're using AI to see if you're any good. So you still have to be good with AI, but it's just an interesting thing. It's slight difference than a lot of people are thinking because there's a lot of hype about it. But it's important to know that as much as AI is growing, you still have to have SEO for your AI to do well.

But it's also still where the majority of your patients are going to come from is that your Google Ads, your Meta ads, your social media, your referral programs, your loyalty programs. Your AI, it's just not there yet. I think it will over time. But we're still quite a ways out for it, because I don't know how you use AI, but I use AI as a validation layer.

Meaning I still find things that I need from a cleaner to mechanic organically or through word of mouth, and then I do. I am somebody who does check something out in ChatGPT. I think it's good. Or Claude, who's become my new friend recently. So yeah, that's just something to keep in mind in terms of the actual metrics.

A few things that help beat AI, which we're going to talk about more. Instagram search and AI discovery. So Instagram has shifted more to keyword search and AI assist search. And they obviously have the new Meta AI. So I used to be not a huge fan of captions and hashtags, and I'm not saying not a fan, it's just I didn't feel like they were very important based off of if your video is going to go viral, if your captions and hashtags really mattered.

I didn't think so. But now I would say that these things are important just so AI can read your videos better, so that it will actually help, because Instagram and Google and AI, these were really separate platform. Instagram lived by itself for a very long time. But then in July of 2025, they opened up their API, and they basically allowed it so that Google can crawl Instagram now.

So it actually kind of affects your SEO a bit. And basically Instagram has said, "Hey, we're okay with things looking at us, with more places reviewing us." From the ChatGPT to Google, they opened up their AI. They opened up their crawlability, for lack of a better word. And so Instagram has more of an effect on things like SEO and AI searches than it used to.

So being active on Instagram is really important now. More important than it used to be, because it's not just about being active on Instagram for Instagram. It's being active on Instagram for visibility on your SEO and your AI and all these other things. So that's important. TikTok hasn't opened up that way yet. I'm not saying it won't.

Just as of this moment, it's not something that's really affecting SEO or AI search, in my opinion. People have different opinions. That's just what I have observed. Reddit, I talked about this earlier. This is really important. Reddit has a huge part of ChatGPT specifically. They have a partnership. They have this like-I won't say silent.

They just didn't broadly announce it either. And not a lot of people realize that, but it's really, really important that your patients are active on Reddit. So what I mean by active on Reddit, if anybody knows anything about Reddit, Redditors are kind of mean. You have to be really careful about how you're active on Reddit. It cannot be glowing reviews.

I need you to get your patients to just talk about you. This is what I mean. This is somebody talking about their surgeon on Reddit. They just need to talk about it. So you ask your patients to share their stories on Reddit, to talk about you in some forums, to just mention your name. I'm not talking about you as a provider being active on Reddit.

I'm talking about your patients being active on Reddit and talking about you. It's a big deal. They can be very matter of fact. They can even say three positives and a negative. Like, "It was a high consult fee. I waited for a while, but it was worth it because blah, blah, blah." Reddit is more of that style than just the positiveness that's more on Google Review and Instagram.

So that is really important. But yes, Reddit is an area that to this day I talk about because it's not something people fully discovered yet. So chances are, if you get active on it and it helps you with at least people looking at ChatGPT and things like that, you might be your only provider in the city doing so, because this hasn't been fully discovered or talked about yet. So something to think with.

This is an example of what I mean, by the way. This is just somebody talking on Reddit about a plastic surgeon who comes up all the time in New York City searches, and you could literally see ChatGPT referencing this Reddit. But it's very matter of fact. She's like, "Expensive," you know what I mean? "Why is it so expensive? But hey, it was great." That's the type of thing I need your patients talking about.

PR, we are at a huge comeback of traditional PR. So AI is all about people talking about you positively in numerous places. So while your website helps, other people need to talk too. If you're very serious about AI, especially if you're in a really competitive city, hiring a traditional PR company has a lot of value.

Because these different articles that you can get into that then backlink to your website or reference your name, AI pulls from these very strongly. That is a huge part of what AI looks like. So for the record, this is an example of an article that AI would pull from, but they do not have to be that big. I don't need you always in Vogue and stuff.

If you are, fantastic, that's great. But they could also be your local, this is your Palm Springs Life, your local golf, your wine and country. They don't have to be huge articles, especially since most of your patients are going to be local and you're pulling them in locally. Just try to get local PR even. Even that is fantastic.

Because getting in these big articles, like the Vogues and GQ you saw, they are very expensive. So I'm just saying you don't have to start there. You could start with more local. If you live in Newport Beach, get more local Newport Beach Magazine. There's a lot that is there. Google reviews, I talked about this a bit earlier, but I cannot stress this enough.

They are more important than ever. They are so, so, so important because they affect your Google business profile. They affect your AI. They even have some effect on your SEO and how relevant you are there. So like I said, I really, truly don't think in today's age that there is a single form of marketing that is more important than your Google reviews.

There just isn't. So put in the work, though. I don't want to see those platforms that they send out an automatic text to a patient, and then if it's five stars, it directs them to their Google business profile and is like, "Here, write a review." And then if it's four stars or below, it directs them elsewhere.

No, those are actually illegal. I'm just going to say, I know they exist, but they are 100% considered review filtering, and there's definitely been court cases about that. You just have to go old-fashioned. You have to send people review requests, hope that they write a good review, and it's okay to have some bad ones.

I actually prefer a 4.8 or 4.9 because it just shows a little more authenticity in there, and a lot of patients feel that way, too. So don't stress about having everything be 5.0 stars. If it is, great, but I'm just saying it's actually, I would argue and say a few negative reviews in there is actually a little bit better because people then are more likely to believe it.

Tracking. So I said this earlier, you can actually track, not all CRMs do this, but a lot of them do, where you can actually track leads from ChatGPT. So far, I think it's pretty much only ChatGPT. I'm not certain that this has been opened up yet for the other AIs out there. But you should know what traffic you're getting, and that way you can sort of see what gets mentioned and when your company's coming from ChatGPT.

You could also get an idea of something that's incorrect out there, too, because ChatGPT also gives incorrect information sometimes, and this helps you. This helps you just know where your leads come from and keep that in mind. Because I did talk to you about it earlier, that even though it's growing, 5%, 10% max, even if you have the most amount of AI visibility of new leads searching for you for the first time.

Building a unified strategy. So this is kind of like we're getting towards the end here, but you combine everything together. They reinforce each other. You use PR and reviews to amplify authority. You monitor forums like Reddit, you do social media, you have content. You kind of just have to do it all.

You have to have lots of marketing channels. Keep that in mind. This is like an investment, right? You make X amount of revenue, right? You're going to reinvest, depending on what stage you are in your practice, anywhere between 5% to 10% of that revenue into your marketing. You should have multiple channels going so that you have multiple sources of patient acquisition, right?

So you should make sure you track everything and know where your leads come from and your ROI and all those fun things. But you have to do many different things. You can't just rely on one form of marketing anymore. The world is past that. Even with AI, it's not just AI. It's AI, local optimization, SEO, three separate efforts.

And it's worth investing into all of these things because it's all just going to get bigger and bigger. So that's a summary. SEO still matters. We have to evolve. Local optimization's important. Generative AI is a new layer of discovery. PR reviews, really important. And, oh, I went back. And this is me.

QR code. Also, if you want my slides, I'm very happy to share my slides. So scan the QR code if you want any information or a free website analysis or marketing analysis or anything like that. We'll definitely help you out here. And I will give that to you for one second, and then I would love to see if there are any questions.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. We do have our first question in the Q&A box says, "How important is social media to all three pillars?"

Erica Crawford

So I would say it's fairly important. So I touch across this briefly, but it used to not be that important because it was very separate because they had not such an open API, but now they're allowing it to crawl. So Instagram's not going to really affect your Google business profile, like where you have your reviews, but it's absolutely going to affect your SEO and it's going to affect your AI.

And when we say social media, I keep talking about Instagram solely because Instagram is literally my favorite platform. I just said TikTok's not really doing that yet. So it really is, we're talking Instagram and some Reddit. That's what we're talking about right now. Yeah, those are the main things. You could also do YouTube.

You could do LinkedIn. You could do all sorts of things. It's just, I'm going to be honest, those are the platforms, particularly Instagram, that's affecting it the most.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. Our next question says, "Do you recommend we buy ads on RealSelf?"

Erica Crawford

I am not necessarily a huge fan of that. It kind of depends on what procedure you're doing. For things in the more surgical side, I'm just such an old-fashioned, like I'm such a Google Ads fan. If they are done right, Google Ads are just fantastic for surgical and meta ads. I feel like Instagram paid ads are great for non-surgical.

RealSelf is a separate for me. It's funny because I know them really well. I know Tom Siri really well. I've known them for a long time. And yeah. Somebody says, "Touchy subject." I'm trying to say this the right way.

No, I don't know. No, I don't love ads on RealSelf. Unless you've kind of maxed out everything else and you're looking for an additional channel, but if you have X amount of dollars in your... I would not throw all your dollars there.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. Our next question says, "The alt text tip is great. Do you have any other social media posting tips that can boost the new algorithm?"

Erica Crawford

Yeah, alt text. I'm a big fan of alt text in general just because, A, it's also a big part of ADA compliance, which not everybody keeps in mind, but it just keeps you nice and legally sound. Yeah, like I said, to me hashtags are back and captions, longer captions, are back.

It's a funny thing, but it's something, like I said, a year ago, I don't think, and I still don't for the record, I don't think it's that important for going viral on Instagram. But now it's important for AI, because AI, it needs to be able to read it, and it needs those things to read it. On a website, there's a few things, for example, that AI really looks at that might not have been that important in the past but are really important now.

Alt text is definitely one of those, although I would argue and say, for example, Influx, we've always done alt text because it's actually part of ADA compliance. But a lot of people have been looser on ADA compliance or whatever, so people are taking it serious now because of AI. But like, oh, you're supposed to always take it serious because of ADA, but that's okay.

But I would say that yes, longer captions and a little bit more information to help AI read it.

Empire On-Demand

Okay, what other questions do we have? How about Instagram and TikTok ads to boost follower count?

Erica Crawford

I do not care about follower counts at all. I think that they're completely unimportant. And I'll tell you why. I am all about basically organic engagement, right? And I've seen it. I've seen it with my own clients. I have some pretty large influencer clients.

And some of them are very validly so. They have hundreds of thousands of followers. They have hundreds of comments on all their video, and I know what their patient, their leads that they're getting from their socials, and it's all really good, okay? But I also have people with huge followings with terrible engagement, and they don't get any leads from it.

I really don't care. I have a client that's like, I think they just hit 3,000 followers. We're not talking a huge amount, but because his content is so authentic and interesting, he gets really good engagement, probably gets like 20, 30 comments on most of his videos, a lot of leads. He actually gets more leads than some of my clients who have 20,000, 30,000 followers.

So I would say that do not worry about your followers. Just worry about your engagement. People literally commenting, liking, sharing your posts in your DMs. It's the only thing that matters, the only thing that actually matters for practice. Followers, and never, ever, ever buy followers for the record.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. Jonathan asks, "Do y'all offer an AI specific SEO package that can help a provider?"

Erica Crawford

Yes, in a way, but it's still going to come down to an SEO package, because I said this a little early on, but it's the catch-22 of it, which is that you have to have good SEO in order to show up in AI, but it's not enough. I am going to be something very blunt because so many people are promising.

So many companies are going like, "I could get you showing up in AI," but they can't, because they cannot be responsible for all your Google reviews. I'm not a traditional PR company. Matter of fact, no marketing companies are. Traditional PR is like their cousins, but it's a separate industry. It's like, I don't know.

It's like saying I'm a cardiologist and I'm a plastic surgeon. No, you're not. Right? They are two different industries. You go to college separately for them. They're very different. So traditional PR has a huge part of doing it, so you'd have to hire a marketing company, traditional PR, be active on your reviews, on social media.

It's just one person cannot do it for you, cannot outsource it. It is on you as a practice because minimally, even if you're getting help with your socials and your PR and all these things, minimally, you're going to be responsible for your Google reviews. Minimally, you're going to be responsible for your good reputation, getting in articles, all of those things.

So it's such a combined effort, but what we can do is at least do the things that make your website readable by AI, there's a lot of things. I'm sure you've heard like buzzwords like FAQs and schema, and those things matter actually a lot. It's just very technical. I don't want to get too much into that here.

So we can get all that done for you, and then we can get your SEO really good so that your website is in a position to be read by AI. But then at that point, I need you to do your Google reviews, I need you to get yourself in some articles and that combined effort. And we will coach you through those things. We will tell you what you need because we are very successful at it.

We have a lot of clients that show up in AEO, and I would argue and say that we are at the forefront of it. I cannot tell you how much A/B testing we have done on this subject. Luckily, we have some lovely clients who've been with us forever, so they allowed us to do a lot of testing. And some of it didn't go well, and some of it went great, but that's kind of how we learned, especially when this first started emerging like a year plus ago.

And so now we kind of know what to do and what not to do. Like fun fact, and this is an irony of the entire thing, which is that AI doesn't love AI content. Like how does that even make any sense? But we did so many tests of just AI-generated content, human-only generated content, and then like AI and human, like meaning like they're kind of working together to sort of come up with ideas and the human's still writing it, but the AI is maybe like QA-ing it, like making sure it's good, things like that.

We did tests of all three, and actually the one that did best was the one that was together, meaning like human and AI together. But the AI-only content, even when we use every AI, we use Surfer SEO, we use all the best technology for it, none of it was anywhere close. Like the rankings of that, of like what content performed the best, it was like human plus AI, just human, AI was at the bottom of what actually AI pulled information from, which is ironic.

So we actually have an eight-man in-house, like we don't outsource our content, all here in our company, eight-house content writing team. And if we thought that for some reason, and you guys understand as business owners and stuff, like if we thought we could cut that and use AI, we would, but I'm telling you, we can't. So, there's things like that we'll help you with that we've kind of just learned from a lot of trial and error.

Empire On-Demand

More questions. We'll keep it going. Yeah. How important are ads on Yelp? We have spent about $500 a month now out of fear, as when we stopped in the past, we noticed they filtered our reviews.

Erica Crawford

I absolutely hate Yelp. I can't wait till the day they get a class action lawsuit because 100%, they filter reviews. They're so pay to play, and it's actually very illegal in medical because we're offering medical services, but they're just the worst. I don't care about Yelp. I literally don't care.

Meaning, we are offering a luxury service. I know it's sometimes hard to think about that, but like Botox and injectables and lasers and surgery and dermatology, like these are luxury services. And our average patient type leans heavier on Google reviews than Yelp. So if you get a couple bad Yelp reviews, if it's not great, I really don't care. Let it slide and just focus on your Google reviews. I really do not care about your Yelp at all.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. And what are your thoughts on print ads, such as in a local magazine?

Erica Crawford

So I only like them in very specific geos. In most of the big cities, they don't perform very well, and I don't like them. But I have seen a few times, and I'm not saying it has to be Kentucky and Alabama, and please, this is not shade if you live in one of those states. I've just found that those are the type of places they perform a little better, small towns, smaller areas. But like the LAs and Miami, not so much.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. What are your tips on growing engagement on socials? The views are there, but the engagement is lacking.

Erica Crawford

Just lots of consistent content, right? You have to be posting regularly, both reels, stories, and personalized content. It's really hard because I know you're trying to build practice, and you all are providers, and you probably have multiple providers, or at least that's your goal, so you're trying to talk up the practice.

But the fact is, is that people tend to like people a little bit more than companies or practices. And I know it's a rough thing, but it's just a fact on social. So, my social media, for example, is mostly work-related, but it's my only social media. So when I post about my daughter or whatever, I swear some of those things get me the most amount of clients and people.

It's just a funny thing. So, it's just one of those things. Speaking of which, if any of you want to DM me or ask more questions, we have a couple more questions here, but let me just drop my social on here. So there you go. If you want to DM me, ask more questions, that's my social.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. Our next question says, what do you think is the best way to ask for a review, in person or through an automated text after the patient's visit?

Erica Crawford

This is a really tough one, and I'll tell you why. It is always nice to ask in person, but you know how sometimes Google reviews don't always get posted? Sometimes if they're using your Wi-Fi in your practice, it'll be slightly more likely to get filtered. So what I'd prefer is that you ask them in person before they leave and let them know that you're going to be sending them a text so that they could do the review in their home.

Now, this is a debated subject because some people are like, "No, I literally make them do it right then and there. And I get more reviews that way, and if 20% of them get filtered out, who cares? I'm getting more reviews." That's true too. So you just have to decide what makes sense for you, because there is truth on both sides.

Just know, if you're desperate and you're scrappy, and you want everyone to make it too, and actually get posted on Google, have them go home and write the review. If you're not, and you're like, "I don't care if I lose some of them," just have them, just bang them out right there at your front desk. So it's your choice.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. Our next question says, do you have any input on GMB posts and its effectiveness with GEO?

Erica Crawford

Yeah. That's back to Google Your Google My Business. Google Business Profile is just rebranded and called GBP. It's a huge effectiveness. So that's your Google reviews. So back to like that's the main meat and potatoes here. What's going to affect your Geo, your AO, your AI search, absolutely most important aspect of marketing today.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. I think that is all the questions I see right now. I love all the questions. That's my favorite part of the webinar. I know. We'll wait another minute or so and see if any more pop up. But your social is in there, and again, I will go ahead and share their website if I can do that.

Or we're going to do it this way because technology is hard for me today, but there's their website as well. We do have another question. How many blog posts should we produce each month?

Erica Crawford

One, at least. If you could do more, great, but one at least. If you could do two, cool. But yeah, I like blogging. Blogging is back. There was a time when it was actually not super relevant a couple of years ago, but with AI, it's 100% back.

Empire On-Demand

Awesome. Well, we'll wait another... I know that as they're thinking, they're like, "Okay, now I need to ask that question." It's okay.

Erica Crawford

If you have a question and you remember it later, you can just DM me and I will answer your question for you.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. All right. Well, I don't see anything else. Oh, this is a good question. Where should we blog?

Erica Crawford

You mean like on your website? If you could clarify.

Empire On-Demand

Let me take a look. Yeah. Where? Yeah.

Erica Crawford

Unless there's something I'm missing, always on your website. You get the option to blog sometimes on other people's site or give other things information. You always want everything on your website because that's like your piece of property. So think of it like you're building your house, and everything that you're putting into it is into something that you have full ownership of.

Blogging on other people's platforms or on different directories, you're literally just giving them your content. So always on your own website.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. Okay, so our next question says: You mentioned human and AI content writing. Does Influx offer copywriting for social posts?

Erica Crawford

We have a social media team. So I would say we don't do just like standalone, just copywriting for social posts, but if you want to utilize my social media team for just all your social media, and that includes like posting, and we do this thing called like remote filming. It's really cool. And we also fly out and film depending on what level of social you want.

So we do that, but we don't just do like copywriting by itself. Although, if you are working with us, let's just say on SEO and whatever, and you just want some advice, our account reps are happy to give advice on pretty much any subject, even if you're not signed on for that subject, if that makes sense.

Empire On-Demand

Perfect. All right. Well, we'll see if there's any more questions this evening. Your website is beautiful, by the way. I just opened it up and I'm like, "Oh."

Erica Crawford

Oh, thank you. Yeah. It's so eye-catching.

Empire On-Demand

Practice what you preach, right?

Erica Crawford

Yes, exactly. I love that.

Empire On-Demand

All right. Well, I don't see any other questions coming in at the time. But again, your social is in the chat, the website's in the chat, so they can reach out to you if they have anything they think of afterwards.

Erica Crawford

Yep, absolutely. And thank you, and you all have a great evening.

Empire On-Demand

Thank you so much, and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you. Bye. All right. And for the rest of you, before I let you go this evening, I wanted to share a couple more things with you about Empire. Our membership programs are designed for one purpose, and that is to support your entire professional journey.

As a medical provider, you know that true mastery requires consistency, repetition, mentorship, and exposure to those evolving techniques. A membership with us gives you exactly that, whether it's a roadmap from those foundational skills to those more advanced procedures or opportunities to revisit courses virtually as your confidence grows. We have courses available for you at every level.

You also gain that consistent hands-on practice and access to our faculty instructors who remain an asset to you during your time with us. Our aesthetic training plans are created to help you achieve and grow your professional skill set both quickly and with confidence. Whether it's our Aesthetics 101 or our Aesthetic Injector Pro track, they both give you the fundamentals that form the core of nearly every cosmetic practice.

They are perfect for that practitioner who wants a complete guided route to becoming a full-spectrum injector. Or you can build your own plan where you tailor your training to meet your future goals. Our memberships are the foundation for clinicians who intend to grow, not just learn once, but continue strengthening their skills over time.

Our members do continuously tell us it is the most valuable decision they've made because you gain access to training with over 700 hands-on workshops held across the country and internationally each year. You also learn from diverse medical experts who have experience in all different specialties. We help those providers add in-demand aesthetic services that support a strong ROI.

With us, you can learn procedures that will boost your sales and create strong profits. You develop business and marketing skills that empower you to grow with confidence, because exceptional training means nothing if your patients don't know that you exist. And in a competitive market, becoming that standout provider is important.

A membership is about that reinforcement, repetition, and long-term mentorship, the heart of a truly safe and confident procedural medicine. If your schedule is busy, and I'm sure that it is as a medical provider, our virtual memberships make learning both easy and flexible. You gain access to a structured curriculum you can tap into anytime, anywhere.

And while virtual training isn't meant to replace that hands-on experience, we do offer over 1,000 CME hours available to you so that you can meet those yearly requirements. And it's a powerful way to support your growth between in-person workshops. It helps you stay up-to-date, confident, and prepared as techniques continue to evolve.

And onto board certification, which is a meaningful milestone in any career. Once your decision to become board certified is final, a team member will guide you through the pathway where you'll complete three aesthetic courses, submit two case studies, and achieve a score of over 70% on our tests.

Once you have passed, your team leader will contact you to congratulate you and walk you through the final steps to obtaining your new board. Lastly, guys, as a thank you, I want to offer a discount for you to continue your education with us. This is an invitation to further develop your skills, expand your professional capabilities, and join our community of dedicated medical professionals who understand exactly where you're at.

If you are interested in purchasing a membership or one of those board certifications, please go ahead and reach out to us. I'm going to put our contact information in the chat for you right now. Any one of us at Empire would be happy to offer you that one-on-one support to get you where you'd want to be.

With that, guys, again, I want to thank Erica for joining us and all of you guys for joining in, and I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday evening, and I look forward to seeing you all soon.