Being good at your work doesn't make your difference obvious to a patient. On Life of Flow, Miguel and I sat down with Matthew Ray Scott, a physician reputation strategist at FEED, with Courtney Johnson joining us. Matthew started in the Army, worked in psychological operations, then moved into medtech branding. His view: marketing buys attention, but reputation scales when you're out of the room.
Can Your Patients Explain Your Process?
Matthew Ray Scott on the mirror marketing test, where paid ads fit, and the one thing patients most want to know before choosing a specialist.
Watch The Episode
Beyond Paid Ads: Building a Physician Reputation with Matthew Ray Scott, LOF #137 of Life of Flow, hosted by Dr. Lucas Ferrer and Dr. Miguel Montero-Baker, with Courtney Johnson.
The Mirror Test
Matthew says most physicians fail what he calls the mirror marketing test. They market to themselves and their colleagues. Pathology, prognosis, procedure.
Patients can't follow it. They can't tell Dr. X from Dr. Y either.
His fix: be different in a way patients can see. Claiming to be better gets lost in what he calls the sea of sameness. One orthopedic surgeon wanted to own "healthcare longevity." Matthew pointed out no patient goes looking for that, and reframed it as "restless aging."
Where Paid Ads Fit
Matthew does see a place for ads, but only once you can finish one sentence: I treat patients like this to solve this problem. His sharper version is that paid advertising is the price you pay for being boring. He even used my market as the example. Someone will always pay a penny more for "minimally invasive vascular surgery, Austin, Texas."
Miguel pushed back with his own experience. After four years in private practice, he says social media is where he wasted the most money. Calls from overseas, bots, a pile of extra work for his team. What worked was relationships with referring doctors, backed by a team of liaisons.
Courtney added the marketing view. Patients rarely go straight from see to click to book.
What Patients Want To Know
A large insurer hired Matthew to sit in on patient consultations and learn how people choose a specialist. His answer: do they understand your process? Step one, step two, step three.
He also says the patient is the hero and the physician is the trusted guide. Miguel had landed in the same place after a lot of work on his practice's story, with the system cast as the foe.
Five Ps
Matthew's pillars are perspective, problem, patient, process and place. Two stand out.
- Problem. Name the problem you solve in plain words. "I treat DVT" is talking to your peers.
- Patient. He says the strongest positioning is built by subtraction.
The Takeaway
Matthew's test: can your ideal patient sit at the dinner table and explain her five steps?
And his rule for ads: not until you can finish that one sentence about who you treat and what problem you solve.