Why MarTech Feels Intimidating - And Why SMBs Need It Anyway (ft. Rakesh Reddy)

Speaker A: Welcome to Making Martech where we spotlight innovative Martech companies and leaders who are driving growth, highlighting valuable insights and actionable strategies to stay ahead in this industry. Today we're joined by Rakesh Reddy, co founder of Orange Carrot Media.

Speaker B: Um, I'm Rakesh, I am the co founder of Orange Carrot, a marketing agency that specializes exclusively in healthcare practices. Most of our clients from healthcare practices are from small medium businesses, not the enterprise level businesses. That exactly excited me when you invited me to talk about the Martech because that's one of the major challenge that we face while serving for the small medium clients. Because, you know, we don't, we don't get a different department to manage the technology aspect of the business. As a marketing agency, we are responsible to manage the tech as well. Not only manage, but also to catch up with the trends of the tech

Speaker A: and coming forward to where you guys are at today. I know you kind of touched on this in your introduction, but uh, there's a ton of agencies out there. What would you really say sets Orange Carrot apart? What do your clients get from you that they can't get anywhere else? Yeah.

Speaker B: So on a high level, any marketing agency now can get you leads, can get you more traffic, can get you more leads. But what sets us apart is no, we get you more patience out of the existing leads. We don't ask you to invest more to get more leads. Thus coming converting a few leads into patients. So our focus would be more on converting the existing traffic into more leads and converting the existing leads into more patients. So that's where our expertise lies in. That's where, uh, now I would proudly say that we stand apart, uh, from most of the market.

Speaker A: And you guys also incorporate Martech into your offering, right?

Speaker B: That's correct. While serving for most of the small medium businesses, Martech tech is something that is tough to talk, um, during the initial phases. Martech is something that the client has to see the implementation and they have to feel the output of this implementation. Then only they would be understanding the depth of the services that we get into. Initially I used to feel that's a disadvantage, that there is no awareness, but now I would feel that's an advantage because now we would be delivering more than what we promised to the clients and most of the clients would be happy with us.

Speaker A: And can you tell us a bit more about the Martech aspect of Orange Carrot?

Speaker B: For any small medium business, the word Martech itself is a scary word. Because if you take any reputed Martech tool that comes with thousands of dollars of subscription and few tools. We need to subscribe annually. There are no monthly subscriptions. And I want to say like you don't need a Martech now Stack, most of the small M medium businesses need a Martech foundation. So the foundation that we think at M Orange Carrot is layer one is Intake, meaning able to tag everything, use Google Tag Manager to manage all the tags and then implement Google Analytics 4, Facebook Pixels Search console and then behavioral analytics tools such as Microsoft analytics as layer one. Layer two would be the integration where once you intake the form leads, all the calls, we should be able to integrate them into the CRMs. So that's where we come in handy. We understand most of these integrations how it works because developing an API would be a hectic task and then it costs a lot. And then we bring in third party tools such as Zapier to help integrating the systems without any developers help. So no extra cost added to the client. Even though it is not a marketing job. But still as an agency we would love to take that job. Do not add extra cost so that we focus more on marketing and the whole process helps the client. That's layer two, but we go into more layers. The third layer is the call intelligence. In most of these healthcare clients that we have we see three types of leads that they're going to get. One is a lead from the form, number two a lead from the chatbot and number three a lead from the like. And we see 80% of the leads are from the inbound phone calls. And most of the times we see there is a lot of mismanagement happening with the front desk. It can be because of, you know, busy signals, can be missed opportunities because now it is after office hours. And then sometimes it can be just, just the friend desk handling um, the walk in patients. So that's why you know, we, we take one more step deep into it and then we implement the call intelligence now where it can actually unlock lot of um, insights for us. See on average we see somewhere between 20% to 40% of the calls are missed. Now either they go to voicemail or the call gets abandoned. And a few people are just frustrated because calls are not answering. So that's where we come in. We launch the marketing automations. We help manage the reputation of the client not only from the Dr. Office perspective, but also it is a critical part of the patient care. No doctor wants to have a patient a bad experience. So that helps us actually go more deep into helping. This doctor office is creating a marketing engine that actually works for them, creating this process is Orange Carrot's main strength.

Speaker A: And you say that this process in bringing Martech tools into these SMBs is something that's been typically overlooked.

Speaker B: Right, Right.

Speaker A: So I guess my question with that is, what's the impact that this can have for these SMBs when they realize that this is not something to overlook, but this is something that they should all have as uh, a found for their business.

Speaker B: Most of most of the times these SMBs are not even aware of the problem. They would be thinking it as a marketing problem, but in reality it is their operational problems when they cannot handle the phone call. So that's where all these smart tech tools comes in. But it is overwhelming at the end of the day there are a lot of tools in the market. But definitely my recommendation is before calling it as a marketing problem, an audit would be a great step to start to understand what is the problem. And then by implementing these tools definitely gives you an impact, either positive or negative, then only you will be able to measure the impact of having these Martech tools.

Speaker A: With that then I want to fast forward to today and I want to ask what have some of the biggest successes that you've had been recently when it comes to bringing this Martech process into these SMBs?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll take one psychiatric client where right now there is a big intake form that a patient has to fill before even getting the consultation from the psychiatrist. And that has become an overwhelming process. So initially what, what we did was we put the like long form on the website. Client insisted us. We told the client like, you know, it's a long form with 20 different fields. It is tough to get leads. But still client insisted us to have like a 20 fields. Then we implemented like a type form kind of a form where is a step by step process where user doesn't see 20 fields at a time. But still we were not getting many leads. So then we told the client like, you know, we have to break this form into two different forms. One is the base lead gen form, the other one is the intake form. Uh, and the client said okay because he was not getting many leads. So we went ahead and then broke the form into two different parts and then we started getting the basic lead gen form fails and then we are getting good amount of leads from there. But here the problem was the patient has to fill the intake form. So someone from the doctor office used to call those patients and then fill out this forms. And then in order to fill 20 fields it would take now somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes and then there is another doctor office with, with multiple locations. This is a good story for us because whenever you handle a client with multiple locations, sometimes what happens is now one or two locations would do too good. That overshadow the underperformance of the other locations. Like this client was doing good because a couple of his locations are absolutely rock. And when we started looking into the call intelligence, that's when we figured out that now eight more locations that were there are not at all looking good. So that's when we treat, we started treating each location as its own entity instead of treating every single, instead of treating all locations as one. So then we started having the intelligence for every location. We implemented the call intelligence and then we got the data and that's when the client was able to clearly see what are the challenges in each location rather than generalizing the challenges as a whole to the brand. We are in the interesting times of now transitioning between m the human work and then the AI work, especially the front desk. That's where we see a lot of challenges being answered. It can actually increase the efficiency in handling the basic human tasks, complex tasks, definitely. We need a human to be handling the task, but the basic human tasks, AI can definitely come in handy, but the only question is the affordability. Most of these small medium healthcare practices can't afford these AI tools right away, but we are exploring as much as we can.

Speaker A: I made a really good point there where you're taking that approach of instead of trying to replace the front desk, you're upskilling the front desk and bringing her or him into the marketing that they're doing.

Speaker B: We shouldn't be seeing this as, you know, human versus AI. We should be seeing that as human and AI and then we need the best of both. The AI today is best at handling the basic things and then the human should be best at handling the complicated things in the front desk. Because, you know, like, you know, for any new, new patient who is calling, uh, to this doctor offices, the moment of truth is the experience that they're going to get with the friend desk, not the actual consultation with the doctor. Actual consultation with the doctor happens much later when they were able to set the appointment, schedule the appointment. In order to schedule the appointment, they need to go through the friend desk and then that friend desk experiences the moment of truth. That moment of truth should be absolutely delightful for anyone else to be able to schedule the appointment right away. So that's what we are trying to optimize.

Speaker A: So what are your thoughts on the overall AI Shift that's happening, especially when it comes to marketing within the healthcare sector. And then how are you guys using AI and adapting to this shift when it comes to your own business?

Speaker B: Yeah, like I think use the right word adapting here, not just AI, right? Like, you know, any industry goes through trends, there are always trends. Okay, if, if we see the trend and then if you are able to understand now where these trends are going and then able to see how we can utilize the trend, uh, and then package it into your solutions, not use that as a buzzword, definitely that trend become an opportunity. But if we just keep on using the AI or, uh, any other trend, or putting in a backseat, uh, underplaying it, definitely that becomes a threat. Any trend can become an opportunity or a threat. It all depends on the way we look at it. So right now at Orange Garrett, definitely we feel this is an interesting times to be in because like earlier if there was a trend, you know, it used to like, you know, it used to take its own time of maybe three to five years to get settled in. And then we used to get that initial phase to digest the things. Right now with AI, everything is rapid. Like, you know, we hear one thing today and then we hear something else tomorrow. And then there are a lot of tools that are popping up. Uh, right now it's becoming almost impossible to figure out which tool is better than the other tool. And then now, if you ask me if I subscribe to any AI tool for any year, I don't think so. Like for me, subscribing to any AI tool even for a month is scary because now I'm anticipating a better tool than this now would be available tomorrow. So yeah, we are in the interesting times. And definitely we started, uh, looking AI now, including into the real life solutions. Meaning we want to use AI to optimize the processes both in terms of marketing but also in terms of operations. For these Dr. Offices, we started off, um, using AI as a pilot testing with some AI outbound, AI inbound, and also the AI chatbots. So, you know, I know you might ask me, you know, what is the difference between a normal chatbot and the AI chatbot? See, AI chatbots are much more intelligent. Like the normal chartbots would be go would go on a flow like based on sr, no questions. But the AI chart would actually answer any question based on the information that we already feed and it consistently keep on learning every day and then it gets better every day. So that's the basic difference between the AI chatbot and the regular chatbots. Now for us, all we have to do is now do the pilot testing, see um, where we can start. We don't need to be 10 out of 10 on day one, even if we start take a step, one step at a time, uh, say for me, one step at a time is able to provide a real life solution, uh, um, not some testing that we do in the backend. Uh, there are a lot of tests that we do in the backend, but for me the real needle moves only when, when we are able to provide a case to one submission in the real life for the client. That actually not only enhances the patient journey process but also achieve efficiency with the budgets. Because as I said, most of these clients are small medium businesses and then they cannot afford testing a hundred different tools in a day.

Speaker A: So have you found that to be kind of where you guys are at right now, where you're still stuck trying to navigate that, but you're still managing to go and find one or two tools that you think are going to be useful when it comes to your application?

Speaker B: It's not about selling the product. It is more about giving the right solution to the clients. I'm just, I'm just touching that point because it is overwhelming even for agencies right now to understand the changes that are coming in. Not only the changes, but also the language that they use. Because most of us, the people working in the agency, we are not the developers to understand their tech language. Now for us, at the end of the day, what kind of problem these AI tools are solved at what cost? That one matters to us.

Speaker A: And I think that's a very widespread challenge that a lot of companies are facing right, uh, now. And for companies that are just starting to get into AI and are looking to get to the position where you're at, what are some of the challenges that you faced along the way and what are some of the challenges that you're facing now when it comes to AI integration within your business? And how have you guys went and been trying to address those?

Speaker B: Yeah, initially major challenge was the possible because in order to implement AI voice, um, the chat and everything, um, the setup costs are starting. What I have seen was at least $3,000. It was going up to $5,000, just the basic setup fee. And again on top of it, there has to be a minimum commitment of 15 to $2,000 every month. And, and then the economics doesn't work in favor of these, um, these practices. It is very tough for someone to invest now 5 grand right away on the technology that there is no guarantee that it is going to work with efficiency. So that's the major challenge that we faced. And we negotiated, uh, with most of these tools, um, and then there was one tool where we were able to negotiate, uh, to $500 just as a proof of concept. So that's how we were able to put our foot in the door, uh, saying, hey, we are going to commit. We are an agency. Uh, we might bring a lot of other businesses to you in the future, only if you agree, uh, for a proof of concept with us at $500 to start. And then they happily agreed and then we are actually implementing it for one client. We are in the implementation stage. They're now building their agent right now for us. And, uh, we are providing them with the data, the call recordings and everything. Uh, whatever they are, whatever the data that they requested us, um, yeah, uh, it is in the process. Within the next couple of weeks, we will go live. And after that, just a matter of few more weeks for us to understand how efficiently it is going to help in real world and then how efficiently we're going to scale this up.

Speaker A: And from where you're at right now, what's the biggest challenge when it comes to this?

Speaker B: The biggest challenge is, um, educating the client that they need to start this right away because AI is not the future. AI is already here, so we need to adapt. If not, you know, we just get left behind. And then, uh, there are always the

Speaker A: competition and it's challenging, especially when you get down to SMBs, because then, like you said, you have to go and worry a lot about budget constraints. Right?

Speaker B: That's what it is. Right? Like, you know, it's not about bringing the solution, but it's all about bringing the solution at the right price. Always matters, at least from the agency point of view. Um, serving to be small, medium businesses, pricing is definitely a sensitive factor for us. That's where we leverage the volume factor here because most of the agencies will be serving for tens of clients. So that's the negotiating factor. That's where we are trying to get some bulk discounts and pass it on to the clients. Uh, the advantage of being with an agency where that agency aggressively going out and testing the things out at the minimal cost.

Speaker A: I think that's a really good place for us to leave off before we wrap up. This is the same question that I ask every guest that comes onto the podcast. What's the most overrated piece of advice you've came across recently as an agency?

Speaker B: You need to provide perfect solutions to the clients I have been in the agency world for almost a decade now. I don't think anything that we can achieve as a perfect thing. There is no perfect in this world. So, yeah, we can get better every day, but being perfect is, uh, is the overrated thing.

Speaker A: Thank you. That was Rakesh Reddy, uh, of Orange Carrot. So thank you for that episode. That was a really awesome conversation. And for people that are looking to maybe get involved with Orange Carrot or find out more about you guys, where can they go and find you?

Speaker B: They can just go to orangecarrotmedia.com@simple spellout orangecarrotmedia.com Alrighty.

Speaker A: Perfect. Thanks for coming on, Rakesh.

Speaker B: Thank you, Mish, for this opportunity. Happy to be here. Thank you.

Speaker A: As we end today's episode of Making Martech, I'd like to thank all our listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to share this and subscribe to our show so you don't miss the next one. I'm your host, Hymnish Jindal, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.