Apex Current, featured in Yahoo Finance as one of DesignRush’s top 10 digital marketing agencies in the U.S. to provide strong ROI, is excited to announce a client partnership with the successful Salt Lake City-based Forum Health organization and its Chicago-based Agenixs integrative health clinic, a former client partner of Apex Current. Looking to become known as the global leader in integrative medicine, Forum Health sought out Apex Current at the recommendation of Forum Health partner, Dr. Paul Savage, founder of Agenixs. Agenixs had previously worked with Apex Current in 2018 and saw great success using our automated pipeline marketing products. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to reinstate those pipelines and to continue the aggressive growth that our previous campaigns saw.
Dr. Paul Savage of Agenixs, Chicago
2018: The Initial Campaigns
Apex Current’s relationship with Dr. Savage first began in early 2018 as a result of a marketing campaign that we launched to generate leads for WaveFlow, a proprietary marketing pipeline product. WaveFlow is specifically designed for GAINSWave™, a non-invasive medical technology that treats erectile dysfunction.
“We found doctors that provided GAINSWave™ and targeted them with ads,” Apex Current founder Corbitt Chandler explains, “And one of the first ones that came through was Dr. Paul Savage out of Agenixs in Chicago. We had created a marketing pipeline for these doctors that was very extensive and the information they were giving us on their business and their motivation, we were able to cultivate through our copywriting. Everything was very, very detailed.”
“I was gating our pipeline so the doctors understood that we're going to choose you and select you if you're right for our product. And [Dr. Savage] is a sales and marketing guy, so he got it. We ended up signing him. And he was a great client that year, one of our biggest clients. And if you look at our cost for his application it was like $23. And he spent $200,000 with us in 2018 which is quite the ROI and proof that our pipelines work.”
It should come as no surprise that Dr. Savage understands the power of automated technology in driving measurable results. Looking for a solution for streamlining his clinical practices, Dr. Savage developed Power2Practice, an EMR (electronic medical records) system specific to the needs of integrative medical care. Currently, Power2Practice has over one million patients in its database across its one-thousand partner clinics. Given Dr. Savage’s innovative and forward-thinking mindset, the working-relationship between Agenixs and Apex Current proved to be a perfect fit.
As Chandler said, “In one of our initial conversations, Dr. Savage actually said something that I had heard a long time ago when I worked in event marketing at a professional boxing match at Madison square gardens, which is, “It's all about getting butts in the seat.” And he knew that a program like ours could bring in qualified individuals who were raising their hand for his treatment, filling out a detailed prospecting form, and finally getting a call from our team to nail down a consultation and “get a butt in a seat.” He knew he could trust our system because it was that very system that had hooked him in the first place.”
WaveFlow Product Marketing-To-Sales-Pipeline Diagram
Unique Industry Challenges
Believing in the validity of the GAINSWave™ treatment service and excited to be teamed up with Dr. Savage and his Agenixs crew, we got to work implementing WaveFlow, our All-In-One Leads to Sales Pipeline marketing product created specifically for GAINSWave™ treatment centers. WaveFlow was modeled after CoolStream, our marketing pipeline product designed for CoolSculpting treatment centers. However, unlike CoolStream, WaveFlow presented some unique marketing challenges.
An immediate obstacle in creating effective campaigns for the GAINSWave™ industry was figuring out how to adequately advertise the service while not violating any online content policies. As our experience has proven, the marketing message must be specific enough to speak directly to the heart of the target audience’s problem. But with the sensitive nature of GAINSWave™ treatments, this initially proved to be a difficult task. However, after extensive research and testing, we were able to craft messages that generated qualified leads at a high rate without issue.
“We have to pique their interest with the ad and the copy, you know, talking about performance, but not really alluding to what that performance is,” Chandler explains, “Then once they get to the landing page, that page is really dialed in on the sales side and has everything about the treatment to educate them and indoctrinate them. And then they fill out a lead form and go through the consultation request form from there.”
The Transition to Forum Health
Phil Hagarman, Forum Health Chairman and CEO
After successfully working alongside Agenixs for nearly a year, Dr. Savage contacts Chandler to inform him of upcoming changes to the company. As he explained, Dr. Savage and his Agenixs clinic were in the beginning stages of a Merger and Acquisition with the forthcoming Forum Health, of which he was to be named a partner.
Salt Lake City-based Forum Health LLC officially launched in January of 2019, citing a mission of “uniting practitioners under a precision health model that addresses root causes — not just symptoms — to help people achieve their personal wellness goals.” The group is under the leadership of entrepreneur and philanthropist, Phil Hagarman, co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Diplomat Pharmacy. Hagarman brings extensive business and medical industry experience to Forum Health as the Chairman and CEO. Agenixs clinic in Chicago serves as the founding practice for Forum Health, with Dr. Savage being named as a Co-Chief Medical Officer. Power2Practice was also an integral part of the M&A.
The group prides themselves on “setting a new standard for healthcare” with their innovative approach that “combines the powerful principles of functional and integrative medicine with advanced medical treatments and technology, data analytics, and collaborative relationships.”
Forum Health came about as a response to the growing demand of the patients that walked through Agenixs’s doors. In his own words, Dr. Savage explains, “People are saying, ‘I want more. I want better health. I want health that’s targeted to me. I don’t just want to take care of how I feel; I want to find the root cause of why I’m feeling this way.’” Forum’s group of seasoned expert medical physicians is on a mission to change the integrative medical landscape for the better, and for good.
In light of the M&A and the coming changes to the chain of command, the client relationship between Agenixs and Apex Current would need to be reevaluated. While his Agenixs clinics saw great success using our pipelines, the strategy would need to be pitched to Forum Health’s incumbent CEO.
And so Chandler and his wife, Michelle, hopped on a flight to Chicago to meet in-person at Dr. Savage’s office. Even though Dr. Savage was enthusiastic about WaveFlow, the Deep Market strategy that’s central to the success of WaveFlow went against the big brand vision of the CEO.
As Chandler recounts, “They wanted to go with a big brand strategy. You know, if you think of Nike and Coca-Cola’s branding and PR, and he believed that they would acquire practices much faster than they ended up being able to do. My whole strategy from the start was, let's get your marketing at the grassroots level or the ground level rather dialed in. Let's implement these pipelines, whether it's GAINSWave or other treatments and go deep in the market, get your systems and processes in place from marketing and sales, and then replicate that as you go to acquire more practices.”
The Deep Market strategy is what created the effective and efficient system that Agenixs had used to close enough leads per month to maintain a consistent revenue across all clinics using our pipelines. While some long-standing companies can afford to implement a big brand approach, it just isn’t a reasonable strategy for the majority of companies out there, especially those in their formative years. And as Chandler says, “Brand is bullshit.”
At the end of the day, Forum Health’s bottom line would agree.
The Relationship is Reinstated
Fast-Forward to early 2020. It had been roughly a year since Agenixs and Apex Current parted ways when Dr. Savage reached back out to Chandler. As he explained, Hagarman had met with Dr. Savage to discuss why his Agenixs clinics had been dropping in revenue. Dr. Savage’s response? In his own words: “It’s because you got rid of my marketing guy!” In short, Hagarman was eager to discuss picking the WaveFlow system back up. The then-incumbent CEO was no longer with the company and their initial big brand strategy had proved to be somewhat fruitless.
And Chandler is also looking forward to continuing his work with Dr. Savage and the Forum Health team: “I'm glad that relationship wrapped up like it did in 2018. I kept an ongoing relationship with Dr. Savage, reaching out to him from time to time just to say “hello” and to see how he was doing. And then, you know lo and behold, 2020 rolls around. And so it's a big opportunity for us as we've currently got two GAINSWave locations and they are looking into implementing it with the other seven locations. And they want to look at marketing other treatments given this system is successful. And so it's something I'm really excited about. Especially since we have the systems and processes already in place for a lot of this.”
About Apex Current
Apex Current, ranked by DesignRush as one of 2019’s Top Advertising Agencies as well as a 2018 BBJ Small Business of the Year Honoree, is a performance-driven digital ad agency. At Apex Current, we create, implement, and optimize scalable digital advertising campaigns that drive tangible results for established companies. From online retail products to local service-based businesses, we have your every digital marketing need covered. These campaign solutions produce increased profits driving tangible results through our conversion-based digital ad expertise including; Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing & more. At Apex Current, our process involves collaborating in tandem with our clients to plan, design, develop and manage custom online campaigns that measurably impact their client's bottom line.
Apex Current is a Certified Infusionsoft Partner that includes an expert team of digital media buyers, designers, CRM specialists, and consultants who have been working in the marketing industry since 2005. Since the company’s creation, Apex Current has worked on projects in a wide variety of industries, national direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands, network marketing companies, fitness and nutrition offerings, mobile app products, medical practices, investing firms, universities, B2B industries, and more. Our clients run the gamut in product and service offerings as well as specialties, but the end goal remains the same - to drive tangible results that are crucial to their company’s revenue growth. Apex Current was founded by Corbitt Chandler in 2017 and is headquartered in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.
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