Dr. Mike Social Media Marketing: The Two-Track Strategy Healthcare Practices Need

Grow your practice with two tracks of marketing: provider marketing, and practice marketing. Learn from Dr. Mike's success.

Author

Steve Kolock
July 31, 2025

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Hey Practice Builders — it's Steve with Healthcare Marketing Vitals!

Last week, we explored how to use local marketing effectively within your community to get more patients.

This week, I'm diving into a case study that reveals why most healthcare practices are missing a massive strategic opportunity. While I’ve talked about social media for providers before, I wanted to really dig in about provider marketing.

Dr. Mike Varshavski has 29+ million social media followers and practices family medicine at Chatham Family Medicine in New Jersey.

His massive following absolutely benefits the practice where he works—it builds credibility, enhances reputation, and likely contributes to a full schedule.

But don’t misunderstand where I’m going here. You and I both know that trying to emulate Dr. Mike’s social media success isn't the most direct or efficient route to filling appointment slots.

Instead, I want to pull lessons from his social media that you can use for successful healthcare marketing that runs on two distinct tracks that both working together:

  • Provider Marketing

  • Practice Marketing

In This Week’s Email:

  • [30 sec] Worth Your Time: Dig further into healthcare provider marketing

  • [3 min] Spotlight: The Case of Dr. Mike and why most practices are thinking about marketing all wrong

  • [30 sec] By the Numbers: The data behind provider vs practice marketing

  • [30 sec] Quote for the Week: Why social media is key for healthcare

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Key Local Marketing Insights

✅ Two Tracks, Different Goals: Provider authority marketing builds long-term credibility and referral relationships (timeline: months to years). Direct practice marketing fills appointment slots efficiently (timeline: weeks to months). Most successful practices run both simultaneously.

✅ The Localization Challenge: Social media authority is largely non-geographic. So even with millions of followers, you still need local marketing strategies to convert broader reach into scheduled appointments. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold value.

✅ Strategic Integration: The most effective approach isn't choosing between provider and practice marketing—it's strategically connecting your broader authority to local patient acquisition through targeted content, community events, PPC Ads, and local SEO integration.

WORTH YOUR TIME

Links from This Week

🔉 [LISTEN] Social Media for Healthcare Professionals - Pediatric experts discuss reasons why healthcare professionals might want to start posting on social media, and what to be aware of. Listen Now →

👀 [WATCH] Kari Morton LMFT YouTube - While this email is focused on Dr. Mike’s social media journey, I wanted to include a healthcare professional in the mental health space so you can see another example of a strong social media presence. Watch Now →

🎥 How to Get Better Reviews [7 min] - Geared primarily toward new practices, but with critical tips for all, I go into how to get the kind of reviews that will rank you higher on Google Search.

Want to improve your SEO? Get better reviews →

SPOTLIGHT

The Case of Dr. Mike: Why Most Practices Are Thinking About Marketing All Wrong

4 min. read

When Dr. Mike Varshavski walks into the family medicine practice in Chatham, New Jersey where he works his patients see a board-certified family physician.

The internet, meanwhile, sees a content creator with 29+ million followers across platforms.

But here's the strategic insight most healthcare practices miss: Dr. Mike didn't set out to become a social media star. He started documenting his medical school journey on Instagram in 2012, gained 100,000 followers over three years, then went viral in 2015 when BuzzFeed featured his photos with his husky, Roxy.

The viral moment wasn't the goal—it was an unexpected opportunity he strategically leveraged.

Dr. Mike's Platform Breakdown:

Most practices studying his success focus on the wrong metrics. His massive following doesn't directly fill appointment slots—it serves a completely different strategic purpose.

The Two-Track Reality

Dr. Mike's journey illustrates why successful healthcare marketing runs on two distinct tracks.

And why you need both working together.

Track 1: Provider Authority Marketing

  • Builds long-term credibility and professional reputation

  • Generates referral relationships with other providers

  • Attracts speaking opportunities and media appearances

  • Timeline: 6 months to several years for significant impact (PR backlinks can help shorten this timeline)

Dr. Mike building his social media presence to 29 million followers falls into this category. But so does going to another provider’s practice and introducing yourself.

Track 2: Direct Practice Marketing

  • Fills appointment slots efficiently and predictably

  • Targets local patients actively seeking care

  • Includes Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads, local SEO, direct mail (EDDM - every door direct mail), targeted local content

  • Timeline: 4-12 weeks for measurable results

Even the practice where Dr. Mike works relies on this for day-to-day scheduling.

Your strategic insight: Don't choose one over the other. Run both tracks simultaneously and understand what each delivers.

The Localization Challenge

As you may have guessed, not all of Dr. Mike's 29 million social media followers live in New Jersey and can book an appointment with him.

It’s important to remember that broad reach doesn't automatically equal local patients.

However, you can find reviews from patients who clearly do know of Dr. Mike from social media.

So even though his online presence isn’t necessarily bringing in all of the patients, his approach offers a strategic framework for healthcare practices that want to build online authority.

And it also happens to have some personal benefits too, since he’s estimated to make as much as $2+ million per month on YouTube, and his speaking fees start at $75,000.

Here are the lessons to learn from Dr. Mike:

1. Purpose Before Virality His goal was never to go viral. His mission: "I can impact—instead of the 40 people I see a week—40,000 people a week, a million people, through my videos to make better health decisions." He started with clear educational goals, then found ways to make that content engaging.

2. The "Infotainment" Strategy As he puts it: "Taking the good-quality evidence but dressing it up in a pretty suit, making it pretty or fun to watch." This approach makes complex medical information accessible while building authority and trust.

3. Wide Variety Content Approach Unlike conventional social media advice to "pick a niche," Dr. Mike deliberately creates diverse content: medical education, reaction videos, health myth debunking, and personal stories. This meant "when the pandemic started, all the people who watched the medical meme content, the medical reaction, perhaps my medical story, all of them needed COVID information."

4. Consistency Builds Foundation From 2012 to 2015, he built following slowly by consistently documenting his medical journey. The viral moment came later, but the foundation was three years of authentic, consistent content.

Even with global authority, the practice where Dr. Mike's works still needs local marketing strategies to connect that broader credibility to actual appointment bookings in New Jersey.

The Strategic Integration Framework

The most successful healthcare practices don't choose between provider marketing and practice marketing—they create a strategic bridge between both tracks.

For Solo Practitioners: Your provider brand IS your practice brand. Build authority that consistently connects back to your local expertise and availability. Every piece of authority content should include subtle local positioning.

For Multi-Provider Practices: Each provider can build individual authority while reinforcing the practice brand. Dr. Smith's expertise in cardiology enhances the entire practice's credibility, which increases the likelihood of bookings and the “surface area” of your marketing inherently, but the practice's local marketing fills the appointment slots.

The Content Strategy: Create content that serves both tracks. A video about managing diabetes builds provider authority, but optimize it for "diabetes management [Your City]" to capture local search traffic and talk about local community resources. 💡Then, reach out to those resources and see if they want to link to or embed your video.

The Risk-Reward Calculation

Now for the strategic consideration most practices avoid discussing: What happens when a provider with a strong personal brand wants to leave?

Dr. Mike's authority is tied to him personally. If he left Chatham Family Medicine tomorrow, his 29 million followers wouldn't automatically transfer to his replacement.

But also…the practice isn’t just built on his reputation.

Smart practices address this by:

Building Practice-Level Authority: While providers build personal brands, also invest in practice-level content and reputation that transcends individual providers.

Integration Contracts: Clear agreements about how personal authority can be leveraged for practice benefit, and what happens if the provider transitions. Is there strict separation between provider and their brand? Is the provider featured in any specific way on your practice website? You need to have these conversations early on.

Systematic Approaches: Develop content and authority-building systems that can be replicated across multiple providers, not just dependent on one "star" provider.

The Real Lesson from Dr. Mike

I don’t bring up Dr. Mike's success as a lesson in building a massive following.

I want you to understand that different marketing tracks serve different purposes—and the most successful healthcare marketing strategies use both strategically.

His authority marketing opens doors to speaking engagements, media appearances, and professional opportunities for him.

But the practice still needs local SEO, PPC Ads, and targeted local content to fill appointment slots efficiently.

Practices that get this right don't try to replicate Dr. Mike's exact approach. They build their own two-track system: provider authority that enhances credibility and referral relationships, plus direct practice marketing that consistently fills schedules.

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BY THE NUMBERS

Social Media & Healthcare Stats

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
❝

I hope to see people get more and more passionate about [health professionals on social media] because I think the absence of evidence-based quality physicians online, especially online, has really stirred the pot and allowed misinformation to flourish because no one was there to extinguish it, with accurate good information."

When You’re Ready, Here is How I Can Help

  1. Reply to this email: What's your single biggest challenge with marketing your practice? I read every response and use your questions to shape future newsletters.

  2. Under 90-95% appointment fill rates consistently? - Maybe it’s time for a 3-month growth sprint.

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That’s All for Now

Have a great week—and remember you don’t need to be 2015’s “Sexiest Doctor Alive” (according to People magazine) to grow your practice.

See You Next Week,

Steve