Radio Front Desk

How to use branding to grow your clinic (with Bianca from Jane App)

• Jane.app • Season 2 • Episode 16

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What if your clinic were a person? That’s the question that sparked this episode with Bianca DiPietro, Jane’s marketing design manager and certified branding expert.

In this conversation, Bianca and Denzil unpack what branding really means for clinics and how it differs from marketing. They explore the full patient journey, from the first Google search to the smell of your waiting room, and why every one of those touchpoints communicates your brand.


What You’ll Learn

You’ll hear why thinking of your clinic as a personality makes branding easier to define, why trust and loyalty are byproducts of a strong brand, and how even small decisions like photography or front desk greetings can completely shift patient perception.

  • The difference between branding and marketing, and how they work together
  • Why senses like sound, smell, and visuals matter in creating a brand experience
  • The role of photography, logos, and typography in shaping first impressions
  • How authentic visuals can build stronger patient trust than polished stock images
  • Budget-friendly ways to start elevating your clinic’s brand today


Guest Bio

Bianca DiPietro is a creative leader, educator, and maker who believes fearless design fosters real connection. As the Manager of Marketing Designer at Jane, she leads the creative of the brand that’s intentionally human and delightful — bringing warmth, clarity, and care to everything from campaigns to community events and so much more. With a background in education, freelance, and creative leadership at HelloFresh, Bianca blends bold thinking, curiosity, and storytelling to craft meaningful experiences. Off the clock, she’s a half-marathon runner, donut enthusiast, and retired roller derby skater.


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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical, legal, or financial advice.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast host or its affiliates.


Speaker 1:

If you were to envision the person of what your brand is. Who are they? How do they sound? How do they speak to people? What do they wear? Are they bold? Are they colorful? Do they wear plain colors that are only neutrals?

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Radio Front Desk. I'm your host, denzel Ford, and the voice you just heard belongs to Bianca DiPietro, jane's marketing design manager and a certified branding expert. We sat down together to consider the many ways clinics can define who they are, not just through logos and colors though we touch on those too but through the full patient experience. Do you know what comes up when someone Googles you, or the way your clients experience your front desk? There's so much to how branding shows up in ways you might not expect. Know what comes up when someone Googles you or the way your clients experience your front desk. There's so much to how branding shows up in ways you might not expect, and that's how we landed on the what if your clinic were a person exercise you just heard, but it's just the beginning. Some clinics are easily able to build loyal, lifelong patients, while others struggle to get people in the door. This episode discusses how oftentimes it's your branding that builds trust and accelerates growth. Let's get into it, bianca. Hello, welcome to Radio Front Desk. I'm so excited.

Speaker 2:

Today we're going to talk about brand and how clinics can think about their brands. So I want to start with the idea of branding and marketing. They're buzzwords. We hear them a lot. Sometimes I think it can be easy to think we mean the same thing when we're saying those words, but maybe we don't mean the same thing. Or it's easy to kind of conflate the meanings don't mean the same thing, or it's easy to kind of conflate the meanings, but they're not quite the same. So I wonder if you could just start by talking to us about what's your way of thinking of these two words marketing, branding.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. So, to put it simply, branding is who you are as a business or a person, a sole proprietor, a practitioner and marketing is how you talk about that and market that and message that to people. I always say a brand is who you are, so it's foundational. And then marketing is the vehicle and the megaphone, how you communicate that out to people.

Speaker 2:

How do you think those two things work together?

Speaker 1:

Your branding is really going to make your marketing strong. Because if your brand, your messaging, your visuals, your experience of your brand is really solid, then your marketing will be super consistent and the message will be consistent across channels, will be consistent to your audience and then people establish trust with you. Trust establish loyalty, loyalty. People come back to you as an expert in your field. So having a brand, a personality, I always say, if you're really struggling to sort of understand what your brand is, if you were to envision the person of what your brand is who are they, what do they wear, how do they sound, what's their vibe, how do they speak to people If you think of your brand as who are they, what do they wear, how do they sound, what's their vibe, how do they speak to people If you think of your brand as a person, it's much easier to tangibly understand those sort of characteristics that should be attached to your brand.

Speaker 2:

Can you say more about that and connect the dots between that and the fact that in a clinic you have certain components of a brand, you have online version, you have a physical space, but you're saying to think about it like there's this element, that it's like a person?

Speaker 1:

yeah, because if you think of a person you think of like are they energetic, are they friendly or are they more stoic, then it's like what do they wear? Are they bold? Are what do they wear? Are they bold, are they colorful? Do they wear plain colors that are only neutrals? That sort of way of like there's the physical, there's the way they talk, maybe they are more reserved, whereas somebody would hug you Like. Those sort of actions and ways that people sort of embody their personality can be like a brand. Right, if you're in a clinic and somebody at the front desk is like greeting somebody and is very sort of friendly and says hello, right away, how are you, can I get you anything? Versus somebody who would sit behind the desk and wait for that person to come up and only speak with them when, like they were like hey, like I'm here for my appointment. Very different experience with that person. So those brand values and sort of that personality comes through in different ways.

Speaker 2:

And if we're thinking about marketing as the megaphone, the actions branding is kind of like what holds all those actions together.

Speaker 1:

maybe yeah, in a certain way, and I also like to think too that your brand you should always think about your brand in the senses Like it's also visuals, it's sound, it's smell, it's finding you on social media, to them walking into your clinic, seeing the signage and the atmosphere and the decor, then the experience with the practitioner, then when they leave, it's every sense and it's the holistic experience.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so throughout this conversation so far, you've mentioned several components of a brand. I'm wondering if you could summarize what are like five really important components of a brand.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so with a brand, you always have typography, your fonts. Your fonts should be consistent across all of your assets, whether that be in the logo, all of your materials, online and digital, and signage and all that stuff. Then you have your color palette. Color palettes can be two or three colors. They can be four or five or six colors. You have primary colors, which are your main colors, and you have your secondary colors and tertiary colors, which usually use more sparsely to add variety to your brand. You have your logo.

Speaker 1:

Your logo usually is made up of the typography and the color palette, but it might have shapes. How you use those shapes, are they rounded? Are they more sharp? Do you have recognizable shapes like a star or a circle? Are they organic? I always show students when I'm teaching different visual toolkits. So like organic lines and shapes versus your. Like more just standard shapes right, they give a different vibe. If you have an illustrative style, it could be sketchy, it could be solid lines, it could look like somebody had hand-drawn it. That also gives a different vibe, right, something that is iconic versus illustrative, which brings me into like your icons and your illustrations. Those are part of your brand. So do you need them? Some clinics, practitioners might, depending on the services that they offer, they might not need that sort of element yet, but it can be in your toolkit as a brand. I always like to say brands evolve because when you kick off your brand and have a logo and you have your visual identity, you might realize oh, I'm adding more services to what I have to offer.

Speaker 1:

Maybe it would be useful for me to have illustration or iconography to supplement my brand.

Speaker 2:

Right. What about making a logo? Should people have someone else do that for them, or can they make it themselves? What do you think of that?

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's a really good question. I feel like it's very hard for anybody to make their own logo because they're almost too close to sometimes the. It's like you need to know who you are. And, going back to what I said earlier, like if you were to think of your brand as a person, you should know what that person is and you should be able to describe them. But to make the visuals that attach to that sometimes is really difficult, even if you have the skill set, because I sometimes feel like too close to be a little bit more objective with, like, how the system works and the brand works.

Speaker 1:

And the reason I say this is because I'm a designer and I, to this day, still cannot design my own brand. So I've had help in the past because I feel like I'm too close and I can't decide and I can't make objective decisions based on what I really want the brand to be. And it's very. It's good to get professional help yeah, even if it's just like a direction in the beginning to help give you a foundation for you to build on. But there's other people who are out in the world who have created logos and they're great and they work. So I just find sometimes you're almost too close to it and it's it kind of limits your ability to sort of think what the potential is for your brand.

Speaker 3:

Hey there, christina, here Just a quick moment to share that this episode is brought to you by Jane. We know how much heart you put into building a practice you're proud of, and that's why we're here to make things like scheduling, charting and payments run a little smoother. If you'd like to take a peek head to janeapp forward, slash pricing, because we love a good bonus. Don't forget to use the code radiofrontdesk for a one-month grace period.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I'll keep it short and sweet. Back to the episode. I wondered what is your take on stock photography. I have an issue because many of the same type of businesses are using the same photos, yes, and so I wonder what is your take on that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, funny enough, I really dislike stock photography as well, like I, just there's just something about it that just says stock. And then you're like, well, I've just grabbed something that I've purchased and it's not really my audience or my brand and how I would shoot it. The other really interesting about photography right now is there is a love for more authentic stuff online right like ugc content, and that just means anyone making a photo.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's very good taking their phone yeah, recording a video, taking a photo, not editing it. There's a trend on social right now around doing these like photo galleries. People do photo galleries of like things that are unedited and they don't look perfect, and it's a thing. People like that now. They don't like to see the super curated stuff. If you go to a lot of brand any brand doesn't need to be a practitioner or a clinic online you'll you'll see that a lot of the photography that they're taking for the brands is now people looking not at the camera. They're laughing, they're looking down, they're not paying attention. It's a candid shot. It looks like it's probably a photo shoot.

Speaker 2:

Right, but it's meant to look candid. I think you could tell us how Jane approaches stock photography. How do we do that and what makes it work?

Speaker 1:

So our stock photography is meant to be more candid. It's meant to be. It's meant to sort of highlight the delightful moments, right, the human moments, the connections between practitioners and their clients. I was actually going through a couple of weeks ago our photography and there's these like moments where people are laughing and their enthusiasm in the photo is seen and they're so happy and the smiles are like almost ecstatic, right, yeah, something that is just you see the emotion. And again, going back to brand, you're supposed to make people feel a certain way and that's all kind of put into how we shoot, because we shoot like a lot. There are the more ones where you know practitioner is sitting down, not so much emotion, but you see that a conversation is happening and you get many different takes of, like, the emotion that's happening, the connections that's happening this literally just happened today in jane.

Speaker 2:

We're looking at a thing we were making that was like I want these photos to bring the words to life. I want them to create a feeling.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's a photo I saw the other day and it was a practitioner and a patient and they were making eye contact, but it was so I don't even know the word, it was just so intentful. You could see the emotion in the photo and that's something you don't get in stock.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think this really ties into another thing I want to ask you about, which is how does all of this relate to the patient experience?

Speaker 1:

your tone and how people receive your brand is going to dictate how they interact with you. If they feel super connected to you and they trust you, they will be more engaged with your social. They potentially will call you more and talk to you on the phone because they know that when they go to your place you're welcoming and friendly, as opposed to somebody who is not that way and they go. I don't really want to call, I don't want to interact with this person. It's maybe it's not as comfortable as they want it to be, or human or delightful, and that sort of prevents them from interacting and taking action a certain way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so rapid fire here. Yeah, what should somebody spend on photography for their clinic?

Speaker 1:

Ballpark Ooh you can get a really good photo shoot done for probably $1,000.

Speaker 2:

How do you find a good photographer?

Speaker 1:

Ooh, the best way I've found photographers personally is through entrepreneurial events. Honestly.

Speaker 2:

Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1:

Especially if you're new. So if you're a new clinic, I'm assuming I'm going to make the assumption that you want to be budget friendly, right? So there's a lot of entrepreneurial events in every city that people live and if you go to those it's usually find pretty talented photographers trying to market themselves and they're usually more approachable, easier to work with and more budget friendly. What's more important?

Speaker 2:

Good photos or a good logo.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, okay, I'm going to say, I'm going to say your logo, because I feel like with the UGC thing I said earlier, you can take some UGC shots and they can be good.

Speaker 2:

Okay, okay, how important is smell.

Speaker 1:

Ooh, pretty important. Just because, if we're talking about practitioners, I'm going to say majority of them have a space, unless it's a virtual situation, and your space should really have a good scent around it. Like again, senses right, that plays into the visuals as well. So, like you would also want to make sure that your space is visually connected to your logo Scent wise, if you have incense going, I don't know. Whatever, I think it's pretty important. Is music part of your brand? Yes, but music audio doesn't always need to be music, right, like it can be sound, but audio doesn't always need to be music. Right, like it can be sound, so it's not necessarily like a song.

Speaker 2:

It can just be some sort of sound that's connected to your brand. For people on a tight budget, whether that's time or money, what's one small thing that they can do today to elevate their brand? Okay?

Speaker 1:

They have the basics.

Speaker 2:

Okay, if they have the basics, if they have a logo and they have socials and things. I would say investing in photography would probably be the best thing to support or pull those things together. That's it for today's episode of Radio Front Desk. My thanks to Bianca DiPietro for reminding us that branding isn't just what people see. It's what they feel, and if today's conversation got you thinking about the role photography plays in shaping that feeling, you'll want to join us for our next episode. We're sitting down with one of my favorite photographers, who specializes in helping clinics capture authentic, high quality photos. You'll learn all his insider tips, like finding the right light and taking shots that will actually connect with your patients. It's a must listen, if I do say so myself.