What Is Chiropractic Advertising

By drbeck | June 29, 2009

(If you haven’t read it yet, you should read my last blog post “Death of a Chiropractic Salesman” before reading this one.)

To get down to the bottom of chiropractic advertising, we begin with a story…

In 1898, at the age of eighteen, Albert Lasker left Galveston, TX and traveled to Chicago by train to learn advertising from the agency of Lord & Thomas. As Mr. Lasker learned the ropes of working in the agency, he quickly began to have a burning question…

“What is Advertising?”

You see, Lasker quickly realized that even though his new employer called themselves an “advertising agency”, no one could tell him what advertising really meant. Not his manager, not even the owners of the company. Mr. Lasker did finally come across an ad man, from a rival company at the time, who offered to help him on his quest. The conversation went like this…

“Well”, said Lasker, “what is right in advertising? Can’t you define it for me?”

“Why”, said the friend, “advertising is keeping your name in front of the people.”

To that, Lasker replied, “Well supposing I can’t live that long. Supposing I go broke; that I can’t keep my name before the people. There must be something else to this thing called advertising.”

I need to stop the story at this point and ask…how many chiropractors do this very same thing? How often have you heard, or even said it yourself, “I just need to get my name out there.” While getting your name in front of people certainly won’t hurt (as long as your name is being mentioned in a good way!), you aren’t likely to live long enough to rely solely on it as a way of growing your practice.

Another way chiropractors use this wrong line of thinking is by running ads in the newspaper or putting up websites that only have their name, phone number, etc. They believe this is getting their name out there in front of the reader and therefore, will be enough to get a new patient. This indeed will work if your are the only chiropractor in town, and it’s circa 1951, but for most of us this form of advertising is a complete waste of money.

Back to the story…

Within a few years, Mr. Lasker had become a partner in the agency, yet he still did not have a good definition of advertising. He had come to the conclusion that advertising was simply “news”, since most ads of that day were simply a small space ad announcing a new product. While Lasker was sitting upstairs talking with another partner is their office, a note got delivered to the room by a bellboy.  It read…

I am in the saloon downstairs and I can tell you what advertising is.
I know that you don’t know.It will mean much to me to have you know
what it is and it will mean much to you. If you wish to know what
advertising is, send the word ‘yes’ down by messenger.
- John E. Kennedy

Lasker sent a note down immediately saying yes, he’d like to know. Mr. Kennedy was shown upstairs, and the two met. Kennedy asked Lasker, “Do you know what advertising is?”

Lasker said “I think I do. It is news.”

Kennedy replied, “No, news is a technique of presentation, but advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words.”

“Well,” said Lasker, “I am hungry. What are those three words.”

At this, Mr. Kennedy revealed the three words that would change advertising forever. He said…

“Salesmanship in print.”

Advertising had always been”salesmanship in print”, and would always be, but Kennedy was the first to put it in those exact words.

This is what your chiropractic advertising must be…in your newspaper ads, on your webpages, pay-per-click ads, email messages, etc. Today, you could slightly change it to be “salesmanship on video” or “on audio” since we have new technologies that can be used to persuade and influence. (If you question whether chiropractors “sell”, you should read my last blog post.)

News, in the form of press releases, can be good for your practice. “Getting your name out” can get an occasional patient or two. But persuading prospects that chiropractic has the answers…and that your office is the office to choose…now that is advertising that will set you apart from your competition and give you a means to obtain success in life.

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Coaching/Strategies, Copywriting, Direct Mail Marketing, Internet Marketing | No Comments »

The Death Of A Chiropractic Salesman?

By drbeck | June 22, 2009

Is selling unethical?Occasionally I get the following type of question….

“Are chiropractors salesmen?” or “Should we even have to market our practice, after all other respectable doctors don’t have to?”

Before we get into the discussion, it’s important that we understand what selling means. From Websters dictionary…

to sell: to persuade or influence to a course of action or to the acceptance of something

That means if you’ve ever influenced a patient to accept your care plan, get adjusted, or even come in for an appointment, you’re guilty of selling. (And in some circles or seminars, you would be quickly ushered out the door for admitting you actually “sold” anything.) Everyone sells, including dentists, MD’s, attorneys, wives, children, teachers and preachers.

What chiropractors really mean is that they don’t want to have to “hard sell” the patient on care. And I’m in total agreement with that. The term “hard sell” brings up unpleasant thoughts of a sleazy car salesman, and rightly so. To be hard sold means someone is very forcefully persuaded, and this is not what you want in your practice. This involves convincing people against their will to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.

Many chiropractic coaches have convinced doctors to use hard sell tactics (of course they don’t use this exact term). They reason, according to these coaches, is that “it’s in the best interests of the patient to get the care, regardless if they realize it or not.”  However, this type of thinking is only trying to justify to yourself the unethical behavior.

There are ethical means to “persuade or influence” a patient to accept your care plan. Methods that do not use hype or exaggeration. Examples include making your office look more professional, dressing appropriately as the doctor, running editorial style chiropractic ads that do not use hype, sending “stick” letters to new patients, having a patient newsletter, etc. All of these are examples of marketing and selling your services.

Another unethical type of selling involves recommending care the patient does not need simply for the profit it will bring the doctor. In chiropractic, there is of course a gray area in that different techniques and philosophies recommend different amounts of care. This makes for a wide range of possibilities when recommending care to a patient.

It is of course the doctors clinical decision as to how much care a patient needs– not an arbitrary ruling by a state board or insurance company that want to cap visits to 12 or less. But realize there are doctors who “milk the system” for all it’s worth, and usually end up in prison as a result. More often than not, this type of wrongdoing is only known by the doctor who does it, and is not easily detected by the patient or others.

So when it comes down to it, there are really only two types of selling you want to avoid. The hard sell and what I call “greedy selling”. Both are unethical and both should never be used in a doctor’s office (or anywhere for that matter).

Ethical methods of persuading or influencing (selling) should be studied, modeled, and executed in your practice. You’re doing it currently any way, you might as well practice and get good at it.

Chiropractic Marketing

As to the question of whether we should “market” our services because other doctors don’t have to, let’s again look at the definition of marketing.

marketing: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service

This is a bit different than advertising, which is “the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements.” (But advertising is a part of marketing, since it is promoting a product or service.) Notice also that marketing includes the above mentioned selling.

Do MD’s and dentists market their practice? Do they promote it by having yellow page ads, newspaper display ads or business cards?

In every town I’ve ever lived in they do. And this just a small part of their marketing in the medical profession. Much of it is done by drug companies with television commercials and magazine ads…or organizations like the AMA, American Heart Assoc, Am. Cancer Assoc, etc. (On another note, why should we even compare the marketing of chiropractic to the marketing of medicine? Are they not separate and distinct disciplines, which require different education and marketing strategies? Is not medicine having a more and more difficult time convincing patients of it’s credibility and authority?)

Gone are the days, if they ever existed, where you could hang a sign out and your practice would be flooded with new patients. This only occurred if you were the first or second chiropractor in town. Today, if all you do is a “hang a shingle” and expect that to work, you’ll have to close the doors in 2 months.

In 2009 and beyond, you must market your services to the public. On the internet, in print media, radio and TV if affordable,  direct mail, in your office, with referrals…whatever ethically works and brings in new patients. Dont let a “I’m to good for that” attitude keep you from building the practice of your dreams.

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Coaching/Strategies | 3 Comments »

Get Google To Send You New Patients

By drbeck | June 16, 2009

Google can send you very qualified prospects if you pay them a small fee to do it. They call it Google Adwords, but I call it the greatest marketing idea of the decade. Where else do you only pay if someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website? That’s right. You only pay google if someone actually goes to your website.

Chiropractic Marketing on Google: How to Get Started

To setup a campaign, go to www.adwords.google.com. When asked between a starter and standard edition, choose standard. After choosing your language, you will be asked to choose how you will target customers by location. This is very important. Be sure to choose the “customized” selection. This allows you to select a radius around your practice that your ads will show up on. This ensures someone from 500 miles away isn’t clicking your ad and running up your bill with Google. You can decide how far to go from your practice, but I recommend 15-30 mile radius depending on if you practice in the city or a small town.

You’ll then be asked to setup your first ad. You only get 25-35 characters for four lines of text, two of which are your headline and website address. Here’s the proven formula for your ads:

• First line should contain your keyword in a headline type phrase

• Second line should be a benefit you offer, for example “Get Rid Of Migraines”

• Line three should describe a feature offer, like “Without Drugs Or Surgery”

• Line four is your URL, with each word capitalized and using a keyword in your landing page address if possible

The next step is choosing your keywords. These are the words that your ad will show for when people type them into the search engine. For now just choose the keyword “chiropractor yourtown” (replace yourtown with your actually town you practice in, like “chiropractor Dallas, TX). We’ll cover more on keywords later.

Choose your daily budget. Be sure to set a daily budget that you are comfortable with, like $10-20 per day for now. Once your daily budget is reached, your ad stops running. If set to low, your ad might stop running in the most important part of the day.

In the last step, you will be asked to set your maximum cost-per-click. This is the most you will bid on your keywords. This will apply to all the keywords you chose earlier. I can’t tell you exactly what to bid on your keywords, as it will be different depending on where you practice and the keywords you choose. But I will show you how to determine what you should bid and how to get lower bids

Now your campaign is ready to go.

What keywords should you use?

Start with the keywords “chiropractic” and “chiropractor” for now. Keyword selection is so important, we’ll be going into detail about it in next week’s lesson.

Keyword Matching

One thing about keywords that may interest you is the different types of matching you can use with Adwords. The three types of keyword matching are broad, phrase and exact. You should also use negative matching to exclude those search terms that don’t apply to your Adwords campaign. Here is how Google describes their keyword matching…
• Broader matching options tend to give you more impressions but accrue higher costs. Therefore, include other matching options (like phrase- or exact-match) along with broad-matched keywords in an ad group.
• Broad-matched keywords should be at least two-word phrases (gourmet coffee or organic coffee beans).
• Narrower matching options tend to give you fewer clicks and lower your costs. It’s still important to use descriptive words for these matching options.
• Negative keywords work well in most cases when you know a term doesn’t apply to your business. (”free”, “medications”,etc.)
To use broad matching, you simply enter in the term by itself. Let’s use the word chiropractic for example. Here’s how the broad, phrase and exact match would work for the search term chiropractic

Broad match = chiropractic (any search typing which includes chiropractic will show your ad, including searches like chiropractic marketing, chiropractic tables, etc)

Phrase Match = “chiropractic Dallas, TX” (Enter this with quotes around it into your Adwords account. Any search that includes this phrase exactly will show your ad, including for example “chiropractic Dallas, TX clinics”, “advanced chiropractic Dallas, TX”, etc

Exact Match = [chiropractic Dallas, TX] (This match is entered into your Adwords account with brackets around it. This means for your ad to show up, someone will have to type this phrase in exactly like you input it, so your ad will only show for the search chiropractic Dallas, TX.)

Which of the above match types should you use? All of them have their place. If you have a lot of competition for Adwords bid prices in your area, then the phrase and exact matches will allow you to beat out your competition and you will pay less for bids on keywords.

Negative keywords = a word with a negative sign in the front of it, like “–tables”, without the quotes. When combined with the above broad and phrase match this will prevent your ad showing when someone types in “chiropractic tables”.

Here’s a list of important negative keywords to use in your account for the keywords chiropractic.

-tables
-table
-marketing
-college
-websites
-seminars
-colleges
-schools
-seminar
-fraud

Do you see what those above have in common? They would be search terms that chiropractors themselves would be searching for, not patients. If you did not have these negative keywords in your account, your ad would pop up when a chiropractor searched for “chiropractic tables” in your area, and he might click your ad to see what you are up to. This wastes your money (since you are charged per click) and reveals your marketing to the guy down the street. Be sure to watch this week’s video to get more clarity on negative keywords.

Google’s Quality Score

When you mouse over the spyglass icon next to your keywords in your Adwords account, you will notice a quality score. Google has three levels of quality score — Ok, Poor and Great. The better your quality score is, the less you will pay per click. The worse your quality score, the more you will pay for keyword bid prices. Have a low quality score for too long, combined with a low CTR and you will be “slapped” by Google with ridiculously high bid prices (like 10X your current bid prices).

Google won’t tell you exactly how to improve your score, but they do reveal a few keys to help you. The score is based on your keyword relevance, your landing page relevance, and your landing page load time. Therefore, here is a checklist you can use to raise your quality score, thereby lowering your bid prices.

- Make sure your keyword is in your ad headline
- Use ad groups in your account (explained below)
- Use your keyword in your headline on your landing page
-Make sure your landing page or main website loads fast
- Use items on your landing page that makes the visitor stay longer (video, audio, etc)
- Make sure your landing page has a privacy policy link on it
- Put a link on your landing page that links to another website with a lot of content (your blog!)

How To Use Ad Groups

Ad groups are different groupings of keywords in your account. Ad groups are primarily setup for two reasons. First they allow you to use different ads to target different keywords. Also, they allow you to get a better quality score for your keywords.

Using the above “Top 10” keywords, you should group the “back pain” keywords together in an ad group. Then put the terms “chiropractic” and “chiropractor” in a separate ad group.

This concept is much easier to explain on the video, where I’ll show you how easy it is to create and manage ad groups in your campaign.

Other PPC Search Engines

Once you have mastered using Google Adwords for your practice marketing, you should branch out into Yahoo and MSN. To setup your accounts there, you should visit the following websites…

http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/index.php
https://adcenter.microsoft.com/

These PPC search engines are not as advanced Google, therefore it’s important to note a few differences in the campaign setup. For Yahoo and MSN, I do not recommend using ad groups or keyword matching. Because traffic is so much smaller it’s not worth wasting your time with these settings. Just start with 1-2 ads, and throw all your keywords into one ad group. Since quality score isn’t as important here, and bid prices are lower, this won’t hurt you at all.

(The above article is part of a ChiroMarketing Academy lesson. To see the 25 minute training video, where you can look over my shoulder see exactly how I set it up, and sign up at www.chiromarketingacademy.com.)

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Internet Marketing, Tools | No Comments »

How to Market Chiropractic on the Internet

By drbeck | June 9, 2009

Are you making full use of the internet to bring in new patients?

Years ago, Bill Gates said “Any business not on the internet will not be around in four years.” While Mr. Gate’s quote still stands true today, I would have to add to it by saying “simply being on the internet is not enough”.

Here’s why…

Many chiropractors today have a website. And it’s well known that millions of people surf the web every day for chiropractic and other related terms. But even with all these searches, most chiropractors only see 3-5 new patients from their website each month.

I often tell my coaching clients  they need much more than just a “brochure”, static type website. What I recommend is that they set up a complete internet marketing system. This includes a website, blog, landing pages, videos, email auto-responders, blog broadcasts, and more. Here are just a few reasons you should consider implementing this type of system for your practice…

1. Once you have your system in place, it brings in patients for you on autopilot! Spend just a few minutes a week to maintain it.

2. Your marketing plan rides the waves of the internet boom.  More and more people are using search engines like Google and Yahoo to find information on their health problems. They want to know about their options before spending money or committing to any one doctor.

3. This technology can be used to keep current patients active with you for life. Retention of new patients is a key factor in the growth of your practice. Many of the same strategies you use online to get new patients — like email communication and blog articles — can also be used to keep current patients active. This creates affinity marketing and means patients are less likely to respond to other offers to go somewhere else.

4. Compared to other forms of marketing media (newspapers, TV, Radio), it’s relatively inexpensive to set up and maintain. Would you rather spend $5000 per year on yellow pages or spend a fraction of that to be on the front page of Google?

Are you seeing the potential that using the internet can have for your practice?

Here’s how you can get a Two Part Internet Marketing Lesson for Chiropractors for FREE

I’ve put together a simple six question survey on internet marketing that will only take you a couple of minutes to complete. As a regular reader, you care about the information that’s published here. This is your opportunity to let me know how I can best serve your needs.

As a thank you for filling out the survey, I’m giving away two lessons from ChiroMarketing Academy. These two lessons focus on “How to Set Up Your Internet Marketing Plan” and “Email Marketing that Converts Website Visitors to New Patients”. (Each of these lessons has a written report plus a training “how to” video.)

Click here to take the survey…

P.S. This free gift is limited to the first 100 participants.

Topics: Internet Marketing | No Comments »

The Two Most Important Numbers

By drbeck | June 4, 2009

Can you guess the two most important numbers to track for a chiropractic practice?

“How many ya seeing doc?” If you you’ve been to some of the hyped up chiropractic seminars, you might think it’s the number of weekly patient visits. After all, you’ve probably been asked this question more times than you’d like to hear.

What does the number of visits per week really tell you about anyone’s practice? It doesn’t tell you how many of those visits are free or discounted. It doesn’t tell you the doctors overhead. For all we know, he could be seeing 300 per week and barely paying the bills. Some gurus even teach that the question “how many you seeing?” actually should be answered with how many patient visits you “see in your head”. Which means make up any answer you want.

“How many new patients you seeing?” New patients are a very important number to track, but the number you see per month doesn’t always tell the whole story. If someone does a spinal screening and gets 30 new patients in for a free exam, is this equal to 30 referred new patients who paid full price? No. Therefore, the importance of new patient totals can vary depending on the quality.

“What are you collecting?” Indeed, the monthly amount collected is a critical number to know for your practice. One that many chiropractors would do good to focus on more. But still, what does this tell you about the “health” of someone’s practice. If someone collects $100,000 a month, you may think he’s a very wealthy doctor. But what you don’t know is that he spent $110,000 to make that $100k. What collections don’t take into account is the overhead a practice has: the rent, payroll, marketing costs, leases, taxes, etc.

“Okay, so what are the two most important numbers? Just tell me already!”

The #1 most important number to know for your practice is the net profit for your practice. Also referred to as the “profit margin”. Simply take the total amount collected and subtract your expenses (doctor’s salary is not counted as expense for this exercise.) Now what % of your gross collections each month is your net profit?

It doesn’t matter if you had 100 new patients last month…or see 1000’s of visits per week…or collected $236,000 last month…if you’re net profit sucks. How many slow months can you make it through with only a 10% or 20% profit margin?

Now granted, you may not want to tell everyone this magic number. But if someone was to ask you, you better know it to the penny for last month…even if you don’t say it out loud. I’ve consulted with too many chiropractors who tell me “we’ll, I think it’s about 50%”. I reply “you think?” Then they give me some excuse about their bookkeeper or account not doing the books yet. Look, we’re not talking about taxes or anything to do with the IRS. We are talking about the actual amount of money that goes into your pocket each month. If you don’t know this number, you’re truly flying blind.

The second most important number is your return on investment for your marketing or ROI for short.Your marketing ROI is just a measure of the profit margin on your marketing dollars. So if you spend $1 on marketing and get back $5, this is good. If you get back $10 or $15 this is excellent.If you aren’t tracking your ROI, you can’t say for certain how well an advertisement performed. Simply measuring the number of new patients that came in from an advertisement is not adequate in comparing ads either.

Let’s look at some actual case studies. Here’s part of an email I received a couple of weeks ago…

Dr.Beck, we put the ’sciatic don’t live it’ insert on Monday to 2 zipcodes that went to 6,000 readers, we got 3 patients ,all over 80 years old, who all paid. we took in $4,500, which was a 18:1 return. I want to crawl, walk, then run , as I tested the waters, with your ad’s. So far we are pleased, and will put out same ad to more zip codes to a different area next week. Pleased to say each of our 80+ year old NP’s ,noticed improvement with chiropractic and are happier citizens and telling friends. Thanks for the blessings.

Based on the above case study, did this doctor do well or not? You could be  thinking “only 3 new patients, that sucks big time!” Or you could say “gosh Dr. Beck, $4500 isn’t that great. I mean that barely pays for my salary!”

But we are missing an important peice of this case study. How much did he actually spend to get that $4500 in his bank account? Here’s the part I left out…

…for a cost of only $250 for the ad…

Wow! For a cost of only $250, he made back $4500. That’s an 18 to 1 return…for every $1 spent he made back $18. Realize he said “will put out same ad to more zip codes to a different area next week.” He can now roll this out to other zipcodes and bring in quite a bit more than his salary. But if he was only tracking the number of new patients that came in — which was only 3 — he may throw in the towel and decide to never run another ad.

Always measure your marketing ROI. Measure it for each ad you run and the monthly total of all your marketing.

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Coaching/Strategies, Newspaper ads | 1 Comment »

14 Ways to Incease Conversions

By drbeck | May 29, 2009

Here’s a list of 14 ways to improve your conversions with a new patient. The purpose of this article is to give you a quick checklist of items you can run through for your office.

The first time through, see which ones you are already doing in your office. Then start implementing one or two new ones at a time until you have them all in place.

A conversion simply means that a new patient has agreed to your plan of care, whatever that plan is for your office. (If you don’t put together any type of care plan for your office, go and do that right now!)

Ok, so let’s get started…

1. Use Marketing That Brings In Quality New Patients
For this one, we’re going back to the source — where you get the new patient. If you’re giving away free exams to anyone you meet at the mall, you’re going to have a pretty crappy conversion rate. Examples of quality marketing involves condition specific chiropractic ads, internet marketing, referrals, doctor referrals, etc. These people are often times very pre-qualified and will be eager to begin care so they can feel better.

2. Have a Nice Reception Area
The first thing a patient sees when they walk in is the waiting room/reception area. How clean and nice does yours look? Cheap poster frames, toys laying everywhere, stains on the carpet, unpleasant music, and bad smells can all contribute to the new patient second guessing their decision to come in for an appointment. Make it nice. Spend a little money to ’spruce it up’ a bit.

3. Great Front Desk CA
The new patient should be greeted right away, made to feel at home and be told what to do next. They are worried about what’s going on and what they might have to pay. Your front desk CA should make them feel very comfortable and reassure them that they’re in the right place. This is HUGE! Whatever you do, do not allow your staff to ignore a new patient who walks in.

4. Don’t Overwhelm with Paperwork
Have you gone through your paperwork lately and condensed it to what is absolutely necessary. You only need paperwork that you are going to use or that is required to protect you and your office legally. Don’t pile up pages and pages of questions that you’re not even going to look at or use during the patient’s care.

5. Do A Good Consultation
Make sure your consultation comes off caring and considerate. Listen, really listen, to the patient’s concerns and ask them questions that guide them along. This should take an average of 7-10 minutes. Keep the consultation focused on the patient and not the weather, their friends, or other time wasters. Also, don’t make a bad impression by telling the patient the “rules” of how your office works, that they’ll have to come back for life, or anything overwhelming like that.

6. Perform An Exam With A Purpose
Everything in your exam should be geared toward giving you good information, teaching the patient, or protecting yourself from legal matters. In 99.9% of cases, there is no need to do the 3 hour exam we learned in school. You should also express to the patient the concern you have with problems you’re finding.

7. Measure A Finding (X-ray, etc)
You need to have some objective findings to cover with the patient and base your care on. (I recommend taking an x-ray or set of films for multiple reasons.) If you don’t have an x-ray make sure you are doing some objective test that the patient can see. This is going to be very important in your report of findings.

8. End Day 1 Correctly
I recommend not doing care the first day, except under certain circumstances. Tell the patient what to expect on their next visit and to see your front desk CA on the way out. There are a lot of opinions on this, pretty strongly on the side of not adjusting on Day 1, but I find they aren’t based on any hard evidence. The argument is that patients won’t come back if they get “fixed” on day one. (You could also argue argue a patient won’t come back because they didn’t get adjusted on day one.) I measured it in my practice for years, doing care on some patients on Day 1 and not for others on a case by case basis. My findings? It didn’t matter that much. Many patients who got adjusted on day 1 stayed with me for years and paid thousands in care. It’s really depends on the patient’s mindset when they walk in more than anything. Test it yourself and measure it. Too many people say adjusting on day 1 doesn’t work, but I think they base this on emotion and not actual numbers.

9. Collect Information and Schedule
Your front desk CA should now collect the payment for today’s visit, ask for insurance information (if you take insurance) and schedule for the next visit. These 3 things should be done a specific way. You could do everything right up until this point, but if the patient leaves with a bad taste in their mouth from the checkout, they may not come back.

10. Do A Proper Greeting On The Next Visit
Have your staff welcome the patient back as if they are someone who’s been coming in for a long time. Make the patient feel like part of the practice.

11. Give A Short, No-Fluff Report
Again, this one is somewhat controversial in chiropractic. Some chiropractic coaches will tell you to give a long winded speech here to hard sell the patient on care. It’s not necessary if you did what you should have on Day 1. A report should not take longer than 10 minutes. Tell them what you found. Tell them if you can fix it and a BRIEF summary of how you’ll do that. Layout their care plan and explain why it takes time. Go over the cost (this is best if your staff does the financial part). If insurance is involved, have that prepared and covered by your staff at this time.

12. Get Paid For What You Do
Have a simple, easy to follow payment plan for your patients. At least 2 options of payment, 3 at most. Remember, very simple. I have seen so many complex systems that almost force the patient to “go home and think about it.” For me, this means prepay with bookkeeping discount, CareCredit, or weekly payments.

13. Adjust the Patient
This is where you get to adjust and perform your other services with the patient. Whatever you do with them, remember they may be a little timid and unsure of what’s going on. Consider the patient’s level of comfort with what’s going on and be considerate. I’ve seen too many chiropractors scare people off with performing a rough first adjustment. The doctor never knows that was the reason the patient didn’t come back, but I can assure you it has happened in many an office.

14. Schedule Future Visits
It’s best if you can get your patient’s care plan scheduled out for the term it runs. Sometimes this is called a MAP, after the Parker Seminars famous “Multi-Appointment Plan”. It’s best to do this on paper first, hand a copy to the patient. Your staff can put it in the computer system later.

Topics: Coaching/Strategies | No Comments »

New Homeowner Marketing for Chiropractors

By drbeck | May 26, 2009

Each year, over 41 million people in the United States move into a new home. This will mean a complete change in where they buy products and services from.

Many of these new homeowners will want to continue their chiropractic care after moving. Some will have injured themselves doing all that heavy lifting. Others may decide it’s finally time to do something about their health. Whatever the reason, many of these new movers are going to need your chiropractic services.

A New Mover Letter

What better time to send out letter introducing yourself as the premier chiropractor in town? Think about it. Most new residents to a city or town will use the service providers they come into contact with first. Because many chiropractors fail to market their practice properly, these new movers are are going to use the internet to look one up.

Why leave it to chance whether they find you or not?

I recommend getting a quality list of new homeowners and mailing them a specific marketing letter. The letter should welcome them to the community, introduce who you are, mention your practice and how you help, plus give them a special “New Mover offer” to come in. I’ve even given away a free product just for the new resident stopping by to meet us. Why? Because if they actually do come by, they’re likely interested in “checking us out”. So why not give a gift to welcome then to the neighborhood.Who are they doing to think about when it’s time to see the chiropractor?

Other than the letter, you’re going to need a quality list of new movers to your area. Preferably from a low cost source that can give you names and addresses each month as people move in. I’ve used companies in the past where half my letters came back as undeliverable. But recently I’ve come across a company with exceptional service.

You can learn more about them at Movertrends.com. You’ll find their website very easy to use. I especially like how easy it is to drill down and pick the county or by zip code. (As a reader of this blog, you can use my discount code to get 33% off any order at MoverTrends.com. All you have to do is click through the link below.)

Click this link to get 33% off any new homeowner list

How many addresses should you start with? The answer will depend on your monthly budget for marketing. But I recommend at least 500-1000 names to start with. At the low price and with the above mentioned discount code, the addresses are only around 20 cents per name. So you may want to even go back and grab the last 3 months of movers as many of them are still looking for a chiropractor.

How to Get My New Homeowner Marketing Letter.

Are you concerned about what kind of letter to send out? Writing a marketing letter is not your favorite thing to do between seeing patients?

No worries. I’ll give you a copy of my letter for free. All you need to do is forward your email receipt from your Mover Trends order to our email: support at dcpracticetools.com (with the @ sign instead of the “at”). My staff will then send you (via email) my new homeowner letter in MS Word format, so you can edit as needed. Then, just have your CA print the letters, stuff them and stamp the envelopes.

Of course you could choose to send a postcard instead to save a few pennies. But I’ve found a letter to be more personal and get a better return on my money. These new movers already get a ton of postcards in the mail. Your postcard is likely to end up in the same places as the rest…in the trash can.

How many new patients can you expect from this type of campaign each month?

Depending on how many people move into your area each month, and what your budget is, you could get anywhere from 1-10 new patients a month. Not bad for something simple and inexpensive like mailing a new mover letter.

Grab the list of new movers to your zip code by visiting…

http://www.movertrends.com/DSC-COMBE1

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Direct Mail Marketing, Tools | No Comments »

Why Do We Do It?

By drbeck | May 18, 2009

Do you ever think about why you became a chiropractor? And not just a chiropractor, but the owner of a chiropractic business?

Some docs, if they will admit it, will say it was for the money. And there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you still provide good patient care. Many say they did it to help other people, and that’s a noble reason. But you can help people working as an associate.Why take the risk of running and owning your own practice?

When I first went to chiropractic school, I wanted to help people and make a ton of money. But 2 years into practice, I was doing it for a bigger reason.

You see, two years out of school I went through a really hard time in practice. I was only averaging 3 new patients a month and collecting about $3000 – with an overhead of $15,000!

Describing how bad things were would not even do it justice. I was working late almost every night, doing 2-4 spinal screenings per week and holding talks for audiences of one – both with awful results.

At times like these in your life, you really begin to see clearly. Your priorities are stripped bare, and you can’t kid yourself anymore.

That’s when it hit me…

It wasn’t the patients who were suffering. They were still getting quality care and couldn’t tell the practice was suffering (we clusterbooked then, so they thought we were busy!) Even if my practice folded, they could just go on to another chiropractor, so it didn’t really affect them.

It was my family. My pregnant wife who was struggling up three flights of stairs each day in our new “apartment home” – sometimes having to lug over 50lbs of grocery with two toddlers in tow. It was our baby girl, who at her 3rd Christmas, could never know how much our hearts broke because we couldn’t buy her gifts. Or when my son was born, extended family brought food for a gift, since our fridge and pantry were completely empty.

You see, my family were the ones suffering the most. While my patients were great (and I loved helping each one of them), they didn’t really care wether I made $25,000 income that year or $200,000. No one cared about the success about my practice more than me and my family. We depended on it. It’s what put food on the table.

It became totally clear to me then. I owned and ran a chiropractic business so I could do something I loved — helping others get well –  AND make a good living for my family’s future, hopes and dreams. I obviously loved chiropractic, but I certainly wasn’t fulfilling the second part…giving my wife and kids what they deserved. A better home with a yard, food, vacations and peace of mind.

That was the turning point. I knew I had better learn to run a business successfully and grow my practice. Because it wouldn’t matter how much I loved chiropractic, or how good an adjuster I was, if I couldn’t keep the doors open. And most important of all, my family depended on it.

I realized the biggest problem I had was that my practice was missing good marketing strategies. Marketing that brought in a high return on investment, quality new patients, and consistent growth month after month.

Have you every seen a struggling practice that had too many quality new patients? I haven’t.

You know how to adjust. You know how to be a good chiropractor. That’s not the problem. Learning a new technique or a new billing procedure will only get you so far. Marketing is the key. Without it any practice will struggle.

Below are the reasons I run my own business. What are your reasons?

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Coaching/Strategies | 3 Comments »

Are Chiropractic Ads in the Newspaper Dead?

By drbeck | May 11, 2009

Are we seeing the end of newspapers as we know it? Hasn’t the internet pushed the newspapers out of business? Should you even spend money putting ads in your local paper?

Since releasing my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads in January of this year, occasionally I get asked the above questions. So I thought it would be a good idea to discuss some of the answers on the blog.

First let’s address the question…”Are newspapers disappearing?”

Before I answer this question, let’s look at a couple of other industries going through tough times. GM and Chrysler are getting bailed out and on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet, new cars are still being sold and, my guess is, will continue to be built for years into the future. In the past year, hundreds of banks have folded and been bailed out by the government. But, I predict banks will be around for a long time. My bank just built a whole new wing for “wealth management”.

What do these businesses have in common? They  made bad decisions for years and are now paying the consequences during a recession. The same goes for large newspaper companies. The newspaper corporations grew large and wasteful. They disconnected with their readership and begin to twist stories into one-sided arguments. Plus, they designed and encouraged the use of poor ads for their clients. When the economy took a dip, these same clients were not willing to pay for advertising that couldn’t bring in a return on investment.

So the answer is yes, some newspapers have gone out of business. But, does this really mean anything? Businesses disappear everyday. A few that have folded: The Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examine, Kentucky Post, and the Cincinnati Post. However, the important point here is that newspapers didn’t disappear into thin air in these cities. Someone is still printing papers and making money. For example, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Baltimore Sun, etc.

A recent MarketWatch.com (owned by the Wall Street Journal) report shows newspaper readership down 7% in the last six months. Not surprising, since the economy itself is down more than that. Spending is down. The stock market is down. My retirement account is down 40 %! So, in the big scheme of things, a 7% decline is rather healthy.

Does newspaper advertising still work? Yes, of course it does.  (If a chiropractic office closes it’s doors because of poor marketing, does this mean chiropractic itself no longer works?) But the key is running the right kind of ad.

Here are a few examples of it working in chiropractic offices for 2009…

Dr. Beck, Just an update on the ads I’ve run .  On Feb. 10, I ran the “Could One Hour With This Doctor…” half page ad and got 13 patients to come in . We closed 10 of those for a total of $18,885 already collected. We paid $1134 for the ad. That’s a 16:1 ROI !!

On March 24, we ran the same half page ad and 10 patients have come in. We converted 6 of those so far and have 1 more coming in today for ROF. We have collected $14,,066 so far. That’s a 12:1 ROI !!

I just ran the “Herniated Disc” ad yesterday. We are scheduling patients as we speak.

THANKS!!!
Denton James, DC

P.S. I ran 2 other ads from another source on 1/21/09 and 3/3/09. The ROI is about 5:1, which isn’t bad, but your ads get us 3 times the ROI !!

Here’s another email I received from a doctor running a full page ad (which is not required with my ads, but he did so to get a bigger ROI)…

Hey Doc,
Just wanted to let you know how great the ads are working for me.  We ran the \”Are you living with sciatica or back pain\” ad on March 30, 2009 which is a Monday. It was $2950 for a full page ad. We had 8 new patients scheduled before lunch on Monday.  For the week we ended up with 14 new patients. We have had 3 referrals so far this week. (the week after running the ad). We have a case $ average of around $1500, so we are figuring about $26000 in income. I couldn’t be happier with the ads so far.  We are looking forward to running another ad in the very near future. – Dr. Chad Keeney

But aren’t online news sites competing with newspapers? Yes, but there’s still a lot of money to be made with print newspapers ads. Many newspapers realize they need an online presence, and are now creating hybrid type papers that are in print and online. Some papers have shut down their print editions, but publish regular online newspapers.

This is why you should be in both places. Never focus on one source of new patients too much. Better to diversify. This is very easy to do on the internet. This is why I spend quite a bit of time teaching about internet marketing in my ChiroMarketing Academy.

No one can say if and when newspapers will become obsolete. If you’re concerned about it, my advice is to stop trying to predict the future and focus on what is working now. The Ultimate Chiropractic Ads are bringing in new patients for chiropractors in 2009.

My final recommendation today is this: Keep running effective print ads for all their worth, while putting more and more empahasis on internet marketing strategies.

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Copywriting, Newspaper ads | 3 Comments »

5 Must Have Chiropractic Marketing Tools

By drbeck | May 7, 2009

Coaching clients and blog subscribers are always asking me where they can find certain marketing tools and services. Here’s a list of 5 products/services I recommend you check out and use to grow your practice.

Chirobloggers
Chirobloggers is a service that will set up a Wordpress blog and host it for you. Plus they will incorporate email marketing into the mix as well. If you’ve been following this site for awhile, you know how effective a blog can be for ranking highly in the search engines. It’s no secret that Google loves blogs. So if you want to jump to the top of the searches for chiropractors in your area in a matter or weeks, blogs using the Wordpress software are the way to go.

I spoke with the owner and Jeremy has created a great tool with Chirobloggers. He even has a free service you can try, so there’s no excuse for not having your own blog now.

The Chiropractic Dashboard
The Dashboard does quite a bit for chiropractors. It’s a proprietary system that educates patients on why they should come in to see you and does so over time. For example, when a person searches for “fibromyalgia” on the web and finds your dashboard website, they will be shown a video about how you can help with fibromyalgia. They also be asked to leave their name and email for followup. Then the dashboard will send out prewritten emails from the doctor educating the prospect and giving them a special offer to come in for an exam.

Social Marketing
By now, everyone has heard of social marketing sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Twitter. Millions of people use these sites every day to connect to others on the internet. But did you know you could use them to bring in more new patients to your practice? In this course, Matthew Loop reveals how he mastered social marketing to add a consistent flow of new patients every month. I’ve known Dr. Loop for almost a year now, and I have to say he stays on the cutting edge of internet marketing.

Dinner Workshop DVDs
If you’re not familiar with a dinner workshop, it’s basically a short talk or “lay lecture” held outside your office for your patients and their guest. When I first heard about dinner workshops, my first thought was that #1.) it was going to be too much work and #2.) you would have to drag your patients to come. But after getting Chris Burfield’s “The Dinner Workshop” DVD course, both of these concerns were put to rest because he included the steps and tools to make it easy. I’ve known Chris for many years, and he knows how to build a successful practice. He’s definitely created an easy step-by-step instruction on how to do do dinner workshops with all the flyers, forms, scripts, and a DVD showing you how to promote it in your office.

Instrument Adjusting Profits
Did you know using an adjusting instrument in your practice is a huge marketing opportunity? The Instrument Adjusting Profits course will show you how to make use this opportunity. Dr. Orsansky and Dr. Dan have created specific marketing pieces and strategies to focus on the instrument adjusting niche. (They’re currently giving away some free bonuses for anyone who grabs their course.) Even if you don’t use an instrument full time, it’s a good idea to get this course and add those new patients to your practice who are looking for an “instrument chiropractor”.

Topics: Chiropractic Marketing, Tools | 1 Comment »

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