Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Can you tell me what is the most important point to make in any and all marketing you do?

(Whether it’s your newspaper ad, website, or patient education, you must have this or it will fail every time.)

Before I tell you the answer, let’s see if you can find it in this article about “Burger King decapitating its King”.

After spending millions of dollars to promote cool and hip commercials with the King Mascot, BK is pulling the plug on this marketing failure.

Why would they do this investing so much to “brand” it into the consumers mind?

Simple. It. Doesn’t. Work.

BK’s biggest rival, McDonalds, is gaining market share while Burger King is losing it.

Why? Here’s the key:

This discrepancy in performance is not the result of McDonald’s having more “creative” advertising or a hipper mascot (Ronald Mc Donald is many things – hip he’s not). But while Burger King was trying to sell consumers an edgy brand image, McDonald’s focused on something much more mundane: selling burgers, fries and coffee. The rest is marketing history.

Do you see it?

The most important concept in any marketing you do is providing a solution to the prospect’s problem. The fast food eater’s problem is that he is hungry, and he wants his food fast.

Now who’s going to connect with the conversation going on in the prospects head: the goofy, big-headed King Mascot jumping around or images of juicy, greasy burgers and fries being cooked up.

Yet, even though BK has spent millions running these silly commercials on TV, they realized it wasn’t working. It’s time to pull the plug and start over, focusing on actually selling the product.

In chiropractic, this means you have to focus on connecting the patient’s problem with your solution. Your solution — that’s the product you’re selling. And make no mistake, while you may not be “hard selling”, you are selling something. Everyone in a for-profit business is selling.

So don’t keep running ineffective ads that may look pretty and impress your receptionist, but do not connect to the patients.

I’ve not eaten at either of these restaurants since I started Chiropractic College. But even though I’m not their target audience, I always thought the King commercials were a waste of money. Maybe it’s just my marketing training.

What do you think?

There’s a little-known formula that you should use in all the marketing you do. This formula should be used when speaking, running newspaper ads, sending direct mail, on your website, and more.

It was officially put into writing in 1898, and has been used in almost every industry since. (It’s really been around since the beginning of creation, because the way humans think has not changed!)

This formula has proven successful for many, many decades, especially in direct response marketing. It’s called the AIDA formula. Let me show you how it works…

A = Attention. Your advertising should grab the reader’s attention. The best way to get someone’s attention is with your headline, if an ad, or your opening sentence (if you’re speaking.) John Caples once said that the headline is 80% of the ads effectiveness.

I = Interest. After you’ve grabbed their attention, you want to continue to making it interesting. What we’re doing here is not just putting up big, bold words in the headline just to get their attention.

You may have experienced advertising in the past that did something crazy and shocking to grab your attention, but as soon as that was over and they started talking about their product. You were no longer interested.

There’s advertising that uses words just to get your attention, but then the ad has nothing to do with that word. It almost feels like a bait and switch, where they’ve baited you, you go to look at the ad and it has nothing to do with the headline.

D = Desire. After the reader is interested in your ad, then you want to arouse their desire. The desire of your prospects are simple: they want to be rid of this annoying health problem. They want the benefits you can offer them.

For those who have my chiropractic ads, you’ll notice many of them describe what the reader will experience once they’ve improved their health…like more energy, more golf, etc. (You should continue this type of”conversation” with them during your report of findings.)

A = Action. Action is where you make the offer and then tell them how to place the appointment. In our case, how to schedule the appointment. The prospective patient must be given a reason to come and see you over all the other offices in town.

This formula that has been effectively working for over 100 years. Unfortunately, many chiropractors are not following this simple strategy with their marketing.

A few minutes every day, I take time to see what interesting concepts I can learn from other bloggers. I use Google Reader to manage all my feeds, that way I don’t have to visit every website individually. Here are some articles and videos related to chiropractic marketing that I’ve been meaning to post for you.

The Power of Passionate Stories – Terry Dean says, “What story are you telling in your business? How to motivate people to change and live a better life? Charts, facts, and figures make good proof, but they don’t motivate people. You can show them charts until their eyes glaze over, but they won’t take action on them.”

Don’t Let Your Small Practice Make You Small Minded! – Chris says, “Most chiropractors fresh out of school fail within the first two years of opening their practice…those first two years in business can be scary, risky, draining, and frustrating…”

Google Deleting Legitimate Places Reviews? – If you have a Google Places page, you should read this account. It appears many business (maybe even yours) have had their reviews deleted by Google.)

Google+: A Chiropractor’s Perspective – Google+ is being called the new Facebook of the internet. I’m not sure I would make that claim, but I’m definitely watching it and plan to use it as part of my marketing plan. In this article, Dr. Mac tells you why it’s going to be very important to us in the future. Also, here’s a funny video Dr.Mac links to in his article: