drbeck

Easy New Patient Referral Increase

Want to increase your new patients each month?

It’s easy. Simply give each new patient the opportunity to refer a friend or family member.

How is this done? Not through pressuring or hounding new patients until they refer. But through gentle persuasion and social proof.

You have probably seen in your practice where a new patient says on their first or second visit “I need to bring my wife in here.” This is great when it happens, but many times patients are so concerned about their own problems that they aren’t thinking of referring someone else.

So here is how you get them to refer:

For every new patient that starts care in your practice, send them a special welcome letter in the mail. This letter should be worded properly so you are educating, congratulating, future pacing, and setting up the referrals. Now, in the P.S. of the letter, write a few sentences about how “many patients tell me that they wished they would have found me sooner. So I’ve included with this letter two gift certificates for a free spinal evaluation. As you can see, they have an expiration of two weeks, so make sure a friend or family member gets them as soon as possible”.

Now print and cut out 2 gift certificates with your offer on them and an expiration of 2 weeks. I recommend making them look nice and using a card stock paper.

Insert a few pages of patient success stories (testimonials) in with your letter to show social proof. You never know which testimonial is going to resonate with that particular patient. Also include a gift, like a $5 Starbucks card to thank them for being a patient.

Not everyone will take you up on this offer. But many patients will. And how much did you spend on this type of marketing? Maybe $1 with stamp, paper and my CA’s time. In 2006 I traced almost half of my referrals to this one little technique. By far the best return on investment of any marketing piece I did that year.

7 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Chiropractic Website

By drbeck Leave a Comment Jun 19

What good is it to have a website if no one is visiting it? Getting traffic to your website is vital for your chiropractic internet marketing plan. Here are 7 methods to drive tons of traffic to your website.

#1. Pay Per Click.

This refers to the ads you see when searching for keywords on the major search engines. The best pay per click ads are Google Adwords because they get the most views. These who up on the right side of the page when someone searches for keywords. When someone clicks on it, you pay a fee and the person lands on your website. Yahoo and MSN also have pay per click ads that are less costly, but Google will send a lot more traffic. Make sure you set it to geographical limits, so you aren’t getting clicks from people 10 states away. When setting up and using Adwords, be very careful because it can be costly if done wrong.

#2. Blogs.

A blog is what you are reading now. It’s basically a website that makes it easy for regular updates to be posted. Search engines love blogs, and will rank them higher than static pages on the same topic because blogs are new content. And Google especially likes fresh content. While blogs take some work to set up, they are very easy to use. If you can send an email, you can post to a blog.

#3. Articles.

Submitting articles to free article directories are a great way to generate traffic to your site. When writing articles, you want to keep them within 500-800 words. Make sure you include your town’s name and keywords you want to get like “chiropractic” or “decompression” in your article. Also you will need a resource box with a short bio of you and your website’s link. A great directory to submit to is http://www.ezinearticles.com

#4. Videos.

Vidoes are rather easy to make today. And since most people have high speed internet, they are great to use. You can do a short 2-5 minute video educating prospective patients on your services. Uploading it to the major websites like Youtube and Google Video will get you a lot of traffic. Make sure to submit it with your website link embedded in the video. Also mention your town in the description when posting the video.

#5. Press Releases.

Press releases can be submitted online (for free) to many of the press release sites. This will get picked up and listed on the major search engines news, like Google News and Yahoo News. Make sure you write it in a “newsworthy” tone and with a good news headline. There are many free press distributors online, like www.pr.com. Also, you can pay a site like prweb.com to submit it to the news directories.

#6. Trade links with other businesses.

If you know other local businesses in your area, you can trade links to your sites. This not only allows for more traffic, but will help drastically in your search engine rankings. Make sure to make your link keywords like “Yourtown Chiropractor” instead of just your website address.

#7. Mail postcards and run newspaper ads.

This is the most costly of all the above list. However, it also could have the highest return on time and money. Get a list of homeowners and send out small or large postcards, with a headline, some copy and testimonials. Make an offer for a free report on some problem and tell them to visit your website. Expect to spend about .40 cents an address.

Of course once you get visitors to your website, you need a proven strategy to convert the visitors to new patients. In my next blog post, I’ll recommend tips for doing just that because getting a return on your marketing is essential.

8 Free Business Resources

By drbeck Leave a Comment Jun 16

Here are 8 free software resources that can help with running and marketing your chiropractic practice. In some cases, you could buy a better paid version, however these work fine for getting started.

#1. Gmail http://www.gmail.com

There are many things to love about Google’s email tool. You can access it from anywhere when traveling. It has one of the best spam filters I have seen (it actually learns). Gmail also has a very effective tagging system to keep your emails organized. I used yahoo for years, but now that I have gmail I realize how clunky yahoo’s email service really is.

#2. Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Firefox is an internet browser, like Internet Explorer. But Firefox is a free browser constantly being updated by the “open source” movement. I love Firefox. It loads faster. It’s more customizable. You can even change the browser theme or “skins” to your liking. And the add-ons are awesome (over 1000 add-ons with everything from ebay to google toolbars!)

#3. Open Office http://www.openoffice.org

This free program is very similar to Microsoft Office. It has a word processor, database program, spreadsheet, presentation program, and drawing software. It can open up Office documents, create PDF’s from Word documents, and more.

#4. Kompozer http://kompozer.net

Kompozer is an html editing software. It allows you to build your webpages without spending $400 on software. It operates in a normal view too, so you do not have to know html coding to put together webpages.

#5. WordPress http://www.wordpress.org

WordPress is a free software for running a blog or even a normal website. It’s the software I am using here to run this site. Once setup, WordPress is very simple and easy to use. If you can send an email, you can post pages to wordpress.

#6. Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/

Analytics is free when you setup an Adwords account with Google. All you need to do is pay $5, write an ad for Adwords, then turn it off until you are ready to use Adwords (I will be discussing Adwords on this blog later). This gives you access to analytics, which is an awesome tool for tracking everything on your website. You can set goals to see where visitors came from and what % are signing up for your e-newsletter. It will even tell you what geographical area visitors came from down to the city level.

#7. AVG http://free.grisoft.com/

This is a free virus protection software. Everyone needs virus protection on their computers. This software runs much better than Norton and McAfee, and doesn’t slow down your internet connection.

#8. Skype http://www.skype.com

Skype is a free calling service that works through your computer. You can can call another Skype user for free. You can call landlines and cell phones for a small monthly fee. This works great with other software for recording your insurance verifications. You can also get a Skype In number which is portable to anywhere in the world.

How Did Your Last Marketing Piece Do?

By drbeck Leave a Comment Jun 11

How did your last newspaper ad do? Or yellow page ad? Or any marketing piece?

If you ask most Doc’s, their answer is based on how many new patients it brought in. No doubt new patients are important. But would you rather have 50 new patients who came in for 1 visit, or 20 new patients that came in for 30 visits.

Here’s one of the biggest mistake chiropractors make with their marketing. They don’t measure their return on investment! Return on investment (ROI) is easy to measure. Basically, if I spend $1 on ad, I want to know how much that will bring me back.

Many times, you will see ROI described as a ratio, like 1:1 or 3 to 1.

What’s a good ROI for a marketing piece?

Well, many marketers say break even, and some will even take a loss on the front end, and make it up on back end sales.

In regards to your practice, I think it depends on your overhead. When your overhead is higher, I think 3:1 is a minimum. If your overhead is lower, then you can easily get by on break even, as long as you get some referrals from that initial group of new patients.

By the way, you should also measure your 1st line of referrals those initial new patients produce as well.

I keep a spreadsheet of all marketing things that I do. It has all the new patients listed and the amount I paid for the marketing. Every few weeks, I look up these new patients in my software and track the ongoing amount we collect on their case.

For example, I recently ran a low back pain ad I had written up. It cost me $700 to run a half page in the local paper. So far, it has returned a 1100.43% ROI from the initial new patients. As a ratio, that’s 11 to 1. So for every $1 spent to run the ad, I have made back $11. When you add in referrals from this group of new patients, it jumps up to 1265.85%. And it should end up better once all the insurance payments come in.

Now if I was just measuring the amount of new patients, I would say this ad did not do well. Because I have had many other ads bring in more new patients. But they were not quality new patients. By measuring ROI, instead of just new patients, it takes into account the quality.

Why go to all this trouble to track ROI?

Because next time you have money to market with, you will know where to put it. You will have a track record of the different marketing you have done. Also, you can compare different ads against each other, and see which one “pulled” the best. This information will help guide you in your future marketing plan.

If you would like a free copy of the spreadsheet I use, just post a comment below.

Is Your Chiropractic Marketing Plan Broken?

By drbeck Leave a Comment Jun 6

These are x-rays of my son’s broken arm. Tuesday, he was “flying” down hill on a razor scooter. He thought everything was going fine. Then all of a sudden, BAM, he crashed into the curb, hitting his knee, head and arm. My wife and I thought he was just bruised up a bit. It would take awhile (about 24 hours later) before we even realized it was broken.

While we waited forever to get his cast on, I thought of how “broken” my marketing plan used to be for my practice. (And how thankful I was that this $1000+ accident didn’t happen back then, when we were dead broke!)

How many times are you hustling in practice, and you think things are going great?

One month the new patients are plentiful. Money is just flowing in. No need to market your practice then right?

Then what usually happens? The next month is terrible! No new patients. Collections are down. It’s like feast or famine being in chiropractic practice sometimes! Unless you implement a marketing plan…

It’s really very easy to put together a marketing plan. Just number 1-52 on a sheet of paper. Think of something you can do every week for the next year. About half should be external and half internal marketing.

Every major holiday should be on there, that’s 9 or 10. Then the smaller holidays like Fathers Day, Mothers Day, etc. Your practice anniversary. Newspaper ads (at least quarterly), newsletters (monthly), and patient appreciation days should be on your list as well.

Your list should be over half full at his point. Now think of some fun or crazy things. “Relief from the IRS Week”, “Hottest Summer Ever Special”, “Back to School” or even silly stuff like National Mustard Week. When my youngest daughter was born, I wrote a fun letter to my inactive patients that was “written by her”. They loved it and we had a good response because people actually read it.

Also, every group has it’s week, like “National Headache Week”, “National Small Business Week”, or “National Scoliosis Week”. Look here for more ideas:

https://healthfinder.gov/nho

http://www.naturenet.net/education/dates.html – for the environmentally friendly

Now you should have a full list. Because you don’t want to market to the same group every week, make a note beside each one telling yourself which group this is directed towards. For example, active patients, inactive patients, new patients-private (direct mail marketing, networking events), new patient-public (newspaper ads).

Get a calendar and layout the dates for the next 12 months. Also make sure things are evenly spread out. Don’t market to just your active patients for 4 weeks straight.

Why go to the trouble of coming up with something different each week? Because one of the most powerful concepts in advertising, the “Reason Why”. If the reason why you are making a special offer or discount is not made clear, or if it’s seen to often, patients won’t believe you.

Have some creative ideas that you’ve come up with? List them in the comments below.

How a Famous Copywriter Can Help Your Practice

By drbeck Leave a Comment May 31

chiropractic marketing pic

This is me and internet copywriter Ray Edwards at the recent World Internet Summit. Ray has written copy for some of the biggest selling websites and made his clients millions of dollars in just the last few months.

During the summit, Ray Taught on his “4 Part Selling Formula” that he uses to write web copy. I’ve listed them with my notes on how they translate into your chiropractic marketing plan.

1. “Here’s What I’m Selling” — This is what you say in your advertising or even when describing your services to a new patient. These are the features of your offer. Maybe you offer a special type of adjusting, or you have a decompression table, or have a special plan for fibromyalgia patients.
2. “Here’s How it helps you” — Many DC’s fall short on this one. We assume that the prospect understand the benefit, but many do not. You have to explain to your prospective patients how what you do will help them. These are the benefits of your offer. And specifically how it will allow them to do the things they enjoy in life. ie golf, playing with the kids, dancing, etc. Remember, the patient is saying “what’s in it for me”.
3. “Some questions you may have” — This one is huge in our profession! We need to handle their objections before they even ask them. Common objections are cost, skepticism of chiropractic (does it work?), fear of chiropractors, “Do I have to go forever?”, “will it come back”, etc
4. “Here’s exactly what to do next” — In your marketing, you have to tell the prospective patient exactly what to do next. You can’t just assume they will know what to do. “call now” or “click here to schedule an appointment” are examples of this.

Ray Edwards also mentioned the following that I thought applied well to our practices:

“They wouldn’t be on your website, unless they weren’t silently begging you for help with their problem.” This applies to when a new patient calls you too.

How can you apply the above marketing strategies to your chiropractic marketing plan?

1000% ROI on Sciatica Ad

By drbeck Leave a Comment May 24

In my last post, I showed you how to perform chiropractic marketing research on the web for your offline marketing. I mentioned how I had used the research to write a new newspaper ad.

How did the ad do?

In less than 60 days, it has brought in a 1000% Return on Investment. To be more specific, I spent $700 to run a half page ad in my local paper. As of today, I have already received $7000 in collections directly from this ad.

Now you might be saying, “That’s not that much!”.

Well, lets dig deeper. A few of these patients have insurance, so in the next 30-60 days I will collect another $2000-3000 dollars.

And I have already received 2 more new patients that are referrals from the original group of new patients that came in.

So when it’s all said and done, I expect this one ad, ran one day, will generate over $15,000. Maybe you can do better, but I know it’s been years since I could spend $700 on a newspaper ad and make $15k back.

The only time an ad even came close was first time I ran a killer ad, back when I first opened my practice. Before everyone else was running them all over town 🙁

So why did the ad work so well?

Two reasons:

1. The headline spoke to the ideal patients that were suffering from the 3 things listed in the headline (sciatica, back pain, and herniated discs)

2. The picture I used had a special caption under it (which is read almost as often as the headline). And the caption spoke directly to the ideal patient

How to Use Internet Keywords in Your Offline Marketing

By drbeck Leave a Comment May 20

Are you using keywords in your chiropractic marketing?

The term “keyword” can be defined a few different ways, according to wikipedia.org. The one you probably hear most is “a word or a phrase used to find useful results in internet searches”. Basically, keywords are what people type into Google or Yahoo when they are doing a search for something.

Many businesses will use keywords in their online marketing. They are used when running pay per click ads, like Goolge Adwords. Keywords can also be used when “optimizing” a website.

We will get into more detail later about how to use keywords in your online marketing plan. In this post, I want to show you how I recently used keywords in my offline marketing to do a newspaper ad.

A few weeks ago, I was working on writing a halfpage ad to run in my local paper. As with any marketing copy, the headline is the most important piece. With this ad I wanted to target people with lower back and disc problems for my decompression program.

What words would make the most qualified new patients read the ad?

I brainstormed a short list. Lower back pain, herniated disc, bulging disc, sciatica, leg pains. Many doctors would assume the term “herniated disc” would the be best to use. After all, that’s what decompression is known for helping. I was thinking the same thing.

But just because we think herniated disc is the best keyword to use, this may not necessarily be the words that patients use most to describe their problem.

When a patient has a health problem nowadays, the first place they look is for free information on the internet. So, I did some research using Google’s keyword tool and at SEObook.com.

Which keyword was the winner?

Sciatica 1534

Lower Back Pain 965

Bulging Disc(s) 192

Herniated Discs 34

Leg Pains 26

Clearly sciatica won. And if I took into account all the derivative keywords, like “Sciatica exercises”, it would have come out even more ahead.

As you can see, patients don’t speak using the same term as us doctors. How can you use keyword research in your marketing plan?

In my next post, I’ll tell you how and why the “sciatica ad” beat the pants off any ad I had previously used (including some of the more popular ads you’ve seen used by chiros)!