Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Is it really possible to get new patients from Facebook?

Some people act like Facebook is the greatest marketing tool ever invented. Others think it is a complete waste of time. So who’s right?

I get quite a bit of feedback from doctors using my chiropractic ads, decompression marketing clients, and friends in the industry. Some of this feedback is used to write better ads and put together tools you can use to get more chiropractic patients.

Also, I will often post feedback here on this blog, so you can use it to grow get new patients right away. So as a blog reader, I want to paste a copy of an email I received Friday.

I thought you might want to know this. For a while now I take a few minutes every week or so and look at my schedule for a few weeks and add those patients to my Facebook. When I think of a patient I haven’t seen in a long time, I try to find them on Facebook and “friend” them. Obviously not all of them are on FB but most are and as far as I know they have all accepted my friend request. Now for the really good part, we are getting patients reactivated with no offers or specials, through this reconnection.

For example, I did a friend request for a husband and wife who hadn’t been in the office for over 4 years. They accepted the friend request and I didn’t hear anything from them. (Most people actually look around my profile and make comments on family pictures or at least send a message to say hi. Some I never hear from.) Anyway, the husband, wife, and 14-year old daughter were rear ended by a semi last Fri. and contacted me through FB. Needless to say, that reconnection, financially alone, is worth $10-15K!

Even better, it’s great to see people I really enjoyed having in the office and they were thrilled to be back. I thought you might want to share this with your clients, if you haven’t already.

Gotta run, have a Blessed weekend!

P.S. It has also increased our referrals! We had 38 new patients last month, not all from FB of course

Okay, I really gotta go this time… Tell all the family hi!

Do you use Facebook as part of your marketing plan? If so, leave a comment below and tell us how.

Find  DC Practice Tools on Facebook be sure to click the “like” button while you’re there.

Are you really talking with your prospective patient? Or are you talking at them?

The reason that most marketing doesn’t work is because it is outdated. A dinosaur from years gone by. Back when this profession was rather new and people were still discovering what it was. When there was only one chiropractor in town and all you had to do was put out your sign.

But today patients are much more sophisticated. They know about their own health. They have a billion more choices for a health care provider. And they simply ignore most marketing that does not speak directly to the conversation going on in their head.

And each condition is different. A neuropathy patient and a back pain patient can be having two totally different conversations going on with themselves about their problem.

So do how you find out what they’re thinking?

Real life research and discovery. I’ll let  you in on a little secret that I use when I write ads.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching what patients are thinking. Hours with real live patients in my practice. I’ve spoken to thousands of doctors about their patients. Spent time on condition-specific forums and read hundreds of testimonials. And the same words and phrases come up time and time again.

So even if I’ve never had migraine headaches, I can totally empathize with those who do. Because I’ve heard so many people (mostly women in the case of migraines), spell out exactly how they feel.

The point is…

Don’t be like the advertiser who thinks you can just throw money at a some fancy ad campaign like Microsoft or Walmart might use. Learn to speak directly to your prospect. Within seconds of reading your ad, you want them to think “Finally, someone who understand exactly what I’m going through!”

Recently on the LinkedIn Chiropractic Professional group Jonathan asked, “Anyone have any good ideas for marketing to attract new patients? What has the best return on investment?”

The answers from different people that came in truly show the confusion in the profession. The 62 comments so far have ranged from “get out in your community” to “Become an MD.”

A doc named Brian has left multiple comments where he gives suggestions for getting more new patients. I’d like to respond to some of them in this blog post. I don’t know Brian, so this is no slight to him personally, but I found his comments summarize the typical DC leaving chiropractic school.

One of the most interesting comments Brian posted was “keep going to school advancing your credentials and until enough of us learn better.” I would have to totally disagree with this recommendation for getting more new patients. Let me explain…

After your initial degree to practice and State/National boards, further schooling is not likely to help you bring in more new patients.

Now you may learn additional skills and become more specialized in the type of patient you see. And this can be a good thing since people have different problems for which they need help with. But really all you’ve done here is slightly shift the type of patient you see. You haven’t really added any additional new patients.

How many patients have ever come to see you because of some specific credential you have? Very few, if any.

Don’t get me wrong. You can use the specialized postgraduate training you received to market to specific conditions, which I highly recommend. But the key here is that you have to market your unique qualifications.

And Brian, along with many doctors, clearly does not want to have any thing to do with marketing or advertising. He goes on to say:

“Trust me, the world would still turn and doctors would still doctor obtaining what’s needed from producers if all marketing disappeared today. Let US hope marketing and other bottom dwelling middle people disappears soon. It’s time for healthy change!”

I’m not certain as to how Dr. Brian is defining marketing here, but he has certainly cast the baby out with the bathwater. Are there bad marketing strategies and outright scammers trying to get your money? Certainly. But is all marketing bad? No. Ambulance chasing is not the same as running an ad on your website.

If you really wanted to help people get better, and make a good living doing it, wouldn’t you use whatever ethical and moral tools you can get your hands on to accomplish that task?

So what is Brian’s solution to getting more new patients? Serving and word of mouth:

“May I humbly suggest; learn to create and maintain healthy relationships with your community. Word Of Mouth is by far much more effective and has far greater benefit than any other scam marketing contrivance that once engaged, One Must Serve.”

[...]

“Go out and open yourself creating loving relationships with “everyone and anyone”, Ignore the sales scam claiming “niche” and or “specific target client” language whether based on geography, issue, etc. (demographic or psychographic)”

It’s interesting that when doctors are so against marketing, and they suggest word of mouth or community relationships…which are both forms of marketing. You see, marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. So every time you pull out a business card, mention your office name, or speak in the community you are marketing your practice.

Marketing is not always evil. Merchants have marketed their services to customers from the beginning. The only other option today is to simply “put out your shingle” and wait for patients to show up. As many bankrupt doctors have found, this strategy doesn’t work. And gone are the days when there was only one clinic per town and no competition. This type of monopoly is not likely to return to your area either.

Word of mouth referrals are the best. And building relationships in your community is necessary. They may take years and years to properly develop, but they do work. But these two strategies alone will not get you a large number of new patients.

You’ve got to directly speak to those who need your services and tell them why they should come see you. You and I both know most people aren’t going to come see you because of ignorance of what our profession really does — unless you teach them.

Therefore marketing and advertising are not only effective ways to bring in more new patients, but can be used to educate the community on what you actually do. This is the answer to getting more new patients. If you use ads and marketing that speak to the patient where they are at, and focus on offering solutions to their problems, you will have more new patients than you can handle.

Are you staying in contact with your patients through email every month?

You definitely should be staying in contact with your current patients outside of their regular visits to your office.

Regular contact enables you to educate your patients. And this helps with your patient retention.

But the biggest reason to contact your patients regularly is to give them opportunities to refer their friends and family. While this should be done in person during a normal visit, I have found that sending the patient something in writing gets even more referrals.

If every new patient that starts care in your office got a letter in the mail plus an email with education and referral opportunities, do you think you will get some referrals?

Not every patient will refer someone else, but how much did it cost you in time or money to have an email company (autoresponder) send something out?

Nothing, it’s free (other than the low cost of the monthly autoresponder!)

You can also send out emails on for special events throughout the year. This notifies your patient list that your office will be focusing on specific issues and reminds them you can help their friends and family.

Here are 20 ideas you can use to send out a special broadcast email…

1. Patient appreciation days
2. Thanksgiving food drive
3. Toys for Tots at Christmas
4. Valentines day
5. Easter celebration
6. Dog days of summer
7. Back to school kids check
8. Tax man day
9. Chiropractic Birthday
10. Practice anniversary
11. Dr.’s Birthday
12. Staff’s birthday
13. Halloween bash
14. Scratch and dent sale (or we ordered too much of x product and don’t have room, need to get rid of it this week!)
15. FAQ (frequently asked questions) about chiropractic care, decompression tables, home exercises, weight loss, etc
16. July 4th
17. Labor Day or Memorial day
18. Any holiday you celebrate that I haven’t already mentioned
19. Local sports team day, i.e. Dallas Cowboys day
20. Newsflash on chiropractic or chiropractic research
21. Any current event in the news, i.e. political race, Olympics, Hurricane relief
22. Celebrity appearance event (retired, locally known sports greats that could use the money)

Do you see the possibilities for using email marketing in your practice? You could combine this with a snail mail letter or postcard as well. For example, let’s say you send a letter in the mail to announce the event, then do 1-3 follow up broadcast emails to remind your patient base of the upcoming event.

Remember, you should not be sending mass emails out through your normal email account. Most internet companies will mark your email messages as spam if you are sending out hundreds or thousands from your person account. Better to use a company that has all these snags worked out.

My favorite system that handles all my email lists and makes it very easy to send an email is http://www.easyemailsystem.com.

Carl has sciatica. He knows this because his wife used that medical thingy online where you put in your symptoms and it tells you what you have.

Carl hates this constant, annoying pain in his right buttocks and leg. Carl has had back pain in the past, but that went away 2 years ago.

Now it’s a “completely different” problem that just won’t go away! And worst of all, he can’t play golf, go dancing with his wife, or even sit for 20 minutes in the car.

Carl knows deep down that if this problem doesn’t get better soon, he’s going to have to see a medical doctor and he’s going to give him a bunch of prescriptions he isn’t crazy about.

He grabs a newspaper on the way to work, and sees an ad for the local chiropractor. Carl knows nothing about chiropractic except that his uncle used to go to one for back pain. This ad is classy, sharp, and has a professional picture of the doctor. The name of the office is in large letters with the phone number underneath the photo.

He briefly makes a mental note that if he ever has low back pain again, he should call this chiropractor’s office.

Carl turns a few pages, reading an article on government overspending and debt accumulation. As he glances down at the bottom half of the page, his mind begins racing. To Carl’s astonishment, there in large bold letters, is a headline that reads “Eliminate Sciatica Without Surgery, Drugs, or Painful Exercises”.

Carl can’t read the “article” fast enough. It describes exactly what he is suffering from. And there’s a solution described and backed up with testimonials.

Carl reads that if he comes in for help during the next 10 days, he will get an exam and x-rays for less than $40. Wow!

Who is article from? Oh, a D.C. Hmmm, not sure what kind of doctor that is. But I’m open to anything that can help with sciatica.

Carl quickly picks up the phone, calls the office, and quickly begs the receptionist to get him in this week, “before this special ends.”

——–
This isn’t a fairy tale. It happens every day around the world. The point of the story is that when you advertise your services, you must enter the conversation already going in the prospect’s mind.

Just talking about the history of chiropractic is not something that a new patient, who doesn’t know anything about chiropractic, is going to respond to.

Your marketing cannot be geared towards what chiropractors love, but not what patients are thinking about.

Once they come in, then you can educate them all about chiropractic and what it can help.
It’s a common phrase in marketing, “what’s in it for me?” At that point in their life, it doesn’t really matter who D.D. Palmer is.

Look, chiropractors can help a lot of different people with a lot of different issues. But, to speak to that new patient on their level, you need to talk to them in their language.

SEO is like Hollywood.  in so many ways…

But today this reference is to the fact that seo is going social.

You see Google has added a +1.  Facebook has added “like”.

Twitter has added “tweet”. LinkedIN has a new share button.

All this adds up to links to your site which is called link juice or back links.

Before you had to go comment on blogs or maybe ask to trade links etc.

Now you can get links from these social networks where people actually hand out online.

What is even better is when these links are created they are shared with the Friends, follows, connections etc.

That can add to lots of views and maybe even some re-sharing.

But why is this so important?

Because it should drive home the point that these sites or social networks are not some silly idea of marketing.

NO these are realty sites that can generate REAL targeted and relevant traffic to your site and therefore your office!

BUT imagine sending an automated robot to the chamber of commerce to do your “networking” for you.

You would be the joke of the town.

Lets get real folks social networking is NETWORKING!

Don’t be the joke of the town.  Take pride is what you put out.

Social networking is not about buttons on your site.

Social networking is not about a fancy designed page.  (not that there is anything wrong with custom pages)

Social networking is about getting good content out that people love and want to share and sharing it!

So be true to the profession.  Take pride in your marketing.

Write and produce good valuable content.

People will share it.

Their friends will like you.  And get links to make your site rank better all at the same time!

You really will become well known and because you added value you will make money.

So if you want links!  Produce good content.

If you liked this post share it, like it, tweet it, email it, google +1 and as many other things as you know how to share it.

Let chiropractors know to stop cutting corners on he marketing.  Tell the story and get patients that pay – stay and refer for life!

Be well.

Matt Prados
CEO ChiropracticTraffic.com

How long does it take to dramatically change your practice?

A lot faster than you think…

In fact, I find that most successful doctors I work with have a point in their practice where things really took off for them.

And from that day on, everything changes.

I know it was like this for me. Early on in my practice, I struggled for years trying to bring in enough new patients to grow and make a profit.

I tried all the normal stuff. Seminars, marketing gurus, chiropractic management groups, yellow pages, Val-paks, money mailers, ad displays, health fair and convention center booths, newspaper ads, spinal screenings – I even went knocking on doors after being in practice for almost two years.

After throwing countless hours and dollars at the “new patient problem”, I got a few new ones trickling in. But many of them were not very interested in care, and their conversion rate was terrible.

The problem is, that almost none of these approaches worked. Most of the marketing techniques were overpriced, outdated or too sleazy.

The problem is chiropractic marketing can be a “brutal – and very time consuming – challenge” to building and sustaining a growing practice.

For my first two years in practice, my frustration with getting quality new patients was agonizing, often making me depressed and bringing me close to tears on more than one occasion.

It’s not our fault really.

None of us learned about marketing in Chiropractic College. After spending four years and over $100,000 on my chiropractic education, I didn’t have one class on how to use effective advertising to grow my practice.

All of this led up to a fight for survival for me. Two years into 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 doing 2-4 spinal screenings per week and holding talks for audiences of one – both with awful results.

I got fed up with marketing, “pushing” patients to refer, hard-sell tactics – honestly I was ready to quit the profession entirely.

It wasn’t that I hated chiropractic. It was that no one could show me an effective way to market and grow my practice. I had spent thousands on marketing systems and coaches, but to what point?

My pregnant wife was struggling up three flights of stairs each day in our new “apartment home” – sometimes having to lug over 50lbs of groceries with two toddlers in tow.

This lack of effective marketing tools forced me to look outside the profession for answers. My practice depended on it. I had no time to “hope” something worked. I needed a solution fast!

At the “eleventh hour” of my practice (and just barely in time to save it) I discovered effective marketing strategies and put them into place for my practice. And I began to see results almost immediately.

Finally, real marketing that works for chiropractic. (Unlike all that other crap out there being pushed on us from advertising sales people and over-hyped chiropractic marketing gurus.)

Within 6 months from this point, my practice volume and income had increased by a multiple of 10! I was making $30,000 and could finally afford to take one day off a week to spend with my family. Later my practice continued to increase as I tweaked my marketing and conversion procedures.

Now $30k may or may not sound like a lot to you per month, depending on where you’re at now. But that’s not the point. The point is the change from $3,000 to $30,000 in such a short time span.

What this meant for me was that my kids could have a less stressful father, who spent more quality time with them. My wife could worry less about buying groceries or clothes. And we could go on that family vacation we always talked about.

What would your life be like if your income increased by a multiple of 10? What would change if it just doubled? And what would that really mean to you?

If you’re not using effective marketing, don’t wait. It can make a huge difference to more than just your practice.

Click Here to Grab Proven Chiropractic Ads

The question of fees will often come up with my conversations with Decompression Marketing Elite clients. How much should I charge? How do I keep fees competitive in my area?

These questions do not just pertain to practices with decompression tables. All of us, no matter what services we have in our offices, should be asking this question on a yearly basis.

How you answer this question can either ‘make you or break you’ in terms of business success. You may be the best doctor, the best adjuster, the most well-liked person in a 30 mile radius, but if you fail to set your prices correctly you’ll be out of business with a matter of time.

Most practices set their fees either based on insurance schedules or local competition. Neither of these is a smart way to do business. Let me explain…

Insurance companies are notorious for cutting what they will pay down to the lowest possible fee schedule. They are a “for profit” business, and expect to pay out a lower amount than what is regularly charged in your area. Using extensive research to justify they’re fees, they have calculated the lowest amount payable to you. So if you are setting your fees to match an insurance companies schedule, they are much too low. And if your fees are below the insurance fee schedule, you’ve been too low for a very long time. Not because you could have gotten more from the insurance company, but because you have been selling yourself short for a long time now.

Remember, not all patients are insurance patients. Many of you see a combination of PI, Work Comp, cash and other types of cases. To set your fee schedule based on one or two insurance companies reduced rates is hurting you all across the board.

The other common way to set your fee schedule by finding out what your competitors charge and trying to beat them with lower prices. Unless you’re running a non-profit clinic, this is the wrong way to set your fees. What if all your competitors are much lower than they should be? What if they still have the original prices they opened with 20 years ago? Maybe they do a ton of therapy, making their adjustment fees artificially low?

It is important to know what your local market is charging, but not so you can undercut their fees. You want to know the range of your competitor’s prices so you can set yours near the high end. That’s right, you don’t want to be the lowest in your area, but the highest. What other professional service is praised for their low fees? Do you go to the lowest priced dentist in town? How about sending your mother to the cheapest surgeon? Would you use cheapest attorney to represent you in a court case?

Here’s a case scenario. The highest price for a chiropractic adjustment in your area is $55, the lowest is $35 and the average is $45. What are your fees going to be for an adjustment? At least $55. But there’s not enough information here to effectively price your services.

Additional questions must be answered like…

• what other services will you be doing on an average visit
• how much will you be charging for these other visits
• how much time will be spent doing all the services a typical patient needs
• how many people do you have on staff and how much do you pay them
• what is your overhead
• and most importantly, how good is your marketing

If you’re marketing is good, you can charge a higher fee because you have plenty of new patients coming in. One person leaving because they are “shopping for a deal” won’t affect your business at all if you’ve got 30 more new patients waiting to get in this week. And this is fair, as prices are somewhat based on supply and demand.

The only exception to this rule of being at the top of your market’s price range is when you make a special offer. When running an ad in the paper with a special offer, for example, don’t try to have the most expensive exam and x-rays in town. This will only deter people from responding to the ad. Without seeing your office, meeting you and your staff, having their problem explained to them, etc., prices will speak loudly. So be sure to give them a good special offer to come, but make sure they understand it is a special price and this isn’t what all your fees will be like in the future.

Recently we had an Internet Marketing webinar with Dr. Matthew Loop, the expert at getting new patients on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other online methods.

Dr. Loop showed us how he gets new patients every month, consistently with inexpensive strategies. Are you wondering if it’s possible to get new patients from social marketing sites like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, and other sites?

Watch the webinar replay and see how chiropractors are getting new patients every month from these websites.

Click Here to Watch the Full Chiropractic Internet Marketing Video

Here is just a short snapshot of what you’ll discover:

- The 7 Keys to Social Marketing Domination, which includes how to get ranked high on Google!
- The patient demographic that is visiting these sites (and how you can make sure to attract them).
- How to bring in new patients from Facebook, instead of wasting time there.
- Learn what micro-blogging is and how it can benefit your practice.
- The quick and easy way to use video marketing.
- And much, much more…

Watch the Webinar Replay Here