Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

1. Monthly print newsletters will be more valuable.

I know, you’re probably thinking print newsletters have gone the way of the dinosaur, and that email, Facebook, etc. are “da bomb!” But the fact is people are starting to demand a more personal relationship with their businesses. All you have to do is look at the Occupy Wall Street movement to sense how people now see a big gap between the products they buy and the companies who provide them. (Also, for more on this, watch the second video here on Dr. Loop’s blog.)

What about email newsletters you ask? You should be sending those too, at least 2 per month. But does it mean more to you to receive a birthday card by snail mail or an e-card? Sending a print newsletter with a real postage stamp is still a very effective way to communicate with current patients and get more referrals.

2. Videos will be more effective on your website.

Video has been around for a number of years on the internet, but it really hasn’t become the norm yet. However I think in 2012 that will start to shift. A few reasons for this are: almost everyone has some type of broadband internet access now, Youtube is more popular than ever, and sites like Facebook are using more video. At the least you should test a video of yourself on the landing page of our website to see if it increases conversions. Using tools like Google website Optimizer will let you easily figure out if videos are more or less effective for your site.

3. Neuropathy, Decompression and other niche specific newspaper ads will continue to get high returns.

Like the print newsletters mentioned above, you may have bought into the lie that newspapers are now extinct. However, in most markets, this is not the case. Many of my clients got their best returns ever on newspaper ads in 2011, especially when using neuropathy and decompression ads. I know there are plenty of other people out there telling you how a jillion internet things will bring in hundreds of patients. And some of it will bring in patients. But don’t neglect the trusted source of patients like the newspaper. The key is using very good copywriting to reach specific niches that are really responsive.

4. Facebook, Google + and other Social Marketing sites will become more important in your chiropractic marketing plan.

Many chiropractors have heard of Facebook. Less have heard of Google+. Unfortunately, doctors treat these sites like everyone else, a place to post all your personal happenings. The problem is most patients aren’t interested in the fact you just “checked in” at the local burger barn. Sure, some personal interaction is necessary to maintain a following. But, you also need good copywriting and intentional posts to cause new patients to act and pick up the phone to call. Another important and often overlooked aspect of these sites is that they help with your search engine rankings. Having Facebook likes and Google+’s on your website will help it come up higher in Google Search, which will translate into more new patients. Just remember, Facebook and Google+ are effective tools, but they are not the only game in town. So, don’t spend 100% of your time and money fiddling with them.

5. Developing a mobile site will become a necessity.

As my friend Terry Dean recently pointed to, more and more people are using iphones to access websites like Facebook. Look at the stats from the link below, which state that “more than 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices “:

https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Also, realize that one of the most common uses for a smart phone is to check email. That means every time you send an email with a link back to your website that person is going to your website on their phone. Even though I prefer to use the internet on my PC, I have an iPhone and iPad that I use often and realize it is just more convenient to click a link now rather than wait until later when I can access the website on my home desktop.

I’ll be working hard to implement these changes in 2012. I recommend you do the same. Also, I’ll keep you updated on any new tools and strategies I’m working on next year. Happy New Year’s.

In a previous article, I showed you a video of how I sub-niche the chiropractic market.

A niche market is simply a subset of a larger market. It’s harder to say the word niche correctly than it is to understand it. (In the south, we say “nitch” but more sophisticated English speakers will use the French-sounding “nish”!)

The overall market in chiropractic is everyone who could be a patient in your practice. But within that group, you can divide them even further into specific niches — fibromyalgia patients, headaches patients, decompression patients, etc.

Today I want to give you an example of how I’ve done this.

But even within these different chiropractic niches, you can drill down further. For example in patients with neuropathy, you have one group that focuses on numbness and tingling while they’ve not yet heard the term “neuropathy.” Another group will respond to the term neuropathy in an ad since they have been “officially” diagnosed with that condition.

In the case of my Decompression Marketing Elite program I’ve actually ‘sub-niched’ the decompression market to different groups of patients that respond differently to their own language.

Within decompression niche there are many “sub-niches”. These are categories with different symptoms like patients with disc herniations, patients with sciatica, patients with general back pain, and more.

Why is all this important?

Because you can use it in all your marketing and get huge ROI’s!

For example, a patient with numbness and tingling down their legs may have no clue about disc herniations. So marketing to them with an ad focused on disc herniations will be pointless.

But run an ad with specific language showing how spinal decompression is the solution they’ve been looking for and they’ll gladly pay you $4,000 to get rid of the problem.

Your simply doing what any specialist in medicine or dentistry does.

This type of “sub-niching” allows for you to really connect with your potential patients, on a level never-before-seen in decompression marketing.

Here’s an excerpt from a long list of phrases I use to sub-niche the decompression market:

ruptured disc
herniated disc
slipped disc
degenerative disc
degenerative disk
herniated disk
spinal surgery
discectomy
bulging disc
degenerative disc disease
disc protrusion
spine surgery
bulging discs
disc herniation
herniated
herniated disc surgery
bulging disk
bulge disc
disc treatment
herniation disc
disease disc

As you can see, there are many groups of patients out there to tailor your marketing too. And this list doesn’t even touch all the keywords dealing with sciatica!

With all this marketing potential, how can anyone say that “marketing doesn’t work?” This is a major problem I see in our profession. Doctors try some general marketing or advertising, only focusing on the chiropractic aspect and not addressing any of the patients concerns. Then when no one comes in, they definitively state that marketing doesn’t work.

The problem is most potential patients are not sitting around thinking about which chiropractor they might go see. Or which decompression table looks the nicest. Or which doctor is dressed the best on his yellow page ad.

Most of them are suffering from various health problems and are wondering who exactly can help them. Will it be you?

If you aren’t speaking their language, entering the conversation already going in their head, you’re marketing will get thrown aside faster than a Kardashian wedding!

By focusing very specifically on what the patient is suffering from, you show everyone that you are qualified to help with their condition. And your conversions will sky rocket as a result.

If you’d like to work with me directly on your decompression, I do take a limited number of area exclusive clients.  Currently many zip codes are already taken, but some areas in the U.S. are still available. We also keep a waiting list if your area is already taken.

http://www.decompressionmarketingelite.com

How do you know if you’re marketing is working?

Many would say the answer is “by the number of new patients” or “by the number of phone calls.”

While these are both good signs that help you to determine if an ad is successful or not, they are not the right way to measure success in marketing.

Let me show you how measuring your return on the number of new patients only can mislead you. Here’s an example of a conversation I once had:

Doc: Dr. Beck, I only got 5 new patients from the ad I ran. I consider this a failure!

Me: How much did the ad cost you to run?

Doc: $500

Me: Did all 5 patients start care? And how much is your average case fee (or lifetime value)?

Doc: $1,800

Me: So you made $9,000 from an ad that cost you only $500 and you consider that a failure?

I know as chiropractors we get all wrapped up in talking about the number of new patients we get from certain marketing campaigns. It is an important stat to keep. But successful business know that it’s your return on investment (ROI) that really matters.

That’s ROI for the whole practice and specifically for each ad we run.

So how do you figure the ROI? Let me show you by using some real numbers. Here’s an email I just received from one of my Decompression Marketing Elite clients:

Hello doc,

Stats update from first EM ad ran as insert; collections in my hand. Ready for this? lol!

I ran in as 21,500 inserts in a free paper; printing cost $515.41 Distribution for inserts cost me $376.25 = total of $891.25 combined
15 day only offer of $35 expired 9-6-11;

Grand total= $17,490.00 collected with residual collections for multipal payment program option uncollected yet. Table is now filled for next 6.5 weeks!

27 new SD patients were scheduled
7 still remaining to be seen.
8 signed and paid in full

Now let’s do some math. I calculate marketing return on investment the quick and easy way. Take the total amount collection and divide it by the cost to run the ad. 20:1 ROI (19.6 rounded up) as of right now, just 2 days after the expiration date of the ad!

$17,940/$891 = 1962% ROI
or 20:1 Return

It goes without saying that not everyone will get these kinds of results. Some will do even better. Many will get a great return although it may not be this high.

But the point is this doctor has kept excellent records of his ad and is quickly able to figure ROI. He’ll need to re-figure the results later after ALL the money has come in. So in the end, it should be even higher than a a 20:1 ROI since 7 new patients have not yet come in and the residual payments have not all been collected.

What kind of returns are you getting from your chiropractic marketing? And if you aren’t measuring ROI, how do you know if your campaigns are successful or not?

I often get asked about running my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads as inserts in the newspaper, as opposed to a space ad inside the paper. Many chiropractors have never tried inserts and are quite surprised at the return on investment they can get.

If you’re using my ads, I strongly recommend testing inserts for your zipcode at least once. (Of course you can try inserts even if you don’t have my ads, but I can’t promise you’ll get good results.) If your ad cost to run in the main section of the paper is going to be above $1,500 or $2,000, you should try inserts as your first three runs.

If you’re running in a major metro city paper, inserts would be better to start with because you can just run in the zip codes for your area.

For example, if you were out on the edge of a big city, like in a small suburb, you’re not going to have that many subscribers in some areas for the major paper. In this case you should run inserts for your zip code instead of paying full price to run in Section A, the news section. Running inserts in a large city paper is a very good thing when looking at your overall marketing plan. It can give you a lot of options and multiple places to run your ad.

You could run a half-page ad in the small, local paper, and then inserts in the big city paper for your area. This allows you to run basically two different ads in the same exact area in two different papers.

With my ad kit you have plenty of ads to rotate and run, and although it’s possible, don’t just build your practice on one ad.

Typically inserts will be a little bit more expensive than running a half-page, a full-page, or a quarter-page ad, but many times inserts will produce better results.
There are different reasons for this, not that it really matters, because the fact that you get a better result is good enough.
But in case you’re curious, let’s look at what advantages inserts offer:

- people can hang on to it longer, putting it on the refrigerator for example,
- the insert’s easier to handle and read
- inserts fall out of the paper, so prospects are more likely to notice it
- it looks a different color than the “gray” newspaper
- inserts are a different size
- inserts stand out from the rest of the paper

All of these factors have an effect on the insert’s higher response over a “display” or space ad. One of the major benefits of an insert is that it’s not right next to any other ad. You don’t have to worry about losing the person’s attention. It’s not mixed in with other articles either, so they can’t really skip over it.

Many newspapers will allow you to bring already printed inserts to their facilities, and they will charge you what’s called an insert fee. There are two fees sometimes quoted regarding inserts: a printing fee and an insertion fee. The insertion fees is where someone actually is putting an insert into each of the papers before they go out in the morning.

In my experience, the insert fee usually the bigger expense. For most papers it’s more cost effective to have the newspaper print the inserts, as opposed to taking them to your own printer. You will have to shop around with your local printers and compare prices to determine which route is best for you.

I know for one of the major big city papers that I ran in, the insert fee was about 70% to 80% of the total cost that they quoted me. Which meant it wasn’t likely I would save much by printing the inserts myself.

But I would shop around and at least find out.

I compared it to the option of paying a local printer, then driving the inserts over to the newspaper’s facility, and paying the insert fee.
It was going to cost me double the price to do it this way! So I decided to just let the newspaper handle everything.

Sometimes newspapers will even have specials on inserts. That’s something you’ll want to ask your ad rep about. If they’re trying to get more inserts into the paper or they’re trying to get new business, the ad rep will give you a special discount.

Are you sub-niching your marketing prospects?

Watch this segment of a decompression webinar I gave. Whether you do decompression or not, you need to understand what sub-niching is. (If you do have a decompression table, watch the complete webinar here.)

We all want to grow. We want our practice volume to grow, our income to grow, and our positive influence in the community to grow. Often times in our quest to grow we jump at every strategy that comes our way, thinking we’ve finally found “the secret” to growth.

But the truth is there is not a huge secret to growth. There are 5 simple strategies to grow. If you improve in these 5 areas, your practice could not keep itself from growing. If your struggling to grow take a look at this list and find the one (or more) strategy that you need to work on.

1. Acquire More New Patients

As I’ve said, there is not secret and this point proves it. Everyone realizes you’ve got to get more new patients to grow. While there are plenty of business coaches telling you to plug the “leaky bucket” and not worry about new ones, common sense tells you that new patients are the life blood of your practice.

So if everyone knows about this strategy, why aren’t more people successful at it?

Well, knowing about it and being good at it are two different things indeed. Most chiropractors (any health practitioner for that matter) have been told various lies about marketing, like: it’s degrading, it’s not for doctors, and my personal favorite “marketing is unethical”. Of course there are snakes out there doing these things. Yet one bad apple doesn’t mean all the rest are bad too. If you’ve got a website, that’s marketing. A business card, that’s marketing as well.

You get the point. Marketing is extremely ethical, especially if you’re in a profession that can help people. It would be unethical to be able to help people and then keep them from finding you for your services. So the question you really need to ask is “how do I find and use effective marketing?”

The general answer is to find and use marketing that proves itself. If you have proven yellow pages work in your area within the last year, by measuring the ROI, then keep using them. If your town has a newspaper, then you should know if a good ad will work there. The specific answer is to look at the links above in the menu bar and the Other Tools where I recommend other people’s products.

2. Get Stronger Conversions

What good goes it do to get 30 new patients a month if you only convert one of them to care? I struggled with low conversions when first starting in practice. Some of my problem was confidence issues, but the bigger part was poor presentation. No, you don’t have to be a sweet-talking care salesman, but you’ve got to present your case with truth and certainty. Imagine going for brain surgery and the surgeon is nervous, uncertain and not very trustworthy. Would you “start care” with him?

The easiest way to get better conversions is to bring in better qualified patients. Patients referred in by others are usually very qualified for care and have already gotten a recommendation from someone else. Also, by using effective marketing like I mentioned above, you can market to certain conditions which are more likely to follow through with your care recommendations.

For more tips on conversions, see my article entitled “14 Ways to Increase Your Conversions“.

3. Collect More Per Visit

How much do you collect per visit on average? Not a guess, but the actual number?

If you’re like I was the first 2 years in business, I had no clue. I thought that since my charge for adjustment was $45, that was my average. Imagine my surprise when I actually did the calculation and found it to be $17. No wonder some coaches tell people “not to worry about the numbers” — wow! How many visits do you have to see at $17 to make a living these days?

So the point is figure up your number and know it. Take all the gross collections you made last month, or last year, and divide by the number of visits in that time period. You may be surprised at what you find.

So how do you increase this amount?

You need to add more services that the patient wants or needs. Easy ideas are massage, nutritional supplements, rehab, weight loss programs, etc. I’m not saying you’ve got to be a Walmart and offer everything under one roof. But adding a couple of extra services you and your patients are interested in will only benefit everyone. Another thing you can do to collect more per visit is raise your fees a little. The costs of running a practice do go up over time, so don’t be shy about raising your fees to make up for it. If you’ve been holding off for years from doing this, now is the time.

4. Increase Your Patient Visit Average (PVA)

Of the 5 things listed here, this is one of the most difficult. I know, you’ve heard stories about people having a PVA of 100+. And they may be using the easier way to increase PVA, which is to discount everything down to nothing (like the $17 a visit mentioned above!)

But for the rest of us, we realize that human nature is what it is, and we live in a world that does not like to commit. It’s nothing for people to have an excuse for missing appointments. Other may not like the perfume your front desk wears and they’ll go down the street to see someone else.

The best way to increase PVA is simply to tell patients at the beginning how many visits you recommend. Not scaring them into it or anything like that. But simply saying here’s how many I think it will take. Other strategies that help are patient education, front desk follow-up, in-office marketing, and having a good rapport with patients.

5. Lower Your Overhead

The one everyone body loves to hate — overhead expenses! But the easiest way to increase your income is to keep more of what you make.

Many doctors think there is nothing that can be done about their monthly business expenses. But this is not true. Everything is negotiable, from lower rent and CAM charges on a lease to a lower monthly cell phone bill. Simply contact all your vendors/suppliers and ask them for lower rates.You’ll be surprised how many will budge.

Also, paying interest on debt every month can kill a practice. What if you kept all your debt payments every month and pocketed them. How much would that add up to? Develop a plan to repay your debt as soon as possible. I followed and recommend the Total Money Makeover.

Some doctors cut out their marketing budget to reduce expenses. But this is very, very dangerous and can send you into a deadly spiral (which I wrote more on here.)

Which of these 5 strategies do you struggle with? Leave a comment below.

Which marketing strategies are currently working the best? How much should you spend on each of them? Find out in these two snippets joined together for you from my recent Decompression Marketing Elite program.

In the video I mention the following categories. More resources can be found to help you when you click on these links:
Chiropractic Newspaper Ads
Google Adwords
Websites/Blogs
Internal Referrals
Social Media/Facebook
Workshops/Lectures

The end of the calendar year, what many Americans call the Holiday Season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years), is quickly approaching. For many chiropractors, this is a bustling time of new patients and high profits to finish out the year strong. For others it represents some of the hardest and leanest months on record.

Why the difference?

It comes down to your view of marketing. There is a myth that’s been perpetuated in our profession for many years. The myth that says you shouldn’t market in certain months because of holidays and vacations. Have you ever heard such nonsense?

I actually had a consultant when I first started out in practice that went through all the ‘bad marketing’ months. January is insurance deductible rollover month. Feb. was probably okay. March was spring break, so not good there. April was tax month, so that was out. The summer was out because everyone went on vacation. December was bad because of all that Christmas spending, no one had money to come in. Plus insurance plans were maxed! And on and on. I think he ended up listing at most 2-3 months out of the whole year that I should use paid marketing!

You may remember the Dynamic Chiropractic poll which was taken awhile back on this issue, finding there was no difference between summer, fall and winter when it comes to marketing. The interesting thing was that 22%, a fourth of doctors polled, said it the season didn’t make any difference in their marketing.

Now that’s the attitude you should have. If anything the Holidays are an excuse to ramp up your marketing because your marketing will stand out even better as your competitors will have believed the myth and pulled back on their spending. Many doctors have realize this little secret and done very well.

Sidenote: In case your not familiar with this blog, when I say “marketing” I mean effective, proven marketing strategies, methods and techniques. I’m not speaking of getting more brochures printed up or drop a few business cards off at the local restuarant.

I’ll never forget the year I put an ad in the newspaper the week before Thanksgiving. It was later in the month I would have liked, considering I believed at the time I shouldn’t be marketing at all near the end of the month. And my ads usually have a 2 week deadline to take action on the offer. But things just didn’t work out for me to get it in earlier. “Oh well”, I figured, “at least they’ll have 1 week to come in.” The results surprised me. A few came in that first week, but we actually got swamped the three days before Thanksgiving Day. I think we had 7 or 8 new patients the day right before, meaning when came back the following week I was going to be doing multiple report of findings. What better thought to have on a 4 day holiday?

Let’s look at the reasons why you should market heavily during the next two months.

• Bad weather means more accidents, whether slips, falls or auto accidents. People will need your services.
• Holidays can be a great time of year to hold a special new patient event like a Food Drive, Toys for Tots drive, Angel Tree program, and more.
• Winter sports are in full swing, causing many athletic injuries that need your care.
• Competitors marketing is usually lessened, which makes yours stand out.
• Discounts can be had from many media, especially newspapers and magazines.
• People are home more often, which means it may be time to try some telemarketing programs.
• More people are online shopping, which means they may come across your website.
• Many are looking to use up there Health Savings Accounts by years end (especially considering people are concerned these benefits will disappear under Obamacare.)

Now I’m not saying you should ignore certain aspects of the Holidays when you do your marketing plan. I would not put an ad in the paper on Christmas Day or New Years day for example, or even the day before. Also, you shouldn’t run ads when you’ll be closed unless you have a good answering service.

Here’s where my focus would be on marketing in the next two months.

Newspaper Adveritising: Run a chiropractic ad or decompression ad at least once in November and once in December. Twice each month would be even better, but in December run your second ad before the 20th. I would also have an ad coming out the very first week of the new year. (Look for a special New Years ad I’ll be mentioning in a few weeks.)

Internet Marketing: I would keep it running right along smoothly with article marketing, email marketing, SEO backlinks and Google Adwords. Now there is a trend at the end of the year on Google (see chart below) where people do search less for the term “chiropractic”. But we need to consider a couple of things here. First, since you only get charged when your ad gets clicked, if no one is searching for this term your ad won’t show and you won’t get charged. Secondly, even if someone does click your Adwords ad, they are interested and have just as much chance of coming in as someone who clicked your ad in April, or June, or any other month. Thirdly, you definitely should be marketing to other keywords than just chiropractic. In fact all keywords take a dip in mid December on Google (except for toys, gifts, etc.), but they also spike quite a bit right after Christmas.

For example, take a look at the chart above which is a Google Trends graph for the search term “sciatica”. See that spike right at the end of the year. You want to be running your ads then for sure. And lastly, it’s been confirmed from Google Adwords experts that one of the worse things you can do is to turn off your ads. This messes up your past history of success with Google, jacking with your bid rates, quality scores and more.

Referral Marketing: Continue with an effective internal marketing plan, but adding to it at least one special event near Thanksgiving food drive, Christmas toy drive, or New Years “get back to health.” As Dan Kennedy says, these are great times to create a special marketing event. Don’t waste it. Also, these events allow your patients to give to those in need helping others to enjoy the holidays.

We’ll look at more ideas in the coming weeks. Have you laid all this out on the calendar yet and put things into action? If not, what are you waiting for, Christmas or something?

Axiom Worldwide, LLC, the maker of the DRX and DRX9000 decompression tables appears to be in liquidation.

What does this say about the current decompression market in the United States?

Not much in my opinion. There are too many questions left unanswered to determine what the cause of their bankruptcy was.

Was it caused by the recession, meaning less sales on their part? Was it due to bad management, hubris born of success, or their recent troubles in Canada? Did it have something to do with the FBI raids on their office back in 2007?

We simply do not know.

What I can tell you is that if you own a decompression table, many people will be trying to use this as a marketing ploy to scare you. One company sent out an email to some chiropractors, trying to scare them into “buying” publicity websites so as to drown out the negative publicity for DRX tables on Google. I’m sure others will soon follow, using fear to motivate you to waste money on useless marketing.

So if you own a DRX table (or any kind of decompression table), what are you supposed to do in light of all this negative news?

As far as marketing your practices goes (which is my specialty, not law), I’m recommending my clients focus on growing their practices and getting more new patients. Decompression offices are still overflowing with new patients, as the need for such treatment has not dropped off and likely will not as the population ages.

Here’s one thing I would NOT do if I was your shoes…

I wouldn’t be using old outdated advertising that talks about “NASA claims”, “FDA Approved” or even mentions the name DRX or DRX9000. You see, that’s the problem with promoting the name of a piece of equipment instead of your practice. If the name of the equipment gets a bad rap, you’re up a creek without a paddle. But if you market your practice as designed to help people who are suffering with herniated discs, sciatica, etc., and a company goes bankrupt or gets bad publicity, it doesn’t affect you.

When I first started looking at decompression tables, I was told the DRX table was the only “true spinal decompression table”. That they would be patenting the term “spinal decompression” soon and no one else could use it. One prominent marketer (at the time) even had ads written for his clients. I personally would not be making this claim any more either, as it is likely not going to go over well with the current news about DRX tables.

Keep marketing the results of your table in an ethical and professional way. This is why testimonials are so important. You’ve seen patients get better. You’ve seen them get well, preventing back surgery or a lifetime of dangerous medications. So you know decompression works. The problem is not if it works or not, but how we market it. Do we make hyped up claims or simply use educational advertising with condition-centered copy?

Decompression is about results for the patients…not about any specific table.

Over the past few years I’ve proven educational ads focused on patient results provides the best results. This is why I write non-hyped up ads. NASA and walking on the moon has nothing to do with decompression tables, and it never has, therefore I don’t put those claims in my ads.

In the end, I’m sure all of this will blow over and be a thing of the past. But what about your practice? Will your practice be thriving or barely surviving at that time?

If you are thinking about getting a decompression table, but have not yet, I urge you to read my previous article on this entitled “Decompression Marketing Solutions“.

One of the most frequent questions we get about the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads (and even Decompression Marketing Elite) is…

“Can you send me a sample of one of your ads?”

In most cases, I understand that this is an honest, sincere question to see what type of ads I write. Usually, it’s to compare to past advertisements the doctor has used in his office. So I realize people aren’t out to steal my ads. But there’s a big problem with this request. To me, this question might as well be…

“Can you send me $50,000 in cash as a sample, to just look at?”

Why would I equate the two requests? Because unlike custom made advertisements, where a copywriter sends over samples he’s written in other industries, my ads are ready to go for one specific industry. That means any chiropractor can quickly change their name and number, insert them into the paper and start getting new patients. (Like the customer who called us yesterday from North Carolina and said his phone has not stopped ringing after running the neuropathy ad one time, scheduling over 40 new patients so far!)

You see, the ads I write aren’t “samples”. They are real ads I’ve spent quite a bit of time and money researching and writing. We don’t have any samples. The ads are all ads, ready to go and bring in quality new patients. Even if we did have samples, reading it would tell you very little. Unless you’ve spent thousands of hours studying copywriting and testing ads, you’re not going to be able to see the nuances of how my ads work.

That’s not being harsh, just being honest. I’ve had two chiropractors, who’ve spent years writing their own ads, now use mine and love them. They’ll be the first to tell you that their own ads worked okay, but after using mine they won’t likely ever go back.

An advertisement works because it produces new patients. Not because it looks beautiful or professional (although I think my ads are both!) Even if the words of an ad are the most beautiful prose ever written, if they don’t bring in new patients they are rubbish.

To ask the question a slightly different way is to say…

“How are your ads different than what I’ve used before?”

Now this is the question most people want to know, and 90% of the time the ‘question behind the question’ of “can you send me a sample”. There are really only 2 reasons to want a sample. Either to run it and see how it does or to see how it looks and reads to differentiate it from other advertising the doctor has seen in the past.

As an aside, sometimes we get the “if you’re ads are so good, why don’t you let us try one for free, then we’ll buy the rest” type of request. I guess we could do that, if we were willing to get our attorney to write up a very long, lengthy contract, making this requester promise to pay a percentage of what he makes, with various clauses for defaulting on the agreement, etc, then pay said attorney thousands of dollars to prosecute violations of this contract, which we all know would be numerous. OR I could just give you a 90 day trial period with a money-back guarantee, and save both of us some legal bills!

But seriously, if you’re struggling in practice ( I feel for you, as I was once there myself), as hard as it  is to sometimes admit it to ourselves, if the 3 payments are too steep for your budget right now it’s time to hold off from buying. If $365 is too much, then you aren’t going to have the money to run an ad in the paper once you get them. And I know for a fact my ads will not work if you shrink them down to a tiny little business card-sized ad to save money.

As to the question of “how are your ads different”, let me attempt to give a quick summary. (More detailed information about these differences are given on the websites linked above.)

• They work better at bringing in quality new patients. Why? Various reasons: they employ empathy, photos with captions, effective offers with a deadline, etc.
• You get 40 different ads (Or a new decompression ad every month in the Decompression program.), as opposed to a small handful.
• You get multiple sub-niched ads, including neuropathy, fibromyalgia, numbness, sciatica, back pain, headaches, decompression, laser, scoliosis, etc.
• You get a money-back guarantee for 90 days on the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads and an area exclusive 60 day trial (nonrefundable) with no long term commitment with Decompression Marketing Elite. Do the other ads give this?
• You get the “how-to” reports. How to get the best ROI with these ads. How to save money with your newspaper ad rep. How often to run the ads. What size. Which ones work best.
• You get bonus marketing letters that you can use via mail to get more referrals, re-activations, new homeowners and more.

I could go on and on, but these are just a few that I’ve listed here. We really have tried to come up with the best chiropractic marketing product available for you to bring in quality new patients. If you haven’t tried them out, what are you waiting for?