Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Is Google Adwords an effective way of doing chiropractic marketing? And if so why aren’t more chiropractors using it?

Before we go in depth with this question, let’s look at some basic terms. Adwords is a program by Google whereby you can place your ads on their search engine. When people type in certain phrases, called keywords, your ad will show up. If the person clicks your ad, they are taken to the site you have linked up with the ad. You only pay if someone clicks your ad (hence the term “pay-per-click advertising” is sometimes used) and do not pay if your ad only shows up but is not clicked. You bid a certain price for your ad to show for a certain keyword. So I might bid $2 for the keyword “back pain”. To keep it simple, we’ll say that if I’m the highest bidder my ad will show first. If the second highest bidder, my ad will show second, etc. (It’s actually a bit more complex than this, as you can beat out the highest bidder by having a higher click-through rate.)

So with that introduction, let us discuss the use of Adwords for chiropractors.

Fact #1
It’s a proven that your potential patients are on the internet, looking for solutions to their problem. Just look at how many searches Google’s keyword tool show occurred in the last 30 days in the United States:

chiropractor = 450,000 searches
back pain = 1.8 million searches
sciatica = 301,000 searches
neck pain =368,000

These are just a few general keywords. I haven’t even included all the specific keywords like “herniated disc back pain”. If we included all these specialty keywords, you could probably double or triple the categories listed above. Just click on this picture and you’ll see there are over 800 related terms just to back pain.

Now some chiropractors might say, “None of these searchers in my town!” Depending on how big of a city or town you live in, there may be only a few searchers for each keyword. But when you market to multiple keywords, you can bet all those keywords added up together make up some serious numbers. For example, my average ChiroPatients Online client has 798 keywords in their account.

Fact #2
Adwords does work to bring in more revenue. Google’s recent earnings report shows they made $7.29 billion last quarter, up 23% from this quarter last year! And guess where 99% of Google’s revenues come from? Their pay per click advertising. In addition to ads on their site, they also manage (or serve) ads on other large websites like Ebay, Blogspot.com, Youtube, and many more. So the question is why are more and more people spending money on advertising if it doesn’t work? Sure there are a few people out there who will spend money every month regardless of if they ever see a return. But in this economy, no small business is going to shell out tons of money on something if it proves to be a waste of time. And most of Google’s advertising clients are small businesses.

So given these two facts, why aren’t chiropractors making better use of Google Adwords? One of the biggest reasons is due to “bad experiences” with Adwords in the past. (Which sort of reminds me of the patient who’s uncle had a “bad experience” with a chiropractor, so he’s really scared to come in.)

Let’s look at some of the mistakes doctors have made:

1. Using XYZ yellow page company to send you “clicks”.
Clicks in general mean nothing in the broad picture. What you want is quality patients coming to your website and scheduling appointments. So these guys who promise “300 clicks a month” are really not doing much at all for you. You can hire a person in the back room to click your ads just as easy as they can.

2. Not setting a budget.
Some doctors will try Adwords a time or two, but forget (or not know how) to set a budget. Next thing they know Google is charging them $5000 for 1 days worth of clicks from China. Which bring us to the next mistake…

3. Not setting a geographical radius.
I usually set a 10-20 mile radius around the doctors practice. This means only people searching from computers inside that area can see the ads. If you’re in Paris, TX you don’t want your ad showing up in for people in Paris, France or Paris, Idaho. Plus there are bad people who will hire guys in India or Pakistan to just sit there and click your ad all day, running up your bill, which makes you stop advertising. This is called click fraud and Google will catch it most of the time, but some slip by.

4. Not cutting out bad keywords.
Sometimes you put in words like “chiropractic” but Google keeps showing your ad for searches on “Parker College of Chiropractic”, or some similar keyword. So now you’ve got to tell Google not to do that anymore by labeling that as a negative keyword. This will lower your costs since you won’t be wasting bad clicks anymore.

5. Not testing ads
Just like when you test offline ads, you should be testing Adwords ads too. In most campaign ad groups I’m testing two ads against each other. I’ll then pick the winner, delete the loser and write a new ad to start testing. This will gradually increase the number of people clicking on the ads over time, and lower your costs per click (due to complex algorithms we don’t have time to address here.)

6. Having an ineffective website.
Having a bad website is not a subjective term. Google has a complex system of analyzing your website to see if it will be pleasing to the visitor. Even if you’re not using Adwords, if you have a website they have measured it according to their standards called page rank, quality score, incoming links, internal links, number of pages, content, keyword saturation, and more. So the quality of your site can rise or lower your prices per click.

But more than Google liking your site, you want your site to convert visitors to patients. This can only be done by what’s called a landing page. A landing page will educate the visitor on why they should pick up the phone and call you to schedule now. Most landing pages are designed to fit the specific keyword the person was searching for on Google. So it works like this: person searches for “back pain” on Google.com, they see your ad that talks about back pain, they click the ad and land on a page that tells them why you are the doctor they should see for back pain. One of the biggest mistakes people can make with Adwords is by sending them to a non-specific web-page, like your homepage on your site.

Why aren’t you using Google Adwords? 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?

You need traffic to your landing pages, blogs, and website to make your internet marketing system run. Too many doctors spend thousands of dollars on a pretty website, and are very disappointed to find little-to-no traffic or very few new patients.  Remember, more Internet traffic to your sites means more new patients. And more new patients equals more profits for your practice!

There are two major categories of website traffic: paid and free. Paid examples would include Google Adwords, newspaper ads with your website address, mailings, press releases, etc. But today I want to focus just on how to get free web traffic.

#1. Post on other blogs.

One of the best ways to get free traffic and great incoming links is to visit other people’s blogs. What you want to do is look for blogs relevant to your practice. These would be blogs on health topics, chiropractic issues, medical issues, or even legal issues dealing with healthcare. For traffic purposes, it’s best to look for local blogs, but for incoming links you can look for blogs anywhere in the world.

Visit some of the blogs and find post/articles that are relevant to your practice. Comment on the post and make sure to fill out the box for your website. This should be your blog or main website, the place that you want to rank higher in Google. I would not recommend doing this for your landing page.

Remember most blogs are an ongoing conversation; so make sure you are contributing to that conversation. Do not be promotional. Leave a comment that is relevant to the topic, not an ad for your website. Most comments must be approved by the owner, and if your comment is not related or overtly promotional, it will be deleted as if it was spam.

The first time you comment, simply use your first name and website link. With following comments, you can be a bit more aggressive by using your first name and some key anchor text, like “Dr. John – Dallas Chiropractor”. They may decide to edit out your anchor text, but many blog owners will allow it, so it’s worth a try.

(You should even comment on this post below, giving me your thoughts. Remember, enter the conversation, don’t just be promotional.”

#2. Participate on forums.

Another free way to generate traffic and incoming links is to post on message boards. This strategy is more for incoming links than for traffic, however if you are in a larger city there could be many discussion boards to post on.

Go to Google.com and search for “yourtown message boards”. You should also try the terms discussion boards and forums combined with yourtown. For example, if I practice in San Diego, I would search for “San Diego message boards” or “San Diego forums”. This is for local traffic.

Make sure that when you register at these message boards that you create a resource box (sometimes called a signature box) with your website or blog link. That way you are subtlety telling the reader to visit your site.

For an incoming links strategy, find a larger, more popular message forum and post messages related to the topic. Also, if the message board is health or chiropractic related, this may provide for a better incoming link. An example site would be http://www.healthboards.com/boards/index.php as it has a high rank with Google. Incoming links from sites with higher “Google page rank” are more valuable than sites with lower page rank. And remember your resource box on these forums, as that is where you will get the incoming “link juice”.

If you want to know exactly what page ranks a site has, you can download the Google toolbar at www.toolbar.google.com

#3. In-Office Blog Promotion.

There are numerous ways you can encourage your patients to learn more and get them to revisit your content on the blog. Why would you want your current patients to read your blog articles? There are many reasons, but here are a few: become better educated, find out about other services and products your practice offers, stay informed about upcoming events like P.A.D.’s, be reminded about referral opportunities, and so much more.

The first thing you can do is print a flyer that reads “To Read The Latest Health Articles And Updates Written By Dr. Beck, Be Sure To Visit www.blogsnamehere.com” Have this flyer in one of those nice, clear standup displays at the front desk where all of your patients can see it.

Another great place to mention your blog is in the newsletter. (You are sending out a printed newsletter to all your patients right?) Simply place a similar text like I quoted above in a prominent place in your newsletter, like at the bottom or top of each page.

You should also put your blog’s website address on all your business cards. This can be used inside and outside the office to better connect with patients and potential patients. Even if you already have a website listed, add your blog address.

#4. Submit to blog carnivals.

There are blogs out on the internet that are looking for different posts to link to on their site. They will typically get quite a few blog posts and put them together into a “blog carnival”. You can submit your content rich blog posts to blog carnivals, and in return may receive free incoming links to your site as well as a chance for good traffic.

To submit to a blog carnival, go to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit.php. You’ll need to find a non-promotional blog post on your blog to increase the likelihood of a carnival linking to your blog.

#5. Outside Promotions.

If you do any outside promotions for your practice (you should be), I recommend you have your landing page address on any materials. Most people who pick up some information will not act on it right away. But later, when they start feeling worse, they’ll pick up that card, brochure, etc and go to our landing page to learn more.

When doing a talk, if you’re making an offer for new patients go ahead and do that first. But after that has been made, make sure you have a slide shown or a flyer handed out with your website information on it. This may sound basic, but you would be surprised at how many chiropractors don’t do this.

Every chiropractor wants to get new patients from the internet. As they should. It’s easy, inexpensive (compared to other marketing) and relatively easy when you know what you’re doing.

After getting a website, the first question to ask yourself is “where does my website rank on Google?”

I speak to many chiropractors who have had a website for years, but they still do not know where they rank on Google’s “organic” search results. The term “organic” simply means natural, as opposed to paid ads.

In this picture to the left, the area marked in red is the section for paid advertising. The middle section of the page that is not marked in red is the organic search results. These results are based on Google’s complex algorithm for determining which website is most relevant to the searcher.

If you pay someone to run your website, the first thing you should measure is how many new patients you are getting from it. The second thing you should be tracking is where it ranks in the organic Google search results.

To do this, go to google.com and search for the term “chiropractor”.  As long as you’re in the area you practice in, your practice should come up. You really need to be in the top 3 search results to get new patients from your website. If you’re in the top 5 results you’re doing well. Below #5 and your website is not effective at all (except for a yellow page type listing for existing patients to look up your phone number.)

If your website is not in the top 3 listing, let’s look at the top 5 reasons why?

1.) Your website is new (under 6 months old).

Google is not simply about first come, first serve. But they are a wary of new websites. I’ve worked on sites that rank highly within 2-3 months, but this took a focused effort of giving Google exactly what it wants to see. So it might take a few months for a new website to rank highly. But you should still be doing everything right that in 3-6 months it will rank. It’s easier to set things up right from day 1 than it is to go back later and fix it.

2.) You are in a very large city (1 million+). Not a suburb, which in this case is considered a small town, but your practice is physically in a city like New York, Dallas, etc.

You can still rank in the top 3 in a larger city, but everything has to be done right. The competition is obviously much bigger. Sometimes you can choose a specific neighborhood and rank well for that, like” North End Boston” or “North Dallas”.  If your prospective patients are typing in these terms when they go online, you would be better off setting up your site for that neighborhood. Also, many patients are not going to drive across miles of traffic to see you, so it may be a better use of your time and money to focus on your local neighborhood.

3.) Your site is not optimized for certain keywords.

Keywords are what people type in when searching for help. The most obvious ones are chiropractor, chiropractic, etc. But there is a long list of keywords you want to rank for. Some others would be back pain, sciatica, decompression, and so on. Many chiropractors will pay thousands to Joe Computerguy to “optimize” their websites. Problem is that Joe Computerguy is optimizing the site for 1999 standards, messing with meta-tags and met-keywords. This is website basics. To rank high on Google you’ve got to play in the big leagues and optimize using the newest technology.

4.) You’re still using an old website layout

Moore’s law says that the amount of computer technology out there doubles every 24 months. But you wouldn’t know it looking at some chiropractor’s websites. Many doctors have websites for their office that look exactly like websites we all ad in the late 90′s. Technology has drastically changed with regards to websites, making it not only easier to build a webpage but much more inexpensive. Google loves a dynamic interactive website with regularly updated information. In areas where all the other chiropractors have outdated sites, you can just straight to the top of Google simply by updating yours.

5.) You don’t have enough backlinks

Google keeps a count of the number of websites linking back to yours. The site with the most backlinks, taking into account #4 above, will usually rank first on Google. To see how many websites you have linking to you, use a free checker like Backlink Watch. Run a few of your top competitors through there too. Do they have more backlinks than you do? If so you need to start building some more.

By constantly working on these, you’ll have a website at the top of Google in no time. Then you’ll be ready for some heavy duty chiropractic Adwords campaigns.

Today I was reviewing the practice stats of a Decompression Marketing Elite client and noticed that this client was doing exceptionally well with internet marketing, getting a whopping 1873% return! The internet is one of the most cost effective ways to market your practice. There is at least a billion people using the internet in the world. And it’s growing more and more every day.

At this point, it’s not a matter of if you should be marketing online, but simply how you should be marketing online. But where do you start? What works for chiropractors?

There are literally thousands of different ways to market your practice online. But not all of them will bring you a return on your time or money spent. Some are frankly a complete waste of your time, no matter what anyone tells you.

Let’s take Google for example…

On the Google search engine there are only 21 slots on the results page (11 paid, 10 organic) for keywords. And we all know you gotta be in the top 5 listings are you are going to be overlooked. How do you go about getting in the top 5 listings?

Some “web site experts” are still claiming you’ve gotta have good meta tags, and they’ll gladly do that for you at the low price of $1000. Most chiropractors don’t have a clue what meta tags are (why should they) so this geeky language makes the “expert” sound like he knows what he’s doing.

The problem is that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important components of your website, meta tags are about a .05. Which means you could leave meta tags out and still be at the #1 spot if you did everything else right. Meta tags were hugely important in 1998, but in today’s world they are simply minor in comparison to other components.

So as you can see, there’s a ton of information to sort through and learn. The problem is you have very little time to do it. And neither do I. This is why I have developed easy to use tools for internet marketing, as well as found great services that can save you time and money.

Here’s a list of some great internet marketing resources you can use. Most are chiropractic specific. A couple are my own and the others are people I’ve dealt with in various ways in the past, meaning they can be trusted.

ChiroPatients Online – My own niche specific done-for-you website, blog and Google Adwords automated system.

Complete Internet Marketing System – A fully automated new patient internet generator that includes email, videos, blogs and more.

Automated Social Networking – A system where all your online social networking is done for you each month.

Customized Twitter Backgrounds – Semmy has the lowest prices on high quality Twitter backgrounds.

Aweber Email System – The best email system on the internet.

ChiroMarketing Academy – My membership site on how to lessons on internet marketing, print marketing, conversion and more.

Leave a comment below and tell us if internet marketing has worked well for your practice.

Are you getting quality new patients from your internet marketing? You are marketing your practice on the internet, right?

Internet marketing is a lot more than just having a website that looks pretty. Too many chiropractors rely on a brochure type online marketing to bring them new patients.

But if you’ve had one of these “brochure” sites for long, you’ll agree it’s not that effective in bringing in new patients.

The problem is you’re missing out on tons of potential new patients. More and more people are using the internet to find chiropractors. And even more people are going online to find solutions to their problems, like answers for conditions they are suffering from.

As of today, 1.5 million people in the U.S. searched for the term “chiropractor” on Google in the last 30 days. That’s just on Google (not Yahoo or Bing), and doesn’t include other similar terms like “chiropractic” which had 3.5 million searches on Google in the last month. Here are a few more numbers on Google searches in the last month:

• back pain: 4 million
• headaches (not even including migraines): 1.8 million
• Neck pain: 1 million
• Neuropathy: 823,000
• Sciatica: 623,000

So how do you get these searches to turn into new patients for your practice?

Join me for a free webinar  where a special guest and I will show you how. This webinar is for those who barely know how to use their email all the way up to those who are expert internet marketers.

Watch the replay here:

http://dcpracticetools.com/chiropractic-internet-marketing

Here’s a sneak peak at what he’s using to bring in new patients to chiropractors every day:

Blogs: Blog are great because they are fully customizable, easy to set up, and search engines like Google loves them. Load them with videos, posts and links to your social networks to get even more new patients out of a blog. Too much work for you? Find out on the webinar how to have weekly blog posts done for you at pennies on the dollar.

Email Marketing: Are you using email marketing yet? Learn how to Create and send unlimited email marketing campaigns. Target market based on opt-in demographics, patient profiles and more. Very easy to use.

Direct Response Marketing: If you’ve read this blog for long, you know I focus a lot on direct response marketing. And you should too, especially on your websites. Find out to get a complete direct response system funneling all leads directly to your phone line and/or email inbox.

Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing: How to use sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus how to have them cross marketed with your website.

Niche Marketing: In today’s over-marketed world, you’ve got to focus on specific high-response niches. Learn how to use 15 individual websites for each niche; back pain, spinal decomp, wellness, cold laser, auto accident, neck pain, carpal, fibro, and many more. Plus, create as many additional niche systems and sites as you want.

Patient Retention: Discover how to use monthly, direct response chiropractic e-newsletters written and sent to your patient or prospect lists each month. This includes new patient stick campaigns, reactivation campaigns, an appointment reminder service and much more.

Videos: How to effectively use patient attraction videos created and personalized for you.Also these videos can be submitted to over 16 internet directories each month.

Join now and be there to listen to an expert internet marketer is doing it for his clients. I guarantee you’ll learn something new because this guy has been known to use over 41 different automated patient attraction systems.

Watch the replay here:

http://dcpracticetools.com/chiropractic-internet-marketing

This is a final post of a 2 part series. The first part is Chiropractic Video Marketing, Part 1.

Now that we’ve looked at how to market you video for new patients, what kind of equipment do you need?

Here’s a list of the inexpensive equipment you need to make your video look like it was made in a million dollar studio.

Webcam or digital video recorder.

Almost any webcam will work, but I recommend a higher quality recorder if possible. I use the Flip Video Ultra which is extremely simple and easy to use. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, records up to 60 minutes, and requires no software or wires to upload to your computer. It only has a few buttons, like play, stop, power, fast forward and rewind, so it’s not complicated at all. You simply flip out the USB port and plug into your computer, then the video you just recorded will upload.

The biggest problem with the Flip Video is that the sound quality isn’t that group. It would be nice if you could plug in an external mic, but the Flip Video series does not offer this. However the new Kodak Zi8 is a small HD camcorder that does have an audio input port. This one comes highly recommended so I’ll likely be upgrading soon.

Microphone for quality sound.

Bad sound can totally ruin a good video. This is why the Flip Video mentioned above has it’s drawbacks. To get good quality sound, I recommend the low cost Audio-Technica ATR35S lapel mic. This mic is normally less than $30 and can be plugged into the Kodak Zi8.

Video Screen Capture

This type of software allows you to capture what you are doing on your computer while talking into a microphone. You might choose to record a workshop on screen with power point presentations or do a staff training video on how to use your practice software. This is the software I use to make training videos for this blog and ChiroMarketing Academy. On doctor I spoke with is using it to record his new patient class and having it duplicated onto DVD’s to hand out to his patients for referral purposes.

The software I use is called Camtasia and costs about $300. I recommend you try the 30 day free trial and see if you like it. You can find it here:

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp.

For recording with Camtasia or editing my screen capture videos, I use the Logitech USB headset which works great and is very affordable (less than $35).

Editing Camcorder Videos and Creating DVD’s

When you use the camcorders mentioned above for patient testimonials, your orientation class, etc. you want an easy software to edit those videos and/or make DVD menus/titles. While Camtasia works well for editing screen capture videos, it is terrible at handling videos imported from a Flip Video or Kodak HD. For editing and creating DVD’s the best software is Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9. This is a reasonably priced (currently less than $99) software that allows you to create DVD menu titles, edit audio and video, and much more.

It can do a lot more than you’ll likely ever need, but it’s great for non-AV people like myself. I just import the video from the camcorder, cut out what I don’t like, and export it in a format for youtube.

Using it to make DVD menus, titles, et. is really beyond the scope of this post, but if you’re interested in learning how I recommend you check out Terry Dean’s Internet Lifestyle System. In this set of DVD’s, he spends quite a bit of time on how to easily use Sony Vega for DVD production (plus there is lots of other very valuable internet marketing lessons in this set.)

A few years ago using video on the internet was pointless because most people had dial-up internet and could not play the videos. Now, the majority your patients have a high-speed connection, allowing to watch even movies and TV shows from the internet.

I follow quite a few internet marketers. In the past few years, many of them have run tests on video vs. no video on a website. Results always show the use of video to be much more profitable.

So how can you use video to grow your practice?

1. On your landing page.
This is an ideal location for a short 2-5 minute video of you talking directly to the prospect. The important thing here is building a relationship with your prospect right away, so they don’t hit the back button and go somewhere else. You should still have some text on your landing page for those who don’t want to watch the video.

2. On your blog.
Your blog is a great place to post videos. You can record videos on special upcoming events (instead of or in addition to writing your post), do short educational videos, remind them to do their home exercises, educate on your nutritional or supportive products, and more. You could occasionally post short videos of you and your family on vacation or goofing off around the house. This will build a better relationship with your patients. Some blogs are just “videocasts” where the blogger never writes and only posts videos. I don’t recommend this, since Google can only read the text on your blog Without text on your site you will loose the SEO bonus of having a blog.

3. Sites for traffic generation.
Youtube gets a huge amount of traffic daily, and you should definitely have a video there. You can upload your video to youtube.com and then embed it on your blog. I recommend using a site like TubeMogul.com. With TubeMogul you can upload a video one time, and they will distribute it out to over 10 highly traffic’d video websites like YouTube, GoogleVideo, Myspace and more. At the time of this writing, it’s still a free service.

The key to making this work is having your blog’s web address at the end of the video or running on the bottom of the screen throughout the video. Because anyone can embed your video on their site once it’s on YouTube, without your address no one will know how to find out more info about you.

4. On your main/traditional website.
If you have a static website (webpage that never gets updated) you can still post videos on it. The problem with this is that you can’t target the videos as specifically as you can on a landing page. Therefore, your script would need to include a more generalized description of you and your practice.

5. As a ‘video email’ to patients.
You can send out a broadcast email (or include it in your Autoresponder series) from your www.easyemailsystem.com account that gives a link for a video. For example, email #7 in my autoresponder could be a 3 minute office tour on video. You would write a few paragraphs in the email, then give the to the webpage your video is embedded on.

6. Workshops and special events.
You could record a new patient orientation workshop or advanced nutrition workshop to put on DVD or post on a website. If someone misses your new patient class, send them to the website or hand them the DVD you had cheaply, but professionally duplicated at Kunaki.com

In the case of advanced workshops, you could break them up into lessons and even charge the patients to watch them — six video lessons on weight loss, or a online workshop for detoxification. The first time you could do it live and record it, after that it could run on autopilot for your. You could also put it on DVD’s and sell them as a product at your front desk.

7. For staff training.
Ever lost or fired a staff member and had to retrain the new person? Does this happen over and over every year? Why not record what you teach them and make it part of your office training manual. With screen capture software and a camcorder, you could have a nice set of office training videos that would cut out 90% of your time on training a new employee.

In the next post, we’ll look at the inexpensive equipment you need to make your videos look like it was made in a million dollar studio.

Find more “how to” lessons on internet marketing, print marketing, conversion and more, at www.ChiroMarketingAcademy.com.

Google has released their attempt at social media. Many internet marketing gurus suspected that with the rise in popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook, it was just a matter of time before Google launched something of their own.

While I don’t think Google Buzz has huge new patient generating compatibility, it certainly is a place to build valuable “back links” to your website. The more links you have, the higher your SEO ranking will be on Google, which means you’ll come up higher when people search. And of course coming up high on Google certainly means getting more new patients!

To participate in Google buzz, you’ll need to have a Gmail account. And frankly you should already have a gmail account. No free email account is easier to use, filters spam, and delivers the correct email message:

Sidenote on Email Delivery: It’s will known in internet marketing that certain email carriers have a really bad delivery rate. Yahoo, Hotmail, and the worst, AOL all have a terrible delivery rate, which means they either don’t deliver your messages sent out to patients or they wrongly put your messages in the spam folder. I cannot tell you how many times doctors using an AOL email account have become upset with us, thinking we were refusing to reply to their support questions. However, we had sent them numerous emails, but since they an an aol account, it’s pointless to expect they even received those replies. My point is, if you are using these email providers, especially aol, you’re missing a lot of important emails that people are sending out to you.

Now, back to Google Buzz. Check out this short video with summarizes what Buzz is all about:

http://dcincome.com/blog/how-to-use-google-buzz-strategically/