Have you set up your 2012 chiropractic marketing calendar yet?

I know it’s already 2 weeks into the year, but if your holiday season is anything like mine, it takes the first week or two in 2012 to actually relax and catch up from the end of the previous year.

One of the things you must do is write down all your plans and goals on a yearly calendar.You can not just wait until you need new patients, and then figure out what to do. This is reactive marketing and you want to be proactive this year.

For years, I used a monthly calendar on the wall that my staff and I could write marketing events down and see what was coming up.

But the furthest you can see on these types of calendars is only 30 days at a time. What we need is a “year at a glance” type of calendar.

Well thankfully this year I found the NeuYear Calendar, which is a complete year at a glance. This will hang great on the wall or back of my door.

I recommend you grab one too, and start planning your monthly marketing events, promotions, ads, etc.

Here’s some benefits listed on their site, which led me to buy one immediately:

• It’s big, coming in at 27″ x 39″ this means you can see the whole year at once. “You no longer have to page through a traditional calendar (or on your small computer screen), to see the whole year. You can layout your goals for the year, set future deadlines, and clearly see the passing of time. Also, it has bigger squares so you can write more.”
• No space between months. “The week is the currency we think in, so this calendar focuses on presenting 52 weeks, rather than 12 months.”
• Brilliant aesthetics. In Making Ideas Happen, author Scott Belsky says “the design of your productivity tools will affect how eager you are to use them; attraction often breeds commitment.”
• 2 calendars in 1! It has a horizontal orientation that fits perfectly above your desk, or you can flip it over for a vertical orientation that fits perfectly on your door.

Now that I shown you which calendar I think is best, what do you do with it?

Call a staff meeting one day during lunch. Start by explaining your mission for your practice and the goals you have for this year.

Then begin brainstorming with your staff about the different types of marketing ideas they have. Make sure to give them room and freedom to talk. Even if they have a bunch of bad ideas, just write them down. You never know when they’ll say something you’ve never thought of.

My staff would often come up with many successful in-office marketing procedures from the past that I had totally forgotten about.

Once you have written down, everything you can think of, start prioritizing your list. Put a “1″ by the most effective, “2″ be second most effective, and so on.

Side note: Do not base effectiveness on what feels like it did the best last year. Feelings do not turn into dollars. Measure effectiveness based on your return on investment numbers you recorded for all marketing last year. And if you didn’t keep good records, go back and see if you can figure it up now. Remember, ROI equals the amount you brought in from a given marketing campaign divided by the money spent on it.

You might want to throw in something new for 2012 that you haven’t tried before. A few suggestions would be:

• Neuropathy or decompression newspaper ads
• Google Adwords
• spinal screenings (but with a caveat, see here)

Then begin writing on your calendar all the 1′s, 2′s, etc. spread out somewhat evenly throughout the year. So you don’t want all your ads to come out in March and have the rest of the year empty.

If you wanted to do it according to budget, you should write the amount to spend beside each campaign to. For example, on February 20th you might write “Run Neuropathy Ad for $1000 or less”. (To see how to save money on running your monthly newspaper ads, watch this free webinar.)

If a month get’s too busy, slide things forward into the next month. You should be marketing every month of the year, no exceptions.

Now you have a marketing calendar set up. Try to stick to it as much as possible. You may need to edit and change things throughout the year. That’s fine, but make sure you take a look at the big picture before making rash decisions.

Do you have any other good ideas on planning your marketing calendar? Let us know in the comments below.

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.

Are you getting the best prices when running your ads?

Some of my clients are saving thousands on ad prices each year. And
we’ll show you how their doing it.

Last week I interviewed special guest Carol Ann Smith on the subject of “How to Save Thousands On Your Newspaper Ads”.

Carol has years of experience working for chiropractors and saving them thousands in advertising prices. In 2010 alone she
helped bring in over 300 new patients from newspaper ads alone for one chiropractic office.

Here are just a few points we discussed:

To see the recorded video, go here:

http://ultimateadservice.com/start

Yours for greater success,
Michael Beck, D.C.

Let’s see how good your math is today. Prizes go to anyone who gets the right answer!

Math never was my favorite subject in school, but I got by with passing grades at least.

Well, there was that one time I made a D with Mr. Drill Sergent Teacher in college Algebra! But, I retook it later with a different teacher and got an A.

Anyways, enough about my report card. Let’s see if you can do some business math…

Nothing complicated of course. I realize most of my readers are doctors and have other skills sets.

Hang with me here and you’ll see there’s a very important marketing lesson that goes along with this math problem.

The most important number in marketing is ROI (which stands for Return On Investment.) According to Investopedia.com the technical definition is:

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

It’s the money you make back, the return, on what you originally invested. So if you put $1 into marketing and make back $7. That’s a 7:1 ROI, also expressed 700%

This is an excellent return. You made $6 that you did not have when you started. All the big box stores would love to have that kind of return on their merchandise.

Let me make the example a little more complicated.

Let’s say you want to start an egg business. But, you need to invest in getting chickens first, before you can have any eggs to sell. Your first step is to hire a chicken catcher (work with me here, it’s an example!) You find a highly recommended chicken catcher for the nice sum of $100.

You ask Mr. Chickengetter (heretofore known as CG) how many chickens he can catch for you. He says he’s not sure, as those buggers are pretty fast. But he’ll do his best. Tomorrow he comes back with 9 chickens. Now it’s time for the egg laying to begin!

Within the first month these fine chickens produce 300 organic, free-range eggs to sell to Whole Foods, who pays you $700 for them.

Wow, this makes you feel really good about your business.

Let’s throw in a little twist. Let’s say all your chickens burn up in a horrible fire after 30 days (hey, stuff happens)!

You’ve now got to go back to Mr. CG and have him catch you some more chickens. But on your way to meet him, you strike up a conversation with another farmer down the road, Mr. Poach.

He informs you that he never pays more than $5 for a new chicken, never, ever! Even though Mr. Poach’s farm is looking pretty shabby, you thank him for his good advice and go on your way.

You then hire Mr. CG for $200 this time and tell him you need a lot of chickens to restart your business. He brings back 18 chickens. You do a quick calculation in your head, while thinking about your previous conversation you had with Mr. Poach. You just paid a whopping $11.11 per chicken! You feel completely duped.

Doesn’t Mr. CG understand how tight money is after the fire? If he really cared, he would have brought back more chickens. At least 50, or maybe 70 chickens.

After giving Mr. CG a piece of your mind for charging you so much per chicken, you go back home and start producing those wonderful eggs.

After 30 days, you have about 600 eggs, which you sell to Whole Foods for $1400.

How depressing this chicken business is.  Last month you felt good about your business ,but this month you only got 18 chickens from Mr. CG. If only he could have brought you 80 or 90 chickens, you could be feeling good right now. You think to yourself, “maybe the money’s in turkey farming.”

What’s the moral of the story?

It doesn’t matter how you feel about the number of chickens you get, it’s the amount of eggs they produce that matters!

In both scenarios, the return is exactly the same, 7:1 or 700%. In both cases you put in $1 and got $7 back. It doesn’t matter how much the chickens cost, because that’s not part of the ROI formula!

How many investors on Wall Street would be ecstatic about buying stocks for $1 and selling them for $7?

Now for the true test of your arithmetic prowess. Here’s a real life example I got in email form.

“I just ran my first ad. We got 6 calls to schedule and 5 came in. I’ve already done one report and he paid $995 today. If he keeps his treatment recommendations he’ll pay an additional $500 to finish his care. 5 NP’s from a $1000 cost to run the ad is not a very good return, don’t you agree?”

Be one of the first 10 comments to get all of the following questions right and I’ll give you a free video for improving your website ranking on Google.

1. Assuming all 5 patients finish the care plan of $1495 each, what will this doctor’s ROI be?

2. Would you be happy with these results?

3. Multiple choice, choose only one:

Would you:

A. Run the chiropractor’s ad again.

B. Not run the ad again because it only brought in 5 new patients.

C. Not run the ad again because it lost you money.

Do long copy ad really work? I mean do people really read all those words?

Long copy is a rather new, untested marketing technique…right?

A few weeks ago I did a webinar for a chiropractic consulting group. Here’s just a short snippet of that webinar where I answered these questions and more.

(Sorry it’s a bit blurry. Even the best webinar recording software still has some improving to do.)

A struggling practice is typically characterized by low income, low number of new patients and small weekly volume.

This may either be a long term practice that has declined, or a brand new practice that fails to really take off.

To a doctor who’s spent years in training and thousands of dollars to obtain a degree, this can be very depressing.

And to top it off, the doctor who ends up struggling is in the worst spot for making good marketing decisions.

There are 4 areas in marketing that a struggling practice must learn to overcome if they are going to outgrow this slump.

1. Because of mistakes in the past, he’s hesitant to even use advertising. Past failures are not necessarily an indication of future failures.

The point of making mistakes is to learn from them. If you eat bad food that makes you sick, you don’t stop eating food. If you’ve used bad advertising in the past, you shouldn’t stop all future advertising either.Marketing your struggling practice is not an option, but a necessity! The key is using effective marketing.

2. He’s so desperate for a solution that he’ll risk large amounts of money to save himself from going out of business.

This means spending money with any ad rep that comes by the office. Don’t loose our good judgment when you’re face-to-face with an ad rep. Get all the information you need. Ask for a good deal. And don’t make quick decisions.

3. Thinking that advertising costs too much, so he’ll just save his money and focus on “internal marketing” and referrals.

Unfortunately, this is a downward spiral, as a struggling practice is struggling because of the lack of NEW patients.Regardless of what some consultants teach, not every patient in your office is going to refer.

That’s just being realistic. So ONLY relying on referrals from a dwindling patient base is just going to frustrate you. Get referrals plus do outside marketing.

4. Not measuring his return on investment and continuing to make stupid marketing decisions based on feelings (or bad coaching advice) instead of looking at the numbers.

This one is not just a trait of the struggling practice. Many well-off practices still make this mistake, preventing even further success.

A good marketing strategy isn’t “successful” because of how it looks, how it makes your wife fee or even how many new patients it brings in. It’s successful when it brings in a good return on investment (ROI). An ad that “just brings in 5 new patients” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you only paid $500 for the ad and each patients ends up paying you $1500 each!

If you’re in this situation, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I was even there at one point in my practice.

But you have to get over these mistakes and advertise your services in an effective way. You should pay special attention to #2 and #3 above. These are deadly.

You can’t afford to waste money on bad advertising. So if you’re currently doing any marketing that’s not been producing in the last 3 months, then stop.

Put your money where it counts, like with running chiropractic ads in the newspaper.

If I had only $500 to spend each month on marketing, and had to pick just one form of advertising…I would pick newspapers…and work the newspaper rep until I got a good ad
placement for one of these ads!

This was one of the big strategies that saved my practice from bankruptcy!

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

Every time you pay money for your marketing, you should include a special offer. (If you’re worried about how offers make our profession look, see my previous article here.) What’s the best offer price for your advertising?

When I wrote my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, I placed an example offer inside all of the ads. In most cases I set the offer price in the range between $30 and $50.

But now I’m giving different advice.

Let me explain…

What I taught before was that you should raise or lower the price slightly, adjusting for the number of new patients that you would want and the quality of the patient.

In most cases, the higher the cost the better the quality of the patient is going to be. By quality I mean more open to your recommendations, easier to convert to care, and overall a better patient. For example, it’s generally thought that to have a $49 offer for an evaluation, you’re going to find a better quality patient than you would if you ran an ad for $15.

If you lower the price to $15, you would get more patients, but you’re going to also notice a lot of just freebie seekers. A general rule is $20 or less, your quality is going to drastically drop.

If it’s a specialized ad — fibromyalgia, decompression, cold laser, neuropathy — you’re going to want to do a higher price. This is because the patient is really wanting some help and they have not been able to find it anywhere else.
But even though they are more desperate for help, they’re also more cautious of offers that sound “too good to be true”. Because they’ve had such a hard time finding help, and they’ve gone to higher priced specialists, they assume a doctor who can really help is not going to be cheap.

So that’s what I used to tell the doctors using my ads. But recent data and feedback has convinced me to adjust this recommendation.

Because doctors didn’t want to get a lot of people wasting their time, and (maybe) because they already had issues with giving a discount, many chose to go with the higher price.

Now I’m not sure if it’s the recession still hanging around, or possibly just the new economy we’re in…but higher priced offers are not working well in most areas.

Lower priced offers are working extremely well though!

So what I advise now is just to take the range down to match this new economy. Use an offer between $15 and $30 now. You’re only giving up $10- $15 from the range I mentioned above, but you’ll get lots more new patients. Which would give a huge ROI after factoring in all the patients who will start care.

So the question is this:

Would you rather have a higher priced offer with little to no new patients (low ROI!)…or a slightly lower priced offer with tons of new patients (awesome ROI)?

Hopefully you’ll choose the latter.

If you’re using my ads, make this adjustment and you’ll see even better results. If you’re not using my ads, you can try the advice I give above with whatever ads you’re using. But I can’t guarantee it will help if the rest of the ad is written poorly. The offer is important, but won’t matter one bit if no one ever gets to it in the ad.

Chiropractic newspaper ads are still working great, regardless of what the naysayers are telling you. Here’s an email I recently received from a doctor…

Hi Dr. Beck,

I ran an ad 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 multiple payment program option uncollected yet. Table now filled for next 6.5 weeks!

27 new SD patients were scheduled!” – Dr. Rich McKay

I frequently get this type of email message…

“Hi Doc. I just ran one of your ads. We got 20 calls and 11 came in for the exam. How can we get better results from the ads?”

Unfortunately this is a huge problem in chiropractic offices (or any health practitioner for that matter!)

The problem here isn’t the ad. After all, it brought in 20 new patients calls! But to have only 55% of those calling in show up for the first visit is ridiculous.

But you want to know the scary part? This is happening in almost every office around the world.

Most doctors never realize this is happening in their clinic. I know I didn’t when it happened to me.

It may not be as bad as the example quoted above, but as you know, every lost new patient is worth thousands of dollars to your clinic.

How many new patients are you missing out on just from bad calls.

Here are a few current numbers on this issue reported in our industry:

• 98% of all new patients call on the phone first to schedule.
• 50% of all lost patients are caused by poor patient handling at the front desk.
• 79% of all advertising is wasted on leads that don’t convert to new patients

Think about it.

You may have spent thousands on marketing in your office which should bring in tons of new patients and revenue, but one person stands between the patient and the doctor; how well are they doing at their job?
For years I’ve urged the doctors using my ads to track their results. Not just from the calls coming in, but the return on investment for each ad campaign run.

Yet, we all get busy and tracking often falls by the wayside.

But finally I’ve found a solution…

Recently I came across a call tracking and call recording application designed specifically for doctors.

It’s called MyDoctorCalls and it is simply the best solution to tracking ads, staff phone training. In fact, the benefits this application will provide with amazing improvements in your marketing.

While this program is relatively new, I’m hearing reports of a 10% to 50% increase in new patient appointments showing up.

Here are the big 3 benefits you will see with MyDoctorCalls:

1. Increases new patient appointments so you can get more out of what you’re already doing.
2. Tracks the results (especially ROI) of every ad or marketing campaign you run.
3. Brings in more existing patients to stay on their recommended care plan.

Let’s do the math…

If you are currently booking 15 new patients per month without call tracking and call recording, you can expect to see an increase of 2 to 8 new patients per month after implementing the technology.

The same metrics apply to current patient appointments as well.

Here’s what a few big names in the profession are saying about this program…

Daniel Murphy, DC, DABCO – “MyDoctorCalls is the most innovative tool I have seen in years!

Gerard Clum, DC – “Recording your calls with MyDoctorCalls is the single-most important thing you can do for your practice.

John Brimhall, BA, BS, DC – “Doctors can double or triple the amount of new patients they receive with MyDoctorCalls!

I recommend you check out this service immediately. They have three very affordable, customized packages for you to choose from and no contracts.

Go to this website to sign up and use the code BECK100 to get $100 off:
www.MyDoctorCalls.com/sign-up

You can even get a live demonstration of the whole program at the convenience of your own computer. I did a live tour via screen sharing software and it was quick and easy.

I got to see all the benefits this program can provide and I flat out told them they are charging way too little for everything it does.

Go to this website to sign up and use the code “BECK100″ to get $100 off.

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

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

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

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

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

Simple. It. Doesn’t. Work.

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

Why? Here’s the key:

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

Do you see it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?