As a special blog post today, I’ve included the introduction page of ChiroMarketing Academy’s Lesson 2. In this lesson, we cover how to use email to market your practice for new and existing patients.

“Today, I’m going to show you how to use email to convert more of your website visitors to new patients.

Most chiropractors do not consider email to be a very effective form of marketing. But I’m
here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth!

In fact, email marketing is so important, I chose to start ChiroMarketing Academy with it.
Let’s look at why this is…

Web research indicates only 1-3% of people will buy (the conversion) the first time they
see a well written website. For “main” websites that have more graphics than content and
tons of menu options, the conversion is less than .5%.

It’s these numbers that make email so important. By simply capturing the visitors name
and email, these conversions can rise to 5-10%, sometimes even higher.

This is especially important when you have paid to get your visitor to the website. Whether
you used pay-per-click ads or an offline method of generating traffic, you don’t want to
pay all that money just to have someone visit your website once and leave.

It can be argued that having email in your marketing plan is actually more important than
having a website. Let’s look at why this is…

1) While not every person online surfs the internet, almost everyone has and uses
email. This important fact will become very helpful in later lessons, when I’ll show
you how to use email with blogs to educate current patients and help new patients
“stick”.

2) In today’s over-hyped and over-marketed world, email builds customer
relationships. Every day our patients are bombarded with marketing messages on
the radio, TV, from hospitals, direct mail and more. To convince people to choose
you above everything and everyone else, you must give them a chance to like and
trust you. And no matter how many bells and whistles you have on your website,
you cannot build a relationship with that prospect or patient in just one visit. Even if
your website gets a small amount of traffic, you can convert more of it to new
patients simply by adding email follow-up.

3) While it’s true that your website makes the “front-end” sale, it’s the email follow-up
that provides continued education and builds the lifetime value of the patient.
As you can see, you just gotta use email when marketing your practice online.
Let’s talk about how to get your emails read and keep them out of the spam folder.
The most important element in writing an email is the subject line. The subjet line is the
headline for your email and if it’s is boring and ineffective, no ones going to even open it.
It only takes half a second for someone to hit delete on your email, or even worse hit the
dreaded spam button, forever affecting your ability to get email through.”

That’s all I could give today (otherwise paying members would hang me!). The rest of the lesson covers…
-words you should never use in your email (or it will end up in the spam box)
-how to write an irristable headline
-a copy of my email to new patients that you can use as a template
-a 22 minute video showing you exactly how to setup your email marketing software (it’s only $19 per month)

To learn more about Chiromarketing Academy, Click Here.

I spent years trying to learn the answers to these questions. I wrote checks totaling in the tens of thousands to ad reps, consultants, and marketing gurus.

What did I learn from all this time and money I invested? Very little, and then quite a bit. Let me explain…

For the first 2 years of my practice life, I struggled just to survive. If an ad rep showed up at my office, I thought I needed to spend money to make money. After all, my coach at the time didn’t seem to advise me otherwise, so I wrote checks faster than a bailout happy congress. Yellow pages, val paks, money mailers, displays, health fair booths, convention center booths, newspaper ads, gym screenings, direct mail — I even knocked on doors (at the advice of another consultant!) 2 years into my chiropractic career.

With all this busyness of marketing activity, I was bound to have a booming practice, right? Not hardly. Mostly I had an empty bank account. (Was I the only one who did this, surely no one else in chiropractic has ever done this kind of thing, right?:)

I learned very little from these people about how to get new patients. They were teaching and selling old rehashed marketing strategies that worked in the 1980’s. That’s when I figured out I needed to study marketing a bit myself, so I could spot an effective marketing approach before I spent the money on it.

Here is my short list of criteria necessary for making buying decisions. Maybe you will find it helpful as well.

1. How much hype and over-exaggeration do you feel or hear coming from the ad rep or sales person? Can they back it up with proof?
2. If it’s a chiropractic coach or guru, do they make you feel good about buying their product or do they make you feel bad, like you are pushed into the sale? (If they are pushy in their approach, how do you think they will teach you to market and convert patients? This is a big clue!)
3. How is the “quality” of new patients using their product or service compared to others? (To many chiropractors worry about numbers and volume, and not enough about quality and profitability.)
4. IS THERE A MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ON THEIR MARKETING PRODUCTS?
5. Is there a long term contract or is it month-to-month?
6. Does their product or service produce new patients right away, do they want me to run ads into infinity because it “builds awareness”?

This was my list. Maybe you have more to add. If so, don’t be shy, post it in the comments below.

5. Use blogs and email to stay in touch with patients. With today’s internet technology, you can stay in touch with your patient base very easily. E-newsletters and event promotions can be sent within minutes if you have a good email system. Blogs are also a great way to stay in contact and educate your patients about why they should stay under care. While print newsletters go out once a month, blog articles and emails can be sent 3-6 times per month. You can tie blogs to an email service and update all of your patient list whenever you post a new article on your blog. Chiropractic internet marketing is only getting easier and less expensive, so get started with this one as soon as you can.

6. Make Recalls. Every 6-8 weeks, go through your patient database and make a list of those you haven’t seen in awhile. Give your front desk person an easy recall script to follow. When she’s calling someone who’s been inactive for some time, have her say that “Dr. _____ want me to give you a call and see how you were doing?” If they say they aren’t doing well, then your staff schedules them for an appointment. Many times they will say “You know, I was just about to call you and schedule an appointment.” If they have slipped off of their current care plan, your staff just needs to get them scheduled without any questions asked. Expect about a 5-10% schedule rate from these calls. I always got better results when I gave my front desk $1 Starbucks credit for each person that shows.

7. Have a VIP list. 80% of your referrals come from 20% of your patients. What are you doing for them to make them feel special and give them more opportunities to refer? Go through your patient list and pick those patients that have referred the most patients into your office. Make sure you are sending them a gift each month “for being a great patient.” Let them know you are thankful for their referrals and give them 1-2 gift certificates to refer friends and family. I always sent small gifts with a letter each month, and a big basket of goodies in the $80-$100 range for Christmas. Don’t be cheap and think it’s not worth it to send out gifts (or that you can’t afford it). When you do the list, you’ll see how valuable those 20% really are.

8. Market other events, products and services. (I know, I said 7 but I couldn’t resist giving this 8th one.) Do you sell supplements, pillows, orthotics, etc in your practice? You should be sending letters out for special events regarding these products. For example, we did a weight loss seminar to promote our supplements once. A letter went out to all the female patients in my practice. About 10% called in to reserve a seat (seating was limited to 20). I had two speakers come in (one lady had lost 140 lbs) and talk about the products. Of the 20, 15 showed and 4 ended up spending around $800 each on supplements over the next 2 months.

1. Mail a stick letter campaign. Every patient that starts care in your office should get a letter and gift from you. It’s called a “stick” letter because it helps them stick around longer. But there is another purpose to this letter - getting referrals. There’s no better time for them to refer than when they first make the decision to get care in your office. I did this for years and got tons of referrals (and never verbally asked for one!) I mentioned how to get a copy of my stick letter a few weeks ago in this chiropractic marketing post.

2. Use health certificates. You should keep some nicely printed health passes or health certificates near your adjusting area and at the front desk. Every time a patient mentions they have a friend who has _______ or asks “does chiropractic help ____?”, you or your front desk person who give them one of these referral passes. I would recommend a type of discounted exam to be printed on these with a deadline.

3. Mail a newsletter. This is the most important internal marketing you can do. It’s easy, it’s inexspensive and it works. Not only do you stay in contact with your patient base on a regular basis, but it also can be used as an opportunity for your patients to refer their friends and family. Simply have a section of the newsletter that makes an offer to for an exam (+x-rays) to family and friends.

4. Have a patient appreciation day. Pick 1 day or 1 week a year to appreciate your patients. Make the event about your current patients, but give an opportunity for friends and family to get a checkup or exam as well. These PAD’s take some work to set up, but if you get 5, 10 or 20 new patients it’s worth it. And don’t feel bad if you don’t get 87 new patients (like the guru’s claim you should). It really is about appreciating your patients you already have. If they really feel appreciated, they will refer over the coming months. It’s the law of reciprocity.

In my next post we’ll cover the next 3 internal marketing strategies. Your assignment is to pick 3 above and start implementing them into your practice ASAP. If you are already using them, how can you make it better?

Comment below and tell us your favorite internal marketing systems.

I wished I could have seen something like this years ago when my practice was struggling. Instead I went to “rah-rah” seminars that my practice consultant held every other month (cost me about $1000 every time I went). Sure, I came home pumped up, “philosophically sound” and convinced it was all in my head (it’s true, it was in my head, put there by that consultant!) Yet my bank stayed near $0, new patients didn’t magically appear, and life pretty much sucked.

There are many lessons in this video, but the two I want to point out are…

Lesson #1. No matter how hard you got it, someone else has had it worse and made it through. Many have not only survived, but thrived and accomplished quite a bit after their struggles.

Lesson #2. No one is going to “pick you up”. Not the current president, the next president, the congress, health insurance companies, not even your patients. You got to pick yourself up, no matter how many times you fall down. If Nick can do it, you can too. Stop making excuses, get up and start getting things done.

To do this, I need your help. What types of practice problems do you need help with? What do you want more information on? What are the best ways you learn?

How can I make sure my blog is giving you the best information to help you?

I’ve put together a simple six question survey that will only take you a couple of minutes to complete. As a regular reader, you care about the information that’s published here. This is your opportunity to let me know how I can best serve your needs.

As a thank you for filling out the survey, I’m giving away my chiropractic referral stick letter system. (I’ve also thrown in a decompression version for those whom it would benefit.)

This letter is mailed to all the patients who start care in your office. In 2006, I tracked the referrals I got from this simple system and it added up to over $100,000 or revenue for my practice.

Click here to take the survey…

THANK YOU!

Blogging is about the most cost effective marketing you can do online. Running a blog is virtually free, it’s the fastest way to get you on the front page of Google and you can keep in contact with your patients on a regular basis.

Blogging is a way to post articles chronologically on a webpage. What you are reading right now is a blog. It’s simply a free software installed on this hosting account. I log in, click on “write” and start typing. If you can write an email and send it, you can run a blog.

What’s it cost? To get a domain name, it cost me $7. $17 a month for hosting. I paid a graphics person $45 to make the header graphic up top. That’s all I spent, a whopping $59.

A blog gets you great ranking on search engines. Google loves blogs because they are new, fresh content. Google prides themselves on keeping current for their search users, so they will give more credit to a blog over a traditional website that never changes. For example, I’ve only been running this blog for less than 6 months and have the #1 and #2 spots on Google for the term “chiropractic newspaper ads”.

Other sites below me have been around for a lot longer than mine…some for almost 10 years.This is for an internationally competitive keyword term. You could do much better for a local search term like “yourtown chiropractor”.

Another great thing about having a blog is that it’s very easy to regularly contact your list of patients (or even prospective patients.) As soon as I hit publish on this article, it will go into an email system that sends out an email notice to everyone on my list. I didn’t have to manually go in and email everyone. All I had to do was publish a blog article and everything was done for me. Essentially, this could be your e-newsletter to your patients.

Don’t worry if you can’t write (at one point you couldn’t adjust either). You can hire someone called a ghostwriter to do it for you. With a little practice you could write 200-400 words once a week. Or have your spouse, staff member or even your teenage do it for you.

We cover blogging, how to set it up, what to write about and how to get it ranked on the top of Google. Find out more by going to my chiropractic internet marketing course.

So why aren’t you blogging? How long before the office down the street starts blogging and jumps to the #1 spot on Google?

The video might lag a bit and takes awhile to load, but it’s well worth the watch, especially the first segment. I think the first segment really portrays the typical chiropractor’s problems…great doctor but poor marketer, not sure where the moneys going and if it’s making a good return on investment, and feeling ripped because they’ve paid for consultants that don’t help them one bit. I mean this guys paying $24k per year for consulting and about to go bankrupt. Bill sums it up when he says “Dr. Lou’s a great doctor, but he needs to become a businessman.”

Here’s the link….

Click Here To Watch

While the team did a great job at giving his office a makeover, they really sucked at giving him a good marketing plan. In the 2nd or 3rd segment Bill has Dr. Lou go into a gym (wearing his white coat, hehe) and talk to people working out. He asks them things like “Do you see a chiropractor?”, “Do you know what a chiropractor does?” and similar questions. Most of the people appear to blow him off. The problem with this line of questioning is that Dr. Lou isn’t “joining the conversation going on in the prospects mind”. Those people aren’t lifting weights, saying “Hmmm, I wonder what a chiropractor does?” or “wow, I wonder how I can get better spinal hygiene?”.

It’s more likely those gym members are thinking “Dude, I wonder if this shooting leg pain is going to get so bad I have to stop working out!” or “Is there not some kind of doctor out there that can help me get rid of these headaches so I can play with my kids when I get home?”. In other words, they are asking…”who in the heck is gonna help me with this life altering, excruciating health problem I have?”

Lest you think I’m anti-wellness or some type of ‘medipractor’, I think there is a time and place for wellness. But it’s not when your out of the office and first contacting a potential patient. Nor am I saying chiropractic is only for headaches or back pain, substitute any health problem you want in the questions above. The point is that people are wanting to get well first, then stay that way.

When you are out talking to prospective patients, what kind of conversations are you having with them? Are you talking on their level or using language that they will just tune out?

What I’d like to know is how to build value in what I offer, such that the potential patient sees that value and is therefore willing to pay FULL FEE for my exam. (Is there really a need to give away our exams for $17 or $27?).

And, do the above in a non-cheesy format. I’m not really interested in sending out free reports/sales pitches to my prospective patients. I think today’s consumer is privy to these “reports” and they know it’s just a sales pitch.

And, while you are seeking my questions; I’d like to know how to market my practice such that I’m not offending any of my potential patients. (Let’s face it, some of the chiro marketing gurus’ marketing methods are downright offending and low class). And that last statement is true, no matter how many patients were attracted with a particular ad.

So…bottom line, is there a method of marketing that is classy and effective??? (That’s the million dollar question).

Jay brings up a valid question that many chiropractors have, so I decided to dedicate today’s post to the subject.

The first issue Jay brings up is he wants his new patients to pay full price for an exam. That’s fair. You can certainly collect $200-300 per exam, I’ve done it as well as many other doctors. However, at this price level there are many prospective patients who simply will not “try” chiropractic if this is what they perceive each visit to cost. So yes, you can certainly charge full price for each exam, but how much are you loosing out on. What we have to ask ourselves is wouldn’t you rather have the patient come in at a lower cost then realize you aren’t a weird doctor, so they stay with you for life and refer their circle of friends? There’s no “need” to charge $17 or $27 for an exam (especially if you are doing well), but there’s no doubt this offer is going to lower the risk for someone to overcome the rumors they’ve heard of chiropractic.

How to build enough value in your practice to actually collect $200-300 for an exam would make this post too long. I’ll address it in a post of it’s own at a later point.

The next issue Jay addresses is “cheesy marketing” and the use of free reports. Assuming he means “cheasy” as in the overhyped, hard selling techniques and kits being sold and taught to chiropractors today… I totally agree. There is a lot of hype in some of those free reports I’ve seen.

Yes, there is marketing that is classy and effective…but not much of it out there. There’s a lot of fancy-smancy stuff that doesn’t work (pretty websites,brochures, cards), and there’s certainly lots of non-classy junk that doesn’t work (although some docs will swear up and down it does work).

This is why I decided to start writing chiropractic ads myself. If you would like to test one in your practice for free, check out this post on chiropractic ads.

When the dust settles, you look back and realized you got little to no new patients. Oh well, at least you “got your name out there”, right?

Has this ever happened to you?

I know I’ve fell for this more times than I should, especially in the early days of my practice. I remember a couple of guys came by the office selling me a spot on the “ad board at the local golf course”. It was only $600 and “all the golfers would see it in the locker room”. I wasn’t into golf at the time, but I thought this would surely bring in new patients, so it was a great deal. Six months later, I had not seen a single new patient from this ad. I called the ad company up, no working phone number. I asked a patient who played golf there if he had ever seen it in the locker room, and he said…”there are no locker rooms there, only bathrooms and there aren’t any ads in the bathrooms” (it’s a public course). Another $600 down the drain.

Not all marketing is bad. Not every ad rep is bad, but many will gladly take your money and run, not caring one bit if you make a good return on your investment or not.

When investing in marketing, make sure the marketer, coach or “guru” is straight forward with you. Do they talk about return on investment, or conveniently leave that out? Do they have a guarantee? It’s best if they have actually run a practice at some point, because then you know they’ve “lived it”.

We’ve all had our challenges marketing our practice. What I want to know is how can I help you better understand marketing? What would you like to know or learn more about when it comes to chiropractic marketing? There’s already too much hyped up marketing B.S. in chiropractic, let’s cut right to the point and talk about the issues that matter most to the hard working chiropractor.

Please leave a comment below with your most important question about marketing?