We get quite a few questions about my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, both from those interested in buying and from doctors who are using them. Today, I wanted to let you in on the 5 biggest questions (and the answers) we get from doctors using the system.

What’s the best ad to start with?

We recently conducted a survey of all the doctors using the chiropractic ads. One question in the survey asked “Which ad has brought you the most new patients?”

The winner by a long shot was my neuropathy ad. This is not surprising since neuropathy is such a hot niche right now with one else really marketing to these patients. While not everyone will get these kinds of numbers, some chiropractors have reported 20-30 and up to 50 new patients from one single run of this neuropathy ad.

A three-way tie for second occurred between my fibromyalgia, sciatica, and numbness/tingling ads. If you haven’t tried these ads yet, I would recommend you do so soon. Also, the winning decompression ad was my “Decompression Sciatica” ad, which has been a proven winner for over 2 years now.

What about making an offer when I’m in an insurance contract, my patient have deductibles and copays, etc?

We get this question a lot from doctors who’ve never run special offers before. And as much as I wished I could answer this one directly, it’s just impossible. Every insurance company is different. Every contract with an insurance company is different. What I can say here is that if you’re in the U.S.,  Medicare and Federal BCBS do not allow offers to be made to their insureds.

Many doctors want us to give free billing, coding and legal advice in addition to the great marketing tools we provide in our kit. While I did put together some great chiropractic appeal letters a few years back, billing and coding is just not my expertise. Marketing is, and those who use my ads are happy that it is.

But I’ve seen doctors so scared of 1 insurance company that they won’t even run an ad with an offer period! Even though there are thousands of new patients out there with other insurance plans or no insurance at all. Do what is right and legal, but don’t let insurance companies cripple you’re marketing. If you’re going to let that happen, you’d be better off going all cash.

I don’t have an x-ray machine, what do I do?

This is probably the most common question we get. Since none of my chiropractic ads are built around “x-rays” or even spend much time talking about them, the answer is fairly simple: take that bullet point out.

Now its best if you can offer some type of objective test that gives your offer some value, like surface EMG, thermal scan, computerized ROM, etc. But it’s not necessary, and the ads will be ok without any mention of x-rays. This is especially the case if you are marketing to a specific niche, like neuropathy or decompression. These people just want help and they see any qualified doctor’s exam as a step in the right direction. But the more perceived value you can put in the offer, the better.

What size ad should I run?

The answer to this question will depend on the size of your marketing budget and the newspaper you run in. The Ultimate Chiropractic Ads includes large and small ads, but doctors using the large ads are getting the best results by far. The “large ads” are ready to go as an insert and can easily be printed as such once you change your name and contact information. Half page or full page is also recommended. In a large paper, sometimes a quarter page will work. Any smaller than a quarter page and you’re results are going to be slim.

What I strongly discourage is cutting out sections of my ads to make them fit into a tiny ad that saves you a few bucks. Better to spend a few extra dollars and run the full ad to bring in 15 or 20 new patients, than to chop the ad up and get nothing for your money.

I can not tell you how frustrating it is to see an ad I spent weeks writing — and proven to work by doctors for years — to have someone say “it doesn’t work” when they have completely butchered it. I’ve seen newspapers change up the ad, replace my photos, and even had doctors put their contact info in huge letters that are bigger than the ad headline itself. For example, someone just sent me a copy of my ad where they paid thousands of dollars for a full page numbness ad, then put something like this at the bottom:

Dr. Messup DisAd DC CCSMP, PSST, BS, BA
201 Anywhere St., Anytown, PA, 12345
815-999-1234
MOST INSURANCE ACCEPTED

Actually this is about to 50% scale, but you get the point. Now he still got some new patients, since the rest of my ad was still intact above this monstrosity. But he was not pleased with his response. Hmm, can anyone determine why his response was low?

Hmm, I wonder where the reader is going to look first? The headline, the copy, nope…the reader is going to look right down at the bottom of the ad, say “this looks like another stinking advertisement”, and turn the page. Nowhere in my kit, nor on my blog, nor anywhere have I ever recommended, implied or suggested doctors do this. It’s like the doctor thought to himself “well, I know Dr. Beck is the copywriter and his ads brought in over $20 million for chiros last year, but what does he know, I want to get my name out there so everyone doesn’t miss it.” Come on! My ads aren’t designed to get your name out there, these ads are designed to bring in new patients! If you want to get your name out there, take a full page ad with just your name, address and phone number.

Ok, I’ll get down off my soap box now.

There’s one question left, and it’s a big one. But since I spent so many words on the last question, this post has already exceeded it’s intended length. We’ll continue next time with the #5 question that’s most commonly asked.

If you haven’t grabbed the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads yet, click here to do so.

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.

In this video training, I show you how to select and purchase a list of local residents near your practice. Then, I take you through the steps of how to get the postcards printed and mailed out. In the video I reference “decompression patients” as an example, but the same principles apply to any type of patient as well.

(If you do not see a video here, you need to update to the newest version of flash player. Click here to get the newest version for free.)

**To access other chiropractic marketing videos, visit http://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/

In a recent decompression marketing webinar, I answered one of the most common questions I get about my ads: “Do newspaper ads still work?” This question doesn’t just apply to those with decompression tables, but to everyone in chiropractic.

Here’s a clip from the webinar where I cover the actual numbers released in a study from the Newspaper Association of America.
(If you have a decompression table and would like to watch the full decompression marketing webinar, visit http://www.decompressionmarketingelite.com)

If you haven’t picked up the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, click here and start using newspaper advertising to bring in more new patients.

No matter where you are at in life or your practice, there is hope. While we can’t sit on our haunches and “believe” success into our practice, we can be inspired by others, which should cause us to then take action.

This guy is making the best of what he has. Are you?

Imagine my surprise when, as I was getting a new ChiroPatients Online client set up yesterday, I found a new chiropractic keyword. Not another word for chiropractic, but a keyword that is a symptom your patients have.

(If you’re not familiar with the term “keyword”, you may want to read a previous post where I covered this called How To Use Internet Keywords In Your Offline Marketing.)

Here’s how it happened…

Ever so often, as we’re setting up a new client, I’ll do some keyword research using Google’s keyword generator tool. With this tool, you type in a keyword like “neck pain” and it will throw out about 700 related words people search for on Google. Plus, it will show you how many searches each keyword gets per month.

As I’m working on a list of symptoms that people would type in Google, I stumbled across an interesting keyword. The keyword list Google’s tool generates for you always includes related keywords.

However, this time a keyword popped up that was not one I had heard of before. I just assumed it was a mistake. Something Google just through in the list because it sounded like another keyword, but wasn’t really related.

But since it gets over 300,000 searches monthly, I thought it would be worth checking it out. I typed into Google’s search engine, and sure enough it’s a related keyword.

I’ve never heard it used before — not in chiropractic school, not in practice, and not by any consulting group. Maybe they teach it now in chiropractic school, but I doubt it.

So I went ahead and put the keyword into my client’s Adwords campaign. When I checked his account this morning, I was shocked to find this keyword triggered my client’s ad 10 times in his area in the last 24 hours!

Since his ad only show for a 20 mile radius around his practice, this is big. Very big because his ad is the only one that shows. No one else knows this keyword exists, therefore they aren’t bidding on it. That means he’s the first and only ad that person sees on the page. And he’s going to pay a very small amount when someone clicks his ad.

For example, a typcial search on Google looks like this. With 3 ads up top, and 8 down the side.

This of course drives bids way up, making it very costly to be in #1. But imagine if you were the only ad showing for a popular keyword. Then you get to be #1 with very little cost. And even more important, you’re the first thing people see on the page and the only ad showing.

In the interest of my clients, I can’t reveal what this keyword is. But I did confirm it’s a new keyword. By using Google’s Trends tool, it showed that the keyword just came into use in 2009. Google Trends will show you how popular a keyword is over time. And you can see if it’s trending up or trending down.

My guess is that MD’s are telling their patients they have this problem, and the patients are going home to search for it online. Here’s a screenshot of the Google Trends research.

The lesson from this is that it pays to do your research. And it definitely pays to know what you’re doing with Adwords so you can be first in the market for new keywords. Without the internet and Google’s keyword tool, I’m not sure chiropractors would even know this word was being used at this level for another 3-5 years.

If you’d like someone to handle your internet marketing for you, check out this free webinar. (We have room for only 2 more clients this month.)

http://www.ChiroPatientsOnline.com

This week, I read Jim Collins’ new book How The Mighty Fall: And How Some Companies Never Give In. I knew this book would have application to chiropractic offices as soon as I read the back cover in Barnes and Noble.

“Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.” – Jim Collins

How true this statement is. Not in a mystical, ‘think and it will happen’ kind of way. Not in a flippant statement some consultants throw at their clients for a ‘pump-me-up’.

But simply a statement of truth.

The success of your practice depends on you! Not the economy. Not the size of your town. Not where you practice. Not the government’s attempts at screwing up healthcare. Not Obama’s spending that you’ll never see a dime of.

Sure, these things make practice a bit more difficult. No one would say they don’t have an affect. But they are not the determining factor in your success.

You would be amazed at the doctors who’ve simply given up marketing their practice the last couple of years. And paid dearly for it. Some haven’t done any outside marketing in 10 or 20 years, but now find themselves forced to due to a declining practice.

Granted, most marketing out there sucks at bringing in new patients. Yet there are proven methods and strategies that work.

And the simple fact is that if you’re not marketing your services to the public, it’s just a matter of time before you’re practice will decline.

Back to the book. Collins has taken various failed companies and studied them to determine what caused their decline. Based on this he has uncovered 5 stages of decline.

Below I list the 5 stages and show how they apply to a chiropractic office. I’ve chosen to give our imaginary chiropractor a name, Dr. Decline, so as not to insinuate that all chiropractors are declining. But it’s very likely many of my readers will be in one of these 5 stages, whether they know it or not.

Hey, I admit I went through stages 1-4 in my early days of practice. Most of us do at some point. But hopefully reading this will help you to recognize it better next time.

Are you in one of this 5 stages?

1. Hubris Born of Success

Hubris is a word from ancient Greece that means overbearing pride or presumption. It’s the thing in Greek mythology that always brought down the hero. It’s what Proverbs 16:18 says well “Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall. ”

This is what Dr. Decline says at some point, “Things are going great right now. I’ve done well. Money is coming in. Why should I even pay for that ad in the newspaper anymore? I can cut back and just rely on referrals. After all, my patients refer because I’m the best doctor in town, not because of some words they read in my newspaper ad or website.”

2. Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Collins thought his data would show declining companies had become complacent and lazy, watching the world go by. But his data showed quite the opposite. He found “overreaching much better explains how the once-invincible self-destruct”

Here our doctor says to himself, “Maybe I’ll buy that new decompression table or new rehab equipment. What’s a big fat lease payment when I’m doing this well. We better hire some new staff too, to get ready for big growth. Things have been busy lately, after all. And I’ll have money because I’ve cut back on my marketing expenses too.”

3. Denial of Risk or Peril

This is when the effects of stage 1 and 2 are starting to set in. Money is still coming in, but signs of danger are starting to appear. There aren’t a lot of new patients on the books next month. The bills are starting to pile up. But the leaders deny the risk.

But our good doctor says, “Ah, it’s probably just the economy or the summer slump or insurance companies. Things will be fine. After all, I’ve been in practice over 10 years, and I’m still here, right?”

4. Grasping for Salvation

The risks of stage 3 have now become a reality, throwing the company into a sharp decline. Collins says this is a pivotal time and brings up the critical question of “how does its leadership respond?”

Does Dr. Decline grasp for a savior in the form of a charismatic chiropractic coach, a “bold but untested strategy” or any other number of magic pill solutions? What he does here is pivotal because once in stage 5 below, there is no coming back.

5. Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

“The longer a company remains in stage 4, repeatedly grasping for silver bullets, the more likely it will spiral downward”, says Collins. The leaders abandon all hope and either sell out or liquidate assets.

This is a sad state for chiropractors when this happens. Let’s hope Dr. Decline never gets here. But the truth is some chiros do.

So how do you prevent the 5 stages of decline listed above?

It’s hard to say for your particular case. But a couple of general guidelines are “don’t ever stop using marketing that works” and cut, cut, cut your expenses.

Oh, and kill that awful sin we all struggle with: pride!

Today’s featured blog post is by billy Sticker of http://the3weekauthor.com

How would you like some free and low cost marketing/advertising?  In this economy (heck, in any economy), you want to get the most “bang for your marketing-buck,” right?  Well then you need to write a book.  Having your own book needs to be a part of your marketing tool chest.

Here is a quick list of 10 reasons why:

1.    Credibility
Being a chiropractor already gives you credibility, but what sets you apart from other DC’s?  If you write a book on your expertise, it can set you apart.  All else being equal, people will choose the author (recognized expert) 9 times out of 10.

2.    Free Publicity
Being a doctor and an author can make it easy to get media attention.  Your local media is always looking for quality content for their followers (TV, newspaper, local magazines, radio).  You can write a  press release and attract media attention worth tens of thousands of dollars in free exposure for you and your practice.

3.    Patient Education
One of the most important keys in patient retention is patient educations.  A great Report of Findings coupled with a “system” of educating the patient throughout the course of their treatment is instrumental in getting a patient to follow through with care.

4.    Patient Retention
If a patient understands the reasons and benefits for continuing care, they usually will follow through with their care.  If implementing a patient education system using your book doubled your PVA, it would also double the value of the patient – which potentially means that you could double your income without seeing any new patients.

5.    Marketing Tool
When you self-publish, it is possible to get your book printed for $2-3 per book.  It usually means ordering large quantities of 1000 or more (I teach DCs how to get that price with no minimum order), but at that price, you can give them out when you do lectures or screenings.  And maybe even use them as a door prize.

6.    Referrals
Your patients will be proud and excited they go to the doctor that “wrote the book on…”  You can pass your book out to existing patients and ask them to hand it out to friends and family to generate referrals.

7.    Eliminate Competition
With your new system in place (free publicity, patient education, patient retention, marketing, and referrals), your competition cannot compete.   Becoming the recognized authority in your local market can set you above the other non-author chiropractors in town.

8.    Legacy
The older we get, the more we want to leave our mark for generations to come.  Can you imagine your great grandchildren reading your book?  Think about it, if your great grand mother or father had written a book, wouldn’t you like to read it?  Your book lives on long after your gone.

9.    Increase Profits
With new found fame, comes the potential for increasing profits – your PVA has almost doubled since you wrote your book, referrals are pouring in, and people are still calling from the TV interviews they saw you on.  Their are new patients everywhere!

10.    Fulfill a Dream
Most people, when asked, admit they have always to write a book.  And of those people, many never will.  It is a great feeling to hold your finished book in your hands – to know you have accomplished something many people only dream of.

If you have ever thought of writing a book, do it.  Fulfill your dream and grow your practice.

Author and Marketing Expert, Billy Sticker, is the founder and CEO of The Instant Influencer, which has been hailed as the fastest, easiest, and most affordable way to writing and publish a book.  He is recognized worldwide as a leading expert on the subject and regularly consults chiropractors and other professionals that want to attain global exposure and a celebrity-like following by having a book.  For more information go to http://the3weekauthor.com