Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Which months are the best to advertise in? Is December or January really a waste of money?

Everyone has an opinion about when to market and when to be a scrooge with your marketing dollars. But there are certain months I have discovered are great to advertise in.

Let’s look at a few conditions…

For auto accident ads, you want to advertise during the times of the year when the weather has an effect. It’s been shown that during icy periods, rain, or fog, more people will get into accidents. This doesn’t mean you can’t run a PI ad during good weather, but after bad weather is best.

If you live in warmer climates, then you would want to run ads that affect people who are more active like golf, etc. Contrary to popular belief, patients do see chiropractors in the summer and you should be marketing then.

It’s much smarter to run ads and keep your marketing up during the summer, than it is to listen to consultants telling you to take the summer off from advertising.

Does the consultant to take off all summer from his marketing to chiropractors?

There is a period of time where you should curtail your marketing, but it’s a short period of time at the end of the year. That’s means the last two weeks of December you should not have a new ad coming out.

Not because people are spending more money at this time, the money is low, and all that fluff.

It’s simply because people are less likely to be considering their health during this time, based on their travel schedule and the things that they have going on. Readership in most newspapers drop during this time too.

No matter what any consultant or colleague says, that’s the only two weeks you should not consider having a live ad in the paper. (That right, all other Holiday weeks are great.)

I would definitely recommend having an ad the first week of December though!

January is typically a decent month only because a lot of people will be considering their health and their new year?s resolutions then. I don?t find January to be the best month, in my experience, but it certainly is a good month for marketing.

Funny story on January.

One consultant I had said that I should market hard in January, because that’s when everyone is “thinking about their health”.  Another consultant I had later said “no, absolutely don’t spend any money on advertising in January, because that’s when everyone’s deductibles start over!”

Who’s right?

Who cares! What month do you not want new patients to come in?

Really, every month is a good month for marketing, even December.

Don’t get the idea because I said don’t advertise in the last two weeks of December you should take the whole month off.

A lot of chiropractors make the mistake of saying…

“I’m going to take December off from marketing. And nope, can’t market in June and July because kids are out of school. November? Well shucks, there’s Thanksgiving, so I better not spend money there. April has Easter weekend, May memorial day weekend, and September has labor day weekend so I can’t market in those months either…..”

You get the picture. Don’t be like this fool who always has an excuse why they aren’t marketing their practice. That mentality is going to hurt your practice.

I’ve known doctors who’ve done these stupid things and have struggled just to keep the doors open. All because they put their marketing on halt for awhile. They thought their referrals would keep them going through these “non-advertising months”.

But where do most referrals come from? They mostly come from new patients or newer patient who’ve started care in the last month.

With all that said, there are some months that have proven to work better for me and my coaching clients.

The best months I’ve found to market were in the middle of the spring and fall (March and April, October and November). I can’t say for certain why that is. I have certain theories, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that’s when I’ve found my ads have the best response.

This does not mean that you should only run your chiropractic ads during these months!

It only means you should have more ads running than the normal during these times. November has always been a very good month for me, even with the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.

But this is not a hard and fast rule. I only mention it to you so you can test it. One year July was my biggest ever months when it comes to collections and new patients.

Can you guess the two most important numbers to track for a chiropractic practice?

“How many ya seeing doc?” If you you’ve been to some of the hyped up chiropractic seminars, you might think it’s the number of weekly patient visits. After all, you’ve probably been asked this question more times than you’d like to hear.

What does the number of visits per week really tell you about anyone’s practice? It doesn’t tell you how many of those visits are free or discounted. It doesn’t tell you the doctors overhead. For all we know, he could be seeing 300 per week and barely paying the bills. Some gurus even teach that the question “how many you seeing?” actually should be answered with how many patient visits you “see in your head”. Which means make up any answer you want.

“How many new patients you seeing?” New patients are a very important number to track, but the number you see per month doesn’t always tell the whole story. If someone does a spinal screening and gets 30 new patients in for a free exam, is this equal to 30 referred new patients who paid full price? No. Therefore, the importance of new patient totals can vary depending on the quality.

“What are you collecting?” Indeed, the monthly amount collected is a critical number to know for your practice. One that many chiropractors would do good to focus on more. But still, what does this tell you about the “health” of someone’s practice. If someone collects $100,000 a month, you may think he’s a very wealthy doctor. But what you don’t know is that he spent $110,000 to make that $100k. What collections don’t take into account is the overhead a practice has: the rent, payroll, marketing costs, leases, taxes, etc.

“Okay, so what are the two most important numbers? Just tell me already!”

The #1 most important number to know for your practice is the net profit for your practice. Also referred to as the “profit margin”. Simply take the total amount collected and subtract your expenses (doctor’s salary is not counted as expense for this exercise.) Now what % of your gross collections each month is your net profit?

It doesn’t matter if you had 100 new patients last month…or see 1000′s of visits per week…or collected $236,000 last month…if you’re net profit sucks. How many slow months can you make it through with only a 10% or 20% profit margin?

Now granted, you may not want to tell everyone this magic number. But if someone was to ask you, you better know it to the penny for last month…even if you don’t say it out loud. I’ve consulted with too many chiropractors who tell me “we’ll, I think it’s about 50%”. I reply “you think?” Then they give me some excuse about their bookkeeper or account not doing the books yet. Look, we’re not talking about taxes or anything to do with the IRS. We are talking about the actual amount of money that goes into your pocket each month. If you don’t know this number, you’re truly flying blind.

The second most important number is your return on investment for your marketing or ROI for short.Your marketing ROI is just a measure of the profit margin on your marketing dollars. So if you spend $1 on marketing and get back $5, this is good. If you get back $10 or $15 this is excellent.If you aren’t tracking your ROI, you can’t say for certain how well an advertisement performed. Simply measuring the number of new patients that came in from an advertisement is not adequate in comparing ads either.

Let’s look at some actual case studies. Here’s part of an email I received a couple of weeks ago…

Dr.Beck, we put the ‘sciatic don’t live it’ insert on Monday to 2 zipcodes that went to 6,000 readers, we got 3 patients ,all over 80 years old, who all paid. we took in $4,500, which was a 18:1 return. I want to crawl, walk, then run , as I tested the waters, with your ad’s. So far we are pleased, and will put out same ad to more zip codes to a different area next week. Pleased to say each of our 80+ year old NP’s ,noticed improvement with chiropractic and are happier citizens and telling friends. Thanks for the blessings.

Based on the above case study, did this doctor do well or not? You could be  thinking “only 3 new patients, that sucks big time!” Or you could say “gosh Dr. Beck, $4500 isn’t that great. I mean that barely pays for my salary!”

But we are missing an important peice of this case study. How much did he actually spend to get that $4500 in his bank account? Here’s the part I left out…

…for a cost of only $250 for the ad…

Wow! For a cost of only $250, he made back $4500. That’s an 18 to 1 return…for every $1 spent he made back $18. Realize he said “will put out same ad to more zip codes to a different area next week.” He can now roll this out to other zipcodes and bring in quite a bit more than his salary. But if he was only tracking the number of new patients that came in — which was only 3 — he may throw in the towel and decide to never run another ad.

Always measure your marketing ROI. Measure it for each ad you run and the monthly total of all your marketing.

Here’s a list of 14 ways to improve your conversions with a new patient. The purpose of this article is to give you a quick checklist of items you can run through for your office.

The first time through, see which ones you are already doing in your office. Then start implementing one or two new ones at a time until you have them all in place.

A conversion simply means that a new patient has agreed to your plan of care, whatever that plan is for your office. (If you don’t put together any type of care plan for your office, go and do that right now!)

Ok, so let’s get started…

1. Use Marketing That Brings In Quality New Patients
For this one, we’re going back to the source — where you get the new patient. If you’re giving away free exams to anyone you meet at the mall, you’re going to have a pretty crappy conversion rate. Examples of quality marketing involves condition specific chiropractic ads, internet marketing, referrals, doctor referrals, etc. These people are often times very pre-qualified and will be eager to begin care so they can feel better.

2. Have a Nice Reception Area
The first thing a patient sees when they walk in is the waiting room/reception area. How clean and nice does yours look? Cheap poster frames, toys laying everywhere, stains on the carpet, unpleasant music, and bad smells can all contribute to the new patient second guessing their decision to come in for an appointment. Make it nice. Spend a little money to ‘spruce it up’ a bit.

3. Great Front Desk CA
The new patient should be greeted right away, made to feel at home and be told what to do next. They are worried about what’s going on and what they might have to pay. Your front desk CA should make them feel very comfortable and reassure them that they’re in the right place. This is HUGE! Whatever you do, do not allow your staff to ignore a new patient who walks in.

4. Don’t Overwhelm with Paperwork
Have you gone through your paperwork lately and condensed it to what is absolutely necessary. You only need paperwork that you are going to use or that is required to protect you and your office legally. Don’t pile up pages and pages of questions that you’re not even going to look at or use during the patient’s care.

5. Do A Good Consultation
Make sure your consultation comes off caring and considerate. Listen, really listen, to the patient’s concerns and ask them questions that guide them along. This should take an average of 7-10 minutes. Keep the consultation focused on the patient and not the weather, their friends, or other time wasters. Also, don’t make a bad impression by telling the patient the “rules” of how your office works, that they’ll have to come back for life, or anything overwhelming like that.

6. Perform An Exam With A Purpose
Everything in your exam should be geared toward giving you good information, teaching the patient, or protecting yourself from legal matters. In 99.9% of cases, there is no need to do the 3 hour exam we learned in school. You should also express to the patient the concern you have with problems you’re finding.

7. Measure A Finding (X-ray, etc)
You need to have some objective findings to cover with the patient and base your care on. (I recommend taking an x-ray or set of films for multiple reasons.) If you don’t have an x-ray make sure you are doing some objective test that the patient can see. This is going to be very important in your report of findings.

8. End Day 1 Correctly
I recommend not doing care the first day, except under certain circumstances. Tell the patient what to expect on their next visit and to see your front desk CA on the way out. There are a lot of opinions on this, pretty strongly on the side of not adjusting on Day 1, but I find they aren’t based on any hard evidence. The argument is that patients won’t come back if they get “fixed” on day one. (You could also argue argue a patient won’t come back because they didn’t get adjusted on day one.) I measured it in my practice for years, doing care on some patients on Day 1 and not for others on a case by case basis. My findings? It didn’t matter that much. Many patients who got adjusted on day 1 stayed with me for years and paid thousands in care. It’s really depends on the patient’s mindset when they walk in more than anything. Test it yourself and measure it. Too many people say adjusting on day 1 doesn’t work, but I think they base this on emotion and not actual numbers.

9. Collect Information and Schedule
Your front desk CA should now collect the payment for today’s visit, ask for insurance information (if you take insurance) and schedule for the next visit. These 3 things should be done a specific way. You could do everything right up until this point, but if the patient leaves with a bad taste in their mouth from the checkout, they may not come back.

10. Do A Proper Greeting On The Next Visit
Have your staff welcome the patient back as if they are someone who’s been coming in for a long time. Make the patient feel like part of the practice.

11. Give A Short, No-Fluff Report
Again, this one is somewhat controversial in chiropractic. Some chiropractic coaches will tell you to give a long winded speech here to hard sell the patient on care. It’s not necessary if you did what you should have on Day 1. A report should not take longer than 10 minutes. Tell them what you found. Tell them if you can fix it and a BRIEF summary of how you’ll do that. Layout their care plan and explain why it takes time. Go over the cost (this is best if your staff does the financial part). If insurance is involved, have that prepared and covered by your staff at this time.

12. Get Paid For What You Do
Have a simple, easy to follow payment plan for your patients. At least 2 options of payment, 3 at most. Remember, very simple. I have seen so many complex systems that almost force the patient to “go home and think about it.” For me, this means prepay with bookkeeping discount, CareCredit, or weekly payments.

13. Adjust the Patient
This is where you get to adjust and perform your other services with the patient. Whatever you do with them, remember they may be a little timid and unsure of what’s going on. Consider the patient’s level of comfort with what’s going on and be considerate. I’ve seen too many chiropractors scare people off with performing a rough first adjustment. The doctor never knows that was the reason the patient didn’t come back, but I can assure you it has happened in many an office.

14. Schedule Future Visits
It’s best if you can get your patient’s care plan scheduled out for the term it runs. Sometimes this is called a MAP, after the Parker Seminars famous “Multi-Appointment Plan”. It’s best to do this on paper first, hand a copy to the patient. Your staff can put it in the computer system later.

Do you ever think about why you became a chiropractor? And not just a chiropractor, but the owner of a chiropractic business?

Some docs, if they will admit it, will say it was for the money. And there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you still provide good patient care. Many say they did it to help other people, and that’s a noble reason. But you can help people working as an associate.Why take the risk of running and owning your own practice?

When I first went to chiropractic school, I wanted to help people and make a ton of money. But 2 years into practice, I was doing it for a bigger reason.

You see, two years out of school I went through a really hard time in practice. I was only averaging 3 new patients a month and collecting about $3000 – with an overhead of $15,000!

Describing how bad things were would not even do it justice. I was working late almost every night, doing 2-4 spinal screenings per week and holding talks for audiences of one – both with awful results.

At times like these in your life, you really begin to see clearly. Your priorities are stripped bare, and you can’t kid yourself anymore.

That’s when it hit me…

It wasn’t the patients who were suffering. They were still getting quality care and couldn’t tell the practice was suffering (we clusterbooked then, so they thought we were busy!) Even if my practice folded, they could just go on to another chiropractor, so it didn’t really affect them.

It was my family. My pregnant wife who was struggling up three flights of stairs each day in our new “apartment home” – sometimes having to lug over 50lbs of grocery with two toddlers in tow. It was our baby girl, who at her 3rd Christmas, could never know how much our hearts broke because we couldn’t buy her gifts. Or when my son was born, extended family brought food for a gift, since our fridge and pantry were completely empty.

You see, my family were the ones suffering the most. While my patients were great (and I loved helping each one of them), they didn’t really care wether I made $25,000 income that year or $200,000. No one cared about the success about my practice more than me and my family. We depended on it. It’s what put food on the table.

It became totally clear to me then. I owned and ran a chiropractic business so I could do something I loved — helping others get well –  AND make a good living for my family’s future, hopes and dreams. I obviously loved chiropractic, but I certainly wasn’t fulfilling the second part…giving my wife and kids what they deserved. A better home with a yard, food, vacations and peace of mind.

That was the turning point. I knew I had better learn to run a business successfully and grow my practice. Because it wouldn’t matter how much I loved chiropractic, or how good an adjuster I was, if I couldn’t keep the doors open. And most important of all, my family depended on it.

I realized the biggest problem I had was that my practice was missing good marketing strategies. Marketing that brought in a high return on investment, quality new patients, and consistent growth month after month.

Have you every seen a struggling practice that had too many quality new patients? I haven’t.

You know how to adjust. You know how to be a good chiropractor. That’s not the problem. Learning a new technique or a new billing procedure will only get you so far. Marketing is the key. Without it any practice will struggle.

Below are the reasons I run my own business. What are your reasons?

It’s time for you to experience growth in your practice, even during the recession.

http://www.chiromarketingacademy.com

If you’ve been following my blog lately, you know that I’ve been releasing a sample of the content from the new ChiroMarketing Academy. The Academy is a membership site unlike anything else in chiropractic. Each month, you’ll have access to private lessons and training videos that teach you how to…

- Bring in more quality new patients using print and internet marketing, referrals, internal promotions, and more.
- Convert patients to care using non-forceful techniques. (It took me years of trial and error to discover these!)
- Keep patients for life with very specific high retention strategies and tactics.

I even captured a short video that gives you a sneak peek inside the membership site. You can see for yourself exactly what’s included in ChiroMarketing Academy.

Check it out now:
http://www.chiromarketingacademy.com

If you’re wondering why the membership is such a low price right now, it’s only the first 50 (only 45 remaining) members who join that will get a special charter membership worth 50% off. With over 1000 chiropractors reading this today, I can’t say how long the remaining 45 memberships will last. It could be a week or it could be less than 24 hours. Once all the charter memberships have been taken, the price will double and likely double again in 6 months (since new content is added every month.)

Either way, I advise you to at least take a look at what’s been added to ChiroMarketing Academy and see how the new strategies can help you grow your practice. There’s a 30 day guarantee on your membership, so you risk nothing by giving it a try.

Yours for a more successful practice,
Michael Beck, D.C.

P.S. As a special bonus for those who join ChiroMarketing Academy, I’ve thrown in The Renegade Marketing Letters…proven marketing letters for referrals, reactivations, and event promotions. With these easy-to-implement marketing tools, you can start seeing new patients this week and easily get back your investment in ChiroMarketing Academy immediately.

http://www.chiromarketingacademy.com

One of the things that always annoyed me when I went to coaching “teaser” seminars is that I couldn’t get a good feel for what the program was really about. With that in mind, I want to completely pull back the curtain and answer some of the questions chiropractors have about the “Maverick Marketing Coach” program at http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

“How quickly can I start seeing results? How fast can I expect a return on investment?”

If you are one of the first 6 to join, you’re going to see a return on your investment very quickly. This is because you’re going to get a “quick start”  60-minute phone call where I will focus on giving you strategies you can implement immediately.  These strategies will enable you to more than recoup the investment you made in the coaching program.

We will thoroughly discuss your marketing plan, your goals and where you see opportunities in your area. We can also focus on any weak spots you may have in your practice regarding new patient conversions or retention. The call will be recorded* and you can download it for future study.

With a client yesterday, we found one small change he could make this week that will result in at least $10,000 more in the next 30 days… and this particular change didn’t even require getting more new patients.

If you don’t make the first 6, we can still cover these topics because we’ll be talking by email almost every day. So the answer is, it’s going to be different from person to person, but I think you should recoup your expenses (plus some) in the first month. And there’s no long term contract since it’s only month to month coaching. If you aren’t getting what you want out of the Maverick Coaching Program, you can cancel at any time.

“What makes you different from the last coach I had?”

First of all, I’m going to focus on what you really need…not a “system” of reports, procedures, and manuals.

It’s about helping you get more new patients, better conversions, and longer retention with patients. Also, I’m going to give you a new patient marketing tool each month, which when applied, will easily bring in thousands more dollars to your practice. You’ll have access to me through daily emails (Mon-Thursdays), monthly conference calls to improve your marketing skills, and so much more.

I want to stress that this coaching program is not one where you are required to go to seminars every month, made to feel guilty because you don’t have the same stats as one of the “big guns”, or given a long list of procedures to follow. Most chiropractic coaches or consultant push you to do their system (which is often outdated) and hound you until you do it their way. That’s not what I’m about.

Maverick Marketing Coach is about you and what you need to get to the next level.

“How much time is this going to take each month?”

As little or as much as you want it to. You won’t have to take calls when you’re seeing patients or plan your month around a seminar.

Sending an email takes less than a minute. The marketing tools I’ll give you are easy to implement and use (most of them you could even hand off to a staff member if you wanted). The conference calls are only once a month, and if you can’t make that you’ll get a CD/DVD mailed to you. And the “Laser Call-in” days are optional — if you want 20 minutes of phone consult, we can talk about what you want on that day.

“What type of chiropractor is this coaching program for?”

Having been a part of some unhelpful coaching groups in the past, I would always feel misled when I joined and later found out their program definitely wasn’t for me. It always sounded great at the seminar, but months later I’d find out the real truth behind those questionable procedures.

I don’t want you to misunderstand what my coaching entails. Here’s what it’s NOT about…

- It’s NOT a large “rah-rah” pump you up seminar every month.
-NOT for chiros who want to see 1000 visits per week by giving away care and sacrificing time with family
-NOT coaching for doctors who want to spend hours and hours discussing chiropractic philosophy or metaphysical concepts.
-NOT a quasi-religion where we sit around in a circle chanting or meet up once a year for a secretive boot camp.

If you’re into those things, that’s fine, but you definitely don’t want to join my coaching program.

With that said, lets look at who’s going to benefit the most from Maverick Marketing Coach. The program is for chiropractors who want…

-to attract a steady flow of new patients month after month
-to seriously grow their practice and take home more profits
-more time off from work and more time with family, fun and travel
-to start getting paid the way a chiropractor deserves
-better new patient conversions and longer retention
-less stressful practice, and better, faster systems

“How do I know if my area is taken?”

This program is area exclusive, which means you won’t be competing with anyone else when you’re using the breakthrough strategies I give you. The areas already taken include…

Southwest Ft. Worth, TX

Greater Lewisville/Flower Mound, TX Area

Edmond, OK

If this is what you’re looking for in a coaching program, I urge you to move quickly and secure your area. With ads running in Dynamic Chiropractic and The Chiropractic Journal in March, I can’t promise you that your area will be available if you procrastinate.

To join, visit http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

If you’ve been following my blog posts over the last 2 weeks, you know there needs to be a serious change in how chiropractic coaches help practices flourish.

Because of this, I’ve designed a very limited coaching program that works in competitive areas…without high pressure closing scripts, expensive seminars, or long term contracts.

What chiropractors need right now, during this tough economy is reliable, consistent new patient marketing tools. That’s the #1 priority. In addition to that, chiropractic offices need effective strategies to convert and keep those new patients.

That’s why as a member of the Maverick Marketing Coach, you’re going to get the latest marketing tools I create for my clients, month after month. These are easy-to-implement marketing tools you can plug and play into your practice to bring in more new patients and keep your patients longer.

Here’s what you’ll get as a client…

-Marketing tools you can implement immediately in your practice to bring in more quality new patients — that includes effective strategies for referrals too.

-Personal, one-one-one mentoring and coaching via daily email where you can ask any questions you want about growing and running your practice.

-Live small group and webinars where I show you how to use the dependable marketing tools. (Which means you won’t have to spend money and travel to coaching seminars anymore!)

-Laser focused call-in days to quickly drill down and solve any questions you have. Call when you want during the allotted times so you don’t have to miss patient appointments or family time.

(You may be thinking this is all a bunch of hype and you’ve it all before, because most coaches ‘sell the sizzle but don’t give you the steak’. But if you take a close look at http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com — whether you choose to join or not — you’ll agree what’s offered here is unlike anything else you’ve ever seen chiropractic.)

“No Long-Term Contracts”

The coaching runs month to month, there are no long term contracts to sign or yearly commitments to agree to. If you aren’t getting what you want out of the coaching program, you can cancel at any time.

Being a member of Maverick Marketing  is also area exclusive, which means you won’t be competing with anyone else when you’re using the breakthrough strategies I give you.

And for all the doctors who’ve picked up my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, you’re going to get credit towards the coaching program.

The first 6 doctors who take action and join will get a bonus 1 hour phone consultation to lay out a step-by-step plan for your practice. This is a $500 value and will likely be gone quickly.

Due to the fact I’ll be spending quite a bit of time and energy on each client, this program is only open to 50 chiropractors total.

Check it out:
http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

This is not a canned, one-size-fits-all approach to coaching. And if you’re looking for a large “rah-rah” pump you up seminar every month or want to spend hours discussing chiropractic philosophy or metaphysical concepts, my coaching program isn’t for you.

What I can do is give you reliable strategies and tools to grow  your practice, the support to easily implement them, and direct one-one access to me for tailored, customized coaching.

http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

Have you ever joined a chiropractic coaching group, only to find out you’re “required” or strongly encouraged to travel to a seminar every 6-8 weeks?

You know, the type of events with a few hundred chiropractors where they say scripted “cheers” and get really excited.

Not the once a year seminar where you can sometimes find decent content being taught by a variety of chiropractors.

I’m talking about the seminars run by coaching groups called “trainings” or “meetings”. The energy is high. You get really pumped up when the coach parades his “big guns” across the stage and tells you how good they are doing. Then you come back to the office on Monday with your notes and try to implement everything you learned.

This happened in multiple coaching groups I was a part of. I was told that coming to seminars every month would keep me on top of my game. Give me the latest strategies. (Which really meant sell me the latest outdated marketing products.)

I’ll never forget the last “coaching” seminar I went to…

The $2000 Tour of San Diego

A few years back, me and a buddy went to one of the “trainings”  as part of the coaching program we were in. You had to attend at least 6 of their seminars a year, or you were kicked out.

We chose San Diego as one of the six to attend since I’d never visited there before. So I bought my plane ticket and reserved the hotel room, plus took money for food. It totaled up to over $2000.

But it was worth it right? Because I was going for 3 days of intensive training on how to grow my practice!

Unfortunately, we were late to the event, and missed all the “awards” that were passed out. After lunch, we grabbed our notebooks, a big cup of coffee, and arrived early for the breakout groups of 20-30 doctors.

Then it happened…

The coach walks in and asks to start numbering ourselves off (you know, like you did in grade school). I looked at my friend to see he had gotten the same number as me, and noticed he was trying his best to keep from laughing at this joke of a “training”.

The coach then told us we were going to get up in front of our group of 30 doctors and “role play our scripts”. I was a bit nervous. Not from the thought of speaking, but because I hadn’t memorized that script perfectly yet.

As we moved into another room, I looked for a seat by my friend to sit down. Strange..I couldn’t find him anywhere. Then it hit me…that sorry dog had skipped out of the session and gone up to his room!

I ran out, called him on his cell phone, and through much laughter, we decided to rent a car and see the sites.

By the time the weekend was over, we’d spent more time sampling the local food than we had in the seminar. When I came home and told my wife I’d paid $2000 to sit in a seminar for 5 minutes, she was more than ticked off!

Here’s my point…

Traveling out of state every 4-6 weeks can get very expensive when you’re not even recovering your investment. Most of these events end up being nothing more than rah-rah, cheerleading events or an excuse to pitch you more outdated marketing products.

Imagine the marketing you could do with the money spent going to seminars every month. That $2000 I spent going to San Diego would have brought in 15-20 new patients to my practice. Once I realized that, I never went to another of those seminars again.

(This post concludes the 5 Chiropractic Coaching Lies series. Thanks to all the doctors who’ve sent me positive comments. I only received one negative, so that tells you how these issues really strike a chord.)

It’s time for a change in the profession and
how coaches help chiropractors succeed.

On Tuesday Feb 24th, you’re going to a see a very exclusive coaching program (limited to only 50 chiropractors) that’s unlike anything else in chiropractic. There’s a huge focus on getting new patients, converting them to care, and keeping them as your patient. The first 6 clients to join will get a very special bonus.

And for all the doctors who’ve picked up my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, you’re going to get credit towards any coaching. Look for the blog post early Tuesday morning.
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Have you ever been told you shouldn’t have to “go out” and get new patients? You just needed to “plug the holes in your leaky bucket” or get more referrals?

This is a lie peddled by some chiropractic consultants, coaches and gurus in our profession. And its very frustrating to think of how I struggled in years past, and others out there are struggling, as a result of this lie.

Why We Fall For It

Well, it’s no secret that chiropractors lack good business and marketing training in school. We all want to build that low stress, high income, self-sustaining-referral-only practice.

Plus, many of us have tried (and been burned) by bad marketing in the past. So the belief that you don’t need to market for new patients outside your practice sounds great.

Also, “who wants to spend money on marketing when you can get referrals for free?”

The Reality of A Chiropractic Practice

I’ll agree, not having to spend time and money marketing to new patients sounds like a good idea. But this type of thinking ignores 2 very important things…

#1. Not every patient you have is going to refer. Not even 50% of them will refer. If 20% of your patients refer that’s exceptionally well.
(That’s one patient out of every 5 referring someone in.)

#2. Most patients will not stay with you for life. (Even if a coach convinces you that his system will have them stay for years, and all his doctors have a PVA (patient visit average) of 998 visits.) That’s just human nature. Do most people stay at the same job all their life? Drive the same car? Live in the same house? Sure, some do. But my point is most do not.

So if only 10-15% of our patients are going to refer, and the majority of your patients won’t stay with you forever…how are you going to grow your practice?

The Truth About New Patient Marketing

Here’s the truth about growing your practice that most chiropractic coaches and consults will never tell you…

Attracting new patients is the most important element of a successful practice. It’s ‘numero uno’! Nothing else compares to it — not procedures, not office flow, not report of findings, not retention, not education.

If it’s so important, why do chiropractic coaches not provide easy-to-implement tools to help you bring in more new patients?

Because most chiropractic consultants are still two decades behind in their marketing strategies!

What you need are new marketing strategies that your prospective patients haven’t seen before and that connect to them on their level. Things like email messages, blogs, newspaper ads with emotion (and without the hype), direct mail letters with empathy, etc.

These are what I’ll be spending 2009 focusing on. What about you?

Before I go, I do want to state that referrals are important. And they are much easier to get than most chiropractors make it out to be. But you still want to be marketing as much as possible outside your practice.

Think about it for just a minute.

Do you personally know a chiropractor that never spends a dime on marketing, internally or externally, and only gets new patients from referrals? And I’m not talking about for just one month, but month after month, year after year.

I have heard quite a few doctors say this…”Most of my patients are coming from referrals. I’m going to kick back on spending money on marketing.” Then the next 3 months the referrals dry up. Why? Because most referrals come from new patients in their first 2-4 weeks.

So the more new patients you bring in through outside marketing, the more you get referrals internally. Now that is reality and it can be accomplished in your practice.

—-

This is blog post #4 in a five part series entitled “5 Lies Chiropractic Coaches Tell“. You can read the first 3 parts here, here and here.  Here’s what some readers have said about this series so far…

It’s great to know that I was not the only one who thought some of the coaching stuff wasn’t on target for how I wanted to practice. Excellent article. Thanks — Steve

Excellent. Fell for them all. I don’t mind so much, I needed very basic biz training. It served it’s purpose.
Love what you are doing here…. — Jeff

It took me the biggest part of 29 years and going through at least 10 management firms to affirm everything Dr. Beck is saying is TRUE. Listen up people! This guy’s been around the block and knows what’s around the next corner. Everything he’s saying is 100% on target.– Jack

Having seen all of the different groups over the past thirty years you are right on. Growth in practice depends more on effective marketing in my opinion than most any thing else.–Rick
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Have you ever been told you needed to see a large number of visits per week to be successful in practice?

While it’s not going to make some of the coaches who read my blog happy (yes I do look at my subscriber list), I’m going to let you in on a little secret…

You Don’t Need High Volume To Be Profitable In Practice

I’m not certain where this got started.

It was likely back in the early days of chiropractic, where chiropractors only did adjustments and everyone charged the same price. Under those conditions, it makes sense that the more visits you see the more you’ll collect each week.

But to believe that today is simply false.

Every doctor has different prices, different therapies, different equipment.

You see, most chiropractic coaches lead you to believe that high volume (or at least more visits) is the way to go. Some even make you feel bad about your practice if you’re not seeing what the top doctors in their coaching group are doing.

Here are some of the ways the high volume lie is used by coaches to make doctors feel guilty…

-when you do an event like a P.A.D. or dinner workshop and you don’t get 60 new patients from it

-when you’re not seeing 1000 visits per week many will say you aren’t “sacrificing enough” or “you don’t have a big enough mission yet”

- if you’re not getting “x” number of referrals per week like the big guns are, you’re not “on purpose”

Number of visits per week is only part of the practice success formula I teach. Dollars of income per patient visit is a much more telling number.

Here’s how you cut through the fluff and find out how these high volume doctors are really doing. Ask them for their average collected amount per visit. Not there “estimated care plan” numbers, but the real deal. I’m about to reveal to you the secret formula no high volume coach wants you to know….

$collected each month divided by your monthly patient visits= average $ per visit

Wow, eye-opening isn’t it. (But believe it or not, this stat is does not show up  on any of the coaching group’s statistics forms I’ve been a part of in the past.) Turns out most high volume doctors are making less than $30 per visit, some even lower than that.

Funny story about coaching groups and high volume real quick…

One group I was a part of did put your monthly collections number on your name badge at the seminars. They did it as a mental boosting type of thing, where you were excited to show up and get your new badge when you hit a certain goal.

The thing I really like about it was this…

No one could come up and B.S. you about their practice. A guy could come up and talk all day about seeing 300 a week, but if his “badge number” was lower than mine, his advice went in one ear and out the other. Turns out high volume guys weren’t the mentors everyone looked up to in this group, it was the “high income” guys instead.

I’ve seen moderately high volume and I’ve seen what most would consider low volume. Guess which practice was more profitable, had lower stress, and allowed me to take time off?

When I was “higher volume”, I was was flat broke making $17 per visit because I was giving away care for free. At the lower volume, I was getting $90 per visit. Maybe I wasn’t making as huge an impact on the planet as the guys seeing 1000 a week, but you know what…I was making a huge impact on the patients I did see each week.

And I was making the biggest impact of all…being there as a father for my children!

What’s really going on here is that these coaches are imposing their values, their goals in life, they beliefs on you. If you really want to see 1000 visits per week, that’s great, go for it. But don’t believe the lie that you can’t be happy without seeing high volume, or that high volume equals high income.

It urns out the low volume practice fit my lifestyle better. I wanted to help people get well, make a good living, and spend time with my family. None of those things require high volume.

What about you? What do you want out of your practice? If you want a high volume practice, tell us why? Let us know in the comments below.