Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Are you staying in contact with your patients through email every month?

You definitely should be staying in contact with your current patients outside of their regular visits to your office.

Regular contact enables you to educate your patients. And this helps with your patient retention.

But the biggest reason to contact your patients regularly is to give them opportunities to refer their friends and family. While this should be done in person during a normal visit, I have found that sending the patient something in writing gets even more referrals.

If every new patient that starts care in your office got a letter in the mail plus an email with education and referral opportunities, do you think you will get some referrals?

Not every patient will refer someone else, but how much did it cost you in time or money to have an email company (autoresponder) send something out?

Nothing, it’s free (other than the low cost of the monthly autoresponder!)

You can also send out emails on for special events throughout the year. This notifies your patient list that your office will be focusing on specific issues and reminds them you can help their friends and family.

Here are 20 ideas you can use to send out a special broadcast email…

1. Patient appreciation days
2. Thanksgiving food drive
3. Toys for Tots at Christmas
4. Valentines day
5. Easter celebration
6. Dog days of summer
7. Back to school kids check
8. Tax man day
9. Chiropractic Birthday
10. Practice anniversary
11. Dr.’s Birthday
12. Staff’s birthday
13. Halloween bash
14. Scratch and dent sale (or we ordered too much of x product and don’t have room, need to get rid of it this week!)
15. FAQ (frequently asked questions) about chiropractic care, decompression tables, home exercises, weight loss, etc
16. July 4th
17. Labor Day or Memorial day
18. Any holiday you celebrate that I haven’t already mentioned
19. Local sports team day, i.e. Dallas Cowboys day
20. Newsflash on chiropractic or chiropractic research
21. Any current event in the news, i.e. political race, Olympics, Hurricane relief
22. Celebrity appearance event (retired, locally known sports greats that could use the money)

Do you see the possibilities for using email marketing in your practice? You could combine this with a snail mail letter or postcard as well. For example, let’s say you send a letter in the mail to announce the event, then do 1-3 follow up broadcast emails to remind your patient base of the upcoming event.

Remember, you should not be sending mass emails out through your normal email account. Most internet companies will mark your email messages as spam if you are sending out hundreds or thousands from your person account. Better to use a company that has all these snags worked out.

My favorite system that handles all my email lists and makes it very easy to send an email is http://www.easyemailsystem.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/

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

Are you using email marketing to its fullest potential in your practice? Watch this short training video to learn about the different email systems I recommend. (This video is a portion of Bonus Lesson 1 in the ChiroMarketing Academy.)

Are you using email yet in your chiropractic marketing plan?

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 subject 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 irresistible 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.

It’s time for you to experience what the internet can do for your practice.

http://www.chiromarketingacademy.com

If you’ve been following this blog lately, you know I talk a lot about using the internet to market your practice.  We’ve talked about Google Adwords and using email to get new patients. All of these are covered  in great detail in this course.

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

Almost everyone I’ve had look at the course tells me it’s very in depth, but also easy for anyone to understand. While you’re there, check out the video where I reveal one of the “7 Advanced Strategies to Google Adwords”.

This course is a complete chiropractic internet marketing plan, where you’ll discover…

-The “magic words” you must have on your web page

-How to get you at the top of Google, MSN and Yahoo’s Search listings!

-The Seven Advanced Strategies for Google Adwords

-Why your current website could be turning patients away

-The quickest, easiest way to get Free Traffic to your web page and how to convert them to new patients

And I even share with you weekly videos to show you exactly what to do. If you’re completely knew to the internet, these are easy lessons to understand.

The first 10 doctors that order will get a free Newspaper ad (full page) I wrote that makes me a 10 to 1 ROI every time I run it (valued at $199 at least).

The first 100 doctors that order will get a s$100 off the membership price before it goes up.

Find out more now:

http://www.chiromarketingacademy.com

If you’re looking for “get-rich-quick” without any effort, this system is not for you. I don’t beat around the bush in it. It takes some effort to succeed in any marketing plan. All I can do for you is shorten the learning curve and give you the TOOLS to get started quickly.

Do you use email marketing in your chiropractic practice?

If not, you should start today.

Due to spam filters on free accounts like yahoo, hotmail, etc, not all of it will get through, but since it’s free it won’t hurt to try.

The real key to email marketing is automating it with an autoresponder. You should use autoresponder email services like easyemailsystem.com to keep in touch with your new patients once they visit your website.

Most autopresponder servives provide opt-in forms for you to put on your website so that you can collect the visitors name and email. Then, you can have a preloaded email sequence educating the prospect on what your practice offers, why they should trust you, and how you can help them with their health problems.

Email systems can also be used to communicate with current patients. You can send out broadcast emails to your patient list when you are having a special event, like a food drive or patient appreciation day. A few quick reminders that the date is coming up and why they should plan to attend.

Also, if you have a blog, you can send out blog updates via email when you make a post. All you need is a free account with feedburner.com. Then just give the above mentioned autoresponder service the feedburner info, and it will send out a “blog broadcast” to your list whenever you post. If you arrived to this post from your email, this is how that email got sent.

So how much work is it to use email?

Very little really. Make sure there is a line on your intake forms to capture emails from patients. And make sure there is an optin page on your webpages. You have your staff manually enter in the patient’s emails, which takes just a few seconds each day. This is a good start, as you will have 2 separate lists that you can customize messages to. Later, you can segment your “prospects” list even more. All the HIPPAA stuff applies to your patient’s emails too.

What I would not recommend is sending emails from your own computer or email service. This appears more like spamming to email ISP’s, so you are likely to never get your email delivered. Services like easyemailsystem.com have special arrangements with these major ISP’s and claim a 99% delivery rate.