Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Have you set up your marketing plan for this year yet?

If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? Set your goals high and plan now for a breakthrough year. Big numbers are possible with the right tools. Just a few weeks ago a client told me he had received 300 extra new patients from using my newspaper ads in 2010. What would 300 more new patients do for your practice, and more importantly your lifestyle?

Here are my recommendations regarding the marketing strategies you should be focusing on for 2011.

1. Finally Do Online Marketing Right.

Chiropractic internet marketing is the strangest thing. It’s the one strategy everyone knows they should be doing, as its getting bigger and bigger every day. It’s also one of the lowest forms of marketing you can do for your practice.

But here’s the strange part: most chiropractors are dragging their feet on doing anything. I’ve seen people spend hours “marketing” on Facebook and Twitter, while their website can hardly be found on Google. Every day you wait to do it right, someone else comes along in your town and figures it out. Being ranked #1 on Google is like being king of hill, and the longer a competitor stays king of the hill the harder it is to knock them off.

So here’s what you need to do right now. Make sure your website shows up on Google’s top 5 for your area for the major keywords that patients would type in; chiropractor, back pain, headaches, decompression, etc. If you’re not there, that’s the first thing to work on. Once you’re set up at least in the top 10, add some condition specific landing pages to your website and buy some qualified traffic from Adwords to send to your site. (See my explanation in more detail in this webinar.)

You may choose to put in the time to do this or hire someone else to do it for you. If you hire someone else, please make sure they (1) know chiropractic, (2) can write marketing copy and (3) actually understand how Google works. Very few web designers understand chiropractic enough to present it to the public. And most web designers are more gifted in the technical skills of programming than in writing. This produces a beautiful site with moving spines and award-winning graphics, but wouldn’t convince your mom to come in as a patient.

Also they must understand what Google likes (hint: it’s called a WordPress site layout). Any high school kid can build a website for you. But there is very little chance it will ever make the coveted top 10 on Google. And if you, your wife, and the aforementioned high school kid are the only ones to every see your website…it’s pointless.

#2. Ignore the ‘Death of Newspapers’ Mantra

When I wrote my first newspaper ad for my practice, someone told me it was pointless since newspaper didn’t work any more. The ad brought in 17 decompression patients at the cost of $800. In 2009 my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads brought in a conservative estimate of $20 million dollars for chiropractors in the U.S. (I haven’t estimated 2010 yet, but it has to be about 5 times that based on the numbers of doctors who bought them.)

Here’s the point…

Ignore the gloomy predictions and focus on your practice now. Will newspapers disappear? Maybe they will someday. Who knows. But the question you need to ask yourself is this: “Is there a newspaper in my town?” If the answer is yes, you should be advertising there. When there no longer is a newspaper in your area, then you can join with the naysayers and proclaim that newspapers are dead. Until then, use them for all they’re worth.

Here are the best producing ads according to feedback in 2010:

• Spinal decompression
• Neuropathy (crazy numbers are being reported for these ads)
• Back pain/sciatica
• Fibromyalgia
• Migraine headaches

You can see the commonality between the above…they all are condition specific ads. In 2011, you’ll need to get even better at showing prospects how you can help them with their specific problems.

#3. Get Into Local Businesses

This year, setting up events in local businesses will bring you many more new patients. While this method has been around for decades, the same old techniques don’t work today. New tactics have been tested to educate and schedule new patient appointments from these events. One method that is working very well is using the Teacher Appreciation Program to check teachers in local schools. If you have a massage therapist on staff, they will be very useful in making connections with local businesses.

Where should you go?

The list is endless. Schools, malls, gyms, banks, Costco and even Walmart. (Yes,Walmart is possible. Look for more on this unique strategy in a few days.) Many of these places, like Costco, will have some type of community health event already planned each year.

I’ve got 4 more strategies you must use in 2011, but this blog post is getting a bit long already. Look for the final 4 next week, one of which you will be shocked I’m actually endorsing!

Use this list to and check off what you need to do.Get out a calendar and pencil in dates that ads will run, changes to be made, etc. Let’s make 2011 your best year yet.

If you’ve been putting off all the internet marketing your practice should be doing, today’s post is going to speed things along nicely. In fact, you could have everything up and running in a matter of days if you follow the advice below.

When it comes to internet marketing, there is a lot of technical stuff to know. There’s building websites, handling email, recording and producing videos, tracking statistics, and more. It can fell like you need a degree in computers just to do it all. This is where you have to make a decision. You can either do the work yourself, or pay someone to do it for you.

Most chiropractors will choose to hire someone else, and that’s a wise decision. This is what’s called “outsourcing”, finding someone else to handle the things you don’t want to.

Why Should You Outsource

There’s no rule that says you personally have to do everything in your practice. You can hire out for someone to answer the phone, clean your office, and even hire another doctor to see your patients if you wanted. It’s even easier online to hire or outsource your work.

Here are just a few reasons you might have for outsourcing your online marketing…

• You are too busy with your practice.
• You hate the technical stuff.
• You could do it, but someone else could probably do it better.
• You value your time and know that it would take awhile to do some of the technical parts.

How much is your time worth? I’ll bet it’s worth more than the $10-35 an hour you would pay someone else to do all the internet marketing for you. By hiring someone to do it for you, you bring on a “team member” that can help you build the marketing system you’ve always dreamed of. Two chiropractic systems that do it all for you are Get New Patients and The Chiropractic Dashboard.

Where To Find A Team Member

Outside of these Chiropractic-focused programs, you may want someone you have direct control over what they create and make for you, like an employee or independent contractor type setup. Here I’ve listed my most favorite to least favorite places to find a team member for outsourcing work to.

1. Friends and family

I prefer to have team members I know and trust already, instead of going out to find someone I don’t know. If you have a child or relative that’s good with webpages and blogs, they could help you put together the steps we’ve already covered.

2. Your own staff members or patients

If your current staff has the ability to help you in developing your chiropractic internet marketing plan, you should use them. Patients can also be a great source of finding help. Some of your patients will have the technical skills to help you and do so for very little pay. Be careful of the professional “web designer” though, as they are likely to charge you thousands of dollars and change your blog/landing page to their own liking.

3. Any of the following online outsourcing companies

• www.Elance.com
• www.Guru.com
• www.Getafreelancer.com
• www.99designs.com (for logo and graphics design)
• www.rentacoder.com

4. Craigslist.com

This site can be an easy way to find an outsourcer or “part time” work at home person to help you with parts of your system.

“What Can I Outsource?”

Here are just a few things you could outsource to the above companies, including the chiropractic specific ones.

• Build a landing page
• Set up your auto responder
• Setup a word press blog on your domain
• Ghost write your blog posts
• Create and install your web forms
• Copy for your landing page (most good copywriters don’t outsource their work on elance.com and other sites)

Other internet marketing tasks you might consider outsourcing are things like press releases, writing articles, blog and forum commenting and other link building strategies. A chiropractic specific service that does this is ASN Solutions. A popular general link building site is Linkvana.

As you can see, there’s plenty of work for an outsourcer or virtual assistant to do. You may like delegating your work so much that you find other things around your office to outsource like compiling patient data, making a mailing list, or doing research for health talks. Who knows, you may even cut back on staff and payroll as a result.

A few months ago I met an super-successful Australian physiotherapist that shares many of my marketing insights and values. (Physio’s in Australia have been dealing with a cash market for years…much like where our market is currently heading.)

When he told me he was giving away 214 marketing tools, a worldwide marketing with hundreds of health practitioners (including many chiropractors), and a monthly marketing CD for less than $100 a month, I thought he was joking.

Click here to see what I mean.

Paul Wright is living proof that a dream lifestyle is possible. He owns 3 successful “Get Active Physiotherapy” clinics in Australia, spends more time at home than his wife likes, never misses a school concert or sports carnival, and visits his clinics for only a few hours each week. He no longer even lives in the same city as 2 of his clinics.

He prefers spending time with his family and friends, at the beach, or at home working on teaching other health professionals how to succeed in business.

How would you like to have the last 20 years of Paul’s best posters, newsletters, articles, lectures, MP3 recordings, handouts and tools that focus on conditions like back pain, neck pain, shoulder and knee injuries and more?

You can grab all 214 of them and much more in his Profit Club Membership Program. All for a measly $67 AUD ($65 US right now) per month.

Here’s what you’ll get…

#1. Unlimited access over 200 marketing resources on the “Member Only Profit Club” website. This includes…

- 14 Medical Doctors Letters and Promotional Materials: Just cut and paste the all or part of these letters to increase referrals and relationships with local doctors.

- 24 General Business Development Items: Includes templates, clinic systems and marketing materials that will increase your clinic productivity and business results.

- 27 Business Building Audio Files: Over 20 hours of MP3s including popular recordings like The 10 Biggest Sales and Marketing Mistakes, The Get Published Interview, The Marketing Triangle and much more.

- 56 Patient and Client Newsletters: Paul and his team currently spend more than 2 days a month specifically writing these newsletters to send to patients and referrers – you can have access to them all. Simply cut and paste the text that you like to build your own newsletter.

- 30 Posters and Signs: Swipe all these high-quality, graphic design marketing materials that Paul’s Get Active has used over the years. Simply add your clinic details to these professional templates.

- 22 Protocols and Procedures: The best business protocols including front desk scripts, sales measurement tools, and cross referral protocols that will immediately increase your revenue.

- 23 Seminar Outlines, Posters and Handouts: Includes seminar handouts, outlines and posters – use these seminars to build your business NOW.

- 13 Vouchers and Other Marketing Materials: Paul’s most effective, creatively designed coupons and flyers that have brought thousands of dollars into Get Active over the years. Simply inserts your contact info and use.

- 5 Financial Tools to Track your Health Business Success: Paul has included here a few of his favorite excel spreadsheets that he uses every day to measure the success of his clinics.

Component #2. Each month you will be mailed an interview with Paul on CD, including topics like: marketing, website search engine optimization, getting more clients, increasing doctor referrals, leadership, customer service and other current issues and opportunities for health care businesses owners.

#3. Marketing Forum. You can instantly access a forum where you and other like minded health professionals can share marketing ideas and thoughts that will benefit everyone – including request signs and posters that our design team can add to the site.

How much for all this?

Only $67 (AUD) a month – and you can cancel at any time. That’s $65 US right now, but the exchange rate changes vary daily so sign up now and lock in this low price.

Join here:
http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?af=1247001

Join now and grab these Three Special, Limited-Time Bonus Offers: Special Bonus #1: Your choice of one of Paul’s “Million Dollar Health Professional” DVDs. (Valued at $125 AUD)

Special Bonus #2:FREE CD Interview “The Biggest Mistakes of Health Business Owners –How They are Costing You Thousands” with Health Business Coach – Anthony Capiaghi, D.C. (Valued at $75 AUD)

Special Bonus #3:FREE CD “How Your Website Can Make Money for Your Health Business” with Web Guru – Derek Recsei (Valued at $75 AUD)

Click Here to Get Everything Listed Above

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

P.S. Paul has a 30 day money back guarantee so you really risk nothing by joining now. Grab the 214 resources, monthly CD’s, marketing forum and the 3 bonuses now at:

http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?af=1247001

Is Google Adwords an effective way of doing chiropractic marketing? And if so why aren’t more chiropractors using it?

Before we go in depth with this question, let’s look at some basic terms. Adwords is a program by Google whereby you can place your ads on their search engine. When people type in certain phrases, called keywords, your ad will show up. If the person clicks your ad, they are taken to the site you have linked up with the ad. You only pay if someone clicks your ad (hence the term “pay-per-click advertising” is sometimes used) and do not pay if your ad only shows up but is not clicked. You bid a certain price for your ad to show for a certain keyword. So I might bid $2 for the keyword “back pain”. To keep it simple, we’ll say that if I’m the highest bidder my ad will show first. If the second highest bidder, my ad will show second, etc. (It’s actually a bit more complex than this, as you can beat out the highest bidder by having a higher click-through rate.)

So with that introduction, let us discuss the use of Adwords for chiropractors.

Fact #1
It’s a proven that your potential patients are on the internet, looking for solutions to their problem. Just look at how many searches Google’s keyword tool show occurred in the last 30 days in the United States:

chiropractor = 450,000 searches
back pain = 1.8 million searches
sciatica = 301,000 searches
neck pain =368,000

These are just a few general keywords. I haven’t even included all the specific keywords like “herniated disc back pain”. If we included all these specialty keywords, you could probably double or triple the categories listed above. Just click on this picture and you’ll see there are over 800 related terms just to back pain.

Now some chiropractors might say, “None of these searchers in my town!” Depending on how big of a city or town you live in, there may be only a few searchers for each keyword. But when you market to multiple keywords, you can bet all those keywords added up together make up some serious numbers. For example, my average ChiroPatients Online client has 798 keywords in their account.

Fact #2
Adwords does work to bring in more revenue. Google’s recent earnings report shows they made $7.29 billion last quarter, up 23% from this quarter last year! And guess where 99% of Google’s revenues come from? Their pay per click advertising. In addition to ads on their site, they also manage (or serve) ads on other large websites like Ebay, Blogspot.com, Youtube, and many more. So the question is why are more and more people spending money on advertising if it doesn’t work? Sure there are a few people out there who will spend money every month regardless of if they ever see a return. But in this economy, no small business is going to shell out tons of money on something if it proves to be a waste of time. And most of Google’s advertising clients are small businesses.

So given these two facts, why aren’t chiropractors making better use of Google Adwords? One of the biggest reasons is due to “bad experiences” with Adwords in the past. (Which sort of reminds me of the patient who’s uncle had a “bad experience” with a chiropractor, so he’s really scared to come in.)

Let’s look at some of the mistakes doctors have made:

1. Using XYZ yellow page company to send you “clicks”.
Clicks in general mean nothing in the broad picture. What you want is quality patients coming to your website and scheduling appointments. So these guys who promise “300 clicks a month” are really not doing much at all for you. You can hire a person in the back room to click your ads just as easy as they can.

2. Not setting a budget.
Some doctors will try Adwords a time or two, but forget (or not know how) to set a budget. Next thing they know Google is charging them $5000 for 1 days worth of clicks from China. Which bring us to the next mistake…

3. Not setting a geographical radius.
I usually set a 10-20 mile radius around the doctors practice. This means only people searching from computers inside that area can see the ads. If you’re in Paris, TX you don’t want your ad showing up in for people in Paris, France or Paris, Idaho. Plus there are bad people who will hire guys in India or Pakistan to just sit there and click your ad all day, running up your bill, which makes you stop advertising. This is called click fraud and Google will catch it most of the time, but some slip by.

4. Not cutting out bad keywords.
Sometimes you put in words like “chiropractic” but Google keeps showing your ad for searches on “Parker College of Chiropractic”, or some similar keyword. So now you’ve got to tell Google not to do that anymore by labeling that as a negative keyword. This will lower your costs since you won’t be wasting bad clicks anymore.

5. Not testing ads
Just like when you test offline ads, you should be testing Adwords ads too. In most campaign ad groups I’m testing two ads against each other. I’ll then pick the winner, delete the loser and write a new ad to start testing. This will gradually increase the number of people clicking on the ads over time, and lower your costs per click (due to complex algorithms we don’t have time to address here.)

6. Having an ineffective website.
Having a bad website is not a subjective term. Google has a complex system of analyzing your website to see if it will be pleasing to the visitor. Even if you’re not using Adwords, if you have a website they have measured it according to their standards called page rank, quality score, incoming links, internal links, number of pages, content, keyword saturation, and more. So the quality of your site can rise or lower your prices per click.

But more than Google liking your site, you want your site to convert visitors to patients. This can only be done by what’s called a landing page. A landing page will educate the visitor on why they should pick up the phone and call you to schedule now. Most landing pages are designed to fit the specific keyword the person was searching for on Google. So it works like this: person searches for “back pain” on Google.com, they see your ad that talks about back pain, they click the ad and land on a page that tells them why you are the doctor they should see for back pain. One of the biggest mistakes people can make with Adwords is by sending them to a non-specific web-page, like your homepage on your site.

Why aren’t you using Google Adwords? Leave a comment below.

You need traffic to your landing pages, blogs, and website to make your internet marketing system run. Too many doctors spend thousands of dollars on a pretty website, and are very disappointed to find little-to-no traffic or very few new patients.  Remember, more Internet traffic to your sites means more new patients. And more new patients equals more profits for your practice!

There are two major categories of website traffic: paid and free. Paid examples would include Google Adwords, newspaper ads with your website address, mailings, press releases, etc. But today I want to focus just on how to get free web traffic.

#1. Post on other blogs.

One of the best ways to get free traffic and great incoming links is to visit other people’s blogs. What you want to do is look for blogs relevant to your practice. These would be blogs on health topics, chiropractic issues, medical issues, or even legal issues dealing with healthcare. For traffic purposes, it’s best to look for local blogs, but for incoming links you can look for blogs anywhere in the world.

Visit some of the blogs and find post/articles that are relevant to your practice. Comment on the post and make sure to fill out the box for your website. This should be your blog or main website, the place that you want to rank higher in Google. I would not recommend doing this for your landing page.

Remember most blogs are an ongoing conversation; so make sure you are contributing to that conversation. Do not be promotional. Leave a comment that is relevant to the topic, not an ad for your website. Most comments must be approved by the owner, and if your comment is not related or overtly promotional, it will be deleted as if it was spam.

The first time you comment, simply use your first name and website link. With following comments, you can be a bit more aggressive by using your first name and some key anchor text, like “Dr. John – Dallas Chiropractor”. They may decide to edit out your anchor text, but many blog owners will allow it, so it’s worth a try.

(You should even comment on this post below, giving me your thoughts. Remember, enter the conversation, don’t just be promotional.”

#2. Participate on forums.

Another free way to generate traffic and incoming links is to post on message boards. This strategy is more for incoming links than for traffic, however if you are in a larger city there could be many discussion boards to post on.

Go to Google.com and search for “yourtown message boards”. You should also try the terms discussion boards and forums combined with yourtown. For example, if I practice in San Diego, I would search for “San Diego message boards” or “San Diego forums”. This is for local traffic.

Make sure that when you register at these message boards that you create a resource box (sometimes called a signature box) with your website or blog link. That way you are subtlety telling the reader to visit your site.

For an incoming links strategy, find a larger, more popular message forum and post messages related to the topic. Also, if the message board is health or chiropractic related, this may provide for a better incoming link. An example site would be http://www.healthboards.com/boards/index.php as it has a high rank with Google. Incoming links from sites with higher “Google page rank” are more valuable than sites with lower page rank. And remember your resource box on these forums, as that is where you will get the incoming “link juice”.

If you want to know exactly what page ranks a site has, you can download the Google toolbar at www.toolbar.google.com

#3. In-Office Blog Promotion.

There are numerous ways you can encourage your patients to learn more and get them to revisit your content on the blog. Why would you want your current patients to read your blog articles? There are many reasons, but here are a few: become better educated, find out about other services and products your practice offers, stay informed about upcoming events like P.A.D.’s, be reminded about referral opportunities, and so much more.

The first thing you can do is print a flyer that reads “To Read The Latest Health Articles And Updates Written By Dr. Beck, Be Sure To Visit www.blogsnamehere.com” Have this flyer in one of those nice, clear standup displays at the front desk where all of your patients can see it.

Another great place to mention your blog is in the newsletter. (You are sending out a printed newsletter to all your patients right?) Simply place a similar text like I quoted above in a prominent place in your newsletter, like at the bottom or top of each page.

You should also put your blog’s website address on all your business cards. This can be used inside and outside the office to better connect with patients and potential patients. Even if you already have a website listed, add your blog address.

#4. Submit to blog carnivals.

There are blogs out on the internet that are looking for different posts to link to on their site. They will typically get quite a few blog posts and put them together into a “blog carnival”. You can submit your content rich blog posts to blog carnivals, and in return may receive free incoming links to your site as well as a chance for good traffic.

To submit to a blog carnival, go to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit.php. You’ll need to find a non-promotional blog post on your blog to increase the likelihood of a carnival linking to your blog.

#5. Outside Promotions.

If you do any outside promotions for your practice (you should be), I recommend you have your landing page address on any materials. Most people who pick up some information will not act on it right away. But later, when they start feeling worse, they’ll pick up that card, brochure, etc and go to our landing page to learn more.

When doing a talk, if you’re making an offer for new patients go ahead and do that first. But after that has been made, make sure you have a slide shown or a flyer handed out with your website information on it. This may sound basic, but you would be surprised at how many chiropractors don’t do this.

Today I was reviewing the practice stats of a Decompression Marketing Elite client and noticed that this client was doing exceptionally well with internet marketing, getting a whopping 1873% return! The internet is one of the most cost effective ways to market your practice. There is at least a billion people using the internet in the world. And it’s growing more and more every day.

At this point, it’s not a matter of if you should be marketing online, but simply how you should be marketing online. But where do you start? What works for chiropractors?

There are literally thousands of different ways to market your practice online. But not all of them will bring you a return on your time or money spent. Some are frankly a complete waste of your time, no matter what anyone tells you.

Let’s take Google for example…

On the Google search engine there are only 21 slots on the results page (11 paid, 10 organic) for keywords. And we all know you gotta be in the top 5 listings are you are going to be overlooked. How do you go about getting in the top 5 listings?

Some “web site experts” are still claiming you’ve gotta have good meta tags, and they’ll gladly do that for you at the low price of $1000. Most chiropractors don’t have a clue what meta tags are (why should they) so this geeky language makes the “expert” sound like he knows what he’s doing.

The problem is that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important components of your website, meta tags are about a .05. Which means you could leave meta tags out and still be at the #1 spot if you did everything else right. Meta tags were hugely important in 1998, but in today’s world they are simply minor in comparison to other components.

So as you can see, there’s a ton of information to sort through and learn. The problem is you have very little time to do it. And neither do I. This is why I have developed easy to use tools for internet marketing, as well as found great services that can save you time and money.

Here’s a list of some great internet marketing resources you can use. Most are chiropractic specific. A couple are my own and the others are people I’ve dealt with in various ways in the past, meaning they can be trusted.

ChiroPatients Online – My own niche specific done-for-you website, blog and Google Adwords automated system.

Complete Internet Marketing System – A fully automated new patient internet generator that includes email, videos, blogs and more.

Automated Social Networking – A system where all your online social networking is done for you each month.

Customized Twitter Backgrounds – Semmy has the lowest prices on high quality Twitter backgrounds.

Aweber Email System – The best email system on the internet.

ChiroMarketing Academy – My membership site on how to lessons on internet marketing, print marketing, conversion and more.

Leave a comment below and tell us if internet marketing has worked well for your practice.

The neuropathy niche is becoming bigger and bigger. Millions of people suffer from this debilitating condition. But questions remain about who will provide the most effective treatment for these suffering patients.

Even the U.S.government realizes neuropathy is becoming a difficult problem to solve. The Neuropathy Association, Inc. states “The National Institutes of Health spent $35 million in 2004 and $29 million in 2005 on peripheral neuropathy research.”

People are looking for answers. And drug companies are not providing a solution.

This is why it’s an opportune time for chiropractors to teach neuropathy patients how they can help.

When I first starting writing neuropathy ads, I wanted to get across to the reader that chiropractors had a solution. One that has been proven to work in many cases. This educational aspect is still a part of the neuro ads I write each month for the NeuropathyDr program.

As the doctors who’ve ran my ads can attest to, the neuropathy market is a wide open niche. There is just so little competition out there right now. Which means you’re message can get through faster, easier and with very little expense compared to other niches (like decompression, fibromyalgia, etc.)

Here are just a couple of success stories doctors are getting with my neuropathy ads:

“Wow!  My first Neuropathy Ad brought in 12 new patients… about $5,000 and only cost $700 to run.  My practice is recovering and so is our cash-flow.” -  Julian Chipley, DC

“We have 37 new pt. scheduled from the ad.” -Dr. Chad Keeney, D.C.

“With Dr Beck`s ad I had 21 NPs and many of them have since referred other patients to us. The ROI thus far exceeds 20-1, and the tab is still running. The difference in my opinion is his copywriting skill…If I had his program 10 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this, I`d be fishing off my tropical island someplace! – Dr Ren Halverson

Just like spinal decompression was all the rage 5 years ago, the neuropathy niche is only going to get bigger and bigger. Don’t be the last chiropractor in your town who taps into this market of patients.

No doubt there are neuropathy patients in your town right now looking for help. They’re tired of being pumped full of drugs to stop the pain. They want a natural solution.

The only question is how are you going to reach them and what treatment protocol will you be using?   While you don’t need to spend $100k (like you did on chiropractic school) or get some fancy equipment to help neuropathy patients, you should know something about what’s been shown to be effective.

Many chiropractors are including other modalities like the Rebuilder, nutritional supplements and rehab into their neuropathy treatment plans.

But which of these really work and which don’t? And how do you build a care plan around it?

Join Dr. John Hayes, Jr. and myself on a free webinar Thursday, June 17th, at 1:30 PM EST as we discuss a “Mid-Year Update” on the neuropathy niche and what you need to be doing right now to get more neuropathy patients.

Register for the free webinar here:

http://www.dcpracticetools.com/neurowebinar.htm

Whether the American people wanted it or not, the U.S. Congress has passed President Obama’s long awaited healthcare bill. But what does it mean for us chiropractors? How will it affect our lives?

Many of these questions will take time to answer, since the bill is massive and it’s doubtful the word “chiropractor” is mentioned too often. But for those who take insurance, your office will have to spend more time and money to figure out the changes you’ll need to make.

Let’s look at 2 certainties that will come of this…

#1. If you are successful in your business, you’re taxes will go up.
To pay for this new plan, the payroll taxes of “the rich” will be raised. Guess who the rich are? Any bum who wants to make more than $200k per year.

Does your dream of a successful practice entail you making more than $200k per year? It should. Most of us did not go to chiropractic school and go into mountains of debt to make $50k or $60k per year.

#2. You’re going to spend a lot more time and money trying to figure out these new laws.
Do you think it’s going to be easier or more difficult to bill insurance after this plan takes affect? Is Medicare currently more or less trouble than other insurance billings?

Your staff is going to have to go through training seminars to get updated. You may even need to hire more staff to keep everything compliant. SOAP notes will have to be top notch (after all we got big brother watching over everything now.) And guess who is going to pay for all these “upgrades” your practice will have to make? The government? Congress? No, you are!

So let’s summarize what we are going to get out of this “historic” bill. Higher taxes and more work. Oh joy, everyone loves those two things, right?

Lest you think I’m all doom and gloom, let me say there is hope. In other countries chiropractic has survived fine without health insurance coverage. Our Australian brothers have been doing it for years. So chiropractic will not end as we know it.

But many chiropractors will suffer. Mainly because they waited too long to counteract the negative effects of this legislation.

“So going to an “all cash” practice is the way to go, right?”

No, an all cash practice is not going to work for everyone. If you’ve been around awhile and have some established marketing strategies that are working, you could make the switch. But there’s a little secret to running a cash practice none of the gurus ever mention. A cash practice requires a lot more new patient flow than an insurance practice.  And since most chiropractors are terrible at marketing…well, they are just not in a place to risk it all. (Of course being terrible at marketing is not an excuse to stay that way. Learn how to do it right, or pay others to do it right for you.)

Plus insurance is still good in some states and not much of a hassle to work with. So if you’re practice heavily relies on insurance, wait and see what’s going to happen. But it’s likely things will get worse in the future as the government gets their hands on more and more private industries.

So how do you overcome the government takeover of health insurance?

First you’ve got to make more than you did previously (and get a really good CPA). To make more money in your practice, you’ll need to grow it by getting more new patients. And doing so now, not in 2014 when this plan fully kicks in. If you wait until then, you’ll be completely behind the curve ball. And the “chiropractic recession of 2014″ will be much worse than the one you’ve been through these past 3 years.

Second, you’ll need to trim the fat. That means getting rid of old marketing tactics, like blindly spending money on “brand” marketing. You don’t need to “get your name out there”. You need to get more new patients. Now. Next month. The month after that, and so on.

Also, you’ve got to get rid of equipment that’s taking up space and isn’t making you money. Get more patients on your spinal decompression table now (see Decompression Marketing Elite) and stop letting it collect dust. If you aren’t going to market it properly, sell it and use the space for something else. Throw out the passive therapies and get some active rehab going.

Plus you should add other non-healthcare based services. Get a cash-only weight loss program going. Add massage therapy. Build up your PI practice. (Look for our new PI marketing course in the next few weeks.) Sell supplements and do nutritional consulting.

“Is there anything good about Obamacare?”

What, you don’t think the added expenses, higher taxes, more stress, more paperwork, more government control, and having to hire more employees is a good thing?

Well, I guess you could look on the bright side. At least more people will have health insurance since we are all now forced by law to carry it. But that may be like getting excited that Medicare covers x-rays, except not for chiropractors. Or getting excited about more high deductible insurance patients, except most of them don’t have the money saved to cover the high deductible.

But I digress. Let’s focus on what you need to do now.

Your 2010 Game Plan

In summary, here’s what you need to do:

Get more new patients now. Through newspaper ads, the internet, referrals, TV, radio, MD referrals, attorney referrals. Get one stream up and running now. Then start another. Then another.

Cut the fat. Run your practice lean and mean. Use the equipment or loose it. Have your staff do the work or cut them. Add more cash services to your practice.

Go now. What are you waiting for? Choose one of the above and do it now.

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.

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/