Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Do you ever look back and think about the mistakes you made in your business? Do you have wonder how much money those mistakes cost you?

In this post, I’m going to cover 3 big mistakes I made early on in marketing my practice. If you’re just starting a practice or buying a new practice, you should avoid these mistakes like the plague. Even if you’ve been in practice awhile, it may be time to brush up on a few of these points.

Mistake #1. Not Measuring ROI

My first year in practice, I blew so much money on marketing that didn’t work. If an ad rep stopped by, and convinced me that his paper/mailer/service was good enough, I would give it a try. Then I would see how successful it was based on the number of new patients it brought in. So what was the mistake in this? I gave no thought to the quality of patient, their ability to pay (ever had marketing bring in all unemployed patients?), the referrals they generated, etc.

Here’s the point…if I just measured the marketing based on new patient numbers, I wasn’t getting the real picture. I would not be able to judge whether I should run this type of marketing again or not. What you need to do is measure every dollar that comes from that marketing piece in a simple spreadsheet. For more details on how to do this, check out my previous post “How Did Your Last Marketing Piece Do?”

Mistake #2: Not Understanding Lifetime Value

This mistake is closely related to mistake #1. Lifetime value of a patient is a phrase that describes how much money that patient will generate over time in your practice. (For those of you who don’t like to talk about patients as a monetary value, get over it , you’re running a business here. There’s a clinical aspect to practice and a business aspect. We’re talking business here.) How do you measure this? Take all the money you have collected in your practice, and divide by the total number of new patients you’ve seen. You could go back 1 year or 10 years, but the further you go back the more accurate the numbers will be. Some doctors also refer to this as the “case average” value.

Why do you need to know this number? Because it tells you how much you can spend to get a new patient.  If your lifetime value is $5000 for every new patient that walks in the door, how much would you spend to get that person as a patient? I’ve heard coaching groups say “Never, ever spend more than $100 to get a new patient!” Where does that number come from? If I spend $300 to get a new patient that brings me $5000 in revenue, isn’t this a good business model? Yes, not everyone spends $5k, some spend less, some spend more. That’s why it’s an average. Figure your lifetime value of a patient and start using that number in your decision making.

Mistake #3: Not Focusing On Condition Specific Marketing

This one will bring the controversies in chiropractic out. No matter, it cost me a ton of money early on in practice and it’s important I tell you about it. If you don’t think chiropractors should market to or even talk about symptoms, you’re in big trouble financially. People have problems. People want solutions to their problems. You can’t sell new patients on wellness. You can teach them about it once they are patients, but you aren’t going to gain most people’s trust trying to sell them something they don’t want.

Now this doesn’t mean you can only adjust that area of complaint, only take x-rays there, etc. That’s not what I’m talking about. But you should market to new patients that have specific problems, then analyze and take care of them the way you see fit. I tried to market and sell my patients wellness, and while I did convert a few patients to care, it almost bankrupted me. Most patients just thought I was speaking a different language and not listening to them. Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to correct this mistake. Educate your patients about wellness once you have them getting better and they are on their way to correction.

While these aren’t the kind of mistakes that get you into trouble with the law or your state board, they are stupid business mistakes that can cost you thousands of dollars and even put you into bankruptcy. Make sure you don’t make them in your practice and you’ll be much more successful because of it.

You can either spend money to market your practice, do all your marketing for free (not recommended) or do a combination of both (highly recommended). Here are 7 marketing strategies that that work well and cost little to no money:

1. Send a “stick” letter

In the marketing world, campaigns that help people stay with you and reduce ‘buyers remorse’ are called “stick campaigns”. You can use this strategy in your practice by simply mailing a series of customized letters that reinforce the patient’s decision to start care and continue to educate them on why they are coming in. This is also a great time to offer referral cards or gift certificates. Simply state in the P.S. of the letter that they can give these certificates to any friends and family for the next 14 days for a free (or $25, 35, etc) spinal exam and x-rays.

2. Condition of the Week board

Get a small to medium sized dry erase board with a small easel. Each week have your staff write a different condition of the week on the board. Also write “Ask for details” or even “Ask Dr. Smith for details”. When patients see this, many of them will say “I didn’t know chiropractic helped with migraines?” What are they really saying? They know someone with migraines and just realized you may be able to help them. This is when you (or your front desk) asks them if they know someone with migraines, then promptly hands a gift certificate to this person for their friend/family member to use.

3. Use Testimonials

You should be collecting and using testimonials in your marketing. Include a copy of your best testimonials in your stick letter. Put them in your newspaper ads. Some doctors frame them and have a wall of testimonials in the adjusting room. You can also have them in a binder in your new patient area. Do testimonials really work? Are they worth the trouble? Ask anyone that uses them and they’ll certainly assure you that 1 key testimonial is what made the person call their office. Even if you can’t use testimonials in your state (rare), you can use them inside your office!

4. Send a monthly printed newsletter.

I’m all for saving time and money. In fact, my internet marketing course for chiropractors teaches doctors how to use technology to communicate with and attract new patients. But nothing beats a printed newsletter sent by snail mail. A newsletter keeps you in touch with your patients on a regularly basis, educates them further on chiropractic, and reduces the likelihood of competitors ‘stealing’ them. Marketing research has shown that if you haven’t communicated with your customer in at least 6 months, they have likely forgotten totally about you. Newsletters also help with generating referrals because you can make a special offer for friends and family to receive an exam and x-rays.

5. Patient Appreciation Days

You’ve probably heard this one mentioned before in the chiropractic guru circles. Maybe you’ve even tried a few and never had great results (like those guys who claim to see 100 new patients). Well, don’t beat yourself up. P.A.D.’s are a great way to generate referrals. Simply get a few sponsors in your town to donate door prizes. Then get a few finger foods and handout/mail out announcement flyers. Make it about appreciating your patients. If they get adjusted that day/week, then they can enter for a prize. If your patients refer someone they get more tickets or you can even put them in a special grand prize drawing. Depending on the size of your current patient base, you should be able to get 5-20 new patients from a properly done P.A.D. For a few hours of work you had a great return on your time, even if you didn’t get the 100 mythical new patients all those others guys get.

Technology has produced new chiropractic marketing techniques in the past 5 years. However, most chiropractors still do not use (or do now know how to properly use) these new strategies to grow their practice. You can be at an advantage if you master these skills before the majority does. Here are four automated marketing tools that can drastically grow your practice.

#1. Pay Per Click. You can use major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to drive people to your website . This can be done by running ads on their pay per click advertising. These ads will show up when someone searches for related keywords you have previously chosen. For example, someone may search for “chiropractor in YourTown”, and your ad would come up on the top and right side of the search page. Where you come up depends on many factors including the bid price of your ad. A note on this: many companies will approach you offering to provide this service for you. Make sure you know enough about it to tell if they are doing a good job or robbing you blind.

#2. Blogs. One of the fastest and easiest ways to rank higher in the search engines is to set up a blog. A blog stands for a “web log”. and is very simple to use. If you can send an email, you can post to a blog. Blogs are known for being updated regulary. In fact many people think of blogs as an online journal. While blogs started out as journals, business owners are finding out that blogs can greatly increase their free traffic. Google particulary loves blogs because you are adding fresh content regularly. And they want to provide their users with the best content on their search engine.

#3. Email Autoresponders. No matter how good your website is, most visitors will not take action right away . There are many reasons why this is the case: they don’t trust you, it’s not the right time, they don’t believe you can really help with “their” problem, etc. What you need is a way to “educate” them on how you can help them, and gain some rapport with them over time. This can be done by sending them and email every few days for 2-3 weeks showing them you are truly an expert on their problem and gaining their trust as well.

To make this work, you need an email opt-in form where you simply ask for their name and email, in exchange for some valuable information. Maybe you offer them a free article on back pain, or fibromyalgia. Then, using an email autoresponder, you can send out prewritten emails in a series every few days to educate them on how you could help with their problem. This has proven to increase conversions on websites.

#4. Video and Audio. Most people have high speed internet connections. You can take advantage of this by posting videos or audios to your website or blog. All you need is a handheld digital camera and you can upload a quick video to your site. I recommend educational type videos on specific problems or symptoms the patients are interested in. You should also get a few patient testimonials on video or audio put them on your website so you have more social proof. Occasional fun videos of you and your family also work well to build positive relationships with your current patients.

These four strategies are covered in great detail in the first 10 lessons in my ChiroMarketing Academy course.

Have you ever thought about how patients think?

When I first started out in practice, I didn’t really care what patients thought about their health problems. I was the doctor, and I was just going to tell them the “truth” about what was going on and how to fix it.

You can imagine how many patients I “turned off” by doing this.

I’ll never forget what a new patient taught me regarding this attitude.

I was just finishing up the new patient exam and x-rays, when she asked “Well Doc, do you think you can help me?”

I said “Mrs Smith, we’ve had great success with other patients that have had…” and I went on to list many of the problems chiropractic can help with. I think I even mentioned a few of the testimonials in the books we had around the office, and handed her one to look at. I was in a hurry and had the patients stacking up out front.

That’s when she looked at me angrily, and said “Dr. Beck, that’s not what I asked. I asked if you could help me with my problem?”

That’s when it hit me…

Patients want help with their problems! They want to believe you can help them, before they even come in to see you.

They aren’t interested in the history and philosophy of chiropractic.

They don’t care about all the problems you can help or who you’ve helped before them.

I have remembered this lesson every since. She was almost furious that I wasn’t addressing her problem directly. That’s the one question all patients want to know. That’s why the come in to see you!

Now obviously I couldn’t guarantee her I could help her problem. But I could have been more specific about the successes we had with her exact condition in the past. And I could have reassured her that if anyone was capable of helping her, we had the best chances of doing that.

How does this relate to marketing?

Marketing is teaching, telling, showing, persuading people to use your services over anyone else’s. And the best marketing message is one that’s relevant to your prospects.

People are searching for answers to their problems in life. They want a doctor who can help them and they will respond to marketing message that appears customized to them.

You can go on and on about chiropractic, but all they want to know is how you can help them. They want to know “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM). And we can’t assume every potential new patient knows what chiropractic is or how it can help them. Most Don’t!

So when marketing your practice, be sure that you are speaking directly to the person’s problems. Make them believe you are the one that can help. Whether it’s on your website, landing page, newspaper ad, yellow pages, or even on your business card.

For chiropractors with conversion problems, this one thing can make a huge impact. The more specific your marketing is, the more credibility and proof you build to that new patient. So that when they do come in, they are less likely to question your recommendations.

P.S. This of course does not negate using testimonials. It prooves the point you need to make your testimonials specific to the target patient you are marketing too. More on this in a later blog post…

In a previous post, I gave 7 strategies for getting more traffic to your chiropractic website. Traffic is a good thing, but converting this traffic to new patients is much more important. It’s better to have 10 paying new patients per month, than to have 1000 (non-paying) visitors to your website any month that .

Here are 4 proven methods to convert your website visitors to new patients.

#1. Use a landing page.

Unless your traffic just stumbles upon your website or blog “organically” through Google or some other search engine, they should not be landing on your home page. This is especially true for paid traffic. If you are paying for people to visit your site, you do not want them to get lost in the land of 100 different menus and click options. Do you realize how many places there is to go on most home pages?

Every visitor that comes to your site is looking for a specific solution. They are there looking for the answer to their problem. If you are paying for them to arrive there, either through Pay-Per-Click or other paid means, you want to send them directly to a page made for them.

If you run an ad for the keyword “chiropractic”, you want the landing page to be all about chiropractic and how it can help them.

If your ad is for “low back pain”, you don’t want a bunch of information about sinus problems and headaches. If they are not familiar with chiropractic (most people!), then they might think you can only help sinus problems and headaches, and not their back pain.

#2. Use an Autoresponder.

An autoresponder is a software program that sends follow up messages to a recipient that has asked for information. They are usually pre-loaded in a series and can each be scheduled with a set amount of days in between.

These messages help to build a relationship and trust over time with your potential patients who otherwise would have just visited your website once, never to be seen or heard from again.

This can be very helpful for converting prospects to new patients. You can educate prospects on why they should see you for their problem. You can educate new patients on why they should follow your care plan. You can send out nutritional or general health advice. All of which can be 95% automated and very inexpensive. All that you need is an opt-in form for visitors to sign up on your landing page or blog.

#3. Use Videos.

I mentioned videos in my strategies to get chiropractic web traffic. But videos can also be used in converting traffic to new patients.

Videos on your landing pages are highly recommended. You can make a short 2-3 minute video of you the doctor speaking about how you help with their problem. Or you can use screen recording software of you doing a power point presentation. You can also have patient testimonials and your staff speak on the video.

Videos may sound difficult, but they are very easy to use. Basically, you produce the video, upload it to your website, and then just “embed” it on your webpage. If you use YouTube, these last two steps are very easy.

#4. Use Great Copywriting.

Copywriting uses words, or copy, to promote a business, product or service. The main purpose of marketing copy is to persuade the reader to act. You want your website visitors to act today. You want them to call you now and schedule an appointment. This is the point of your website.

You need to get peoples attention right away, or they will click the back button. This is done with a headline. You also need to have an offer and call to action, or the prospect will not be motivated to act. Think of your landing page like a newspaper ad. It needs to grab the readers attention and persuade them to action.

A great resource to learn basic internet copywriting is Maria Veloso’s book “Web Copy That Sells“. If you don’t want to learn copy yourself, you can hire it out. But expect to pay $1000-$3000 for a newbie copywriter, and $3000-$6000+ for a good copywriter to write your landing page, email autoresponders, and full long copy pages.

Apply these strategies to your chiropractic marketing plan, and you will see more new patients from your website.

How did your last newspaper ad do? Or yellow page ad? Or any marketing piece?

If you ask most Doc’s, their answer is based on how many new patients it brought in. No doubt new patients are important. But would you rather have 50 new patients who came in for 1 visit, or 20 new patients that came in for 30 visits.

Here’s one of the biggest mistake chiropractors make with their marketing. They don’t measure their return on investment! Return on investment (ROI) is easy to measure. Basically, if I spend $1 on ad, I want to know how much that will bring me back.

Many times, you will see ROI described as a ratio, like 1:1 or 3 to 1.

What’s a good ROI for a marketing piece?

Well, many marketers say break even, and some will even take a loss on the front end, and make it up on back end sales.

In regards to your practice, I think it depends on your overhead. When your overhead is higher, I think 3:1 is a minimum. If your overhead is lower, then you can easily get by on break even, as long as you get some referrals from that initial group of new patients.

By the way, you should also measure your 1st line of referrals those initial new patients produce as well.

I keep a spreadsheet of all marketing things that I do. It has all the new patients listed and the amount I paid for the marketing. Every few weeks, I look up these new patients in my software and track the ongoing amount we collect on their case.

For example, I recently ran a low back pain ad I had written up. It cost me $700 to run a half page in the local paper. So far, it has returned a 1100.43% ROI from the initial new patients. As a ratio, that’s 11 to 1. So for every $1 spent to run the ad, I have made back $11. When you add in referrals from this group of new patients, it jumps up to 1265.85%. And it should end up better once all the insurance payments come in.

Now if I was just measuring the amount of new patients, I would say this ad did not do well. Because I have had many other ads bring in more new patients. But they were not quality new patients. By measuring ROI, instead of just new patients, it takes into account the quality.

Why go to all this trouble to track ROI?

Because next time you have money to market with, you will know where to put it. You will have a track record of the different marketing you have done. Also, you can compare different ads against each other, and see which one “pulled” the best. This information will help guide you in your future marketing plan.

If you would like a free copy of the spreadsheet I use, just post a comment below.

These are x-rays of my son’s broken arm. Tuesday, he was “flying” down hill on a razor scooter. He thought everything was going fine. Then all of a sudden, BAM, he crashed into the curb, hitting his knee, head and arm. My wife and I thought he was just bruised up a bit. It would take awhile (about 24 hours later) before we even realized it was broken.

While we waited forever to get his cast on, I thought of how “broken” my marketing plan used to be for my practice. (And how thankful I was that this $1000+ accident didn’t happen back then, when we were dead broke!)

How many times are you hustling in practice, and you think things are going great?

One month the new patients are plentiful. Money is just flowing in. No need to market your practice then right?

Then what usually happens? The next month is terrible! No new patients. Collections are down. It’s like feast or famine being in chiropractic practice sometimes! Unless you implement a marketing plan…

It’s really very easy to put together a marketing plan. Just number 1-52 on a sheet of paper. Think of something you can do every week for the next year. About half should be external and half internal marketing.

Every major holiday should be on there, thats 9 or 10. Then the smaller holidays like Fathers Day, Mothers Day, etc. Your practice anniversary. Newspaper ads (at least quarterly), newsletters (monthly), and patient appreciation days should be on your list as well.

Your list should be over half full at his point. Now think of some fun or crazy things. “Relief from the IRS Week”, “Hottest Summer Ever Special”, “Back to School” or even silly stuff like National Mustard Week. When my youngest daughter was born, I wrote a fun letter to my inactive patients that was “written by her”. They loved it and we had a good response because people actually read it.

Also, every group has it’s week, like “National Headache Week”, “National Small Business Week”, or “National Scoliosis Week”. Look here for more ideas:

http://www.healthfinder.gov/library/nho/nho.asp

http://www.naturenet.net/education/dates.html – for the environmentally friendly

Now you should have a full list. Because you don’t want to market to the same group every week, make a note beside each one telling yourself which group this is directed towards. For example, active patients, inactive patients, new patients-private (direct mail, networking events), new patient-public (newspaper, yellow pages).

Get a calendar and layout the dates for the next 12 months. Also make sure things are evenly spread out. Don’t market to just your active patients for 4 weeks straight.

Why go to the trouble of coming up with something different each week? Because one of the most powerful concepts in advertising, the “Reason Why”. If the reason why you are making a special offer or discount is not made clear, or if it’s seen to often, patients won’t believe you.

Have some creative ideas that you’ve come up with? List them in the comments below.