Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Let’s see how good your math is today. Prizes go to anyone who gets the right answer!

Math never was my favorite subject in school, but I got by with passing grades at least.

Well, there was that one time I made a D with Mr. Drill Sergent Teacher in college Algebra! But, I retook it later with a different teacher and got an A.

Anyways, enough about my report card. Let’s see if you can do some business math…

Nothing complicated of course. I realize most of my readers are doctors and have other skills sets.

Hang with me here and you’ll see there’s a very important marketing lesson that goes along with this math problem.

The most important number in marketing is ROI (which stands for Return On Investment.) According to Investopedia.com the technical definition is:

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

It’s the money you make back, the return, on what you originally invested. So if you put $1 into marketing and make back $7. That’s a 7:1 ROI, also expressed 700%

This is an excellent return. You made $6 that you did not have when you started. All the big box stores would love to have that kind of return on their merchandise.

Let me make the example a little more complicated.

Let’s say you want to start an egg business. But, you need to invest in getting chickens first, before you can have any eggs to sell. Your first step is to hire a chicken catcher (work with me here, it’s an example!) You find a highly recommended chicken catcher for the nice sum of $100.

You ask Mr. Chickengetter (heretofore known as CG) how many chickens he can catch for you. He says he’s not sure, as those buggers are pretty fast. But he’ll do his best. Tomorrow he comes back with 9 chickens. Now it’s time for the egg laying to begin!

Within the first month these fine chickens produce 300 organic, free-range eggs to sell to Whole Foods, who pays you $700 for them.

Wow, this makes you feel really good about your business.

Let’s throw in a little twist. Let’s say all your chickens burn up in a horrible fire after 30 days (hey, stuff happens)!

You’ve now got to go back to Mr. CG and have him catch you some more chickens. But on your way to meet him, you strike up a conversation with another farmer down the road, Mr. Poach.

He informs you that he never pays more than $5 for a new chicken, never, ever! Even though Mr. Poach’s farm is looking pretty shabby, you thank him for his good advice and go on your way.

You then hire Mr. CG for $200 this time and tell him you need a lot of chickens to restart your business. He brings back 18 chickens. You do a quick calculation in your head, while thinking about your previous conversation you had with Mr. Poach. You just paid a whopping $11.11 per chicken! You feel completely duped.

Doesn’t Mr. CG understand how tight money is after the fire? If he really cared, he would have brought back more chickens. At least 50, or maybe 70 chickens.

After giving Mr. CG a piece of your mind for charging you so much per chicken, you go back home and start producing those wonderful eggs.

After 30 days, you have about 600 eggs, which you sell to Whole Foods for $1400.

How depressing this chicken business is.  Last month you felt good about your business ,but this month you only got 18 chickens from Mr. CG. If only he could have brought you 80 or 90 chickens, you could be feeling good right now. You think to yourself, “maybe the money’s in turkey farming.”

What’s the moral of the story?

It doesn’t matter how you feel about the number of chickens you get, it’s the amount of eggs they produce that matters!

In both scenarios, the return is exactly the same, 7:1 or 700%. In both cases you put in $1 and got $7 back. It doesn’t matter how much the chickens cost, because that’s not part of the ROI formula!

How many investors on Wall Street would be ecstatic about buying stocks for $1 and selling them for $7?

Now for the true test of your arithmetic prowess. Here’s a real life example I got in email form.

“I just ran my first ad. We got 6 calls to schedule and 5 came in. I’ve already done one report and he paid $995 today. If he keeps his treatment recommendations he’ll pay an additional $500 to finish his care. 5 NP’s from a $1000 cost to run the ad is not a very good return, don’t you agree?”

Be one of the first 10 comments to get all of the following questions right and I’ll give you a free video for improving your website ranking on Google.

1. Assuming all 5 patients finish the care plan of $1495 each, what will this doctor’s ROI be?

2. Would you be happy with these results?

3. Multiple choice, choose only one:

Would you:

A. Run the chiropractor’s ad again.

B. Not run the ad again because it only brought in 5 new patients.

C. Not run the ad again because it lost you money.

It was a hot, sunny July 4th weekend in the Texas hill country. Thankfully there was a slight breeze, but not much help when the thermometer is near 100.

After returning home from church, I was reading on the couch when I heard a loud cracking sound outside. At first, I thought it was my air conditioning unit falling apart. Great! It’s gonna be a hot afternoon now! But then the sound was gone so fast, I thought maybe it was only the wind,

Then about an hour later my daughter took the dog for a walk and nearly fell over this tree in the front yard. She ran saying “Daddy, this huge tree just fell in our yard!” I thought she must have been exaggerating, as some of the females in our house are prone to do.

But sure enough, a huge post oak, over 40 feet tall and with a trunk bigger than my waist, had cracked and fallen in the front yard.

The very tree that my little children had been playing under just the previous day. Next to this tree, another one exactly like it shades our picnic table and holds up a swing for the kids.

Why did the tree fall?

It was perfectly healthy. No disease. No bugs inside. Sure we’re in the worst drought in Texas history right now, but this tree had green leaves and was thriving.And it’s not like we’ve had any hurricane winds lately.

There was absolutely no outward sign this tree would fall over.

Yet once it fell, you could see what the cause of death really was. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Why am I telling you about a majestic oak falling down in my yard?

Because it applies to how you run your practice. Let me explain…

When my practice was struggling, it looked great on the outside. The patients really had no idea it was in trouble. The carpet was clean, the paint looked good, I dressed well and my staff was professional. And while it’s true there weren’t ever more than a couple of people in the office at the time, most patients just thought we had scheduled them during a special time.

However, on the inside the whole business was starting to crack. Marketing was pretty much useless, because every time I let the newspaper design an ad for me it failed miserably. New patients began to dwindle, visits decreased and cash flow quickly dried up.

My family noticed though. They noticed every time we climbed into the 1998 4 door Ford Escort in the August heat (with a broken AC to boot!) Anyone who came by the house noticed, as there was sparse furniture and even less food. Business associates and friends noticed as well, but I pretty much ignored their sage advice.

After all, I was told not to associate with such “negative thinking people”.

Things did turn around at the 11th hour of my practice, thanks to finally mastering marketing and patient care plans. (You can read the whole story at my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads site.) And we were blessed to be given a second chance right on the verge of bankruptcy.

But the point is there were signs–very big signs—that my practice was headed south. But I just ignored them and chose not to deal with the problems.

The same thing is true with the tree collapse. There were signs. I had been warned when we moved in to this house. And as soon as I saw what had happened, his words came back to me, “Ya, post oaks are pretty. But they grow up to just fall over in your yard!”

But I thought, “No way, won’t happen to my trees.” Just because the tree trunk weighs a thousand pounds and is growing at 45 degree angle doesn’t mean anything. Just because the neighboring lot has 5 or 10 trees that have fallen over doesn’t mean anything. I just need to ignore those negative trees

Of course, once it fell you could see the inside of the trunk had split. The crack was completely undetectable on the outside. But inside, the crack had completely taken the support out of the base, going 2-3 feet into the ground even. Once that trunk base split inside, it was just a matter of time before the tree collapsed. Thank God my children weren’t playing under it at that moment.

Here’s the point. Wherever your practice is right now…whether it’s super successful or fallen on hard times…you better take a look at it’s health. What’s your marketing look like? Are you focusing on condition-specific marketing yet? Is your monthly new patient volume trending up or down?

There are a lot of factors to look at in addition to marketing. I’ve listed just a few. But often the loss of new patients (which means no or poor marketing strategies) is where serious problems start.

Don’t wait until the whole thing collapses. Fix the cracks before they get worse. Next week we’ll look at specifically how to do just that.

Recently on the LinkedIn Chiropractic Professional group Jonathan asked, “Anyone have any good ideas for marketing to attract new patients? What has the best return on investment?”

The answers from different people that came in truly show the confusion in the profession. The 62 comments so far have ranged from “get out in your community” to “Become an MD.”

A doc named Brian has left multiple comments where he gives suggestions for getting more new patients. I’d like to respond to some of them in this blog post. I don’t know Brian, so this is no slight to him personally, but I found his comments summarize the typical DC leaving chiropractic school.

One of the most interesting comments Brian posted was “keep going to school advancing your credentials and until enough of us learn better.” I would have to totally disagree with this recommendation for getting more new patients. Let me explain…

After your initial degree to practice and State/National boards, further schooling is not likely to help you bring in more new patients.

Now you may learn additional skills and become more specialized in the type of patient you see. And this can be a good thing since people have different problems for which they need help with. But really all you’ve done here is slightly shift the type of patient you see. You haven’t really added any additional new patients.

How many patients have ever come to see you because of some specific credential you have? Very few, if any.

Don’t get me wrong. You can use the specialized postgraduate training you received to market to specific conditions, which I highly recommend. But the key here is that you have to market your unique qualifications.

And Brian, along with many doctors, clearly does not want to have any thing to do with marketing or advertising. He goes on to say:

“Trust me, the world would still turn and doctors would still doctor obtaining what’s needed from producers if all marketing disappeared today. Let US hope marketing and other bottom dwelling middle people disappears soon. It’s time for healthy change!”

I’m not certain as to how Dr. Brian is defining marketing here, but he has certainly cast the baby out with the bathwater. Are there bad marketing strategies and outright scammers trying to get your money? Certainly. But is all marketing bad? No. Ambulance chasing is not the same as running an ad on your website.

If you really wanted to help people get better, and make a good living doing it, wouldn’t you use whatever ethical and moral tools you can get your hands on to accomplish that task?

So what is Brian’s solution to getting more new patients? Serving and word of mouth:

“May I humbly suggest; learn to create and maintain healthy relationships with your community. Word Of Mouth is by far much more effective and has far greater benefit than any other scam marketing contrivance that once engaged, One Must Serve.”

[...]

“Go out and open yourself creating loving relationships with “everyone and anyone”, Ignore the sales scam claiming “niche” and or “specific target client” language whether based on geography, issue, etc. (demographic or psychographic)”

It’s interesting that when doctors are so against marketing, and they suggest word of mouth or community relationships…which are both forms of marketing. You see, marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. So every time you pull out a business card, mention your office name, or speak in the community you are marketing your practice.

Marketing is not always evil. Merchants have marketed their services to customers from the beginning. The only other option today is to simply “put out your shingle” and wait for patients to show up. As many bankrupt doctors have found, this strategy doesn’t work. And gone are the days when there was only one clinic per town and no competition. This type of monopoly is not likely to return to your area either.

Word of mouth referrals are the best. And building relationships in your community is necessary. They may take years and years to properly develop, but they do work. But these two strategies alone will not get you a large number of new patients.

You’ve got to directly speak to those who need your services and tell them why they should come see you. You and I both know most people aren’t going to come see you because of ignorance of what our profession really does — unless you teach them.

Therefore marketing and advertising are not only effective ways to bring in more new patients, but can be used to educate the community on what you actually do. This is the answer to getting more new patients. If you use ads and marketing that speak to the patient where they are at, and focus on offering solutions to their problems, you will have more new patients than you can handle.

How long does it take to dramatically change your practice?

A lot faster than you think…

In fact, I find that most successful doctors I work with have a point in their practice where things really took off for them.

And from that day on, everything changes.

I know it was like this for me. Early on in my practice, I struggled for years trying to bring in enough new patients to grow and make a profit.

I tried all the normal stuff. Seminars, marketing gurus, chiropractic management groups, yellow pages, Val-paks, money mailers, ad displays, health fair and convention center booths, newspaper ads, spinal screenings – I even went knocking on doors after being in practice for almost two years.

After throwing countless hours and dollars at the “new patient problem”, I got a few new ones trickling in. But many of them were not very interested in care, and their conversion rate was terrible.

The problem is, that almost none of these approaches worked. Most of the marketing techniques were overpriced, outdated or too sleazy.

The problem is chiropractic marketing can be a “brutal – and very time consuming – challenge” to building and sustaining a growing practice.

For my first two years in practice, my frustration with getting quality new patients was agonizing, often making me depressed and bringing me close to tears on more than one occasion.

It’s not our fault really.

None of us learned about marketing in Chiropractic College. After spending four years and over $100,000 on my chiropractic education, I didn’t have one class on how to use effective advertising to grow my practice.

All of this led up to a fight for survival for me. Two years into 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 doing 2-4 spinal screenings per week and holding talks for audiences of one – both with awful results.

I got fed up with marketing, “pushing” patients to refer, hard-sell tactics – honestly I was ready to quit the profession entirely.

It wasn’t that I hated chiropractic. It was that no one could show me an effective way to market and grow my practice. I had spent thousands on marketing systems and coaches, but to what point?

My pregnant wife was struggling up three flights of stairs each day in our new “apartment home” – sometimes having to lug over 50lbs of groceries with two toddlers in tow.

This lack of effective marketing tools forced me to look outside the profession for answers. My practice depended on it. I had no time to “hope” something worked. I needed a solution fast!

At the “eleventh hour” of my practice (and just barely in time to save it) I discovered effective marketing strategies and put them into place for my practice. And I began to see results almost immediately.

Finally, real marketing that works for chiropractic. (Unlike all that other crap out there being pushed on us from advertising sales people and over-hyped chiropractic marketing gurus.)

Within 6 months from this point, my practice volume and income had increased by a multiple of 10! I was making $30,000 and could finally afford to take one day off a week to spend with my family. Later my practice continued to increase as I tweaked my marketing and conversion procedures.

Now $30k may or may not sound like a lot to you per month, depending on where you’re at now. But that’s not the point. The point is the change from $3,000 to $30,000 in such a short time span.

What this meant for me was that my kids could have a less stressful father, who spent more quality time with them. My wife could worry less about buying groceries or clothes. And we could go on that family vacation we always talked about.

What would your life be like if your income increased by a multiple of 10? What would change if it just doubled? And what would that really mean to you?

If you’re not using effective marketing, don’t wait. It can make a huge difference to more than just your practice.

Click Here to Grab Proven Chiropractic Ads

There aren’t too many books published specifically for chiropractic marketing, so I was very interested in seeing what Dr. Reizer has to say in his new book CHIROPRACTIC MARKETING TOOLS THAT WILL ABSOLUTELY GROW YOUR PRACTICE. According to his site, Dr. Reizer “is a former associate professor of Sherman College and has taught numerous graduate level courses in chiropractic technique, x-ray analysis, diagnostic interpretation, chiropractic philosophical applications, and chiropractic communications.”

Dr. Reizer has published numerous other books on chiropractic (which I have listed at the end of this post), as well as three science fiction novels.

The subject matter of Chiropractic Marketing Tools ranges from simple business cards and newspapers to more advanced strategies like writing your own newspaper ads, developing a weight loss campaign, and marketing to health clubs. The book is only 133 pages, but packed full of ideas. I counted at least 24 different marketing tools mentioned. Dr. Reizer spends about 3-6 pages on each of the marketing tools mentioned. In most of the chapters he briefly explains the tool and how to use it, and sometimes gives an sample piece that you can easily use in your office.

One Amazon reviewer said,”Every morning our staff reads a few pages to get everyone thinking about how to promote the office.” This is actually a pretty good idea, as these are mostly marketing tools that your staff could do for you (or setup for you.) So to have them thinking about marketing each day is vital to your practice. Also, many of these strategies your staff has never heard of before, so you can provide a quick and easy manual of marketing ideas for them to use.

I do have two critiques of the book.

The biggest critique is that while the tools mentioned are useful and will “absolutely grow your practice” if done correctly, one of the most effective marketing tools available to chiropractors is only mentioned in passing: direct response marketing. These exact words are not found in the book, but Dr. Reizer does spend a few pages talking about lead generation marketing, which is a form of direct response marketing. He then provides a sample free report, which well written. But no mention of long copy newspaper ads or direct mail pieces. Seeing as one of my Decompression Marketing Elite clients just notified me that they got over 300 new patients this year from my ads, I think newspaper ads are pretty important!

The other critique is related to the first. Overall the book is a great summary of marketing ideas for every chiropractor to use. But the book is going to be used most by those who are new to practice or operating on a low marketing budget. For example, all of the strategies in the book could be done each month for less than $500 (there is no mention of radio or TV marketing). While this is a great place to start, and even marketing veterans should be doing some of the things Dr. Reizer mentions, there is much more that can be done in the way of effective marketing strategies.

Overall I think it’s a book every chiropractor should have in their arsenal. For those in practice less than 2 years, or for doctors struggling, it is a must read ASAP. For others, this book will be very useful for your staff and as a reference guide for ideas.

Dr. Reizer’s other chiropractic books include:

• 15 Secrets to Becoming a Successful Chiropractor
• Up and Running – Opening A Chiropractic Office
• Teaching Your Patients Chiropractic
• Depression – Proofing Your Chiropractic Career

The more fishing poles you have in the water, the more fish you’ll catch, right?

I’m not a big fan of this analogy, and here’s why.

First, let’s look at what’s true about it.

It is certainly true that you want to have more than one marketing method being used in your office. And seeing as most chiropractors don’t have any solid marketing strategies in use, I can see why so many marketers are teaching this analogy.

In fact, many chiropractors expect there to be one magic pill that fixes their marketing woes. Relying on only one marketing strategy in your practice, even if it works great, is a recipe for failure. Hey, my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads work great in getting hundreds of new patients and thousands of dollars into your practice over time, but I have never claimed they’re the only marketing method you’ll ever need in practice.

With that said, let’s look at the fishing poles analogy a little closer.

More fishing poles is always better, right?

Are more new patients always a good thing, or does quality factor into the equation?

I don’t know about you, but I’d take 10 referral new patients over 50 telemarketing new patients any day of the week. You see, quality of patients is a big factor as well. Therefore, all marketing methods are not created equal.

I realize when we start talking about patients (people) having a measurement of quality associated with them, it’s going to make some doctors uncomfortable. I hope you realize I’m not talking about the way they dress, talk, or even act. Truth is, there is only so much time in the day. I would rather spend that time working with people who really want help and are willing to pay full price for it.

Back to our fishing poles analogy. After hearing it, you might think, “if having more marketing strategies is always better, why not 50 of them? Why not 100? Why not 500?” and so on.

I grew up fishing. My grandparents fished the rivers of Central Texas. My parents still fish the lakes every summer. By the time I was 18, I had eaten more catfish then most people do in a lifetime (and catfish is not the healthiest fish either!) I still like to go with my kids, when I can actually get away.

And there’s one thing I know about fishing…there’s a limit to how many poles you can handle at one time. At most you can hold one in each hand, then maybe have 4-6 in holders on the boat if you are really good. What do you think is going to happen if you try and add a couple more?

It’s very likely you’ll spend all your time just trying to keep your lines baited. If you get more than one fish on a line at a time, you’ll be in a bind, and maybe even loose one fish or both.

Now you could hire a “fishing pole” manager, akin to a marketing manager. And now that person can handle 8-10 poles while you can still handle your 8-10 poles. But the manager has to check with you every few minutes to see if she’s doing it right. Plus, you still got to tell them what kind of bait to put on the line, how long to leave the line out there, how far to cast, etc.

And what happens if you get a line tangled up? Now you’ve got to go mess with that and clean it up. Are you seeing the similarities to your practice yet?

Here’s the point…

You can only handle so many fishing poles at one time. That’s not being pessimistic, it’s just being real. It’s much better to have 8-10 really strong ones, shaving off the bad ones and adding news ones as you go along.

Perhaps over 5,10, or 20 years you can build up marketing strategies that can be left alone to work. By using the internet you can plug in many marketing methods which will run on autopilot, taking up a very small amount of time. But getting 100 strategies set up? Not likely.

That’s why you’ve got to make sure your 8-10 are working well. I recommend doing niche specific marketing like PI marketing, decompression marketing, neuropathy marketing,  and fibromyalgia marketing. You should do market in the newspaper, on the internet, through referrals, in office marketing, snail mail, email…even the radio and TV is your budget allows.

My last post on the new health care reform (entitled “Congress Has Done It, Now What?“), caused quite a few comments. Mostly the feedback was good. One lady called me a right wing nut and we gladly accommodated her request to be removed from the email list. I guess in today’s politically correct world, stating the obvious (that our taxes will go up and it will be more work on our practices) makes you a right wing nut.

A few concerned doctors emailed me trying to persuade me to see the “bright side of things”.  They argued things were not so bad, after all the ACA or ICA (depending on which one you ask) was responsible for getting anti-discriminatory language in the bill. While I commend both organizations for fighting hard for chiropractic, I’m not so sure the gain of anti-discrimination language will justify the huge stack of problems the bill will cause.

Of course if your patients are mostly Muslim, Amish, American Indian or a Christian Scientist you will likely continue on as if nothing has changed.

As for everyone else, this type of government action brings up the age old chiropractic question, “cash or insurance?”

First off, I must state I do not agree with the mentality that has been perpetuated for years by many chiropractic coaches: “we must do cash because all insurance is evil” . There are good reasons not to take insurance, some of which are philosophical, but this type of rhetoric mentioned above is usually just a cop-out for those are are scared and don’t know how to bill insurance. Trust me, I know because this was me for the first 2 years in practice!

So with that said, let’s look at a the biggest reasons some doctors abandon insurance for an all-cash practice.

What the Proponents of an All-Cash Practice Say:

1. Insurance is too restrictive of the services you provide.

Many chiros do away with insurance hassles because of the burden it puts on their practice. They do not like to be told what they can and can not do with their patients. If most of their insurance patients are carrying these types of restrictive plans, they will choose to convert to an all-cash practice. Do you think Obamacare will make insurance more restrictive or less for chiropractic? (Leave your comments below.)

One medical doctor sent a letter to her patients stating she will not comply to the new laws Obama has enacted.

Of course the doctor who takes insurance will rebut this argument when applied broadly to the whole United States. His reply would be that “just because there are some bad insurance pockets, or even whole states, does not justify saying all insurance is bad and only pays for 12 visits anyway, so we might as well go all-cash.”

2. Insurance is too much work.

Other doctors choose not to bill insurance because they say it is too much work. They have to submit reams and reams of paperwork just to make $30 on a visit. Exams and x-rays require even more notes and paperwork. They’ll have to hire another staff person just to figure out all the billing codes and how to do chiropractic insurance appeals.

What does the non-cash chiropractor say to this? He would likely reply that “while some insurance plans and contracts require an insane amount of work, this does not mean that all insurance plans do. I simply do not participate in the ones that are bad.” He would also argue that whether cash or insurance, we all must have documentation. He would likely also add that many cash practices give the patient a superbill, which is essentially doing everything an insurance practice would do, except fight denials.

3. They do not pay special services.

A few doctors choose not to bill insurance because their practice is very specialized and insurance in their area does not pay chiropractors for these services. These include spinal decompression, weight loss, nutrition, cold laser, deep tissue laser, etc.

On the other side, many chiropractors will still implement these uncovered services, but also continue to offer chiropractic adjustments and therapy. So they will bill insurance for those services that are covered and do cash for those services not covered like decompression treatments, etc.

So which side of the fence do I stand on?

Neither. At the current time (and this may change in the future), I do not paint with a broad brush when it comes to this subject. Some states and areas are great with insurance, with plans giving 80-100 visits per year. I’ve even seen a few that allow unlimited visits to chiropractors per year. Other areas are so bad you’d have to be crazy to bill insurance there.

In my Decompression Marketing Elite program, there is one client grossing a million per year as an all cash practice. Another client has a mostly insurance practice and is doing nearly the same amount. Other clients have more of a 50/50 mixture, doing cash for decompression plans and insurance for other services.

You see, whether you choose cash or insurance, you should choose wisely. And once you make that choice, it all comes down to one thing — marketing. Insurance companies won’t bring you many new patients, if they bring any at all. Simply switching your practice to all cash won’t make people flock to you either.

I think too many people sit around thinking the grass is greener on the other side, when in reality they are not reaching their potential because of poor marketing choices.

What do you think about all this? Leave your comments below.

Coaching clients and blog subscribers are always asking me where they can find certain marketing tools and services. Here’s a list of 5 products/services I recommend you check out and use to grow your practice.

The Chiropractic Dashboard
The Dashboard does quite a bit for chiropractors. It’s a proprietary system that educates patients on why they should come in to see you and does so over time. For example, when a person searches for “fibromyalgia” on the web and finds your dashboard website, they will be shown a video about how you can help with fibromyalgia. They also be asked to leave their name and email for followup. Then the dashboard will send out pre-written emails from the doctor educating the prospect and giving them a special offer to come in for an exam.

Social Marketing
By now, everyone has heard of social marketing sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Twitter. Millions of people use these sites every day to connect to others on the internet. But did you know you could use them to bring in more new patients to your practice? In this course, Matthew Loop reveals how he mastered social marketing to add a consistent flow of new patients every month. I’ve known Dr. Loop for almost a year now, and I have to say he stays on the cutting edge of internet marketing.

Dinner Workshop DVDs
If you’re not familiar with a dinner workshop, it’s basically a short talk or “lay lecture” held outside your office for your patients and their guest. When I first heard about dinner workshops, my first thought was that #1.) it was going to be too much work and #2.) you would have to drag your patients to come. But after getting Chris Burfield’s “The Dinner Workshop” DVD course, both of these concerns were put to rest because he included the steps and tools to make it easy. I’ve known Chris for many years, and he knows how to build a successful practice. He’s definitely created an easy step-by-step instruction on how to do do dinner workshops with all the flyers, forms, scripts, and a DVD showing you how to promote it in your office.

Instrument Adjusting Profits
Did you know using an adjusting instrument in your practice is a huge marketing opportunity? The Instrument Adjusting Profits course will show you how to make use this opportunity. Dr. Orsansky and Dr. Dan have created specific marketing pieces and strategies to focus on the instrument adjusting niche. (They’re currently giving away some free bonuses for anyone who grabs their course.) Even if you don’t use an instrument full time, it’s a good idea to get this course and add those new patients to your practice who are looking for an “instrument chiropractor”.

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

You should be measuring return on investment (ROI) for every marketing strategy or channel you use. To accurately measure ROI, you’ll need one very important number…the “case average” of your new patients.

Case average is a figure that represents how much money a patient will generate over time in your practice. You will sometimes hear it referred to as “lifetime value of a patient.”

You figure it by taking your collections for the month (or quarter, year) and dividing by the number of new patients during the month. And make sure to count all the new patients who’ve come into your practice, not the number of patients who started care. (I do exclude freebies who never get an exam though.)

You can also calculate a case average using a different forumla. Take your PVA (patient visit average) and multiply it by your $ collect per visit. So if your PVA in your office is 22 and you collect an average of $50 per visit, then your case average is around $1100 (which is too low.) But I don’t like this method as much because it can be inaccurate, since you’re figuring an average from averages (that have usually been rounded up or down).

Some chiropractors don’t like to calculate case averages in their office, because they think you’re putting a dollar value on the patient’s head. But let’s face it, you’re running a business here. There are two parts to running your own practice… a clinical aspect and a business aspect. This blog is about the business aspect.

The biggest reason to determine case average in your practice is to make good marketing decisions. Combine it with your conversion rate and you can really drill down on your marketing. Let’s run through an example…

An ad costs you $1500 to run. The last two times you ran it you got 13 new patients. You’re thinking about running it again, but your not sure if its really worth it. Because you’ve read this blog for awhile now, you’ve been keeping track of your numbers (right?). You know that every new patient that walks in the door will equal an average case of $1500. And you know that if a new patient comes in, you have a history of converting about 60% of them to care.

So if the ad produces 13 new patients, you’re going to convert 8 of them (13 x .60 = 7.8 rounded up).
8 new patients times $1500 case average is $12,000.

So now back to the question. Should you spend $1,300 on an ad to get $12,000 in return? If you said “NO, $1300 for one ad is crazy!”, you need to go back and reread the above paragraph until you get a yes.

This is the problem with judging your marketing solely on the number of new patients. Some chiropractors think…”13 new patients, well gosh Dr.. Beck, that’s not very many. Dr. Joe Blow said he got 187 new patients from an ad!”

That’s great for Dr. Joe. But I wonder what his conversion percentage is? And what?s his case average? Because if he really did get 187 new patients and converted most of them, he’s got a million dollar a year practice.

In today’s world, you need a case average well over $1500 to be profitable in practice. If this number gets below $1000 your usually going to struggle unless you have a ton of new patients coming the door. If the case average falls below $500 for more than a month, you?re practice is in big trouble.

The best way to get a higher case average is to increase your retention and collect more per visit.

Also, you can raise your case average by planning out each patient’s case in detail. This means around the time you do your report of findings with the patient, plan the services you’ll be performing with care plan. For example, if you are going to see a patient for 24 visits, what are all the services and billing codes you’ll be performing. Use a travel card, folder or software to keep track of this.
Planning the case out like this also helps your staff stay on track with the patient?s care. If a re-exam is supposed to take place on visit 12, your staff sees it and is able to make sure it gets done and billed. Or if an extremity adjustment is supposed to be done each visit, you are reminded of it.

This may sound like a simple step to take, but don’t overlook the pre-planning of a patients care. You’ll be surprised at how much you and your staff miss if you’re not watching it every day on every patient. Just one small service missed regularly can amount to hundreds of dollars on each case.

I once counted up how much revenue was lost one month because my staff had “missed” a few re-exams, extremity adjustments, re-xrays, computerized test-ing, home exercises, rehab etc. It came out to be over $3,000. From that point forward, I made sure everyone (including myself) kept up with each patient’s planned care.

Each month, figure your case average for your practice. Then check to see how your marketing is going. The number of new patients you get is important, but make sure you are considering the total dollars they are bringing into your business as well.