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Do you have a “philosophy of chiropractic marketing? You should.

No, I’m not talking today about B.J. Palmer or issues of mixers and straights.

Here’s what I mean…

There’s a lot talk in chiropractic about “philosophy”, namely the issue over what chiropractor’s believe about their own profession.

Likewise, marketing is always a hot topic because doctors, rightly want to grow their practice, serve more people and increase their incomes.

But one thing you rarely see mentioned is the phrase “philosophy of marketing”.

The word philosophy has many meanings, which can be anything from literal Greek meaning of “the study of wisdom” to the more often used sense of man’s attempt at searching for truth (think Socrates and Plato).

But the meaning I’m after today is neither of these, but simply “a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.”

So what you need is a system of principles for guidance in marketing! Simple to do, right?

If only it was. If you’ve been around the profession for very long, you’ve heard dozens of different “principles” of marketing.

Here’s a few BAD philosophies of marketing I’ve heard…

• Don’t spend more than $100 per new patient
• Marketing is unethical and is only for snake oil salesmen.
• Just do a ton of spinal screenings and you’ll be fine.
• You’ve gotta just out in the community, pass your card around more.
• Make every patient get their family members check within 10 days, or you “fire the patient”.
• Get a fancy website up and people will flock to your door!

Maybe you think I’m exaggerating? Okay, I only exaggerate a bit on the last one! But the others I have actually heard almost verbatim.

These are not effective philosophies of marketing for your practice. What is a good philosophy?

“I will do any type of ethical marketing as long as it shows a good return on investment.”

This philosophy works because it covers all of the above bad ones and more. To get a good return (ROI), you’ve gotta get qualified new patients, like I recommend with my chiropractic ads.

And it doesn’t matter if you pay $101 per new patient. What matters is the ROI.

Maybe passing out cards is a good idea. Maybe a good website will work. Maybe spinal screenings are effective. But the only way you really know is by measuring their ROI (which in the case of spinal screenings should factor in your time spent.)

That’s my philosophy of marketing. Do you agree or disagree? What’s your philosophy?

It’s often said that to have success in your practice, you’ve got to focus on “a big hairy goal” or see the “big picture” or get “the big idea”.

This is true enough, but not precise enough.

You see, once you have that big picture, then it’s time to get to work. And inevitably as you focus on accomplishing that big picture day by day, you realize there are tons of tiny little steps!

There’s marketing, exams, paperwork, treatment notes, billing, etc., etc. The carpet sure looks dirty and the toilet isn’t perfectly clean either. And who’s going to change that light bulb that’s been out in the closet for 5 weeks?

“No worries, don’t sweat the small stuff” you tell yourself.

But then you begin to realize that big picture isn’t really materializing. And that big hairy goal is looking so hairy you’ve forgotten why you wanted to accomplish it in the first place.

What’s the solution?

I recommend you be more concerned about the details of your business. Someone’s got to sweat the small stuff. It does matter what you wear to your office. (If it didn’t matter you would wear your pajamas.) Patients do care if your breath smells like rotten garlic after lunch.

And you’ve got to make sure your staff understands your high standard of excellence in keeping your office efficient and clean. Nothing turns a patient off more than a dirty, smelly and unorganized office. Does your office smell like greasy fast food after lunch? Is Mary’s perfume at the front desk enough to knock your next patient out?

But here’s the key to “sweating the small stuff”…

You should only be “sweating” about a specific topic only once. As the owner, it is your job to make sure it gets done. Either by you or by someone else.

Make a list of everything you do in your business each month. Then ask yourself what you are good at and what you like to do. You might even give each task a rating of 1 to 5, 1 being something you absolutely love and 5 being something you hate to do.

Then start with the 5′s and ask yourself who else could do those. For example:

Need light bulb change? That’s Carol’s job to take care of. (Make a note to put that on her to do list and regularly check it.)
Billing? Outsource it or hire someone part time in-office.
Marketing? Get a done-for-me marketing program that works (highly recommended: The Ultimate Chiropractic Ads).

Check out my More Tools page to see other examples.

Now once you’ve taken as much off your plate as you can, you should have plenty of time to focus on what really matters. Plus, your office will look, smell and be more efficient as a result.

Regardless of what anyone says, success really is in the details. Yes, have a big goal. That’s not difficult. Lot’s of people have goals.

It’s the getting things done part, the accomplishing of multiple tasks all at once, that is the hard part. This is why most people never accomplish their goals.

Details matter. The whole world is full of details.

Just check out this video and stand amazed at the details of God’s creation (it’s full HD so you can full screen it and enjoy it.).

Can you tell me what is the most important point to make in any and all marketing you do?

(Whether it’s your newspaper ad, website, or patient education, you must have this or it will fail every time.)

Before I tell you the answer, let’s see if you can find it in this article about “Burger King decapitating its King”.

After spending millions of dollars to promote cool and hip commercials with the King Mascot, BK is pulling the plug on this marketing failure.

Why would they do this investing so much to “brand” it into the consumers mind?

Simple. It. Doesn’t. Work.

BK’s biggest rival, McDonalds, is gaining market share while Burger King is losing it.

Why? Here’s the key:

This discrepancy in performance is not the result of McDonald’s having more “creative” advertising or a hipper mascot (Ronald Mc Donald is many things – hip he’s not). But while Burger King was trying to sell consumers an edgy brand image, McDonald’s focused on something much more mundane: selling burgers, fries and coffee. The rest is marketing history.

Do you see it?

The most important concept in any marketing you do is providing a solution to the prospect’s problem. The fast food eater’s problem is that he is hungry, and he wants his food fast.

Now who’s going to connect with the conversation going on in the prospects head: the goofy, big-headed King Mascot jumping around or images of juicy, greasy burgers and fries being cooked up.

Yet, even though BK has spent millions running these silly commercials on TV, they realized it wasn’t working. It’s time to pull the plug and start over, focusing on actually selling the product.

In chiropractic, this means you have to focus on connecting the patient’s problem with your solution. Your solution — that’s the product you’re selling. And make no mistake, while you may not be “hard selling”, you are selling something. Everyone in a for-profit business is selling.

So don’t keep running ineffective ads that may look pretty and impress your receptionist, but do not connect to the patients.

I’ve not eaten at either of these restaurants since I started Chiropractic College. But even though I’m not their target audience, I always thought the King commercials were a waste of money. Maybe it’s just my marketing training.

What do you think?

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.

What is the most profitable condition to be marketing to right now? Which of the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads bring in the highest return on investment? What is marketing and advertising anyway?

Check out this short video where I explain the answer to these questions and more.

I just received the DVD set from the NeuropathyDr conference I spoke at last summer. Here’s the first 10 minutes of the talk, where I showed the audience why some chiropractic ads bringing in little-to-no results. I’ll be posting more videos from this DVD in the future, but if you like this one, please click through to Youtube and choose “Like” or thumbs up.

A discounted or special offer is when you lower your consult, exam and/or x-ray price for a new patient. Some people think using discounted offers is the bane of chiropractic.

But I’ve yet to hear any good reasons for thinking this. But I’ve heard many myths about discounted offers that would lead people to think they are bad.  Let’s look at each one:

Myth #1: Offers Hurt the Profession

What hurts the profession is when chiropractors are going broke and closing their doors to bankruptcy. And nothing closes the doors faster than not bringing in any new patients. I can understand where this myth is coming from if everyone in the phone book is making the same “free x-ray” offer to the community. But the problem here isn’t that everyone is making a discounted offer. The problem is that they are all doing the same thing, making the same offer. I always recommend my customers and clients make their offers unique, which means different than the competition. This may even mean a higher priced offer! Also, offering something in regards to a specific condition, like neuropathy or fibromyalgia,  is much more effective than a generalized “free chiropractic exam”.

Myth #2: Offers Are Illegal in the U.S.

I’m not an attorney, so check with yours regarding your state laws. In the United States, there had developed a long held view that professionals should not advertise at all. A few lawyers challenged this in the Bates v. State Bar of Arizona Supreme Court case, which said that advertising was a kind of commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. Also, the Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar established that was a violation of the antitrust laws for anyone to restrict competitive pricing with professionals. Many chiropractors will tell me it is illegal in their state to make special offers, but when they actually research it and ask their state boards they find out that’s not the case. Sure there are some insurance carriers like Medicare and other federal plans may require you not to make special discounted offers to their members. Yet, surely you want to see a mixture of patients in your office. I’ve yet to meet a chiropractor that makes 100% of their monthly gross income from Medicare payments.

Myth #3: Offers Makes You Look Sleazy

A carefully written offer in your advertisement is not “sleazy.” What makes an offer look sleazy is the use of hype in your ad (which can make it illegal in some cases.) To say that you’re giving a limited-time, reduced price on a special “herniated disc” evaluation is not sleazy. And the thousands of patients who come in each month to chiropractor’s offices don’t think so either. This relates back to Myth #1 above and the whole “it’s not professional.”

Myth #4: My Area is Too Wealthy to Respond to Discounted Offers

This myth is interesting. I practiced in a high income area ($90k+ average income) and when I ran ads I’d have people drive up in Jaguars and almost beg to be scheduled for the special we were running that week in the newspaper. A friend of mine practices in an even higher income area, and he once said he had quite a few billionaire’s wives coming in responding to his special offers. There’s two things to keep in mind when dealing with high income areas: (1) in a time where people have more debt than ever, the appearance of wealth and true wealth are not the same, and (2) many wealthy people got that way be saving money where they could. I would almost venture to say people with high income respond slightly better to special offers.

Myth #5: It Will Bring in Lower Quality Patients

This myth can become reality if you don’t word your offer correctly, or you advertise in the wrong locations. Usually a slight price adjustment can correct this. One doctor told me that he was getting tons of decompression patients with an offer of a free exam and x-ray. Others have told me this “freebie” offer brings in too many lookers — people who simply waste time for a free exam and have no intent of wanting any care. In this case, a price increase of $25 or $35 can make a huge difference. By charging a little more for the offer, only those most interested will take you up on it. Of course, there is a place of diminishing returns where you can go to high with your price and kill the effectiveness of the ad.

Myth #6: Your Offer Price Must End in 7

Did you know there was magic in the number 7? Twenty or so years ago, the genius marketer Ted Nicholas ran some direct mail tests. He tested prices ending in 7 verses prices ending in 9. The 7′s outperformed the 9′s. Since then, this strategy has spread through most professions. Sure, it worked for Nicholas back then, but does it work for you? The only way to find out is to test. I know plenty of markets who have tested $7 offers against $10 offers, and the $10 almost always wins. So are we going to say all offers must end in 0′s now? You should try $17 or $27, but since I’m not superstitious I suggest keeping it simple by using multiples of 5 ($15, $25, $30, etc.)

Myth #7: Must Be Able To Pay with a Single Bill

This isn’t as common as the myths above, but in some coaching circles it’s somewhat popular. The thought is that when a person sees your offer, they think it’s not really that much money if they only have to pull one bill out. So they recommend you do offer prices at $5, $10 and most often at $20. I’m not sure what they would say about $100 offer, since after all it’s still just one bill the patient has to pull out of their pocket. In a society that pays with credit cards, checks, debit cards, and more, the “one bill strategy” is pretty much useless. It may have worked 50 years ago when $5 was a lot of money to most folks, but today it’s just not a big deal.

Guest post by Todd Brown

Practice scalability is a prerequisite if you ever want to achieve real wealth and autonomy as a chiropractor.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s THE most important factor for you… if… you want to earn the big money and eventually get free of your practice.

In the rest of this guest blog post I’ll share the two core things needed to scale your practice to incredible heights.

First, let’s start by defining what it means to scale your chiropractic practice.

In simple terms: scaling your practice means your practice cash grows faster than your expenses, without limits, and beyond your own personal efforts.

Said slightly differently: a practice that can go on without you is scalable. If your practice is not able to go on functioning and growing with out you, it is not scalable.

So, what do you need to create a practice that can scale?

Two things:

First, you need systems.

A practice that is built around the skill-sets or abilities of one or two people, instead of systems, is not scalable.  There’s only so much those people can do. And, your practice becomes more and more dependent on the actions of those people.

Instead, when you build a practice that’s driven and powered by systems, and not people, you’re not held captive by any one or two staff members.

Systems allow you to terminate or add new staff members without the fear of a job, task, or process being done in a different manner than your practice has become accustomed.

As well, systems are what produce consistent, predictable results. This is exactly what allows franchises to grow and scale, often at an incredible rate.

Second, you need to a method or process to ensure and maintain quality control.

As your practice grows via reliable systems it becomes essential that you have a process in place for confirming the desired outcomes of each system.

Think of it like this:

You have practice systems that run and grow your office.

And you have a quality control system for checking and confirming that each of the practice systems are being done properly and achieving the outcomes they were designed for.

Together – systems and quality control – give you the ability to scale your practice. And the ability to scale your practice is what gives YOU the ability to build wealth, gain more freedom, and achieve the ultimate chiropractic lifestyle.

About the author:
Todd Brown, Founder of More Chiro Patients, Inc., provides motivated chiropractors with the business-building, marketing, and entrepreneurial skills to achieve wild levels of personal, financial, and lifestyle success.  His free chiropractic marketing videos and articles can be found here: Chiropractic Marketing Blog

Last week we looked at three big marketing strategies you should be be doing this year to build your practice. (To read that post, click here.) Today, let us look at four more marketing methods you would be very wise to use in 2011 for your biggest year yet.

#4. Have Your Staff Do “Focused” Spinal Screenings

This recommendation may come as a shock to some of my readers, as I have often times said spinal screenings are a waste of time for most doctors. And I still tell my clients and customers that. For the doctor, it is not a good use of your time to go and spend 4 hours standing at the front of a business, chasing people with a clipboard in hand. I’ve done enough of these types of screenings in my lifetime and 95% of them were a complete waste.

But there are three reasons you should do spinal screenings: (1) you’re new in practice, (2) you’re about to go out of business and need new patients ASAP, or (3) you can have someone else do it for you at a big event. It’s this third one that I recommend you focus on in 2011. A big event would be a huge festival that your town holds once per year, or a large business that let’s your staff come in to screen (like Walmart, Costco, etc.). Notice I said “your staff”, and not you as the doctor. If you want to streamline this process for your staff, and find out how chiropractors are still getting into Walmart to do screenings, I recommend you get Dr. Smith’s Spinal Screening Program.

#5. Email Marketing With Current and Inactive Patients

It’s amazing that many chiropractors still don’t ask for their patient’s email address. It’s as simple as including it on the intake form for all new patients. The reason this is so important in your marketing strategy is that we’re all human, which means we forget things. Patient’s forget appointments unless reminded. And this is especially true of patients who’s treatment plan does not require them to come in often (maintenance or wellness patients, etc.) How much revenue is lost in your practice every week simply because people forgot about their appointments?

The simple solution is to set up a system with your staff to email patients about their appointments. Or society is becoming more and more an email/internet society, replacing the telephone. My dentist emails me a remind before each appointment, which makes a huge difference when I’m extremely busy and likely to forget. Now I don’t recommend this for all patients, but you should make a list of the ones who need to be reminded most. Also, something similar can be done for inactive patients. You can compile an email letter that offers inactive patients to return to care. If your list is set up right, with a click of a button your email can go out to thousands of inactive patients at once. This strategy can really have an affect on your practice in the long run.

#6. Get More PI Patients

As health insurance becomes more difficult to work with in 2011, many chiropractors will turn to seeing more car accident cases. Unfortunately, most chiropractors still think PI marketing is all about using outdated attorney-schmoozing techniques to get new PI patients. While it’s true a few chiropractors do this, its by no means necessary to for having a successful PI practice.

There are much better ways to get new patients from attorneys, as well as MDs, ER rooms, body shops, existing patients, Facebook, and more. This does not mean you must become a 100% PI mill practice. But you should take another look at PI, as the return is much higher because you actually get paid a fair value for your care, if it’s done right. See This PI Marketing program for all the new marketing strategies you can use.

#7. Use Direct Mail

Direct mail has long been a tested and proven marketing method in businesses worldwide. But when the recent recession hit, so many companies pulled out of direct mail marketing that the USPS took a huge hit. And unfortunately many chiropractors did the same. Of course cutting back on your direct mail campaign doesn’t make sense if all your competition has done the same. Like newspaper ads, now is the best time to use direct mail, since others are cutting back or convinced it doesn’t work.

What type of direct mail? I would not suggest fancy postcards. Long copy letters and postcards work best, but they must be written well and not sound sleazy or cheap. Also, list selection is important when it comes to direct mail. Getting a good list from a list broker can increase your return on investment drastically. We’ll look closer at direct mail in a future blog post.

The super-successful practice will implement all seven of these strategies. Which of these 7 will you implement this year?

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.