Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Does everyone who calls in for an appoint show up? Do you ever wonder how many new patient appointments are being lost on the first phone call?

I frequently get this type of email message…

“Hi Doc. I just ran one of your ads. We got 20 calls and 11 came in for the exam. How can we get better results from the ads?

Unfortunately, this is a huge problem in chiropractic offices (or any health practitioner for that matter!)

The problem here isn’t the ad. After all, it intitiated 20 new patients calls! But to have only 55% of those calling in show up for the first visit is ridiculous.

But you want to know the scary part? This is happening in almost every office around the world.

Your office may not be as bad as the example quoted above, but as you know even one lost new patient is worth thousands of dollars to your clinic.

How many new patients are you missing out on just from bad calls.

Here are a few current numbers on this issue reported in our industry:

• 98% of all new patients call on the phone first to schedule.
• 50% of all lost patients are caused by poor patient handling at the front desk.
• 79% of all advertising is wasted on leads that don’t convert to new patients

Click here to watch this free webinar.

1. Monthly print newsletters will be more valuable.

I know, you’re probably thinking print newsletters have gone the way of the dinosaur, and that email, Facebook, etc. are “da bomb!” But the fact is people are starting to demand a more personal relationship with their businesses. All you have to do is look at the Occupy Wall Street movement to sense how people now see a big gap between the products they buy and the companies who provide them. (Also, for more on this, watch the second video here on Dr. Loop’s blog.)

What about email newsletters you ask? You should be sending those too, at least 2 per month. But does it mean more to you to receive a birthday card by snail mail or an e-card? Sending a print newsletter with a real postage stamp is still a very effective way to communicate with current patients and get more referrals.

2. Videos will be more effective on your website.

Video has been around for a number of years on the internet, but it really hasn’t become the norm yet. However I think in 2012 that will start to shift. A few reasons for this are: almost everyone has some type of broadband internet access now, Youtube is more popular than ever, and sites like Facebook are using more video. At the least you should test a video of yourself on the landing page of our website to see if it increases conversions. Using tools like Google website Optimizer will let you easily figure out if videos are more or less effective for your site.

3. Neuropathy, Decompression and other niche specific newspaper ads will continue to get high returns.

Like the print newsletters mentioned above, you may have bought into the lie that newspapers are now extinct. However, in most markets, this is not the case. Many of my clients got their best returns ever on newspaper ads in 2011, especially when using neuropathy and decompression ads. I know there are plenty of other people out there telling you how a jillion internet things will bring in hundreds of patients. And some of it will bring in patients. But don’t neglect the trusted source of patients like the newspaper. The key is using very good copywriting to reach specific niches that are really responsive.

4. Facebook, Google + and other Social Marketing sites will become more important in your chiropractic marketing plan.

Many chiropractors have heard of Facebook. Less have heard of Google+. Unfortunately, doctors treat these sites like everyone else, a place to post all your personal happenings. The problem is most patients aren’t interested in the fact you just “checked in” at the local burger barn. Sure, some personal interaction is necessary to maintain a following. But, you also need good copywriting and intentional posts to cause new patients to act and pick up the phone to call. Another important and often overlooked aspect of these sites is that they help with your search engine rankings. Having Facebook likes and Google+’s on your website will help it come up higher in Google Search, which will translate into more new patients. Just remember, Facebook and Google+ are effective tools, but they are not the only game in town. So, don’t spend 100% of your time and money fiddling with them.

5. Developing a mobile site will become a necessity.

As my friend Terry Dean recently pointed to, more and more people are using iphones to access websites like Facebook. Look at the stats from the link below, which state that “more than 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices “:

https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Also, realize that one of the most common uses for a smart phone is to check email. That means every time you send an email with a link back to your website that person is going to your website on their phone. Even though I prefer to use the internet on my PC, I have an iPhone and iPad that I use often and realize it is just more convenient to click a link now rather than wait until later when I can access the website on my home desktop.

I’ll be working hard to implement these changes in 2012. I recommend you do the same. Also, I’ll keep you updated on any new tools and strategies I’m working on next year. Happy New Year’s.

Are you getting the best prices when running your ads?

Some of my clients are saving thousands on ad prices each year. And
we’ll show you how their doing it.

Last week I interviewed special guest Carol Ann Smith on the subject of “How to Save Thousands On Your Newspaper Ads”.

Carol has years of experience working for chiropractors and saving them thousands in advertising prices. In 2010 alone she
helped bring in over 300 new patients from newspaper ads alone for one chiropractic office.

Here are just a few points we discussed:

To see the recorded video, go here:

http://ultimateadservice.com/start

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

A struggling practice is typically characterized by low income, low number of new patients and small weekly volume.

This may either be a long term practice that has declined, or a brand new practice that fails to really take off.

To a doctor who’s spent years in training and thousands of dollars to obtain a degree, this can be very depressing.

And to top it off, the doctor who ends up struggling is in the worst spot for making good marketing decisions.

There are 4 areas in marketing that a struggling practice must learn to overcome if they are going to outgrow this slump.

1. Because of mistakes in the past, he’s hesitant to even use advertising. Past failures are not necessarily an indication of future failures.

The point of making mistakes is to learn from them. If you eat bad food that makes you sick, you don’t stop eating food. If you’ve used bad advertising in the past, you shouldn’t stop all future advertising either.Marketing your struggling practice is not an option, but a necessity! The key is using effective marketing.

2. He’s so desperate for a solution that he’ll risk large amounts of money to save himself from going out of business.

This means spending money with any ad rep that comes by the office. Don’t loose our good judgment when you’re face-to-face with an ad rep. Get all the information you need. Ask for a good deal. And don’t make quick decisions.

3. Thinking that advertising costs too much, so he’ll just save his money and focus on “internal marketing” and referrals.

Unfortunately, this is a downward spiral, as a struggling practice is struggling because of the lack of NEW patients.Regardless of what some consultants teach, not every patient in your office is going to refer.

That’s just being realistic. So ONLY relying on referrals from a dwindling patient base is just going to frustrate you. Get referrals plus do outside marketing.

4. Not measuring his return on investment and continuing to make stupid marketing decisions based on feelings (or bad coaching advice) instead of looking at the numbers.

This one is not just a trait of the struggling practice. Many well-off practices still make this mistake, preventing even further success.

A good marketing strategy isn’t “successful” because of how it looks, how it makes your wife fee or even how many new patients it brings in. It’s successful when it brings in a good return on investment (ROI). An ad that “just brings in 5 new patients” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you only paid $500 for the ad and each patients ends up paying you $1500 each!

If you’re in this situation, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I was even there at one point in my practice.

But you have to get over these mistakes and advertise your services in an effective way. You should pay special attention to #2 and #3 above. These are deadly.

You can’t afford to waste money on bad advertising. So if you’re currently doing any marketing that’s not been producing in the last 3 months, then stop.

Put your money where it counts, like with running chiropractic ads in the newspaper.

If I had only $500 to spend each month on marketing, and had to pick just one form of advertising…I would pick newspapers…and work the newspaper rep until I got a good ad
placement for one of these ads!

This was one of the big strategies that saved my practice from bankruptcy!

Every time you pay money for your marketing, you should include a special offer. (If you’re worried about how offers make our profession look, see my previous article here.) What’s the best offer price for your advertising?

When I wrote my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, I placed an example offer inside all of the ads. In most cases I set the offer price in the range between $30 and $50.

But now I’m giving different advice.

Let me explain…

What I taught before was that you should raise or lower the price slightly, adjusting for the number of new patients that you would want and the quality of the patient.

In most cases, the higher the cost the better the quality of the patient is going to be. By quality I mean more open to your recommendations, easier to convert to care, and overall a better patient. For example, it’s generally thought that to have a $49 offer for an evaluation, you’re going to find a better quality patient than you would if you ran an ad for $15.

If you lower the price to $15, you would get more patients, but you’re going to also notice a lot of just freebie seekers. A general rule is $20 or less, your quality is going to drastically drop.

If it’s a specialized ad — fibromyalgia, decompression, cold laser, neuropathy — you’re going to want to do a higher price. This is because the patient is really wanting some help and they have not been able to find it anywhere else.
But even though they are more desperate for help, they’re also more cautious of offers that sound “too good to be true”. Because they’ve had such a hard time finding help, and they’ve gone to higher priced specialists, they assume a doctor who can really help is not going to be cheap.

So that’s what I used to tell the doctors using my ads. But recent data and feedback has convinced me to adjust this recommendation.

Because doctors didn’t want to get a lot of people wasting their time, and (maybe) because they already had issues with giving a discount, many chose to go with the higher price.

Now I’m not sure if it’s the recession still hanging around, or possibly just the new economy we’re in…but higher priced offers are not working well in most areas.

Lower priced offers are working extremely well though!

So what I advise now is just to take the range down to match this new economy. Use an offer between $15 and $30 now. You’re only giving up $10- $15 from the range I mentioned above, but you’ll get lots more new patients. Which would give a huge ROI after factoring in all the patients who will start care.

So the question is this:

Would you rather have a higher priced offer with little to no new patients (low ROI!)…or a slightly lower priced offer with tons of new patients (awesome ROI)?

Hopefully you’ll choose the latter.

If you’re using my ads, make this adjustment and you’ll see even better results. If you’re not using my ads, you can try the advice I give above with whatever ads you’re using. But I can’t guarantee it will help if the rest of the ad is written poorly. The offer is important, but won’t matter one bit if no one ever gets to it in the ad.

Chiropractic newspaper ads are still working great, regardless of what the naysayers are telling you. Here’s an email I recently received from a doctor…

Hi Dr. Beck,

I ran an ad as 21,500 inserts in a free paper; printing cost $515.41. Distribution for inserts cost me $376.25 = total of  $891.25 combined 15 day only offer of $35 expired 9-6-11;

Grand total= $17,490.00 collected with residual collections for multiple payment program option uncollected yet. Table now filled for next 6.5 weeks!

27 new SD patients were scheduled!” – Dr. Rich McKay

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 grocery with two toddlers in tow.

I began to think my uncle was right years ago when he said…

“Why Don’t You Go To Medical School,
Then You’ll Be A Real Doctor.”

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. This all lead up to my writing of the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads.

Right now, decide that you will not give up. Work smart, then work hard until you reach your goal. Then set a higher goal and do it again.

Check out this video of a girl who did not know how to give up.

Are you really talking with your prospective patient? Or are you talking at them?

The reason that most marketing doesn’t work is because it is outdated. A dinosaur from years gone by. Back when this profession was rather new and people were still discovering what it was. When there was only one chiropractor in town and all you had to do was put out your sign.

But today patients are much more sophisticated. They know about their own health. They have a billion more choices for a health care provider. And they simply ignore most marketing that does not speak directly to the conversation going on in their head.

And each condition is different. A neuropathy patient and a back pain patient can be having two totally different conversations going on with themselves about their problem.

So do how you find out what they’re thinking?

Real life research and discovery. I’ll let  you in on a little secret that I use when I write ads.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching what patients are thinking. Hours with real live patients in my practice. I’ve spoken to thousands of doctors about their patients. Spent time on condition-specific forums and read hundreds of testimonials. And the same words and phrases come up time and time again.

So even if I’ve never had migraine headaches, I can totally empathize with those who do. Because I’ve heard so many people (mostly women in the case of migraines), spell out exactly how they feel.

The point is…

Don’t be like the advertiser who thinks you can just throw money at a some fancy ad campaign like Microsoft or Walmart might use. Learn to speak directly to your prospect. Within seconds of reading your ad, you want them to think “Finally, someone who understand exactly what I’m going through!”

Carl has sciatica. He knows this because his wife used that medical thingy online where you put in your symptoms and it tells you what you have.

Carl hates this constant, annoying pain in his right buttocks and leg. Carl has had back pain in the past, but that went away 2 years ago.

Now it’s a “completely different” problem that just won’t go away! And worst of all, he can’t play golf, go dancing with his wife, or even sit for 20 minutes in the car.

Carl knows deep down that if this problem doesn’t get better soon, he’s going to have to see a medical doctor and he’s going to give him a bunch of prescriptions he isn’t crazy about.

He grabs a newspaper on the way to work, and sees an ad for the local chiropractor. Carl knows nothing about chiropractic except that his uncle used to go to one for back pain. This ad is classy, sharp, and has a professional picture of the doctor. The name of the office is in large letters with the phone number underneath the photo.

He briefly makes a mental note that if he ever has low back pain again, he should call this chiropractor’s office.

Carl turns a few pages, reading an article on government overspending and debt accumulation. As he glances down at the bottom half of the page, his mind begins racing. To Carl’s astonishment, there in large bold letters, is a headline that reads “Eliminate Sciatica Without Surgery, Drugs, or Painful Exercises”.

Carl can’t read the “article” fast enough. It describes exactly what he is suffering from. And there’s a solution described and backed up with testimonials.

Carl reads that if he comes in for help during the next 10 days, he will get an exam and x-rays for less than $40. Wow!

Who is article from? Oh, a D.C. Hmmm, not sure what kind of doctor that is. But I’m open to anything that can help with sciatica.

Carl quickly picks up the phone, calls the office, and quickly begs the receptionist to get him in this week, “before this special ends.”

——–
This isn’t a fairy tale. It happens every day around the world. The point of the story is that when you advertise your services, you must enter the conversation already going in the prospect’s mind.

Just talking about the history of chiropractic is not something that a new patient, who doesn’t know anything about chiropractic, is going to respond to.

Your marketing cannot be geared towards what chiropractors love, but not what patients are thinking about.

Once they come in, then you can educate them all about chiropractic and what it can help.
It’s a common phrase in marketing, “what’s in it for me?” At that point in their life, it doesn’t really matter who D.D. Palmer is.

Look, chiropractors can help a lot of different people with a lot of different issues. But, to speak to that new patient on their level, you need to talk to them in their language.

I often get asked about running my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads as inserts in the newspaper, as opposed to a space ad inside the paper. Many chiropractors have never tried inserts and are quite surprised at the return on investment they can get.

If you’re using my ads, I strongly recommend testing inserts for your zipcode at least once. (Of course you can try inserts even if you don’t have my ads, but I can’t promise you’ll get good results.) If your ad cost to run in the main section of the paper is going to be above $1,500 or $2,000, you should try inserts as your first three runs.

If you’re running in a major metro city paper, inserts would be better to start with because you can just run in the zip codes for your area.

For example, if you were out on the edge of a big city, like in a small suburb, you’re not going to have that many subscribers in some areas for the major paper. In this case you should run inserts for your zip code instead of paying full price to run in Section A, the news section. Running inserts in a large city paper is a very good thing when looking at your overall marketing plan. It can give you a lot of options and multiple places to run your ad.

You could run a half-page ad in the small, local paper, and then inserts in the big city paper for your area. This allows you to run basically two different ads in the same exact area in two different papers.

With my ad kit you have plenty of ads to rotate and run, and although it’s possible, don’t just build your practice on one ad.

Typically inserts will be a little bit more expensive than running a half-page, a full-page, or a quarter-page ad, but many times inserts will produce better results.
There are different reasons for this, not that it really matters, because the fact that you get a better result is good enough.
But in case you’re curious, let’s look at what advantages inserts offer:

- people can hang on to it longer, putting it on the refrigerator for example,
- the insert’s easier to handle and read
- inserts fall out of the paper, so prospects are more likely to notice it
- it looks a different color than the “gray” newspaper
- inserts are a different size
- inserts stand out from the rest of the paper

All of these factors have an effect on the insert’s higher response over a “display” or space ad. One of the major benefits of an insert is that it’s not right next to any other ad. You don’t have to worry about losing the person’s attention. It’s not mixed in with other articles either, so they can’t really skip over it.

Many newspapers will allow you to bring already printed inserts to their facilities, and they will charge you what’s called an insert fee. There are two fees sometimes quoted regarding inserts: a printing fee and an insertion fee. The insertion fees is where someone actually is putting an insert into each of the papers before they go out in the morning.

In my experience, the insert fee usually the bigger expense. For most papers it’s more cost effective to have the newspaper print the inserts, as opposed to taking them to your own printer. You will have to shop around with your local printers and compare prices to determine which route is best for you.

I know for one of the major big city papers that I ran in, the insert fee was about 70% to 80% of the total cost that they quoted me. Which meant it wasn’t likely I would save much by printing the inserts myself.

But I would shop around and at least find out.

I compared it to the option of paying a local printer, then driving the inserts over to the newspaper’s facility, and paying the insert fee.
It was going to cost me double the price to do it this way! So I decided to just let the newspaper handle everything.

Sometimes newspapers will even have specials on inserts. That’s something you’ll want to ask your ad rep about. If they’re trying to get more inserts into the paper or they’re trying to get new business, the ad rep will give you a special discount.

With the internet being all the rage, many chiropractors have been told that newspaper advertising is completely useless. Is there any truth to this claim?

No. Chiropractic newspaper advertising is still going strong. It is certainly true that some newspaper publishers are struggling to keep up with the recent recession and all the new media in the past few years. But this is an advantage to you, since you can get better prices in most markets than you could 5 years ago. You’ll still get a good return from newspaper ads and a much quicker one than from a website.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying you should do newspaper advertising in the place of internet marketing. I’m saying you should do both. Why must it be one or the other? One is a quick influx of new patients when you run the newspaper ad. The other is a constant trickle of a new patients from your website and other online marketing methods. I for one like money that comes in big and fast, and money that flows in consistently over time. How about you?

If newspaper ads aren’t working anymore, no one has notified my ad customers who are getting tons of new patients. Like Dr. Merritt, who had 50 new ones after running his first neuropathy ad or the doc who called us and mentioned that his phone has not stopped ringing after running his first ad. Or Dr. David Rusick who just today emailed me this:

My first ad worked great! We have seen 22 new patients in one week from this ad alone and they are still calling, and 18 have agreed to prescribed care plans. Not a bad ROI, when my average case is $1,400.00 and my first 1/2 page ad cost was $1,500.00 . It sounds too good to be true, but it works. It has been amazing to see the reponse from the patients.They feel like the ad was written specifically for them. They are all ready for care when to they come to my office. Thanks Doc.

Here’s a short clip from a webinar where I cover the actual numbers released in a study from the Newspaper Association of America.

(If you have a decompression table and would like to watch the full decompression marketing webinar, visit http://www.decompressionmarketingelite.com)