Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

I was recently thumbing through Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Direct Marketing book, looking for a quote I had seen about chiropractic newsletters. While I did find the quote, I was reminded of something even more important when it comes to marketing.

In the first section of the book, Dan lists 10 rules to follow on marketing in your business. What he said in rule #9 can be directly applied to your chiropractic marketing. Here’s what he said…

Rule #9: Results Rule, Period.

Results are what matters when it comes to measuring the success of your marketing.

While there are certain caveats to this rule (which I discuss below), let’s look at what this really means for your practice.

“Results rule, period” means it doesn’t matter what your friends, colleagues, family, front desk CA, or even your spouse thinks about your advertising. When it comes down to it your own feelings about a certain marketing piece aren’t the determining factor of it’s success.

It doesn’t matter what your newspaper representative thinks about your chiropractic ads either. You would be surprised at how many times an ad rep wants to make changes to my ads.  They’ll tell my customer “I can make that ad look much better. Let me have our art department put a better picture in there. And I think you should cut this out and we’ll put you a pretty coupon right there.”

Then I get an email from the doctor asking me if he should let them do this. I tell him “Sure, if THEY GIVE YOU THE AD PLACEMENT FOR FREE! Otherwise, tell them it’s your money and you’ll spend it on the type of marketing you want.”

I once had a front desk CA proof read an ad I was about to run in the small community newspaper. She told me “the ad wasn’t going to do well, because she wouldn’t respond to it herself.” Then I asked if she had a herniated disc like the patients the ad was geared towards. Of course her answer was no. But she still insisted the ad likely wouldn’t do well. I then told her that we could run her rewrite of the ad, if she wanted to pay for it out of her next paycheck. That ended the discussion. (This ad brought in 13 new decompression patients for an ROI of 2062%.)

So who’s vote does count?

The only vote that counts is your patient’s vote, since they are the ones giving you the money. You then total the income from their case fees, and see if it’s more than you paid to run the ad. This is your ROI and it is the determining factor if the ad was successful or not.

So what’s more important when measuring ad results, the number of new patients you get from an ad or the actual ROI?

Well, if you ask most chiropractors, they would tell you it’s the number of new patients. But the ROI is much more telling. The biggest reason is because the ROI figures in the quality of the patient, how long they stay, and how much they spend.

For example, you could get 81 new patients in for a free exam and have only 4 of them actually ever give you money. Or you could have 15 sciatica patients pay $47 for an exam, 13 of which accept a care plan, spend $2000 each and get an ROI of 2500%. Which one would you rather have?

Figuring the ROI will also factor in the “caveat” I mentioned above to Dan’s rule. Here’s what I mean…

If you are measuring purely the number of new patients you got in, you could change the above rule to “Number of New Patients Rule, Period.” But this is not true, as it doesn’t account for the unethical, hyped up, immoral, and in some cases illegal advertising that goes on.

After all, if all that matters is getting the most new patients you can get from an ad, why not “promise a cure” and tell them the first visit is free? Hey, if you’re just measuring new patients, you did great, you got 101 new people in the door! Do whatever it takes, right?

But let’s look at your ROI. After 99 of them waste your time and never pay you a dime, 1 files a lawsuit against you for unethical advertising, and the state board fines you and yanks your license to practice, I’d say your ROI is about a negative 1 million percent.

With that said, I think we should modify Dan’s rule to make it a bit more speficic. “Return on investment rules, period.”

Do you agree or disagree? Post your comments below.

Some people say print newspapers are dead. And maybe a couple in the U.S. are dead or have been bought out by another company.

This means newspaper ads will no longer work for you, right?

Not from what I’ve been hearing. Chiropractic newspaper ads are still working well. In fact, certain conditions like neuropathy, herniated discs, sciatica, and numbness seem to be pulling better than they ever have before.

Could this be due to the population aging? More toxins being in our food and environment? I’m not sure what the cause is, but I can tell you that focusing your marketing on very specific health problems is working better than ever.

In fact, neuropathy is so big I’ll be holding a webinar in a few weeks to show you how to market to these patients. And I’ll have a guest doctor joining us to teach how he’s getting neuropathy patients well.

So back to newspaper ads, do they work?

Well here’s two doctors that recently sent me their success stories with the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads…

“Wow!  My practice is recovering and so is our cashflow. “

I have been blessed with a large and successful practice… but after 14 years something started to happen… Maybe it was the economy or maybe it was my focus.  Life does get busy.

Bottom line: My practice had dropped by 20 to 30% from September of 2008 to July of 2009.  It was pretty ugly.  In August of 2009 I discovered Dr. Beck’s Chiropractic Ad’s and I took a chance.

Wow!  My first Neuropathy Ad brought in 12 new patients… about $5,000 and only cost $700 to run.  My practice is recovering and so is our cashflow.  Not only are the Ads great, I have started using his family and friends gift certificates and his home health recommendations booklet.  It’s great stuff.

-Julian Chipley, DC

“If I had his program 10 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this,
I`d be fishing off my tropical island someplace!“

Years ago I had a practice which treated 150 patients daily for close to ten years. I eventually went to the DC/MD model when my body wore out and my marketing efforts declined since I was unique in our community regarding  interdisciplinary practice. Spiraling overhead eventually led me to return to solo practice, but the marketing that was successful in the past no longer produced consistent results, and ROI was low.

I liked everything I heard and read pertaining to Dr Beck`s program. I related to hid experiences, and the straight froward approach resonated with me.Unfortunately a lot of the marketing and consulting services available in our profession today use antiquated approaches that simply don`t work like they once did. Long winded scripting, 2-3 day reports, and high cost either out of pocket or with hefty percentages of practice increase are the norm. We all know that  getting qualified new patients in our doors remains THE most important aspect of a successful practice. The initial ad I ran was neuropathy. I`d written ads myself on the condition in the past and experienced modest success from them.

With Dr Beck`s ad I had 21 NPs and many of them have since referred other patients to us. The ROI thus far exceeds 20-1, and the tab is still running. The difference in my opinion is his copywriting skill. I`m actually a pretty good writer, but there`s a science to ad copy that I admittedly know nothing about. If I had his program 10 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this, I`d be fishing off my tropical island someplace!

- Dr Ren Halverson

Don’t wait until everything slows down during the holidays. Pick up your ads now and get started next week with more new patients.

http://ultimatechiropracticads.com/ultimate-chiropractic-marketing-ads

When I first started out in practice, I had no experience in running a business. In chiropractic school I assumed I would learn how to run a business. But that didn’t happen.

So I hired a consultant, who I felt certain would be able to use his years of experience to direct me on the right path.

Then my grand opening came. We ran a full page, long-copy newspaper ad. We did a huge telemarketing campaign to the area. And it worked, bringing in over 50 new patients the first month and $22,000 in cash collected!

Who can complain about that?

Actually it really messed me up.  So bad it would take 2 years to recover. Let me explain…

You see, I thought since this was my first month, every month after this would only get better. After all, if this wasn’t the case, surely I would have heard about it in school, or my $1000 per month consultant would tell me. Time to go get a $700 a month car payment. Time to start looking at new houses. (Do you see where this story is headed?)

Since my first month was so good, I’ll just lay off marketing the next month. Guess what happened?

Yep, only collected $10,000 and had a handful of new patients. But I thought “No problem, it’s December, everyone knows chiropractors are ‘cursed’ in December. Next month will be better. I won’t do any more more marketing and I’ll just wait and see what happens.”

I waited. And I waited. Five months later, we were stilling only seeing about 10 new patients per month and collecting between $10-15k.

So I did some proven marketing again. I bet you can guess what happened next.

We had an awesome month! So I thought, “I’m so busy seeing new patients and getting them well, I don’t really need to market much next month. After all, school is letting out and everyone knows new patients avoid a chiropractor during the summer.”

The next month dropped again. “We’ll of course, it’s summer time”, I thought. “I’ll just wait and see what happens next month.”

I’ll spare you the long sad story, and tell you this pattern continued for the next 2 years. It was a vicious  downward spiral. One good month, then ‘wait and see’ whats going to happen, then 3 bad months. Rinse and repeat.

Every quarter, I had less and less money to spend on marketing, since I was relying on 1 month to cover 3 months of expenses.

Why didn’t I learn my lesson, you ask?

There are many reasons, but the biggest one was that having one good month always made me think everything was okay. All I had to do was keep holding on and things would get better.

And while it’s true you must “hold on” during rough times in life, holding on doesn’t mean you just sit around doing nothing. You “hold on” to your faith, your family, and your sanity. But you don’t hold on to the business stuff that’s not working, namely a messed up marketing plan. I was simply holding on, praying for Someone else to do the work of bringing in the new patients.

I did eventually learn my lesson and turn things around.

Wait-and-see chiropractic marketing does not work. And the sad part is, if you do this too often, you’ll get into a spiral that’s very difficult to get out of.

Don’t wait and see what’s going to happen next month. Don’t count on spinal screenings to build your practice.  Don’t sit around thinking patients are just going to walk in the door.

Instead, use proven marketing systems. Run a chiropractic newspaper ad next month. Implement a new referral strategy with your patients. Set up an automatic online marketing system.

You don’t have to do it all in one month. But for your practice’s sake, do something!

Sometimes it’s prudent to wait and see. But when it comes to solid proven marketing, you’re always better off doing it now instead of later.

Have you ever had less than stellar results with a chiropractic ad that’s worked for everyone else?

I’ve spoken to many doctors who now use the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads to bring in new patients. But occasionally a chiropractor will tell me their results were less than expected. After breaking it down the fault usually lies in 5 categories of changes made to the ad.

Let’s take a look at the first 2 ways you can ruin a good chiropractic ad.

#1. Changing Font Size Proportions.

This one happens more often than you might think. You simply change your contact information on the ad and send it to the newspaper. They tell you the ad needs to go up in size to fill your half or full page order. Then you see the proof. If you’re not watching closely, the newspaper editing department may have completely diluted the effectiveness of your ad.

How? By enlarging the body text of the ad, but not changing the headline in proportion. This makes the ad look weird and any regular newspaper reader is going to notice this point. If you’re using my ads, you know they aren’t designed to look like an ad. But when the font size is disproporti0nate, it’s much easier for readers to say “Oh, that’s just an ad, I’ll skip over that.”

To fix this, simply make sure the original font size ratio stays the same when the ad is enlarged. If the headline is 3 times bigger than the body text before the newspaper gets it, the headline should still be 3 times larger than the body text after they make their changes.

#2. Charging Too Much for the Special Offer.

The question of “how much to charge” for a new patients first visit always seems to get sparks flying with chiropractors. I understand both points of view. Some doctors don’t want to ‘water down’ chiropractic by giving away free exams and x-rays. Other chiropractors are struggling so bad they can’t give away exams even if they wanted too.

Here’s the point…

Marketing is about ethically persuading people to come in to your office and see if you can help them get well. And make no mistake, we must market our practices to be successful (even referrals are a type of marketing.) I’m not saying you must give away anything for free. But if you make a special offer, many people will get over their procrastination and skepticism to come in and see you.

In my ad kits, I recommend between $25 and $50. (Of course this excludes all federally insured patients, Medicare, etc.) This appears to best at weeding out the people who only want a free exam while still maximizing your ad response. In some cases more than $50 is justified if you’re doing a specialized practice. But realize that the higher you go with your price, the lower the number of new patients.

What about the loss of revenue from giving too much away? It is true you loose a small bit of revenue from this first visit. But if you’re set up your fees properly, and know how to do a report, then you’ll bring in plenty on the patients care. There is no need to be so greedy about the first visit you miss out on the huge blessings in store for your practice later on.

Also, see my previous article on this subject entitled “Is Your Marketing Classy and Effective“.

Occasionally I’ll get an email asking if my newspaper ads really do work like I claim on the website.

And while I can’t say that they will work 100% of the time in every town, since there are factors outside my control like crummy newspapers, they bring in quite a few new patients.

I often wonder “why are chiropractors so skeptical of good marketing ideas?”

But, then I remember all the hyped up, over-exaggerated claims out there in our profession.

You know the ones that make huge claims with very little to no proof. Websites with almost unbelievable crap. Smooth sounding salesmen on the phone with a rough, scratchy ‘I’m-your-buddy’ voice. Or ads in chiropractic journals with headlines like… 

“208 New Patients with One Ad!”

or

“I have the BIGGEST practice in the whole world and make $145,270.16 per month!!!!”

(I particularly like this last example. I’m thankful he put the exact number down to the penny, because until I saw that 16 cents I was really doubting it. Alas, now my doubts are resolved.)

Maybe these claims are true. It’s certainly possible to get hundreds of patients and have the biggest practice in the world. Yet not very probable.

But it sure would help if they gave some real PROOF to back up these enormous claims!

For example, if there is a testimonial, how about giving the person’s full name and town they live in. And I’m not talking about “Dr. T — California” or “P.M.–Montana” either. I’ve heard of marketers (especially internet marketers) out there who flat out lie and make up testimonials to put on their site. So, just having someone’s initials isn’t enough proof to back up a claim. Especially a big, unbelievable claim.

If a doctor got 202 new patients from one ad, I want to see his name, age, town…maybe even a video of him showing how excited he is.  200 new patients is more than some chiropractors see all year.

What really sets a customer’s mind at ease when buying a marketing product is having a 100% money back guarantee.

If these products and marketers had a guarantee then you could feel better about taking the risk when buying their material. If their claims are hyped up, you’ll know when you buy their product and you can simply send it back.

When I wrote my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, I knew there would be some skepticism. This is why I put in a 90 day guarantee. If someone isn’t happy — for any reason — they can send it back for a full refund. All I ask is that they run at least 1 ad. That’s fair isn’t it?

So be careful out there. Examine every claim with common sense and reason.

But don’t assume everything that has to do with chiropractic marketing is hype. There are marketing strategies and tools that work to bring in an extra 10, 20 or 30 new patients a month. For most doctors, these are welcome numbers to be adding to their other new patient endeavors.

(Today’s blog post is from Section 3  Ultimate Chiropractic Ads manual and is entitled “How to Get the Best Ad Placements and Save Thousands of Dollars With Your Ad Rep”)

When running an ad, much of the success of your ad will depend on the price you get to run the ad, and the newspaper that you run the ad in.

In this section we’re going to talk about how to get the very best rates. I’ll show you negotiating tips and tricks that you can use with ad reps to get great prices. And we’ll discuss the major pitfalls where most chiropractors mess up big time and waste money.

The First Contact: Don’t Waste A Lot Of Time

When you first select the newspaper to run in, call or email the ad rep that you found from their website. Once you get a hold of an ad rep, you’re going to ask for their media kit. Now they may give you this information over the phone, or by email.

Many of them will push to set-up an appointment at your office, so they can sell you on a big ad package. You don’t want to set up an appointment right now. You haven’t determined if this newspaper is actually going to worth your time and money.

If you set up appointments with everybody, you’re going to waste all your time meeting with ad reps. You’re not even sure if their newspaper is good enough to advertise in yet. And they just spent an hour of your time trying to sell you on how great their paper is.

Let the numbers determine how good their newspaper is first; not what the ad rep says.

When you get the media kit, it’s going to have some very important information in there. One of the things that you’re going to look for is the number of subscribers that they have.

If you’re looking at a large newspaper, it’s going to have subscribers for the different days of the paper. For example, Sunday’s subscriber rate may, and usually is, much larger than the weekly subscriber rate.

Typically you’ll see a weekly subscriber rate, a weekend, and then a Sunday subscriber rate. You will also see the number of papers that they sell through the boxes and vendors on the street. This should be a separate number and not included in the subscriber totals.

I should also mention here the coverage of the newspaper. If you’re in a suburb, make sure the papers you are dealing with covers your area. Some ad reps will insist that the paper gets delivered near you, but it may turn out to be in very small amounts.
All of these numbers are important, but the main thing you want to look at is subscribers. That’s what you can compare from one paper to the next.

Smaller, local papers are many times free and they’re not going to have a subscriber rate. They’ll simply have a distribution rate, or how many papers they throw or mail.

Typically, some of the free papers will mail these to homes and apartments. Because they have no idea how many actually get delivered by the post office, you can’t always trust the numbers.

If there’s too many newspapers to choose from in your area, then you should…

Ask You Patients Which Paper They Read.

If you keep getting the same answer from different patients, you know that’s the newspaper to be advertising in. You may want to even do a more formal survey where you ask them to fill out a short questionnnaire. On the form, ask them to list the top three newspapers they look at on a monthly basis.

Just because a paper is free doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a good paper to advertise in. That will depend on the quality of the paper, where your competition is advertising, and other factors in your area. For example, one of the best return on investments I ever had was with a local, free paper. After testing major metropolitan papers and local paid papers, I wasn’t getting a great return.
That’s when I decided to give this more local, free paper that only went out once a week. It mailed to the businesses and homes right around my practice. As I investigated further, this paper had the best layout as far as geographically of where my patients came from. And it was free, so almost everybody in the community got it in the mail.

Plus, it was the only newspaper really covering the local sports teams.

Side-note: Sports coverage is very important for smaller suburbs. The major metropolitan papers will not give great coverage to smaller sports teams. You potential prospects will want to read about their kids and grandkids sports teams. This is one reason why newspapers will be around for many more years to come.

Using the strategies I reveal in this manual, I got a great deal with this local paper. I still tested all the other papers, but that little local one always came back to me as my best return on investments.

It was also the least risky too, because it was the lowest cost. This allowed me to test new ads and try new strategies that I wouldn’t want to risk in other papers due to the higher cost.

Each geographical area (and the way you practice) is different, so I can’t tell you exactly which ads will work best. Or which ads to start with. But here’s a few tips to help you make a good decision.

Start with an ad that’s typically the type of patient you see come into your office.

What type of patient comes in regularly? Which condition would you like to see more of?

For example, if you see a lot of lower-back patients or headache patients in your office, start with that ad. You already know your practice draws these types of patients, so that’s a good ad to start with.

You’re typically going to get some good results with that. If you have a decompression office, for example, then you would pick one of those ads to start with. Same with cold laser ads.

All the ads can work well for your area, but some will pull bigger than others. Remember, we’re just testing out which paper is likely to give you the best return on investment.

Once you find out with paper that is, you can start running other ads. I do not recommend you just stick with one condition or one ad. You should diversify your practice!

Other topics discussed in section 3 of the manual are…

• How to negotiate the best ad position for the lowest price.
• What section of the newspaper you should never, ever run an ad in.
• Use this special phrase with your ad rep and get 50-80% off your ads month after month.
• Negotiating tricks that ad reps use against chiropractors.
• How to choose between a big, metro newspaper and a small community paper. (This one may surprise you.)
• Why you should never agree to run multiple ads in a newspaper until you’ve done this!
• The 5 pitfalls chiropractors must watch out for when running newspaper ads.
• How to determine which ads to “roll out” in a big way in other marketing media.
• When to run your ad as an insert and when to your run it as a regular space ad.

If you haven’t picked up the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads yet, find out more here…

http://ultimatechiropracticads.com/ultimate-chiropractic-marketing-ads

Are we seeing the end of newspapers as we know it? Hasn’t the internet pushed the newspapers out of business? Should you even spend money putting ads in your local paper?

Since releasing my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads in January of this year, occasionally I get asked the above questions. So I thought it would be a good idea to discuss some of the answers on the blog.

First let’s address the question…”Are newspapers disappearing?”

Before I answer this question, let’s look at a couple of other industries going through tough times. GM and Chrysler are getting bailed out and on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet, new cars are still being sold and, my guess is, will continue to be built for years into the future. In the past year, hundreds of banks have folded and been bailed out by the government. But, I predict banks will be around for a long time. My bank just built a whole new wing for “wealth management”.

What do these businesses have in common? They  made bad decisions for years and are now paying the consequences during a recession. The same goes for large newspaper companies. The newspaper corporations grew large and wasteful. They disconnected with their readership and begin to twist stories into one-sided arguments. Plus, they designed and encouraged the use of poor ads for their clients. When the economy took a dip, these same clients were not willing to pay for advertising that couldn’t bring in a return on investment.

So the answer is yes, some newspapers have gone out of business. But, does this really mean anything? Businesses disappear everyday. A few that have folded: The Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examine, Kentucky Post, and the Cincinnati Post. However, the important point here is that newspapers didn’t disappear into thin air in these cities. Someone is still printing papers and making money. For example, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Baltimore Sun, etc.

A recent MarketWatch.com (owned by the Wall Street Journal) report shows newspaper readership down 7% in the last six months. Not surprising, since the economy itself is down more than that. Spending is down. The stock market is down. My retirement account is down 40 %! So, in the big scheme of things, a 7% decline is rather healthy.

Does newspaper advertising still work? Yes, of course it does.  (If a chiropractic office closes it’s doors because of poor marketing, does this mean chiropractic itself no longer works?) But the key is running the right kind of ad.

Here are a few examples of it working in chiropractic offices for 2009…

Dr. Beck, Just an update on the ads I’ve run .  On Feb. 10, I ran the “Could One Hour With This Doctor…” half page ad and got 13 patients to come in . We closed 10 of those for a total of $18,885 already collected. We paid $1134 for the ad. That’s a 16:1 ROI !!

On March 24, we ran the same half page ad and 10 patients have come in. We converted 6 of those so far and have 1 more coming in today for ROF. We have collected $14,,066 so far. That’s a 12:1 ROI !!

I just ran the “Herniated Disc” ad yesterday. We are scheduling patients as we speak.

THANKS!!!
Denton James, DC

P.S. I ran 2 other ads from another source on 1/21/09 and 3/3/09. The ROI is about 5:1, which isn’t bad, but your ads get us 3 times the ROI !!

Here’s another email I received from a doctor running a full page ad (which is not required with my ads, but he did so to get a bigger ROI)…

Hey Doc,
Just wanted to let you know how great the ads are working for me.  We ran the \”Are you living with sciatica or back pain\” ad on March 30, 2009 which is a Monday. It was $2950 for a full page ad. We had 8 new patients scheduled before lunch on Monday.  For the week we ended up with 14 new patients. We have had 3 referrals so far this week. (the week after running the ad). We have a case $ average of around $1500, so we are figuring about $26000 in income. I couldn’t be happier with the ads so far.  We are looking forward to running another ad in the very near future. – Dr. Chad Keeney

But aren’t online news sites competing with newspapers? Yes, but there’s still a lot of money to be made with print newspapers ads. Many newspapers realize they need an online presence, and are now creating hybrid type papers that are in print and online. Some papers have shut down their print editions, but publish regular online newspapers.

This is why you should be in both places. Never focus on one source of new patients too much. Better to diversify. This is very easy to do on the internet. This is why I spend quite a bit of time teaching about internet marketing in my ChiroMarketing Academy.

No one can say if and when newspapers will become obsolete. If you’re concerned about it, my advice is to stop trying to predict the future and focus on what is working now. The Ultimate Chiropractic Ads are bringing in new patients for chiropractors in 2009.

My final recommendation today is this: Keep running effective print ads for all their worth, while putting more and more empahasis on internet marketing strategies.

There’s no more contemplating whether or not a recession is coming. It’s here.

You can’t turn on the TV without hearing about the recession.  What does it all mean for you, the chiropractor?  Will it affect your new patients?  Will your current patients keep coming in?  Will your income drop?

I can’t predict the future.  I can’t tell you what the economy will do in 2009.  I do know that as long as your patients have jobs, nothing will really change with their finances.  Maybe their dropping 401k balances will worry them. But all the doom and gloom they hear constantly is likely to affect their spending more than any real change in their household budgets.

But I can say one thing for certain: if you cut back on your marketing, it’s guaranteed your new patient levels will drop off. If your new patient flow decreases, your income will follow.

A friend of mine bought a practice in August of this year. In just 3 short months he’s doubled the practice and cut back to only one employee. Another successful friend is having the worst winter of growth in the history of his practice.

What’s the difference?

Marketing. The doctor who bought new office really cranked up the marketing. He’s been testing my ads like crazy. He’s got fibromyalgia patients, decompression patients, he’s advertising for headache patients, and many other niches. And he’s not just running ads. I coached him on implementing 4 other major marketing campaigns to be running each and every month. This isn’t including the internal marketing that occurs naturally as a result of all the new patients flowing in.

Who do you think is going to do better during a recession? The chiropractor who markets his practice more, with better tools and strategies, or the one who cuts back and waits to see how long it will last?

While all your competition is cutting back, if you push ahead, you’ll be the one who comes out on top.  While everyone jumps out of yellow page advertising because “money is tight”, you’ll have an opportunity to stand out be staying in. You’ll also have quite a bit more negotiating power to get a good rate. The same goes for chiropractic newspaper ads.

Now before we go any further, we should discuss two detrimental myths that some chiropractors hold…

Myth #1. Chiropractic marketing doesn’t work. To that person, I say you are using the wrong kind of marketing. I fell into this trap during my first 2 years of practice. Too many “Mercedes 80′s” coaches trying to make me do their type of marketing. A variation of this myth is “Marketing doesn’t work in my town”. To this I say…really? Is there a newspaper? Billboards? TV station? Do you ever get any junk mail? It’s more likely you’re using bad advertising and marketing tools. Remember, what worked in the 60, 70′s, and 80′s won’t work in 2009. Your patients have had it with hyped up marketing promises. people in your community have grown more immune to the continuous flood of boring or pushy advertising everyone else is doing. As a result, you must be very specific and clear about what you are offering and how it can benefit the patients.

Advertising and marketing does work. It’s what every successful business is built on. You just need the right tools to make it work. (More on this in future blog posts!)

Myth #2. Marketing is unethical. This is a big roadblock to success a few doctors have. I think it comes from the “medical doctors don’t have to market” mentality. Maybe the GP never markets (unless you consider the millions drug companies spend doing it for them), because he’s so full of people wanting drugs and running in every time they have a paper cut. But the specialists market all the time.

Have you ever seen an ad or billboard for a hospital? What about a pain management or scoliosis center? In the city where I live there are hospitals advertising all sorts of specialties…sleep centers, back pain centers, fibromyalgia centers, cancer centers, heart rehab centers, neonatal units, and more.

Yes, there is some marketing that’s badly done out there. Not so much unethical, but just pushy and sleazy, hurting your practice image. I recommend you stay away from that kind of marketing.

Now back to the recession…

There is a recession going on. But are you going to sit around and mope about it? Or are you going to make sure you don’t have a “personal recession” with your own practice or income. There’s no government bailout coming for chiropractors. Ain’t gonna happen.

I will make one prediction for 2009. And I’ll bet it holds true. Ready?

“The chiropractor who  uses proven marketing tools and strategies  in 2009 will be more successful than his competition.”

A revelation right?

Don’t cut back on your marketing (unless it’s the “Mercedes 80′s” marketing). Use the tools and strategies you learn about on this blog to grow and build your practice…like there’s no recession in site.

See you next week.
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What’s the secret to getting new patients, month after month, year after year? How do you set up and run low-cost, high-profit chiropractic marketing plan?

I spent years trying to learn the answers to these questions. I wrote checks totaling in the tens of thousands to ad reps, consultants, and marketing gurus.

What did I learn from all this time and money I invested? Very little, and then quite a bit. Let me explain…

For the first 2 years of my practice life, I struggled just to survive. If an ad rep showed up at my office, I thought I needed to spend money to make money. After all, my coach at the time didn’t seem to advise me otherwise, so I wrote checks faster than a bailout happy congress. Yellow pages, val paks, money mailers, displays, health fair booths, convention center booths, newspaper ads, gym screenings, direct mail — I even knocked on doors (at the advice of another consultant!) 2 years into my chiropractic career.

With all this busyness of marketing activity, I was bound to have a booming practice, right? Not hardly. Mostly I had an empty bank account. (Was I the only one who did this, surely no one else in chiropractic has ever done this kind of thing, right?:)

I learned very little from these people about how to get new patients. They were teaching and selling old rehashed marketing strategies that worked in the 1980′s. That’s when I figured out I needed to study marketing a bit myself, so I could spot an effective marketing approach before I spent the money on it.

Here is my short list of criteria necessary for making buying decisions. Maybe you will find it helpful as well.

1. How much hype and over-exaggeration do you feel or hear coming from the ad rep or sales person? Can they back it up with proof?
2. If it’s a chiropractic coach or guru, do they make you feel good about buying their product or do they make you feel bad, like you are pushed into the sale? (If they are pushy in their approach, how do you think they will teach you to market and convert patients? This is a big clue!)
3. How is the “quality” of new patients using their product or service compared to others? (To many chiropractors worry about numbers and volume, and not enough about quality and profitability.)
4. IS THERE A MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ON THEIR MARKETING PRODUCTS?
5. Is there a long term contract or is it month-to-month?
6. Does their product or service produce new patients right away, do they want me to run ads into infinity because it “builds awareness”?

This was my list. Maybe you have more to add. If so, don’t be shy, post it in the comments below.

In a comment to my last post, Jay said…

What I’d like to know is how to build value in what I offer, such that the potential patient sees that value and is therefore willing to pay FULL FEE for my exam. (Is there really a need to give away our exams for $17 or $27?).

And, do the above in a non-cheesy format. I’m not really interested in sending out free reports/sales pitches to my prospective patients. I think today’s consumer is privy to these “reports” and they know it’s just a sales pitch.

And, while you are seeking my questions; I’d like to know how to market my practice such that I’m not offending any of my potential patients. (Let’s face it, some of the chiro marketing gurus’ marketing methods are downright offending and low class). And that last statement is true, no matter how many patients were attracted with a particular ad.

So…bottom line, is there a method of marketing that is classy and effective??? (That’s the million dollar question).

Jay brings up a valid question that many chiropractors have, so I decided to dedicate today’s post to the subject.

The first issue Jay brings up is he wants his new patients to pay full price for an exam. That’s fair. You can certainly collect $200-300 per exam, I’ve done it as well as many other doctors. However, at this price level there are many prospective patients who simply will not “try” chiropractic if this is what they perceive each visit to cost. So yes, you can certainly charge full price for each exam, but how much are you loosing out on. What we have to ask ourselves is wouldn’t you rather have the patient come in at a lower cost then realize you aren’t a weird doctor, so they stay with you for life and refer their circle of friends? There’s no “need” to charge $17 or $27 for an exam (especially if you are doing well), but there’s no doubt this offer is going to lower the risk for someone to overcome the rumors they’ve heard of chiropractic.

How to build enough value in your practice to actually collect $200-300 for an exam would make this post too long. I’ll address it in a post of it’s own at a later point.

The next issue Jay addresses is “cheesy marketing” and the use of free reports. Assuming he means “cheasy” as in the overhyped, hard selling techniques and kits being sold and taught to chiropractors today… I totally agree. There is a lot of hype in some of those free reports I’ve seen.

Yes, there is marketing that is classy and effective…but not much of it out there. There’s a lot of fancy-smancy stuff that doesn’t work (pretty websites,brochures, cards), and there’s certainly lots of non-classy junk that doesn’t work (although some docs will swear up and down it does work).