You need traffic to your landing pages, blogs, and website to make your internet marketing system run. Too many doctors spend thousands of dollars on a pretty website, and are very disappointed to find little-to-no traffic or very few new patients.  Remember, more Internet traffic to your sites means more new patients. And more new patients equals more profits for your practice!

There are two major categories of website traffic: paid and free. Paid examples would include Google Adwords, newspaper ads with your website address, mailings, press releases, etc. But today I want to focus just on how to get free web traffic.

#1. Post on other blogs.

One of the best ways to get free traffic and great incoming links is to visit other people’s blogs. What you want to do is look for blogs relevant to your practice. These would be blogs on health topics, chiropractic issues, medical issues, or even legal issues dealing with healthcare. For traffic purposes, it’s best to look for local blogs, but for incoming links you can look for blogs anywhere in the world.

Visit some of the blogs and find post/articles that are relevant to your practice. Comment on the post and make sure to fill out the box for your website. This should be your blog or main website, the place that you want to rank higher in Google. I would not recommend doing this for your landing page.

Remember most blogs are an ongoing conversation; so make sure you are contributing to that conversation. Do not be promotional. Leave a comment that is relevant to the topic, not an ad for your website. Most comments must be approved by the owner, and if your comment is not related or overtly promotional, it will be deleted as if it was spam.

The first time you comment, simply use your first name and website link. With following comments, you can be a bit more aggressive by using your first name and some key anchor text, like “Dr. John – Dallas Chiropractor”. They may decide to edit out your anchor text, but many blog owners will allow it, so it’s worth a try.

(You should even comment on this post below, giving me your thoughts. Remember, enter the conversation, don’t just be promotional.”

#2. Participate on forums.

Another free way to generate traffic and incoming links is to post on message boards. This strategy is more for incoming links than for traffic, however if you are in a larger city there could be many discussion boards to post on.

Go to Google.com and search for “yourtown message boards”. You should also try the terms discussion boards and forums combined with yourtown. For example, if I practice in San Diego, I would search for “San Diego message boards” or “San Diego forums”. This is for local traffic.

Make sure that when you register at these message boards that you create a resource box (sometimes called a signature box) with your website or blog link. That way you are subtlety telling the reader to visit your site.

For an incoming links strategy, find a larger, more popular message forum and post messages related to the topic. Also, if the message board is health or chiropractic related, this may provide for a better incoming link. An example site would be http://www.healthboards.com/boards/index.php as it has a high rank with Google. Incoming links from sites with higher “Google page rank” are more valuable than sites with lower page rank. And remember your resource box on these forums, as that is where you will get the incoming “link juice”.

If you want to know exactly what page ranks a site has, you can download the Google toolbar at www.toolbar.google.com

#3. In-Office Blog Promotion.

There are numerous ways you can encourage your patients to learn more and get them to revisit your content on the blog. Why would you want your current patients to read your blog articles? There are many reasons, but here are a few: become better educated, find out about other services and products your practice offers, stay informed about upcoming events like P.A.D.’s, be reminded about referral opportunities, and so much more.

The first thing you can do is print a flyer that reads “To Read The Latest Health Articles And Updates Written By Dr. Beck, Be Sure To Visit www.blogsnamehere.com” Have this flyer in one of those nice, clear standup displays at the front desk where all of your patients can see it.

Another great place to mention your blog is in the newsletter. (You are sending out a printed newsletter to all your patients right?) Simply place a similar text like I quoted above in a prominent place in your newsletter, like at the bottom or top of each page.

You should also put your blog’s website address on all your business cards. This can be used inside and outside the office to better connect with patients and potential patients. Even if you already have a website listed, add your blog address.

#4. Submit to blog carnivals.

There are blogs out on the internet that are looking for different posts to link to on their site. They will typically get quite a few blog posts and put them together into a “blog carnival”. You can submit your content rich blog posts to blog carnivals, and in return may receive free incoming links to your site as well as a chance for good traffic.

To submit to a blog carnival, go to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit.php. You’ll need to find a non-promotional blog post on your blog to increase the likelihood of a carnival linking to your blog.

#5. Outside Promotions.

If you do any outside promotions for your practice (you should be), I recommend you have your landing page address on any materials. Most people who pick up some information will not act on it right away. But later, when they start feeling worse, they’ll pick up that card, brochure, etc and go to our landing page to learn more.

When doing a talk, if you’re making an offer for new patients go ahead and do that first. But after that has been made, make sure you have a slide shown or a flyer handed out with your website information on it. This may sound basic, but you would be surprised at how many chiropractors don’t do this.

This is a final post of a 2 part series. The first part is Chiropractic Video Marketing, Part 1.

Now that we’ve looked at how to market you video for new patients, what kind of equipment do you need?

Here’s a list of the inexpensive equipment you need to make your video look like it was made in a million dollar studio.

Webcam or digital video recorder.

Almost any webcam will work, but I recommend a higher quality recorder if possible. I use the Flip Video Ultra which is extremely simple and easy to use. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, records up to 60 minutes, and requires no software or wires to upload to your computer. It only has a few buttons, like play, stop, power, fast forward and rewind, so it’s not complicated at all. You simply flip out the USB port and plug into your computer, then the video you just recorded will upload.

The biggest problem with the Flip Video is that the sound quality isn’t that group. It would be nice if you could plug in an external mic, but the Flip Video series does not offer this. However the new Kodak Zi8 is a small HD camcorder that does have an audio input port. This one comes highly recommended so I’ll likely be upgrading soon.

Microphone for quality sound.

Bad sound can totally ruin a good video. This is why the Flip Video mentioned above has it’s drawbacks. To get good quality sound, I recommend the low cost Audio-Technica ATR35S lapel mic. This mic is normally less than $30 and can be plugged into the Kodak Zi8.

Video Screen Capture

This type of software allows you to capture what you are doing on your computer while talking into a microphone. You might choose to record a workshop on screen with power point presentations or do a staff training video on how to use your practice software. This is the software I use to make training videos for this blog and ChiroMarketing Academy. On doctor I spoke with is using it to record his new patient class and having it duplicated onto DVD’s to hand out to his patients for referral purposes.

The software I use is called Camtasia and costs about $300. I recommend you try the 30 day free trial and see if you like it. You can find it here:

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp.

For recording with Camtasia or editing my screen capture videos, I use the Logitech USB headset which works great and is very affordable (less than $35).

Editing Camcorder Videos and Creating DVD’s

When you use the camcorders mentioned above for patient testimonials, your orientation class, etc. you want an easy software to edit those videos and/or make DVD menus/titles. While Camtasia works well for editing screen capture videos, it is terrible at handling videos imported from a Flip Video or Kodak HD. For editing and creating DVD’s the best software is Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9. This is a reasonably priced (currently less than $99) software that allows you to create DVD menu titles, edit audio and video, and much more.

It can do a lot more than you’ll likely ever need, but it’s great for non-AV people like myself. I just import the video from the camcorder, cut out what I don’t like, and export it in a format for youtube.

Using it to make DVD menus, titles, et. is really beyond the scope of this post, but if you’re interested in learning how I recommend you check out Terry Dean’s Internet Lifestyle System. In this set of DVD’s, he spends quite a bit of time on how to easily use Sony Vega for DVD production (plus there is lots of other very valuable internet marketing lessons in this set.)

A few years ago using video on the internet was pointless because most people had dial-up internet and could not play the videos. Now, the majority your patients have a high-speed connection, allowing to watch even movies and TV shows from the internet.

I follow quite a few internet marketers. In the past few years, many of them have run tests on video vs. no video on a website. Results always show the use of video to be much more profitable.

So how can you use video to grow your practice?

1. On your landing page.
This is an ideal location for a short 2-5 minute video of you talking directly to the prospect. The important thing here is building a relationship with your prospect right away, so they don’t hit the back button and go somewhere else. You should still have some text on your landing page for those who don’t want to watch the video.

2. On your blog.
Your blog is a great place to post videos. You can record videos on special upcoming events (instead of or in addition to writing your post), do short educational videos, remind them to do their home exercises, educate on your nutritional or supportive products, and more. You could occasionally post short videos of you and your family on vacation or goofing off around the house. This will build a better relationship with your patients. Some blogs are just “videocasts” where the blogger never writes and only posts videos. I don’t recommend this, since Google can only read the text on your blog Without text on your site you will loose the SEO bonus of having a blog.

3. Sites for traffic generation.
Youtube gets a huge amount of traffic daily, and you should definitely have a video there. You can upload your video to youtube.com and then embed it on your blog. I recommend using a site like TubeMogul.com. With TubeMogul you can upload a video one time, and they will distribute it out to over 10 highly traffic’d video websites like YouTube, GoogleVideo, Myspace and more. At the time of this writing, it’s still a free service.

The key to making this work is having your blog’s web address at the end of the video or running on the bottom of the screen throughout the video. Because anyone can embed your video on their site once it’s on YouTube, without your address no one will know how to find out more info about you.

4. On your main/traditional website.
If you have a static website (webpage that never gets updated) you can still post videos on it. The problem with this is that you can’t target the videos as specifically as you can on a landing page. Therefore, your script would need to include a more generalized description of you and your practice.

5. As a ‘video email’ to patients.
You can send out a broadcast email (or include it in your Autoresponder series) from your www.easyemailsystem.com account that gives a link for a video. For example, email #7 in my autoresponder could be a 3 minute office tour on video. You would write a few paragraphs in the email, then give the to the webpage your video is embedded on.

6. Workshops and special events.
You could record a new patient orientation workshop or advanced nutrition workshop to put on DVD or post on a website. If someone misses your new patient class, send them to the website or hand them the DVD you had cheaply, but professionally duplicated at Kunaki.com

In the case of advanced workshops, you could break them up into lessons and even charge the patients to watch them — six video lessons on weight loss, or a online workshop for detoxification. The first time you could do it live and record it, after that it could run on autopilot for your. You could also put it on DVD’s and sell them as a product at your front desk.

7. For staff training.
Ever lost or fired a staff member and had to retrain the new person? Does this happen over and over every year? Why not record what you teach them and make it part of your office training manual. With screen capture software and a camcorder, you could have a nice set of office training videos that would cut out 90% of your time on training a new employee.

In the next post, we’ll look at the inexpensive equipment you need to make your videos look like it was made in a million dollar studio.

Find more “how to” lessons on internet marketing, print marketing, conversion and more, at www.ChiroMarketingAcademy.com.

Are you making full use of the internet to bring in new patients?

Years ago, Bill Gates said “Any business not on the internet will not be around in four years.” While Mr. Gate’s quote still stands true today, I would have to add to it by saying “simply being on the internet is not enough”.

Here’s why…

Many chiropractors today have a website. And it’s well known that millions of people surf the web every day for chiropractic and other related terms. But even with all these searches, most chiropractors only see 3-5 new patients from their website each month.

I often tell my coaching clients  they need much more than just a “brochure”, static type website. What I recommend is that they set up a complete internet marketing system. This includes a website, blog, landing pages, videos, email auto-responders, blog broadcasts, and more. Here are just a few reasons you should consider implementing this type of system for your practice…

1. Once you have your system in place, it brings in patients for you on autopilot! Spend just a few minutes a week to maintain it.

2. Your marketing plan rides the waves of the internet boom.  More and more people are using search engines like Google and Yahoo to find information on their health problems. They want to know about their options before spending money or committing to any one doctor.

3. This technology can be used to keep current patients active with you for life. Retention of new patients is a key factor in the growth of your practice. Many of the same strategies you use online to get new patients — like email communication and blog articles — can also be used to keep current patients active. This creates affinity marketing and means patients are less likely to respond to other offers to go somewhere else.

4. Compared to other forms of marketing media (newspapers, TV, Radio), it’s relatively inexpensive to set up and maintain. Would you rather spend $5000 per year on yellow pages or spend a fraction of that to be on the front page of Google?

Are you seeing the potential that using the internet can have for your practice?

Here’s how you can get a Two Part Internet Marketing Lesson for Chiropractors for FREE

I’ve put together a simple six question survey on internet marketing that will only take you a couple of minutes to complete. As a regular reader, you care about the information that’s published here. This is your opportunity to let me know how I can best serve your needs.

As a thank you for filling out the survey, I’m giving away two lessons from ChiroMarketing Academy. These two lessons focus on “How to Set Up Your Internet Marketing Plan” and “Email Marketing that Converts Website Visitors to New Patients”. (Each of these lessons has a written report plus a training “how to” video.)

Click here to take the survey…

P.S. This free gift is limited to the first 100 participants.