As a way of saying thanks for reading my blog, I wanted to give you one of the many lessons from ChiroMarketing Academy. This is a written article posted there, along with all the video and audio lessons to fully flesh out your marketing plan.

Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving!

You’ve heard it mentioned before. Every chiropractic coach or consultant harps on it. Some chiropractors have even claimed to have reached the magical place where that’s all their practice relies on.

I’m talking about referrals.

The ever elusive type of new patient every practice loves. Referrals, on average, are easier to convert to care, cost little-to-nothing to acquire, and are just all around less stress on your practice.

I’ve identified 5 quick and easy ways to use your internet marketing plan for referral generation.

#1. Front Desk Display

How many patients pass by your front desk every day? How many look at what’s there, or talk with your staff?

One of the most visible spots in your office is at your front desk. It’s here that we can indirectly work for referrals.

I recommend you go and buy a medium sized dry erase board. On it, write (or have your staff write because their handwriting is prettier) a short blurb educating your patients about a health condition you can help with.

Then, simply add your landing page address at the bottom of the board.

So it would look like this:

Condition of the Week:
Migraine Headaches
Did you know chiropractic can has
a proven track record with helping with headaches?
Learn more at…www.mylandingpageaddress.com

Simple right. (And if you don’t like “Condition of the week”, feel free to make it “health tip of the week” or whatever suits your practice.)

Add to that a stack of flyers or printed small “coupons” next to the board for patients to pick up. They may ask you or your front desk person “I didn’t know chiropractic helped with headaches?”

What they’re really saying when they ask this is “I know someone with headaches!!!”. So make sure you have something to hand to them with this landing page address on it. It’s best if the landing page just mentions headaches, but it’s ok if you just have a general set up there.

Why send a potential referral to a landing page and not just hand them a special certificate to come in for a free exam? Why go the extra step?

Well, first let’s think about it from your current patient’s prospective. It’s much easier for a person to say… “You’ve mentioned before that you have bad headaches. You really should check out this website my chiropractor put up for headache sufferers. It’s got some great information you can get there.”

It’s not as convincing when a patient says “You have got to go see my chiropractor for those headaches. He’s awesome.” Sometimes this strategy works. But I bet you’ll get more people signed up on your list at your landing page.

That brings us to the second reason we want them to go there. Once they leave their information on the landing page, you can email them regularly. They’re on your list now, and will be getting your autoresponder series.

It’s simply a matter of time before they receive the right email on the right day and pick up the phone to finally come in.

#2. Put it on your business card.

Patients pick up your business cards. They write their appointment times down on it. They keep it for your phone number.

They even pick up your cards to hand to their friends and family members that need your help.

So let’s make sure your landing page is listed on your card.

There’s two ways to do this…

First, you can simply put it at the bottom of your card, like you would a website address. At the bottom, centered, have printed “Visit www.mylandingpageaddresshere.com for 7 free tips on health living”.

You can make it as big or small as you like, but the bigger the better when it comes to getting someone to act on it.

The second method is having it on the front like I just mentioned, as well as on the back of your card. Have a two sided card printed up with the something similar to the following on the back…

“Discover the 7 Keys To Healthy Living In Today’s Unhealthy World…
Download a Free Copy Of This Life-Changing Report At www.myaddresshere.com”

You’ll learn…

• How to get rid of the aches and pains of everyday life
• Why the way you sleep could be making things worse
• How to determine if you have good posture or not
• The 3 essentials to getting enough exercise
• And much more!

Receive this special free report
by going to www.myaddresshere.com.

#3. Mention it in your health talks.

Many chiropractors give new patient orientation classes, health talks, spinal care classes, etc.

Do you hand out anything at these talks to stimulate referrals? You should.

Simply make a flyer that has similar language to what I mentioned above. Really build up the free information a person will receive by going there.

Again, this will make it easier to get potential patients signed up on your list, having them receive multiple emails over a period of time from you.

I would still close at the talk (or workshop) making an offer to the patients’ direct family members. But for non-family referrals, the landing page process will work better.

#4. Broadcast Email. (This is a great strategy to get referrals and reactivations.)

If you’ve been in practice more than a year, it’s likely you’ve built up a large list of patients. You need to have them all in your email system so you can reactivate the lost ones and get more referrals.

To do this, enter the first name and email addresses into your system. For www.easyemailsystem.com you’ll simply go to import list. If you’re using the Dashboard System, they can do this for you. They’ll get an email from the system confirming they want to sign up on your “new” system.

Not everyone will sign up because many patients will have moved on, don’t check their email, or various other reasons. But just by contacting them, you will get some reactivations as they get on your list and start receiving information from you again.

So how do you get referrals?

Actually you can do it multiple ways using this strategy. But here’s a couple of examples I like…

• When you get a new landing page setup, simply email your list and let them know you just put up some free information on ______ (whatever topic you chose) and if they know anyone who is suffering with ______ they can go there and get help.

• When you have special events, email your list, let them know there is a going to be a special event coming up with 20 spots available for exam and x-rays at $___ (special offer). To receive more information about the event, have those interested sign up at your landing page. When the event gets closer, send out a reminder email.

If you have 3000 people on your list, and you run a special event (Christmas, PAD, etc) and send an announcement out to your email list, imagine how many new patients you will have.

#5. Newsletters.

Each month, you should be sending out a chiropractic newsletter. In your newsletter, there should be a section, or insert, that gives a special offer. Use the following language to make your offer appealing for your current patients.

For example…

New Patient Special For March 2009 Only
If you refer a new patient in the month of March, they can will receive all exams and x-rays for only $35. Have your referral visit www.mylandingpagehere.com for more info.

Of course, one of the first things they will get when they sign up at your landing page is a special offer to come in for $35. This offer should be there for everyone to sign up, so you aren’t really adding anything extra for March. But you are letting your current patients know about it in the newsletter.

That’s the 5 steps for today. You could get more advanced by setting up a special landing page for each special offer above, but I don’t advise that until you have the basics in place first.