Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

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.)

I often get asked if online social marketing and networking really work to bring in new patients. My answer is usually “it depends on what you mean by social marketing and networking.”

Before I explain, let’s first define what these words mean.

Social marketing: marketing and advertising that reaches potential consumers via social networking website, such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Social networking: a social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

As you can see, these two terms are closely related. And often times they are used interchangeably within internet marketing circles.

Let’s look at the major components of a good social networking plan that can bring in new patients…

Press Releases
Press releases can be submitted online (for free) to many of the press release sites. This will get picked up and listed on the major search engines news, like Google News and Yahoo News.

Video
Most people have high speed internet and love to watch videos on Youtube. By submitting short 2-5 minute videos educating prospective patients on your services, you’re going to increase your web traffic and potential new patients.

Blog
A blog is what you are reading now. It’s basically a website that makes it easy for regular updates to be posted. Search engines love blogs, and will rank them higher than static pages on the same topic because blogs are new content. And Google especially likes fresh content.

Articles
Submitting articles to free article directories are a great way to generate traffic to your site. Other blogs and websites will pick up your article and spread it around on their sites, increasing the number of links you get back from it, creating a “viral” effect.

Social Bookmarking
This is where you save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. By bookmarking your own blog posts and adding friends, others will see what you like and click the links back to your site. Example sites are Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc.

SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is when your website or blog has been optimized for certain keywords, thereby increasing your ranking on Google and other search engines. (Having a blog alone will automatically increase your SEO.)

Social Media
Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook are the major sites here. The average person on these websites are females around age 35-40 — the perfect chiropractic patient! You can also interact with people who are talking about their health problems.

So, back to my original question, do these sites actually work to bring in new patients?

Yes, when used together, they definitely work. But, you have to do them often enough and with a purpose. Here’s what I mean…

If you think you can just post a couple of things about you had for dinner last night, like everyone else does on Facebook or Twitter, and expect to get new patients, it’s never going to work.

You must use specific marketing phrases and techniques on these sites to bring more traffic to your website. The more people who come to your site, the more new patients that will call and schedule.

Two chiropractors, Dr. Len Schwartz and Dr. Matt Loop, just released a social networking and marketing video at their Automated Social Networking 3.0 site that shows you the exact layout of what you need to do

Their free video is simple, easy to understand, and provides you with a proven and tested Social Media Marketing formula for achieving online or offline success!

Check it out here:

www.InternetForChiros.com

I found that they explained the complex issues of social marketing very well, especially on the second page. There you’ll see a 30 minute video where they draw everything out on a whiteboard.