Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Are you using email marketing to its fullest potential in your practice? Watch this short training video to learn about the different email systems I recommend. (This video is a portion of Bonus Lesson 1 in the ChiroMarketing Academy.)

(This post is part two of a two part series. To see the first 3 strategies, click here.)

#4. Use Good Telemarketing

Many chiropractors think telemarketing is some kind of sleazy type of marketing that only ambulance chasers would do. Unfortunately if you think this way, you could be missing out on a great method of getting new patients.

Using telemarketing services with a reputable company is such an easy way to get new patients.
One thing to realize with telemarketing is that the conversions are probably going to be lower than new patients from the other strategies I mention.

The lower conversions can lead some chiropractors to believe telemarketing patients are not worth the trouble and too much work on the doctor and staff. But it’s really return on investment that you should look at.

I ran telemarketing campaigns for almost 6 years straight and always made a considerable return on my investment. One client of mine is getting 10-15 new patients A WEEK from telemarketing, and converting a 50% of them to care.

#5. Use Effective Direct Mail

Direct mail is one of the oldest forms of marketing. Even with the rise of internet, radio and TV direct mail marketing still grows each year.

There are many different forms of direct mail — postcards, letters, magalogs, magazines, tear sheets — but postcards and letters are the most often used by chiropractors.

If your marketing budget is tight, you should start with postcards then move into letters at a later point. It’s also important to note that you should not start direct mail until you have other less risky marketing strategies in place — namely newspaper ads and internet marketing. This is because direct mail requires more patience and testing to be profitable. But don’t let this deter you, because when used properly, direct mail can be very profitable.

When it comes to postcards, you can choose between the small regular size, a half page size and an oversized postcard. Most direct mail testing shows that the bigger the postcard, the better the response. Of course much of the response will come from the words, or the “copy”, on the postcard.

The list you buy is going to determine about 50% of the response you get from direct mail. Make sure that you find a decent list broker so you’re getting good addresses.

#6. Use PPC Marketing And Social Media To Get New Patients

PPC stands for “pay per click marketing”, and you should be using it to bring new patients into your practice. The three big PPC companies currently are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. When someone searches on Google for the term “chiropractor” your ad would show up. If the person clicks on your ad, they go to the website you designate and you get charged a small fee.

The best thing about PPC is that you only get charged for people who click on your ad. You aren’t getting charged for everyone to see your ad, just for those who click on it. Also, you can customize and tweak the ads, so that you’re only getting certain types of patients. For example, you might want to set up a PPC campaign just for spinal decompression and focus on speaking to that patient about his disc problems. (For more info on setting up a PPC account, see my previous post here.)

Another great tool to get people to your website — and then call you to schedule an appoint –  is by using social media. Social media is a catch phrase for all the popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and many of the blogs out there. To use this method, you basically create accounts on these sites and link them back to your website. If you’d like to learn more about this method, I recommend you grab Dr. Loop’s course here.

#7. Do The Report of Findings Right

You may be wondering why I would mention the ROF in an article about marketing. I do this because how you handle the report with a patient will likely decide if they will refer their friends or family in.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of mistakes in this part of a chiropractor’s office.

You want to give the patient a short, no-fluff report with certainty. Some chiropractic coaches will tell you to give a long winded speech here to hard sell the patient on care. If the patient really wants help with their problem, and you have some objective findings to show them, you won’t need to hard sell them on care.

A report should not take longer than 10 minutes. Tell them what you found. Tell them if you can fix it and a BRIEF summary of how you’ll do that. Layout their care plan and explain why it takes time. Go over the cost (this is best if your staff does the financial part). If insurance is involved, have that prepared and covered by your staff at this time.

Have a simple, easy to follow payment plan for your patients. At least 2 options of payment, 3 at most. Remember, very simple. I have seen so many complex systems that almost force the patient to “go home and think about it.”

Also, you’ll want to begin mentioning how your office sees families (if you do). If done in a non-forceful way, it’s likely the patient will begin to ask questions about their spouse or children. This is a great opportunity to educate them on sending a referral in.

Have you heard of blogging?

Blogging is about the most cost effective marketing you can do online. Running a blog is virtually free, it’s the fastest way to get you on the front page of Google and you can keep in contact with your patients on a regular basis.

Blogging is a way to post articles chronologically on a webpage. What you are reading right now is a blog. It’s simply a free software installed on this hosting account. I log in, click on “write” and start typing. If you can write an email and send it, you can run a blog.

What’s it cost? To get a domain name, it cost me $7. $17 a month for hosting. I paid a graphics person $45 to make the header graphic up top. That’s all I spent, a whopping $59.

A blog gets you great ranking on search engines. Google loves blogs because they are new, fresh content. Google prides themselves on keeping current for their search users, so they will give more credit to a blog over a traditional website that never changes. For example, I’ve only been running this blog for less than 6 months and have the #1 and #2 spots on Google for the term “chiropractic newspaper ads”.

Other sites below me have been around for a lot longer than mine…some for almost 10 years.This is for an internationally competitive keyword term. You could do much better for a local search term like “yourtown chiropractor”.

Another great thing about having a blog is that it’s very easy to regularly contact your list of patients (or even prospective patients.) As soon as I hit publish on this article, it will go into an email system that sends out an email notice to everyone on my list. I didn’t have to manually go in and email everyone. All I had to do was publish a blog article and everything was done for me. Essentially, this could be your e-newsletter to your patients.

Don’t worry if you can’t write (at one point you couldn’t adjust either). You can hire someone called a ghostwriter to do it for you. With a little practice you could write 200-400 words once a week. Or have your spouse, staff member or even your teenage do it for you.

We cover blogging, how to set it up, what to write about and how to get it ranked on the top of Google. Find out more by going to my chiropractic internet marketing course.

So why aren’t you blogging? How long before the office down the street starts blogging and jumps to the #1 spot on Google?