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).

There are a lot of salesmen out there trying to get our marketing dollars. They come into our offices, call us on the phone, and send mail or email, all with the hopes of getting our hard earned money. Then we go and spend thousands of dollars with them, because they made it sound so good. Maybe it’s on a chiropractic website, a pretty yellow page ad, or a telemarketing deal.

When the dust settles, you look back and realized you got little to no new patients. Oh well, at least you “got your name out there”, right?

Has this ever happened to you?

I know I’ve fell for this more times than I should, especially in the early days of my practice. I remember a couple of guys came by the office selling me a spot on the “ad board at the local golf course”. It was only $600 and “all the golfers would see it in the locker room”. I wasn’t into golf at the time, but I thought this would surely bring in new patients, so it was a great deal. Six months later, I had not seen a single new patient from this ad. I called the ad company up, no working phone number. I asked a patient who played golf there if he had ever seen it in the locker room, and he said…”there are no locker rooms there, only bathrooms and there aren’t any ads in the bathrooms” (it’s a public course). Another $600 down the drain.

Not all marketing is bad. Not every ad rep is bad, but many will gladly take your money and run, not caring one bit if you make a good return on your investment or not.

When investing in marketing, make sure the marketer, coach or “guru” is straight forward with you. Do they talk about return on investment, or conveniently leave that out? Do they have a guarantee? It’s best if they have actually run a practice at some point, because then you know they’ve “lived it”.

We’ve all had our challenges marketing our practice. What I want to know is how can I help you better understand marketing? What would you like to know or learn more about when it comes to chiropractic marketing? There’s already too much hyped up marketing B.S. in chiropractic, let’s cut right to the point and talk about the issues that matter most to the hard working chiropractor.

Please leave a comment below with your most important question about marketing?