Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Today’s featured blog post is by Billy Sticker of http://instantinfluencer.com/

How would you like some free and low cost marketing/advertising?  In this economy (heck, in any economy), you want to get the most “bang for your marketing-buck,” right?  Well then you need to write a book.  Having your own book needs to be a part of your marketing tool chest.

Here is a quick list of 10 reasons why:

1.    Credibility
Being a chiropractor already gives you credibility, but what sets you apart from other DC’s?  If you write a book on your expertise, it can set you apart.  All else being equal, people will choose the author (recognized expert) 9 times out of 10.

2.    Free Publicity
Being a doctor and an author can make it easy to get media attention.  Your local media is always looking for quality content for their followers (TV, newspaper, local magazines, radio).  You can write a  press release and attract media attention worth tens of thousands of dollars in free exposure for you and your practice.

3.    Patient Education
One of the most important keys in patient retention is patient educations.  A great Report of Findings coupled with a “system” of educating the patient throughout the course of their treatment is instrumental in getting a patient to follow through with care.

4.    Patient Retention
If a patient understands the reasons and benefits for continuing care, they usually will follow through with their care.  If implementing a patient education system using your book doubled your PVA, it would also double the value of the patient – which potentially means that you could double your income without seeing any new patients.

5.    Marketing Tool
When you self-publish, it is possible to get your book printed for $2-3 per book.  It usually means ordering large quantities of 1000 or more (I teach DCs how to get that price with no minimum order), but at that price, you can give them out when you do lectures or screenings.  And maybe even use them as a door prize.

6.    Referrals
Your patients will be proud and excited they go to the doctor that “wrote the book on…”  You can pass your book out to existing patients and ask them to hand it out to friends and family to generate referrals.

7.    Eliminate Competition
With your new system in place (free publicity, patient education, patient retention, marketing, and referrals), your competition cannot compete.   Becoming the recognized authority in your local market can set you above the other non-author chiropractors in town.

8.    Legacy
The older we get, the more we want to leave our mark for generations to come.  Can you imagine your great grandchildren reading your book?  Think about it, if your great grand mother or father had written a book, wouldn’t you like to read it?  Your book lives on long after your gone.

9.    Increase Profits
With new found fame, comes the potential for increasing profits – your PVA has almost doubled since you wrote your book, referrals are pouring in, and people are still calling from the TV interviews they saw you on.  Their are new patients everywhere!

10.    Fulfill a Dream
Most people, when asked, admit they have always to write a book.  And of those people, many never will.  It is a great feeling to hold your finished book in your hands – to know you have accomplished something many people only dream of.

If you have ever thought of writing a book, do it.  Fulfill your dream and grow your practice.

Author and Marketing Expert, Billy Sticker, is the founder and CEO of The Instant Influencer, which has been hailed as the fastest, easiest, and most affordable way to writing and publish a book.  He is recognized worldwide as a leading expert on the subject and regularly consults chiropractors and other professionals that want to attain global exposure and a celebrity-like following by having a book.  For more information go to http://instantinfluencer.com/

Have you tapped into the very hot neuropathy niche yet?

Due to the aging baby boomer population, there are currently millions of cases of peripheral neuropathy worldwide.

- In March of this year, a California legislative task force on peripheral neuropathy was established and reported that over 20 million Americans suffer this disease.

- It Is Anticipated That by 2010 Sales of Neuropathic Pain Drugs Will Double To US$5.5 Billion.

- Almost 1 million neuropathy related keyword searches were performed on Google last month in the U.S.

With my ads, it’s easy to get neropathy patients in the door. But then how do you help them get better?

Find out on Tuesday 1:00PM EST, 12:00 CST, on Jan. 19th when I’ll be hosting a webinar entitled “Discover An Ethical Treatment Plan Proven to Find and Help Neuropathy Patients”.

Register here to watch the replay:

http://www.neuropathychiros.com

I’ll be joined by two experts in the neuropathy field.

Dr. John Hayes, DC and Dr. David Phillips, PhD have combined efforts to develop a tested and replicable treatment system for patients with peripheral neuropathy.

Dr. Hayes will be taking us through exactly what he does with his patients to get them better. I think you’ll be surprised at how easy his protocol is to implement in your practice. And rest assured, it does NOT advocate outrageously expensive equipment, or cold laser therapy!

Here’s just a few of the conditions Dr. Hayes has used his system for…

-Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy
-Post ChemoTherapy Neuropathy
-Diabetic Lumbopelvic Plexopathy and incontinence
-Failed Lumbar Back Surgery
-Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
-Multiple HNPs with bilateral Radiculopathies
-Idiopathic Polyneuropathy
-Chronic, intractable Myofascial Pain

In addition to Dr. Hayes, we’ll be joined by Dr. David Phillips. Dr. Phillips invented the world’s first infrared ear thermometer and received The Inventor Of The Year Award 1987. Dr. Phillips also invented the nano-silver based cure for Molluscum Contagiosum, a previously incurable childhood skin disease.

Now, he’s developed a unique device that’s proven to be 94% effective in the treatment of the chronic pain of Peripheral Neuropathy.

And you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how inexpensive this equipment really is!

Make sure you’re on this exciting webinar.

If you have questions, you’ll be able to type them in on the webinar and we’ll be answering them in a Q&A session at the end. I’ll see
you there.

P.S. Just like spinal decompression was all the rage 5 years ago, the neuropathy niche is only going to get bigger and bigger. Don’t be the last chiropractor in your town who taps into this market of patients.

No doubt there are neuropathy patients in your town right now looking for help. They’re tired of being pumped full of drugs to stop the pain. They want a natural solution.

The only question is how are you going to reach them and what treatment protocol will you be using.

Register here to watch the replay:

http://www.neuropathychiros.com

The study of marketing and advertising is one of my life’s passions. I’ve read and studied the greatest sales letters and ads of today, as well as successful ads of the past 100 years. (I’ve even handwritten a replica of a Master Copywriter’s 50 page sales letter, a marketing autopsy if you will .)

While the words, strategies, and offers in these ads may have changed over time, the 5 “secrets” to making them successful never change.

I call them secrets, because if they were well known, more practices would be using them in their chiropractic ads. But I’m going to reveal them here, so you’ll forever know them.

1. Have A Compelling headline. Famous ad man John Caples, author of Tested Advertising Methods and writer of what may be the greatest ad in history, accurately stated the headline is responsible for 80% of the ad’s results. Your headline is the “ad for the ad”. If the headline isn’t noticed, you’re ad is surely doomed.

2. Use an advertorial style ad. If you’re a well-known company making billions of dollars, you can run an ad with only your name, picture and some pretty colors. For those of us that have not yet acquired that level of success, it’s been proven that an educational style ad called an “advertorial” works much better. An advertorial looks like an article, or an editorial, so hence the name. They are typically bigger than a display ad and are written by an expert copywriter. And who in the world would actually read all those words in your ad? Your ideal patient who wants to refer all their friends and family  members in, that’s who!

3. Make an offer. While it’s not a requirement in chiropractic to give a discount on the first visit, it will certainly bring in more new patients when offered in your ads. If you’re going to spend the money to run an ad, then you should give an incentive to the reader to pick up the phone and call now. You don’t need to make a special offer because you have to, (as if chiropractic is some second-rate type of healthcare) but because you want to do it so more people will respond to the ad. This allows you to help more people, build a bigger practice, and live a better lifestyle.

4. Use a photo with a caption. A caption on a well placed photo can be the second most read part of your ad, after the headline. You must be careful to use this one right though. We aren’t going to make the focus of the ad the photo. On the other end of the spectrum, even a lot of average copywriters get this one wrong. They think using any kind of of picture is bad marketing. And the photo doesn’t necessarily have to be a picture of you. It depends on what the ad is written for.

5. Give proof. Your ad should have as much proof as can be squeezed in it. Two powerful forms of proof are testimonials and scientific studies. Testimonials work because they back up the fact you really can and do help people. Studies prove you aren’t just making stuff up. For example, if your ad focuses on headaches, it should mention the Duke University Study or the study in the Journal of Neuromusculoskeletal System 2002.

Does your advertising follow these 5 guidelines?

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?

In my last post, we discussed how you could start preparing for economic change. Today I’ll continue with the last 3 steps you can take to win during the recession.

5. Get out of debt.
If you’ve ever had a slow month of collections, you realize how tough carrying debt can be. You’re debtors don’t care if you are having a slow month, or the economy is in turmoil, they just want to be paid. Proverbs 22:7 says “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.” Lest you think this is some kind of outdated, old-fashioned wisdom, try going a few months not paying your debtors and see what happens.

I know it’s not politically correct to say “get out of debt” these days, in a country gone wild with borrowing up to their eyeballs. But truth is truth, and carrying debt during a slower economic time is a recipe for disaster. So focus today on paying it off.

6. Add other streams of income to your practice.
It’s said that one is the loneliest number. In business and marketing this is certainly true. It’s not wise to rely on one stream of income. Many businesses have been wiped out overnight because they only had one method of making money. What can you add to your practice that builds on what you have, but is different than chiropractic services. Can you add nutrition, weight loss, detox, or decompression programs to your practice? Can you better diversify your marketing, so you aren’t getting new patients from just a few sources?

7. Stay focused on your business.
Who’s going to win the elections? Will the stock market go up? Will real estate go back up? Who cares, none of these things are going to make a difference in your practice in the coming year. You’re a chiropractor. Stop watching the news and get busy on your practice! Did George Bush help build your practice? How about Bill Clinton? No, your practice grew as a result of you, not Congress or the President. It’s what you do over the next year that matters.

Some chiropractors will go out of business in the next 12 months. Some will just do ok. Others will explode past their limitations and build the lifestyle of their dreams. Which will you be?

Google Adwords should be a part of your chiropractic marketing plan. Adwords are the small ads that run on the right hand side of the page when someone searches on Google.

To setup a campaign, go to www.adwords.google.com

When asked between a starter or standard edition, choose standard. After choosing your language, you will be asked to choose how you will target customers by location. This is very important. Be sure to choose the “customized” selection. This allows you to select a radius around your practice that your ads will show up on. This ensures someone from 500 miles away isn’t clicking your ad and running up your bill with Google.

You’ll then be asked to setup your first ad.

You only get 25-35 characters for four lines of text, two of which are your headline and website address. Here’s the proven formula for your ads:

First line should contain your keyword in a headline type phrase

Second line should be a benefit you offer, for example “Get Rid Of Migraines”

Line three should describe a feature offer, like “Without Drugs Or Surgery”

Line four is your URL, with each word capitalized and using a keyword in your url if possible

The next step is choosing your keywords. These are the words that your ad will show for when people type them into the search engine.

Then you will choose your daily budget. Be sure to set a daily budget that you are comfortable with. But to low because once your daily budget is reached, your ad stops running. And this could be in the most important part of the day.

In the last step, you will be asked to set your maximum cost-per-click. This is the most you will bid on your keywords. This will apply to all the keywords you chose earlier. Later you should set a bid price for each keywords, as the competition will be different.

Now your campaign is ready to go. One last recommendation is to run a test ad against your original. You can do this under the “Ad Variations” tab inside each keyword. Change one line and test it in your campaign.

Included in my upcoming course on Chiropractic Internet Marketing will be video tutorials on how to setup these features, plus many more advanced strategies for Google Adwords. Look for it to be released in a couple of weeks.

Newspaper advertising is still a very good marketing tool for your practice. But there are two major problems with chiropractic newspaper advertisements.

1) The ad looks like an ad. This may sound silly, but if your ad looks like an ad (like everyone elses), it’s not going to get much attention. But if it looks like an article (advertorial), it will look different than an ad, and people will read it more often. Advertorial’s have been proven to pull in new patients faster and have a higher ROI than standard display ads.

2) Even if you run an advertorial, all the other chiropractors have the same one and run it like crazy. This quickly decreases your response and within months it’s not worth running the ad. You know the one. Everyone bought that kit a few years ago. “A Doctor’s Confession To The Town of…”

To solve this problem in my practice, I studied copywriting for years, so I could write my own copy and ads. Ads that aren’t hypey and fake.