Here is your chance to see an updated version of my friend Paul Wright’s free webinar entitled “The Practice Acceleration Program – 12 Steps to a Great Health Business in ONLY 42 Days”.

There are 3 different days you can register, go here to find out more:

http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?Clk=4287445

This presentation outlines the 12 Essential Steps that you DID NOT learn in your university or technical education, but MUST know to be a successful health professional in these trying financial times.

Here’s just a sample of what Paul will cover…

• The 12 essential steps to a great health business – are you using them?

• Why failing to use these steps will leave you chained to your business forever.

• How these steps allowed Paul to run his clinics remotely – in fact he has only visited his six clinics four times in one 10 week period.

• How your admin team can kill your profits and what to do about it.

• Actions steps you can implement NOW to make you thousands in lost profits.

• The importance of cancellation reduction and how to make every treatment session “too important to miss”.

• How to get your hands on Paul’s exact procedures, scripts, steps and protocols that have taken him 20 years to develop and refine.

Click on the link below to check webinar times and register for this FREE event.

http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?Clk=4287445

The most difficult (and most frustrating for some) part of Google Adwords is dealing with the quality score.

The quality score is a way for Google to keep a high “quality” advertising network. It punishes people for being dishonest and stupid.

So if your website is selling chiropractic services, you are going to pay a lot more for running ads that only talk about back surgeries and don’t mention chiropractic. In many cases you will pay 10 times more!

Therefore, you do not want to make Google mad when it comes to quality score.

Let’s look at some things you can do to raise your quality score…

1. Make sure your keyword is in your ad headline. This means if your ad is about back pain, you should have the word back pain in the headline for sure, and possibly the first line and the domain name. That means in this example, don’t write an ad all about chiropractic and not mention the keyword “back pain”. Google will just think your site has nothing to do with back pain and make you pay a lot more for these bids.

2. Use ad groups in your account. We looked at this one above.

3. Use your keyword in your headline on your landing page. Continuing our “back pain” example above, if your site is really about “back pain”, then you should have that phrase prominently on your website somewhere right? If you don’t, another strike against you in Google’s book. More strikes = higher bid prices.

4. Make sure your landing page or main website loads fast. If your site loads slow, and Google’s searchers are going there, then it can make Google look bad. Would you refer one of your patient’s to a restaurant where the service was slow?

5. Use items on your landing page that makes the visitor stay longer (video,
audio, etc). The longer people stay on your site, and the more pages they visit, the more relevant Google thinks your site is to that keyword. If people go to your site after clicking your Adwords ad, and then click the “back button” immediately, that’s going to lower your quality score.

6. Make sure your landing page has a privacy policy link on it. For an example of this, go to http://www.ultimatechiropracticads.com and look at the bottom of the page for the privacy policy.

7. Put a link on your landing page that links to another website with a lot of
content (your blog!). This one is a big factor of quality score. Basically, the more pages you have on your site (or a site you link out to) that is relevant to a keyword, the better off you are. So for the keyword “back pain”, you can’t just have a small website with very few pages about back pain. This is why the blog is so important, because it gives you an “article database” of information to link to, some of which will be about “back pain”.

To  learn more about how to get new patients with Google Adwords, watch a free webinar at ChiroPatientsOnline.com

Have you set up your 2012 chiropractic marketing calendar yet?

I know it’s already 2 weeks into the year, but if your holiday season is anything like mine, it takes the first week or two in 2012 to actually relax and catch up from the end of the previous year.

One of the things you must do is write down all your plans and goals on a yearly calendar.You can not just wait until you need new patients, and then figure out what to do. This is reactive marketing and you want to be proactive this year.

For years, I used a monthly calendar on the wall that my staff and I could write marketing events down and see what was coming up.

But the furthest you can see on these types of calendars is only 30 days at a time. What we need is a “year at a glance” type of calendar.

Well thankfully this year I found the NeuYear Calendar, which is a complete year at a glance. This will hang great on the wall or back of my door.

I recommend you grab one too, and start planning your monthly marketing events, promotions, ads, etc.

Here’s some benefits listed on their site, which led me to buy one immediately:

• It’s big, coming in at 27″ x 39″ this means you can see the whole year at once. “You no longer have to page through a traditional calendar (or on your small computer screen), to see the whole year. You can layout your goals for the year, set future deadlines, and clearly see the passing of time. Also, it has bigger squares so you can write more.”
• No space between months. “The week is the currency we think in, so this calendar focuses on presenting 52 weeks, rather than 12 months.”
• Brilliant aesthetics. In Making Ideas Happen, author Scott Belsky says “the design of your productivity tools will affect how eager you are to use them; attraction often breeds commitment.”
• 2 calendars in 1! It has a horizontal orientation that fits perfectly above your desk, or you can flip it over for a vertical orientation that fits perfectly on your door.

Now that I shown you which calendar I think is best, what do you do with it?

Call a staff meeting one day during lunch. Start by explaining your mission for your practice and the goals you have for this year.

Then begin brainstorming with your staff about the different types of marketing ideas they have. Make sure to give them room and freedom to talk. Even if they have a bunch of bad ideas, just write them down. You never know when they’ll say something you’ve never thought of.

My staff would often come up with many successful in-office marketing procedures from the past that I had totally forgotten about.

Once you have written down, everything you can think of, start prioritizing your list. Put a “1″ by the most effective, “2″ be second most effective, and so on.

Side note: Do not base effectiveness on what feels like it did the best last year. Feelings do not turn into dollars. Measure effectiveness based on your return on investment numbers you recorded for all marketing last year. And if you didn’t keep good records, go back and see if you can figure it up now. Remember, ROI equals the amount you brought in from a given marketing campaign divided by the money spent on it.

You might want to throw in something new for 2012 that you haven’t tried before. A few suggestions would be:

• Neuropathy or decompression newspaper ads
• Google Adwords
• spinal screenings (but with a caveat, see here)

Then begin writing on your calendar all the 1′s, 2′s, etc. spread out somewhat evenly throughout the year. So you don’t want all your ads to come out in March and have the rest of the year empty.

If you wanted to do it according to budget, you should write the amount to spend beside each campaign to. For example, on February 20th you might write “Run Neuropathy Ad for $1000 or less”. (To see how to save money on running your monthly newspaper ads, watch this free webinar.)

If a month get’s too busy, slide things forward into the next month. You should be marketing every month of the year, no exceptions.

Now you have a marketing calendar set up. Try to stick to it as much as possible. You may need to edit and change things throughout the year. That’s fine, but make sure you take a look at the big picture before making rash decisions.

Do you have any other good ideas on planning your marketing calendar? Let us know in the comments below.

1. Monthly print newsletters will be more valuable.

I know, you’re probably thinking print newsletters have gone the way of the dinosaur, and that email, Facebook, etc. are “da bomb!” But the fact is people are starting to demand a more personal relationship with their businesses. All you have to do is look at the Occupy Wall Street movement to sense how people now see a big gap between the products they buy and the companies who provide them. (Also, for more on this, watch the second video here on Dr. Loop’s blog.)

What about email newsletters you ask? You should be sending those too, at least 2 per month. But does it mean more to you to receive a birthday card by snail mail or an e-card? Sending a print newsletter with a real postage stamp is still a very effective way to communicate with current patients and get more referrals.

2. Videos will be more effective on your website.

Video has been around for a number of years on the internet, but it really hasn’t become the norm yet. However I think in 2012 that will start to shift. A few reasons for this are: almost everyone has some type of broadband internet access now, Youtube is more popular than ever, and sites like Facebook are using more video. At the least you should test a video of yourself on the landing page of our website to see if it increases conversions. Using tools like Google website Optimizer will let you easily figure out if videos are more or less effective for your site.

3. Neuropathy, Decompression and other niche specific newspaper ads will continue to get high returns.

Like the print newsletters mentioned above, you may have bought into the lie that newspapers are now extinct. However, in most markets, this is not the case. Many of my clients got their best returns ever on newspaper ads in 2011, especially when using neuropathy and decompression ads. I know there are plenty of other people out there telling you how a jillion internet things will bring in hundreds of patients. And some of it will bring in patients. But don’t neglect the trusted source of patients like the newspaper. The key is using very good copywriting to reach specific niches that are really responsive.

4. Facebook, Google + and other Social Marketing sites will become more important in your chiropractic marketing plan.

Many chiropractors have heard of Facebook. Less have heard of Google+. Unfortunately, doctors treat these sites like everyone else, a place to post all your personal happenings. The problem is most patients aren’t interested in the fact you just “checked in” at the local burger barn. Sure, some personal interaction is necessary to maintain a following. But, you also need good copywriting and intentional posts to cause new patients to act and pick up the phone to call. Another important and often overlooked aspect of these sites is that they help with your search engine rankings. Having Facebook likes and Google+’s on your website will help it come up higher in Google Search, which will translate into more new patients. Just remember, Facebook and Google+ are effective tools, but they are not the only game in town. So, don’t spend 100% of your time and money fiddling with them.

5. Developing a mobile site will become a necessity.

As my friend Terry Dean recently pointed to, more and more people are using iphones to access websites like Facebook. Look at the stats from the link below, which state that “more than 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices “:

https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Also, realize that one of the most common uses for a smart phone is to check email. That means every time you send an email with a link back to your website that person is going to your website on their phone. Even though I prefer to use the internet on my PC, I have an iPhone and iPad that I use often and realize it is just more convenient to click a link now rather than wait until later when I can access the website on my home desktop.

I’ll be working hard to implement these changes in 2012. I recommend you do the same. Also, I’ll keep you updated on any new tools and strategies I’m working on next year. Happy New Year’s.

Recently a student from University of California Riverside contacted me for an interview regarding chiropractic marketing. I thought you might be interested in his questions and my answers. It’s a little longer than my usual blog posts, but I didn’t want to divide it up into parts.

Here is the interview:
——

Greg: I’m a student at UC Riverside. I am taking an internet marketing course and we were all assigned a niche (ex. chiropractors, plumbers, dentists) and was told to create an online marketing plan for these professions. I was assigned chiropractors and in my research, I found this site. You seem to be an authority in the industry so would it be ok if I ask you a few questions either through email or phone about Chiropractic Marketing and ROI.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I really appreciate it. My class revolves around internet marketing and its impact for businesses today. I have a couple of generic chiropractor questions and a few more specific internet marketing questions.

My first question: When you are training to become a chiropractor, do they teach you just what you need to be a skilled practitioner or do they also teach you how to run your own chiropractic business. Basically, do they teach you how to market yourself?

Dr. Beck: No. Most chiropractic colleges have one class on the business side of chiropractic and it is very bland. The teacher is often not in practice or if he/she is in practice, they are reluctant to give too much information on marketing, fearing that the college would not approve. The chiropractic schools do a great job of teaching us how to be skilled practitioners and caring doctors, but the business training is really lacking. And you see this affecting the profession with many chiropractors struggling to make ends meet.

Greg:  Do Chiropractors in large cities charge significantly more/make more than those in smaller cities? Or is it mostly standardized across the nation.

Dr. Beck:  There is certainly more potential in a large city for higher income, due to the higher density of potential patients. However there is more competition in large cities and overhead expenses are much higher. Smaller towns allow lower monthly overhead so that the business can have a higher profit margin. Plus smaller towns can allow for easier referral capacity. So it’s a toss up in my mind. I say live where you want to live and raise your family.

Greg: I saw on your website that you mentioned for one example that the lifetime value of a patient is $1800. Is this factual or was it just used for the example? If the latter, what would you estimate the lifetime value of a patient to be.

Dr. Beck: The term “lifetime value” is a typical marketing term used to estimate marketing costs and return on investment. If you take the lifetime value of a customer, then you can determine how much you can spend on marketing to acquire that customer. The lifetime value of a chiropractic patient is between $1000-3000 on average, depending on the type of practice, location and services offered. Some highly specialized niche practices will make higher than $3000. Anyone making less than $1000 per patient, averaged across 12 months, will find it very hard to be profitable in today’s world, unless of course they are getting hundreds of new patients per month.

Greg: I’ve noticed that in many large cities, the Google PPC ads are about $2-$3 a click. Even with a 10% conversion rate (just a guess by me), $30 for a patient worth $1000+ seems like a steal. What are you thoughts on this? Are chiropractors just unaware of these options in acquiring more patients?

Dr. Beck: A 10% conversions directly from Google Adwords would be quite high in my opinion, for any business. The actual number ranges between .5-2% depending mostly on the landing page copy on the doctor’s website. If we assume a conservative 1% conversion rate and high (in most areas) $3 per click, then it would take $300 to get a new patient. At a lifetime value of $1800, that is still a “steal” as you say. The return on investment (ROI) is quite high, with a $1500 profit per patient. Are chiropractors unaware of this? I don’t think most chiropractors understand Pay Per Click well like Google Adwords and they may have been screwed over by a company running it for them in the past. Also, many chiros have been told bad marketing proverbs like “you should never pay over $100 per new patient”, which causes them to quickly decline paying $300 per new patient.

Greg:  In our study one of the questions that we have to answer is if we had a website that ranked for “chiropractor in city” and was getting 100 targeted clicks a month. Not knowing how many people are going to call the chiropractic business, what should we charge the chiropractor for this website per month. What would be a fair price for the chiropractor as well as the webmaster on a monthly basis?

Dr. Beck: Words like “fair price” will mean different things to different chiropractors. So if asking them directly what they would pay for a website, it would depend on the money they are making at the time. Many chiropractors are paying upwards of $3000-5000 for really bad websites; websites that looks great but fail at getting new patients. Other companies charge a monthly fee like $500 for a website design and maintenance (which does not include an PPC.) I personally think no more than $1000-1500 for a website and additional monthly fees for Adwords management.

Greg: What would be the maximum you pay for the lead. We are going to assume he is a random patient meaning he may only go to the initial appointment or he may stay for a few years.

Dr. Beck: How much would I pay for a lead in practice? Almost nothing since leads do not equal new patients. I once bought a chiropractor’s files who was going out of business and mailed out letters to all 1000 of them. Not one came in. But I assume by the word “lead” you mean new patient. How much would I pay for a new patient? I would pay at least 70% of the lifetime value. But few chiropractors will do this high of a number, because of multiple factors mostly related to now knowing their numbers. (Most physicians and healthcare practitioners are not known for their ability to keep good business statistics.) Many chiropractors have been told they should pay little to nothing to get new patients in. Some have even been taught it’s unethical for a doctor to do any type of marketing. Also as I mentioned above, there is this proverb going around that we shouldn’t pay more than $100 per new patient, so that’s a baseline for you to consider.

Regarding a “random patient” who might stay one or might stay 100 visits, all this is factored into the lifetime value number as it is an average across your practice.

Greg:  I appreciate your time. I’m grateful for any help and I am looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much, Greg Larkin, Student at UC Riverside.

You should be measuring return on investment (ROI) for every marketing strategy or channel you use. To accurately measure ROI, you’ll need one very important number…the “case average” of your new patients.

Case average is a figure that represents how much money a patient will generate over time in your practice. You will sometimes hear it referred to as “lifetime value of a patient.”

You figure it by taking your collections for the month (or quarter, year) and dividing by the number of new patients during the month. And make sure to count all the new patients who’ve come into your practice, not the number of patients who started care. (I do exclude freebies who never get an exam though.)

You can also calculate a case average using a different forumla. Take your PVA (patient visit average) and multiply it by your $ collect per visit. So if your PVA in your office is 22 and you collect an average of $50 per visit, then your case average is around $1100 (which is too low.) But I don’t like this method as much because it can be inaccurate, since you’re figuring an average from averages (that have usually been rounded up or down).

Some chiropractors don’t like to calculate case averages in their office, because they think you’re putting a dollar value on the patient’s head. But let’s face it, you’re running a business here. There are two parts to running your own practice… a clinical aspect and a business aspect. This blog is about the business aspect.

The biggest reason to determine case average in your practice is to make good marketing decisions. Combine it with your conversion rate and you can really drill down on your marketing. Let’s run through an example…

An ad costs you $1500 to run. The last two times you ran it you got 13 new patients. You’re thinking about running it again, but your not sure if its really worth it. Because you’ve read this blog for awhile now, you’ve been keeping track of your numbers (right?). You know that every new patient that walks in the door will equal an average case of $1500. And you know that if a new patient comes in, you have a history of converting about 60% of them to care.

So if the ad produces 13 new patients, you’re going to convert 8 of them (13 x .60 = 7.8 rounded up).
8 new patients times $1500 case average is $12,000.

So now back to the question. Should you spend $1,300 on an ad to get $12,000 in return? If you said “NO, $1300 for one ad is crazy!”, you need to go back and reread the above paragraph until you get a yes.

This is the problem with judging your marketing solely on the number of new patients. Some chiropractors think…”13 new patients, well gosh Dr.. Beck, that’s not very many. Dr. Joe Blow said he got 187 new patients from an ad!”

That’s great for Dr. Joe. But I wonder what his conversion percentage is? And what?s his case average? Because if he really did get 187 new patients and converted most of them, he’s got a million dollar a year practice.

In today’s world, you need a case average well over $1500 to be profitable in practice. If this number gets below $1000 your usually going to struggle unless you have a ton of new patients coming the door. If the case average falls below $500 for more than a month, you?re practice is in big trouble.

The best way to get a higher case average is to increase your retention and collect more per visit.

Also, you can raise your case average by planning out each patient’s case in detail. This means around the time you do your report of findings with the patient, plan the services you’ll be performing with care plan. For example, if you are going to see a patient for 24 visits, what are all the services and billing codes you’ll be performing. Use a travel card, folder or software to keep track of this.
Planning the case out like this also helps your staff stay on track with the patient?s care. If a re-exam is supposed to take place on visit 12, your staff sees it and is able to make sure it gets done and billed. Or if an extremity adjustment is supposed to be done each visit, you are reminded of it.

This may sound like a simple step to take, but don’t overlook the pre-planning of a patients care. You’ll be surprised at how much you and your staff miss if you’re not watching it every day on every patient. Just one small service missed regularly can amount to hundreds of dollars on each case.

I once counted up how much revenue was lost one month because my staff had “missed” a few re-exams, extremity adjustments, re-xrays, computerized test-ing, home exercises, rehab etc. It came out to be over $3,000. From that point forward, I made sure everyone (including myself) kept up with each patient’s planned care.

Each month, figure your case average for your practice. Then check to see how your marketing is going. The number of new patients you get is important, but make sure you are considering the total dollars they are bringing into your business as well.

As a doctor, should you let your patients in on your personal life?

My answer to this question is “Absolutely yes!” There are two big reasons you’ll want to reveal personal aspects of your life to your patients…

#1. It connect your patients to you, building a much stronger bond. The reason social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, cell phones and blogs are so popular today is because people want to feel connected. We live in a very connected world where patients want to know about your good times and even be there for you during your hard times. Also, patients feel really put off by many doctors out they have seen in the past. They feel rushed, neglected and completely fed up with “the system.” If they can just see that you’re a real human with a life, then they are going to appreciate you and your office that much more. (I don’t recommend you let patients know about all your personal “problems”, but if they can “be there for you” or “pray for you” during hard times,  this would be acceptable.)

#2. Events in your life make for great marketing opportunities. One of the greatest marketers of all time, John E. Kennedy, wrote a book in the early 1900′s entitled “Reason-Why Advertising”. He stated that when you write and run an ad, you must give a believable reason why you are making an incredible offer. By sending a letter or email to your patients on special dates in your life or practice, you’ll be giving a great “reason why” you’re offering a discount, sale on certain products, or free food and refreshments.

Here’s a few examples of certain dates you could use…

-Practice anniversary
-Your marriage anniversary
-Birth of your child
-One of your children’s birthday
-Your birthday
-Getting a new pet
-Your pet’s birthday
-Your family’s summer vacation
-Your spring break plans

There’s really no end to the list of events you could come up with and use in your marketing. For example, after my daughter was born 2 years ago, I wrote and sent out a reactivation letter to my patients written in her voice. After it went out, patients started coming in to get adjusted that we hadn’t seen in years. And based on what some of them said, I think they wanted to hear more about my daughter than to get adjusted. But either way, they did re-activate and a few stayed on for good this time. If you would like to download this letter for free, click here. (Feel free to change the offer so that it fits your practice.)

This is just one of many marketing letters included as a bonus in my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads.

Speaking of special announcements, I have one to make of my own…

After a long and stressful Sunday night, my 4th child was born into the world. What started out as a home birth — which should have been easy and uncomplicated because our previous 3 were born at home with midwives assistance — became a hospital vacuum extraction. And while the kid is going to need some chiropractic care and cranial work, he’s doing extremely well considering. His name is Sterling Marshall Beck and he was born Monday at 8:41am at 8lbs 9oz and 22 inches long.

Here’s a few pictures of him with brother and sisters.

Just half a day old and ready to learn about marketing!

with new big sister.

The whole gang

[ad#atifadd-6]

Have you ever thought about how patients think?

When I first started out in practice, I didn’t really care what patients thought about their health problems. I was the doctor, and I was just going to tell them the “truth” about what was going on and how to fix it.

You can imagine how many patients I “turned off” by doing this.

I’ll never forget what a new patient taught me regarding this attitude.

I was just finishing up the new patient exam and x-rays, when she asked “Well Doc, do you think you can help me?”

I said “Mrs Smith, we’ve had great success with other patients that have had…” and I went on to list many of the problems chiropractic can help with. I think I even mentioned a few of the testimonials in the books we had around the office, and handed her one to look at. I was in a hurry and had the patients stacking up out front.

That’s when she looked at me angrily, and said “Dr. Beck, that’s not what I asked. I asked if you could help me with my problem?”

That’s when it hit me…

Patients want help with their problems! They want to believe you can help them, before they even come in to see you.

They aren’t interested in the history and philosophy of chiropractic.

They don’t care about all the problems you can help or who you’ve helped before them.

I have remembered this lesson every since. She was almost furious that I wasn’t addressing her problem directly. That’s the one question all patients want to know. That’s why the come in to see you!

Now obviously I couldn’t guarantee her I could help her problem. But I could have been more specific about the successes we had with her exact condition in the past. And I could have reassured her that if anyone was capable of helping her, we had the best chances of doing that.

How does this relate to marketing?

Marketing is teaching, telling, showing, persuading people to use your services over anyone else’s. And the best marketing message is one that’s relevant to your prospects.

People are searching for answers to their problems in life. They want a doctor who can help them and they will respond to marketing message that appears customized to them.

You can go on and on about chiropractic, but all they want to know is how you can help them. They want to know “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM). And we can’t assume every potential new patient knows what chiropractic is or how it can help them. Most Don’t!

So when marketing your practice, be sure that you are speaking directly to the person’s problems. Make them believe you are the one that can help. Whether it’s on your website, landing page, newspaper ad, yellow pages, or even on your business card.

For chiropractors with conversion problems, this one thing can make a huge impact. The more specific your marketing is, the more credibility and proof you build to that new patient. So that when they do come in, they are less likely to question your recommendations.

P.S. This of course does not negate using testimonials. It prooves the point you need to make your testimonials specific to the target patient you are marketing too. More on this in a later blog post…