Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Where is your practice going in 2009?

In this month’s issues of The Chiropractic Marketing Newsletter, I’m covering the 7 most important numbers you must track in your office…and what you should be doing to improve them. This newsletter is an 11 page ‘seminar-in-a-box’ mailed right to your doorstep every month. It’s only $29.97 per month, can you cancel at any time (but I don’t think you’ll want to when you see the valuable information that’s revealed.)

This issue mails out on March 9th at 10AM CST. If you want to receive your issue in the mail, make sure you subscribe by then.

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Here is an excerpt that covers #5 out of 7. The newsletter goes into much more detail about how to improve each of these 7 numbers to bring more growth and profits to your practice.

#5. Case average.

Case average is a number that represents how much money a new 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 quarterly, yearly) and dividing by the number of new patients during the month. And make sure to use the new patients defined as in #1 above, not just the number of patients who started care.

Some chiropractors don’t like to figure this number, because they say 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 newsletter is about the business aspect. (I trust you’ve got the clinical side figured out.)

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.

But because you read this newsletter, you’ve been keeping track of your numbers for awhile. 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 patients 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”, you need to go back and reread the above paragraph until you get a yes.

As a side-note….

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.

This bring us to our next number you must be tracking…

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Whether the economy is really in a recession or not, all the doom and gloom broadcasting 24/7 from the news media makes people panic. While some patients may begin to clinch their wallets a bit tighter, here are some ways you can survive, even thrive during the so called recession.

1. Only use marketing that works
Now is not the time to cut back on marketing. Stopping your marketing during a downturn in the economy is the exact opposite of what you need to do. Yes, you do need to refine your marketing, use direct response marketing (makes sure it pays for itself, bringing in a return on investment). Don’t commit to long turn contracts or stupid “pretty” advertising, then be shocked when you’ve spent $10,000 and not seen a return. Also, you should be able to get better deals as newspaper, direct mail print shops and other forms of media struggle for marketshare. Your competition will go with the flow and think it’s time to cut back, this is exactly why it’s going to be your best time to market and lead the field.

2. Start using internet marketing
Chiropractic internet marketing is very inexpensive, and if done correctly, can provide a huge return on investment. Why spend $5-10k on a yellow pages ad for a whole year, when you can spend a few dollars on the internet and change it if it’s not working? When I mention internet marketing, I’m not talking about just having a traditional website. Thats like putting a flyer up on a bulletin board somewhere in town and hoping for someone to find it and become a new patient. To maximize your online marketing, you’ll need a complete automated system that’s easy to run and manage. See my ChiroMarketing Academy for details on this.

Another great aspect of the internet is that the affluent (wealthy) use the internet to make buying decision more so than any other income level. This makes them a great group to market towards since they are least affected by any economic turbulence.

3. Market to current patients more
It’s much less expensive to market to your current patients then it is to go out and acquire new patients. This doesn’t mean you can only market to current patients and grow, but I bet you could so more with your patient base. Do they know about all the services and products you offer? Are they reminded on regular intervals to get adjusted? Do you send a monthly printed newsletter in edition to 2-4 emails a month? Do you have special events like P.A.D.’s, toy drives, etc?

4. Redefine your marketing message
As I mentioned above, during tougher economic times, you can’t waste money on marketing that doesn’t work. Therefore, you have to make sure you are marketing the right message to the right people. The generalized “I’m a chiropractor and we help everybody with everything” isn’t a marketing message at all. Patients want a doctor with two things: experience (positioning yourself as an expert) and empathy (understanding how they feel). Master these two in your marketing message and direct it at specific conditions people suffer with, and you’ll never have to worry about new patients.

It is said more millionaires were made during the Great Depression than any other time in our nations history. Most likely this was due to great deals on stocks, real estate and businesses. You can see these economic times as an advantage or disadvantage, it’s your choice. But whatever you do, don’t pull back on all your marketing and think you can wait it out.

We’ll continue with the next 3 in part 2 in my next post…

Here are 8 free software resources that can help with running and marketing your chiropractic practice. In some cases, you could buy a better paid version, however these work fine for getting started.

#1. Gmail http://www.gmail.com

There are many things to love about Google’s email tool. You can access it from anywhere when traveling. It has one of the best spam filters I have seen (it actually learns). Gmail also has a very effective tagging system to keep your emails organized. I used yahoo for years, but now that I have gmail I realize how clunky yahoo’s email service really is.

#2. Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Firefox is an internet browser, like Internet Explorer. But Firefox is a free browser constantly being updated by the “open source” movement. I love Firefox. It loads faster. It’s more customizable. You can even change the browser theme or “skins” to your liking. And the add-ons are awesome (over 1000 add-ons with everything from ebay to google toolbars!)

#3. Open Office http://www.openoffice.org

This free program is very similar to Microsoft Office. It has a word processor, database program, spreadsheet, presentation program, and drawing software. It can open up Office documents, create PDF’s from Word documents, and more.

#4. Kompozer http://kompozer.net

Kompozer is an html editing software. It allows you to build your webpages without spending $400 on software. It operates in a normal view too, so you do not have to know html coding to put together webpages.

#5. WordPress http://www.wordpress.org

WordPress is a free software for running a blog or even a normal website. It’s the software I am using here to run this site. Once setup, WordPress is very simple and easy to use. If you can send an email, you can post pages to wordpress.

#6. Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/

Analytics is free when you setup an Adwords account with Google. All you need to do is pay $5, write an ad for Adwords, then turn it off until you are ready to use Adwords (I will be discussing Adwords on this blog later). This gives you access to analytics, which is an awesome tool for tracking everything on your website. You can set goals to see where visitors came from and what % are signing up for your e-newsletter. It will even tell you what geographical area visitors came from down to the city level.

#7. AVG http://free.grisoft.com/

This is a free virus protection software. Everyone needs virus protection on their computers. This software runs much better than Norton and McAfee, and doesn’t slow down your internet connection.

#8. Skype http://www.skype.com

Skype is a free calling service that works through your computer. You can can call another Skype user for free. You can call landlines and cell phones for a small monthly fee. This works great with other software for recording your insurance verifications. You can also get a Skype In number which is portable to anywhere in the world.