Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Do you ever think about why you became a chiropractor? And not just a chiropractor, but the owner of a chiropractic business?

Some docs, if they will admit it, will say it was for the money. And there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you still provide good patient care. Many say they did it to help other people, and that’s a noble reason. But you can help people working as an associate.Why take the risk of running and owning your own practice?

When I first went to chiropractic school, I wanted to help people and make a ton of money. But 2 years into practice, I was doing it for a bigger reason.

You see, two years out of school I went through a really hard time in practice. I was only averaging 3 new patients a month and collecting about $3000 – with an overhead of $15,000!

Describing how bad things were would not even do it justice. I was working late almost every night, doing 2-4 spinal screenings per week and holding talks for audiences of one – both with awful results.

At times like these in your life, you really begin to see clearly. Your priorities are stripped bare, and you can’t kid yourself anymore.

That’s when it hit me…

It wasn’t the patients who were suffering. They were still getting quality care and couldn’t tell the practice was suffering (we clusterbooked then, so they thought we were busy!) Even if my practice folded, they could just go on to another chiropractor, so it didn’t really affect them.

It was my family. My pregnant wife who was struggling up three flights of stairs each day in our new “apartment home” – sometimes having to lug over 50lbs of grocery with two toddlers in tow. It was our baby girl, who at her 3rd Christmas, could never know how much our hearts broke because we couldn’t buy her gifts. Or when my son was born, extended family brought food for a gift, since our fridge and pantry were completely empty.

You see, my family were the ones suffering the most. While my patients were great (and I loved helping each one of them), they didn’t really care wether I made $25,000 income that year or $200,000. No one cared about the success about my practice more than me and my family. We depended on it. It’s what put food on the table.

It became totally clear to me then. I owned and ran a chiropractic business so I could do something I loved — helping others get well –  AND make a good living for my family’s future, hopes and dreams. I obviously loved chiropractic, but I certainly wasn’t fulfilling the second part…giving my wife and kids what they deserved. A better home with a yard, food, vacations and peace of mind.

That was the turning point. I knew I had better learn to run a business successfully and grow my practice. Because it wouldn’t matter how much I loved chiropractic, or how good an adjuster I was, if I couldn’t keep the doors open. And most important of all, my family depended on it.

I realized the biggest problem I had was that my practice was missing good marketing strategies. Marketing that brought in a high return on investment, quality new patients, and consistent growth month after month.

Have you every seen a struggling practice that had too many quality new patients? I haven’t.

You know how to adjust. You know how to be a good chiropractor. That’s not the problem. Learning a new technique or a new billing procedure will only get you so far. Marketing is the key. Without it any practice will struggle.

Below are the reasons I run my own business. What are your reasons?

After consulting and speaking with hundreds of chiropractors about marketing, by far the biggest “lost” marketing opportunities are on the internet. In fact, I strongly encourage new coaching clients to work hard on making their marketing on the internet more successful.

There are three very big reasons you should be using the internet to market your practice…

Reason #1. Everyone is using it. Why wouldn’t you want to spend time and money for chiropractic advertising at the place everyone is going?

Reason #2. It’s relatively inexpensive compared to offline marketing. (With today’s economy, who doesn’t want this?)

Reason #3. It can be 95% automated. Which means you do the work once (or pay someone else to) and with only slight tweaks it runs itself.

But there’s one big misconception chiropractors have about marketing their practice on the internet. Many believe that chiropractic internet marketing equals having a pretty, static website. (No worries, I thought this same thing just a few years ago.) You know the pitch all those website companies make..”Hey Doc, we can do a website for you and it will bring you tons of new patients.”

Putting up a static website and expecting new patients just doesn’t work anymore. Let’s look at a similar comparison offline. Would you put up a sign on the front of your office, not do any other marketing, and expect a continual rush of new patients for the next 10 years?

So how do you really use the internet to bring in more quality new patients. Here are my top 3 proven ways to do it…

#1. Improve your organic search ranking. Getting a higher ranking of your website in Google and Yahoo is critical to bringing in more new patients from the internet. When someone types in “Chiropractor” + your town’s name, you want to be at or near the top of the listings. The nice part about organic search results is that they are free, which means you don’t have to pay every time someone clicks on the listing and goes to your site. The bad part about organic search rankings is that they are difficult to improve with a “Traditional” type website.

But there is a new type of website that search engines love (especially Google). This is called a “wordpress site” and can be downloaded for free at http://www.wordpress.org. It’s a software that once installed, makes your site nice and orderly for Google to index all the pages in their system. (Many people use this software to create a blog, but it also allows you to create a more traditional looking website.) I’ve seen clients put these sites up and rank #1 in their competitive areas within 2 weeks. Consider most of these doctors have had an old website up for years and never reached the top 10 on Google with it.

#2. Pay per click marketing. If you go to google.com or yahoo.com and search for a term, you’ll notice ads at the top and right side. These are called pay-per-click ads (PPC for short). You write an ad, bid on it’s location, and if someone clicks on it you pay a small fee. If no one clicks on it and goes to your webpage, you don’t pay. (Wouldn’t it be nice if newspapers and yellow pages were like this — you only pay if new patients show up at your door

Google’s PPC is called Adwords, and it’s vastly superior to yahoo or MSN.com’s PPC systems. A very nice component of Adwords is the wide range of testing and tracking you can do with your ads. For example, I’ve run tests in the spinal decompression market where one single character in the headline of the ad can have 4 times the results than if that character wasn’t there.

#3. Email marketing. Almost no one is using email in chiropractic today. This makes you really ‘stand out from the crowd’ if you can put email messages to work for your practice. The first place to use email messages is to your new patient prospects that have found you on the internet. In exchange for a free gift (an ebook, enewsletter, report, etc) the prospect leaves their name and email. You can then send out a series of messages building rapport and giving them an offer to come in as a new patient. (How much does it cost to send out all these emails? Nothing really. Maybe $20 per month if you use a service like http://www.easyemailsystem.com)

The second place you should use email marketing in your practice is with your current patients. Send out an email reminders when you’re having your patient appreciation day. Send out emails when your doing a special promotion. You can even send out a newsletter by email to your patients educating them on different health topics each month.

Are you using these 3 internet marketing strategies in practice? If not, what are you waiting on. The internet is the new yellow pages, encyclopedia, and library rolled into one. Don’t be the last chiropractor in your town to be using these strategies to get more new patients.

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.

Click Here to Subscribe

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…

Subscribe Now to get the full issue…

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?

You can either spend money to market your practice, do all your marketing for free (not recommended) or do a combination of both (highly recommended). Here are 7 marketing strategies that that work well and cost little to no money:

1. Send a “stick” letter

In the marketing world, campaigns that help people stay with you and reduce ‘buyers remorse’ are called “stick campaigns”. You can use this strategy in your practice by simply mailing a series of customized letters that reinforce the patient’s decision to start care and continue to educate them on why they are coming in. This is also a great time to offer referral cards or gift certificates. Simply state in the P.S. of the letter that they can give these certificates to any friends and family for the next 14 days for a free (or $25, 35, etc) spinal exam and x-rays.

2. Condition of the Week board

Get a small to medium sized dry erase board with a small easel. Each week have your staff write a different condition of the week on the board. Also write “Ask for details” or even “Ask Dr. Smith for details”. When patients see this, many of them will say “I didn’t know chiropractic helped with migraines?” What are they really saying? They know someone with migraines and just realized you may be able to help them. This is when you (or your front desk) asks them if they know someone with migraines, then promptly hands a gift certificate to this person for their friend/family member to use.

3. Use Testimonials

You should be collecting and using testimonials in your marketing. Include a copy of your best testimonials in your stick letter. Put them in your newspaper ads. Some doctors frame them and have a wall of testimonials in the adjusting room. You can also have them in a binder in your new patient area. Do testimonials really work? Are they worth the trouble? Ask anyone that uses them and they’ll certainly assure you that 1 key testimonial is what made the person call their office. Even if you can’t use testimonials in your state (rare), you can use them inside your office!

4. Send a monthly printed newsletter.

I’m all for saving time and money. In fact, my internet marketing course for chiropractors teaches doctors how to use technology to communicate with and attract new patients. But nothing beats a printed newsletter sent by snail mail. A newsletter keeps you in touch with your patients on a regularly basis, educates them further on chiropractic, and reduces the likelihood of competitors ‘stealing’ them. Marketing research has shown that if you haven’t communicated with your customer in at least 6 months, they have likely forgotten totally about you. Newsletters also help with generating referrals because you can make a special offer for friends and family to receive an exam and x-rays.

5. Patient Appreciation Days

You’ve probably heard this one mentioned before in the chiropractic guru circles. Maybe you’ve even tried a few and never had great results (like those guys who claim to see 100 new patients). Well, don’t beat yourself up. P.A.D.’s are a great way to generate referrals. Simply get a few sponsors in your town to donate door prizes. Then get a few finger foods and handout/mail out announcement flyers. Make it about appreciating your patients. If they get adjusted that day/week, then they can enter for a prize. If your patients refer someone they get more tickets or you can even put them in a special grand prize drawing. Depending on the size of your current patient base, you should be able to get 5-20 new patients from a properly done P.A.D. For a few hours of work you had a great return on your time, even if you didn’t get the 100 mythical new patients all those others guys get.