Top 20 Chiropractic Marketing Secrets Too busy to promote? Overworked? Worried about not having a constant flow of New Patients to fill your schedule? Or to expand your practice to the Levels you have always dreamt of? No Life? No time for your family?
1. Chiropractic New Patients FunneL
Having a New Patients Funnel is the number one factor in generating new patients for your office in magnitudes you might never have thought possible. It’s breaking realities the speed and quantity of new people that can be funneled to your practice. What is a sales funnel or in this particular case a Chiropractic New Patients Funnel? It is a marketing tool that helps you drive prospects from one step to another in a consistent, systematic way, until that prospect makes a purchase decision and goes from being a prospect to a patient. This system will not only increase your patient base, but also, it’ll allow you to expand your reach as an expert.
A sales funnel is a long-term strategy. Its aim is to turn cold leads into loyal, long-term patients. This system will allow you to have no lead leakage. Your prospect is “funneled” to a buying decision automatically. Meanwhile you get back to running your practice instead of baby-sitting your website. Obviously for this to work successfully you’ll need to be able to deliver an excellent experience in your practice when people visit you for the first time to take up your first offer package. And you need to have the ability to turn people into repeat patients. But any successful professional, or a business owner gets this already, and has no problem delivering great quality care and creating long term, high value patients. This will be the key for an influx OF patients you can’t even handle. If you decide to learn this system and put it in, the next secrets I am about to give you they become secondary and you might as well skip them. But, if you do not have a Funnel yet they will bring you new patients, but not to the level that a New Patients Funnel with Click Funnels would bring you, in addition to your TIME. A good set up funnel can give you time to do other activities that you might not have otherwise.
2. Pati e nt on i t a i c e r p Ap Days
One of the most effective internal marketing programs, is the Patient Appreciation Days. This type of chiropractic marketing does not have to be a big deal. Put a white board up in each of your adjusting rooms with a message about the upcoming event. Put some balloons on the board as well as the front desk, and tell your patients that you’re having a special day where they can bring in friends and family members to some special that you’re offering. Make sure your staff is also doing this at the front desk, and giving patients simple handouts.
You can do patient appreciation days every other month, and it can become a good constant flow of new patients. You do not have to do a big giveaway, and you can spend very little money on the event other than balloons. This Event can just become a part of our monthly schedule. That way you don’t have to think about when you are going to do them or how You’re going to promote them, your staff can start the process every two months as you hit those calendar days.
3. In Of fice Lectures In office lectures are a part of many practices. This form of chiropractic marketing can be a great way to educate patients, but they are traditionally not a good way to generate new patients. General health talks can be interesting to some of your current patients, but they are not a very big draw for potential new patients. The way to overcome this is by thinking outside the box. What if instead of doing a talk on posture you did a talk about weight loss?
If you pick a topic that more people are interested in, you will have a larger pool to draw from. It’s also key to have all the traditional marketing pieces in place. Attractive Title or Name for Your Event Limited Availability
HOOK
Call to Action
Social Proof
Instead of setting up a boring talk, take the time to put together a can’t miss event. Create a buzz around it, this can become a good source of new patients for your practice.
4. Of fice Ap pearance An area that most doctors forget about is the overall look of their office. If patients don’t feel comfortable in your practice, they are unlikely to become regular patients. They are also much less likely to send in referrals. The list below could give you a few ideas you could create to better your office appearance. Wait time should be five min or less. Give patients something to occupy their time (Magazines, Plants, Aquarium, TV, etc…) Give them social proof to look at on the walls. Exceptionally clean bathrooms. They should feel at home when they are there.
5. Birthday Cards Birthday cards can be use as a patient retention, and reactivation tool, for decades. Something different and key would be personalization. Just sending a cheap postcard in the mail has very little impact. Think about how you can make that card exceed their expectations. Always Wow your patient, it does not take much to create a difference and really communicate how much you do care. How can you make it stand out to show the patient that you are a doctor who truly cares for their patients. Putting just a bit of extra effort, can create an exponentially better result. Put this same kind of thought into all of your chiropractic marketing procedures, and you could see a big difference in your influx of new patients.
Happy Birthday! May all your wishes come true!
6. Personal Notes Hi Sue…Dr. Jeff wanted me to note to you today to see how Please give us a call if there
send a
you are doing.
is anything
One of the things you could use for re-activations is to write personal notes (letters). In fact you can have your staff do this when they have free time. Have your staff write a small note that said something to the effect of, “Hi Sue…Dr. Jeff wanted me to send a note to you today to see how you are doing. Please give us a call if there is anything we can do to help you.”
we can do to help you.”
It would surprise you the effect you can create with a bit caring note. It makes your patients feel you care enough to think about them. Guess where they go when they feel they need care again?
7. Pers onal Voic e Messag es This is a good tool to reach out to past patients. This can save you time instead of writing emails for hours, and impresses patients that get your messages. You can get a good quality microphone or use your computer internal voice recording act to record your voice. When people get your email it tells them to click on the attached audio file. They get a high quality, very personal, well thought out, voice message from you, their chiropractor. You will be able to give them more detail than you could type to them, and it’s much faster. It’s a win win on both sides. This is a great tool to do re-activations. How cool would it be for a patient to get a personalized voice recording in their email from you asking them about how they are doing? You could sit down and knock out a dozen of these every day in a few minutes.
8. Email Newsletters
The majority of chiropractors that use newsletters today are using some kind of canned newsletter from a company that sells them. This boring information is communicated to your patient base with the hopes that they will in some way get excited by it. I’ve yet to meet a chiropractor that is expanding their practice with this useless tool. Newsletters can be outstanding, but you have to put some time into them. Your patients have to know that you actually wrote it before they are going to spend their valuable time reading it. In this day and age your newsletter does not have to be written at all.
We are in an audiovisual technology age, so you could create a greater impact if you were to record your voice or do a video as an email newsletter. There are so many efficient, and low cost ways, to reach out personally to your patients.
9. Office Giveaways or Swag
Office giveaways or swag are often wrapped into patient appreciation days, but they don’t have to be. They in fact can be a promotional item for your office.
1
Swag Can Increase Your Brand Recognition
Humans gravitate toward that which is familiar to them, sometimes even subconsciously. Company swag is a great way to increase familiarity with your brand. The more items circulating that have your business name or logo, the more people can come to recognize your brand.
d r a C o w 10. T M ondays
2
Swag Wearers Will Promote Your Practice
Promotional merchandise can go on just about anything — travel mugs, T-shirts, handbags, Popup Sockets, you name it. When people sport your swag and carry it around with them, they become mini-marketers promoting your Brand.
Health card Mr. Johnny
On the opposite months of your Patient Appreciation Days you could do a “Referral Card Program". You can get some nice and creative postcards produced giving a special for new patients. Stamped the cards, and have your staff hand out two of them to each of the patients that came in that week. The staff can simply hand them the cards and said “Hi Johnny...You've had great results in our office, and we've enjoyed having you as a patient here. Here are two cards that you can give to family members or friends that you care about. It allows them to come in to be checked at not cost. They just have to come in before this date that I'll stamp on the card for you." You can generate a significant amount of new patients each month from this marketing promotion. This system can be scheduled on the marketing calendar every two months. You don’t need any thinking or work needed to do it. Just get your staff to keep the marketing calendar events on it.
11. Business Massage Program
I’m going to walk you through the steps to build an amazing steady flow of new patients. Implementing a business massage program could become one of the most powerful forms of chiropractic marketing you’ll encounter. The first step is to find the right massage therapist, someone that is good at talking to people, and that is moderately proficient at chair massage. It has been found that working with new massage therapists was much easier than working with established pros. Established therapists have their place, but they often do not want to go out to businesses. You can pay two massage therapists hourly to call local businesses to set up community outreach massage days. You could be able to have two or three massage events set up each week throughout the year by doing about five hours of calling each week.
They should go to the events with massage chairs and small bottles of water to give to participants. While giving the massage, they should talk to the individual about problems they were finding, and offered them an opportunity to come into the office for a small fee. Usually, in most cases the individual would hesitate when asked to sign up. The therapist could then hand them a coupon with a story about your office. The coupon or ad should give them more information about you, and it should also be about 3x more expensive than the deal of the day. You don’t have to pressure anyone at all, but the serious individuals will commit because they didn’t want to pay the higher fee. This event is capable of generating at least five new patients each week, but the sky is the limit. The more events you set up the more new patients you will produce. The business massage program can be the focus of all your marketing efforts if you do it well.
s t n e i t a 1 2. N ew P s Di n n er
Chiropractic New Patient Dinners can generate an almost unlimited number of new patients when delivered properly. There are three key steps: Generate leads Call to set appointments Delivering a good talk with a solid close You can generate a large number of leads from your current patients, but the way to be able to generate the largest number of leads is by using a lead collector at screenings. Now, when I say lead collector, I’m talking about a large stand-alone lead collector with a full size poster on it. You can collect hundreds of leads in a single day. When calling for appointments your staff can say that they had won a free dinner for two at such and such restaurant. They also can communicate what the event was about, and that you would be presenting for around twenty minutes on how to reach best health, before dinner. Your talk can be around 20 to 30 minutes, and at the end you can make an offer that is only good for that night to encourage them to schedule a check-up. You can also hand them a card with 10 lines and ask them to write the names of people they know that needed to hear this information. It is common to get 40 to 80 new leads from each dinner. Those leads are like referrals for your next dinner. You can do one dinner per week, and typically generate 30 to 50 new patients per month from this activity. That number does not include all the referrals that come in from the new patients that started care with you. New patient dinners can be very effective, but they must be implemented properly.
13. Weight Loss
Weight loss may be one of the best ways to grow your practice. It’s an incredibly popular topic, and chiropractors are positioned well as providers for this. The holistic philosophy that most chiropractors have along with your knowledge level of nutrition and body function, makes weight loss a great fit. Marketing for this topic is much easier than chiropractic. You can certainly try to create your own weight loss program, but there are some programs out there that you can pay for access to. Take your time when investing in a program like this. Look carefully at the overhead associated with the weight loss system you choose.
14. Confirm your business listing with
1 Yahoo
CREATE A YAHOO BUSINESS LISTING
2 Google
CONFIRM GOOGLE BUSINESS LISTING
15. USE HOOTSUITE Cover all your social media pages with one post at Hoot-suite. This is a great time saver that your staff can use to schedule multiple posts at a time.
3 Bing
USE BING WEBMASTER TOOLS
16. Create an Email List Create a list of emails, this is your most powerful communication line to each one of your patients. Start with your current patients, and at once implement the collection of emails with your new patients. This is the LIFE BLOOD of your practice!
17. Instructional Videos Make YouTube or Vimeo videos for your patients. Give free information as instructional videos, before and after stories, and Patient Testimonials. They can be a very powerful way of communication and social validation.
18. Patient Testimonials
Video or written testimonials are one of the BEST ways to bring traffic to your site. Google loves YouTube and people love to see what others are saying.
19. Publish, Publish, Publish!!!!
Build a following, publish in different platforms (Podcasts, Live FB, YouTube videos, Blogs, …). Find: this goal is two-fold. First, it helps you find your audience on multiple channels, but is also increases your “findability” by boosting your SEO with targeted content. Attract: multiple platforms gives you the opportunity to promote your content in ways your audience prefers. Your content should be visually appealing, prompts an easy click or share, and is focuses on bringing new or lost readers to your brand for more.
Engage: once attracted to you, this content inspires deeper interaction with your organization. It gives consistent content on a regularly scheduled basis, focuses on education and promotes further action by the reader. This can be targeted for readers before and after they convert. Convert: this is most likely content and platform working together to enable a reader to become a member or follower. (Conversion “rules” are set by you.) Retain: This content is focused on reaffirming members as being an integral part of the group. While keeping readers engaged, it also strives to make members feel heard and a part of the brand. It also works to keep members wanting to be members.
20. Write a Book
Being an author gives you instant credibility. Would you rather see the doctor in town that wrote book or the one that didn't? Even easier than writing a book is writing an eBook. You could even have someone write this for you. Present yourself as an expert in your field.