GREAT NEWS!!!!!!! My new website WWW.FreeDCHelp.COM is up and running. This site’s purpose is to provide a repository of materials that will be helpful to those in the profession. On this site will be posted archived articles as well as sample reports, letters and marketing materials — FREE. I also hope that as much assistance that this site may be able to provide to you, that you will see the need to pass along this “Secret” to others.Please do not hesitate to contact me, drvernonchiro@aol.com, if you feel that you may have information, resources or web content that could provide additional assistance to those in the profession. Please feel free to write me with comments or criticisms.

Remember: To get the most out of this newsletter, I suggest that you print it out and read it-don’t skim it-Refer back to it when implementing your marketing plan

A Story: The old “crabs in a bucket”

When a fisherman catches crabs and throws them in a bucket to be boiled and eaten, whenever one crawls to the top with a chance to escape, the other crabs drag him back down to be boiled and eaten with the rest of them. Easier to do that than to get together and help each other out, so they all wind up dying.

By now I hope that you all have come to realize that when it comes to succeeding there are no true “secrets.” There are only things you don’t yet know, but there really are no secrets–the knowledge is there for you to find and implement, if you decided to do so. Please don’t waste the knowledge that is being provided to you, and please don’t be like the crabs in the bucket, share and help each other so we all don’t die.

Track your efforts
Don’t let your marketing dollars go to waste by not analyzing the results. Track the referral source for each new patient. Some practice-management software systems offer features for noting how your new patients found you.

Take advantage of that capability to discover where your marketing efforts are succeeding and which marketing techniques are not paying off.

HOW TO MARKET FIBROMYALGIA SERVICES

Announcing a Direct Mail Marketing Conference Call Tuesday Evening September 25^th, at 7:00pm EST

This will be the first conference call that I will be presenting. It will focus on how to properly conduct a direct mail marketing campaign. We will discuss:

1. How to conduct a 2 step marketing campaign
2. How to write a report for interested prospects that will get them into the office
3. How to locate and specifically target fibromyalgia patient in your town
4. How to purchase proper mailing lists
5. And much much more.

This one conference call could make you an extra

$30-$50 thousand dollars in 2008.

DON’T MISS THIS MONEY MAKING, PRACTICE BUILDING OPPURTUNITY

HERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR DIALING IN TO THIS CALL:

On September 25^th At 7:00 PM (Eastern Time ) Dial the Conference Dial-in Number: (641) 715-3300
When prompted, enter the assigned access code, followed by the # key.
Once connected to the live conference, every caller will be able to talk. Every caller will also have access to touch tone commands thaqt will be sent in an e-mail. The Participant Access Code: 332242#

This is a very simple and old marketing/practice build techniques that continues to work well today both in its basic form as well in its new high tech format.

One of the easiest ways to attract new patients is to host health seminars in your office. These seminars position you perfectly as the leader for health and wellness in your community. And although your goal is to educate the public about the benefits of a nervous system free of interference (subluxation) you have to first get them into the office. Remember, unfortunately because the profession has in the past chosen to portray itself as musculoskeletal experts the population will have a preconceived belief system, we use this belief system to get ‘em in the door, then we EDUCATE.

Most marketing experts agree that the topics below are the topics that people respond to best:

• Boosting Your Immune System Naturally,
• Eliminating Ear Infections,
• Controlling ADD Without Drugs,
• Eliminating Headaches,
• Eliminating Low Back Pain,
• Trauma and Your Spine,
• Maximizing Your Child’s Health the Drug-Free, Natural Way, and
• Injury Prevention.

Advertise in your local paper, but don’t forget your patient base. Ask current patients and invite your patients bring a guest. Also make sure that you obtain name, address, phone and e-mail of all guests who attend. You should have “gift certificates” available for a free or discounted examination and thermal scan or x-ray.

If you are not comfortable in front of an audience and you are hesitant to do the presentation you should force yourself to do it anyway. You will see that your ability to do public speaking will become one of your very best marketing tools. Don’t worry about being nervous, just do it, it gets easier each time. If you absolutely have severe stage freight there are a number of canned lectures available on e-bay and elsewhere. You can turn down the lights and just do a Power Point or similar presentation then take questions at the end.

Marketing guru David Singer says that the secret to getting your practice to expand is having continuous new patient procedures that you can do year in, year out, for every year you practice. And, a good idea when you are planning your marketing calendar (Which I’m sure you are all doing), is to capture the momentum of particular seasons or the holiday spirit, and to use these opportunities to promote your practice through seasonal marketing!

Seasonal marketing will enable you to reach a wide range of people, helping you to get as many people under care as possible. And, because many people have no idea what chiropractic is or how it works, the holidays are a great opportunity to invite people into your office to find out if chiropractic can help them — to show them an alternative to their life of medication, side effects, and surgeries.

Such marketing plans are successful because people don’t know about what D.C.s do, or the benefits of chiropractic and have limited knowledge of what it could do to improve their health beyond the scope of spinal problems. Keeping this in mind, and the fact that the media and medical profession won’t help spread our message, it is up to you to educate your friends, family and community about chiropractic.

With the holidays soon upon us, it’s time to start planning now.

First, you have to make the decision to do something you normally wouldn’t do, and then do it. Remember, if you don’t have a plan, you are only planning to fail. And, the only way to get new patients is to plan to do things to get them to come in.

Take out your calendars and make note of the following seasonal marketing ideas:

*** Thanksgiving. Help your local food pantry raise food to donate to needy families for the Thanksgiving holiday. Set up a table near the doorway of a local grocery store. As people come in, ask them to donate food. On their way out, customers will drop the donations into carts. Thank them and tell them you have a gift for them. Hand them a flyer that contains a gift certificate. Ask for their name and number so that you can call and tell them how to use the certificate (for a complimentary exam.)

*** Christmas. This is the most successful marketing season! You can offer your patients gift certificates to give to their loved ones as Christmas gifts. The gift would be a complimentary examination to find out if chiropractic can help them with their health problems. You can also make a game out of it for your patients, offering a reward for the patient who hands out the most certificates and gets the most people to come in for an exam.

*** New Years. “Start the Year Healthy” campaign! This recall system involves calling all your inactive patients and inviting them to “feel good for the new year.” Invite them in during the months of January and February to return to care at no charge.

*** Valentine’s Day. Launch a “Have a Heart” campaign. Successful events have included letting the local ASPCA (an organization that protects animals) set up a traveling adoption agency outside your practice. This will generate free TV, radio and newspaper coverage, will draw people to your clinic to see and adopt the animals, which will ultimately give you the opportunity to generate new patients for your clinic. Another successful idea is having patients donate money to the “Have a Heart” campaign. You will match the amount of money donated by your patients and the proceeds will be given to a needy family.

*** Mother’s Day/Father’s Day. Host activities to encourage your patients to invite their mother and father in for a complimentary exam. Tell your patients you are offering a special gift — the mothers/fathers of all patients who come in that week will be eligible for a complete exam at no charge. Extend this to grandmothers, grandfathers, etc.

*** Fourth of July. Host a patient appreciation day and celebrate both at once. Hold a celebration barbecue, inviting patients and their guests to attend. Each guest your patients bring will get a free exam during the party and then signed up to come back into the office for a consultation or to begin care.

Seasonal marketing opportunities are endless. And they aren’t limited to the holidays listed above. On holidays when the office is closed, such as Labor Day or Memorial Day, you can still hold an event to get people in for care.

You are in a wonderful profession that gives you the greatest opportunity — the chance to help change the lives of many people. It’s up to you whether you contribute to this effort.

Start now. Dedicate this month to helping more people than you ever have before. Schedule an event and make it happen. Whenever an opportunity arises, talk about chiropractic and spread the message.

When all marketing efforts fail

Over the years, many chiropractors have told me marketing doesn’t work in their town. They’ve tried placing ads in the newspapers and other print media, and have tried other types of advertising to bring in new patients with little or no success. In fact, many of these doctors have had such poor results that they’re afraid of trying any other marketing campaigns because they’re convinced that the use of any media in their town is ineffective.

So, what can you do to bring in new patients if you happen to practice in a town where advertising “doesn’t work?” Here are a few possibilities:

1. Make sure you have tested multiple media. Besides trying to place both newspaper ads and inserts, have you tried direct mail, (make sure you’re on the conference call on the 25^th)television and radio advertising, marriage mail (a technical term for things like Valpak), yellow pages advertising, etc.?

From my experience a lot of chiropractors rely on newspaper advertising and marriage mail, the latter which usually doesn’t produce great results (but is still worth testing). But don’t forget that two of the most powerful ways of targeting your prospects are through direct mail and television advertising. If you’ve tested all of these and other media in your town, move on to the next possible solution.

2. Look at all other factors that may be affecting your results. Often it isn’t the media that’s poor, but other factors aren’t in the doctor’s favor. For example, if placing a newspaper ad, do you have good positioning? Do the subscribers get the newspaper early in the week?

As for direct mail, did you send out more than one sequence? Did you try personalizing the mailing? Is the envelope handwritten? Have you tested different formats (different types of envelopes, postcards, mailing tubes, etc.)? (Make sure you’re on the conference call on the 25^th)

Besides mistakes you could make with the actual media, perhaps there are other problems you’re overlooking. For example, if you drive your prospects to a website, is the website set up to convert an interested prospect into a new patient?

How about your staff? Are they well trained to get someone who calls for the first time to schedule an appointment? You could have the best ad in the world in a great media, but end up with lousy results if you don’t focus on converting these prospects. This is usually the number one culprit in poor patient conversion. And it’s NOT the staff fault, usually the doctor has poor trained the staff how to handle the calls that come in from an ad or worse yet has not shared the advertising plan with the staff and they and your office sound like fools when a prospect calls from seeing an ad.

3. Focus on your current patients. You want to do everything you can to a) keep your current patients, and b) get them to refer. So rather than putting most of your efforts into trying to get patients through external marketing, focus some of this energy towards building and maintaining relationships with your current patients, have frequent internal marketing campaigns, send out endorsed mailings, and have patient appreciation events to stimulate referrals.

4. Spend the next year trying to establish yourself as the expert in your town. Spend the next six-to-twelve months trying to obtain free publicity through the media, do public speaking, and even consider writing a book. Taking this approach probably won’t provide immediate gratification, but if you’re persistent enough this could be an excellent source of new patients.

5. Spend your time. I’m personally not a big fan of doing screenings, networking, etc., but it’s one option for bringing in new patients. Yet, before you resort to this, try delegating these time-consuming tasks to your staff. In fact, sometimes they’ll do a better job at recruiting new patients then you!

Some doctors will blame their location. Quite frankly, it usually isn’t the location that’s responsible for one’s struggles, and for proof of this you could probably find at least one or two other chiropractors nearby who are doing extremely well in practice.

So, if marketing doesn’t seem to be effective in your town, before concluding that it’s your area that’s responsible, you need to rule out all other factors that could be having a negative impact on any advertising you do.

Still available-A Must Read Classic

Think and Grow Rich is a classic motivational book. Every marketing guru in chiropractic recommends it and this is one of those rare occasions that I do as well. I think every chiropractor “NEEDS” to read this book and refer to it often. Especially while trying to increase your practice numbers. You can have an e-book version for instant download for $3.00 (3 measly bucks to increase your brain) by clicking here. You will receive a $3.00 invoice from Paypal. Once paid the e-book is sent.

I WILL NEVER SELL, LOAN, SUPPLY OR IN ANY WAY GIVE YOUR INFORMATION TO ANOTHER THIRD PARTY. THIS IS MY PROMISE.