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

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein

Internet marketing using Google ad words pay per click upside and downside.

Mark your calendar now: On November 19^th,2007 at 8:30 pm (EST) A conference call featuring one of best internet marketing experts in America.

Roger Hall, Author of the book, ‘37 Killer AdWords PPC Secrets Exposed

Mark Your CalendarsToday For 11/19/07 8:30 PM (EST)

I have put a great deal of effort to bring you this author and the very valuable information he will share with my members. Please don’t be one of these people that wait for the CD, participate for god’s sake it’s FREE

WEB-SITE MARKETING: A MUST IN TODAY’S WORLD

It seems that everybody and his brother has a web site. In addition to your letterhead, business card and sign, the newest fad is to put your web site address on your automobile (actually may cause you car to be a tax deduction, check with your accountant) not to mention on your shirt and hat.

Now is all this Internet talk just hype, or is there some truth in it? Up to a year ago, if one of my clients asked my opinion regarding getting a web site for their business, more than likely I would have told him to wait on that web site, and put their money toward more profitable avenues.

This is no longer the case. The Internet has moved out of the “hype” phase and into the “profit” phase.

What this means to you as a Chiropractor, is that YOU MUST get a web site for your practice. Why?

An effective web site can give you a return on your investment that few, if any, medium can.

Imagine this:

You have your web site address on your business cards, letterhead, advertisements, promotional pieces, and any outgoing materials. Your patients and prospective patients load up the Internet from their work or home computer and go to your site. Instantaneously, they get to your site and your site educates them on Chiropractic - the philosophy behind it, and more importantly how it can help them. Next time they show up for their appointment, what you’re telling them makes more sense, and they are more likely so stay with your practice longer. But wait a second. . .

Before they leave your site, they sign up for your FREE monthly newsletter, sent to them by e-mail. And once in a while they will e-mail your web site address to their friends who wanted to know more about Chiropractic but were too nervous to make their first appointment. (And if you design your site right, those friends will understand how Chiropractic will help them, and in turn call to make their first appointment).

Next month you write a little personal article about Chiropractic and send it to all the subscribers of your online newsletter. Since you are sending it by e-mail, there is no cost to you and there are online software, many of which are free, which take care of most of the work for you.

Anytime you have a special event, or you just need an influx of business, you load up the program and send an announcement or promotional piece to your subscribers. It costs you nothing, takes a few minutes, and can bring you a consistent and predictable stream of appointments.

I’m sure that this sounds maybe a little like a fantasy. However, it’s not, as several Chiropractors are doing this already. One Chiropractor I know even has a weekly online video conference where his patients connect to him online and he answers their questions sent by e-mail. He has a video camera attached to his computer and the camera broadcasts his “show” on the Internet. This maybe a little over the top for now, but it is a look at what the future may hold for internet marketing.

Because very few Chiropractors have the knowledge, and even more importantly, the time to create a web site, your best bet is to out source this project to a webmaster.

Search the web, when you find a site that you like save it, show it to your webmaster. When you go looking for a web site designer, try to find one who knows about Chiropractic. Things will go much more smoothly if the web site designer is knowledgeable about the principles of Chiropractic, and how it works.

Ask around, and don’t be surprised to find out that one of your patients designs web sites for a living.

There are a number of companies that will put your web-site up in an hour, and the site is completely editable by you.

When designing a site there are some things to keep in mind.

1) The web site should be designed for the layman. Do not assume that the viewer knows anything about Chiropractic. She doesn’t know what a subluxation or an adjustment is. Explain everything in detail, and use as few (if any) technical words as possible. And whatever you do, make sure that the material is interesting and doesn’t put the viewer to sleep.

2) Use as little bells-and-whistles as possible. Some web site designers pride themselves on their ability to put every bell-and-whistle ever invented on their customers’ web sites. Stay away from these people like you would the black plague.

Web sites with tons of bells-and-whistles (Active-X, Java, audio, video, etc.) and tons of images, tend to slow the loading of the web site, and in some cases crash the viewer’s computer if it can’t handle the power needed to view that site.

An ideal site will have only a few images, which are small and fast loading. The emphasis should be placed upon an easy to navigate design, and content (text) that catches the viewers’ attention and makes them stay and view the remainder of your site.

3) Make sure that you have a purpose for creating the web site. Is it to educate patients? Or is it to get new patients? Maybe it’s to help you communicate regularly with your patients.

Whatever the reason is, make sure that all parts of the site are in harmony to reach that goal.
The next questions most Chiropractors ask is how much is fair to pay for a web site. On average, it will cost you $300 - $500 a year to register your domain name and get it hosted. You want a web site with your own domain name (www.yourname.com). Do not get a web site on a free server just to save money (www.xyz.com/yourname). You will lose much more in credibility than the money you saved.

As far as the cost of the actual creation of your web site, a fair price is anywhere from $300 - $5,000, it goes higher than this if you want more features, bells and whistles on your site. I would recommend you get quotes from at least three web designers, and look at samples of their work, before you shell out your hard-earned money.

Next week we will discuss how to optimize your position on search engines so people looking for a chiropractor can find you. If you go to Google and put in “chiropractor” “MountLaurel” guess who is number 2? Try it, remember to use the quotation marks, most people know that this will give them more targeted results. This was obtained by using the power of the web-site Spine Universe. Because they get so many hits, their listings go to the top. More about all of this next week. And I can’t wait for the November 19^th conference call where the guru of Google marketing will be on the phone to take your questions. ALL FREE FROM ME

OKAY, HERE WE GO AGAIN.

I can’t harp on this issue enough. I continue to hear chiropractors tell me that they don’t send out regular internal marketing campaigns because they don’t work. I think the main reason for this comment is a failure to understand what the regular mailing does. If you understand the concept of return on investment I would honestly find it hard to believe that you would make such a statement, as it really doesn’t take more than one or two new patients to bring in a positive ROI. Don’t think that when you send out 50 reactivation cards that you will get 45 people calling the office, but if just 1 person returns for active care the campaign has probably been paid for.

If you have a good relationship with your patients (both past and present), then you should receive a three-to-five percent response when sending out an internal marketing campaign, assuming you send out a quality campaign this means that your campaign includes cards that people will read and not trash.

Quite frankly, even if you received just a one percent response, it still should deliver a positive return on investment.

For example, if you were to send out an internal post card marketing campaign to 100 of your patients, and it cost you one dollar per patient, the total investment would be $100. One quality reactivated patient should easily pay for this.

However, if you aren’t getting at least a three-to-vie percent response with your internal marketing campaigns, then here are three things you could do to get them to work:

1. Building and maintaining relationships.

This is the biggest reason why many chiropractors don’t receive a good response with their internal marketing campaigns. You need to do everything necessary to “build the bond,” and then maintain it. The funny thing is that you all know exactly what they must do, but for some reason you still don’t do it.

Just a few of the things you can and should be doing to build the relationship with your patients:

-Give each patient a welcome gift after the report of findings. A letter opener, a discount card to a store in the area, a mug, a pen.

-Send a welcome letter to each patient after his or her first visit.

-Call every patient the night of his or her first adjustment, or if you’re to busy or think you will forget, then you can tell the new patient to call you at a certain time because you want to know how they reacted to their first adjustment.

-Send a patient newsletter at least every 2 months.

-Have at least one (two is better) patient appreciation events each year.

-Send reactivation cards every month. Use cards that people will read and not throw in the trash, like the “3 STOOGES” cards.

Doing these six things alone will help to build and maintain the relationship with your patients, which will not only help to improve the response of your internal marketing campaigns, but overall will improve compliance.

So, how many of these things you’re doing in your practice right now. Doing three or four of them is better than doing none, but there is no good reason why you aren’t doing all six of them, except complacency or laziness. Then you’ll call me and say, Lenny it’s not working, when you did nothing. I can have the average practice double their income in one year. If the doctor is willing to work.

2. Make sure you offer praise and recognition to your patients for referring.

This is something else that most chiropractors know they should be doing. And while many do send a thank you card for referring, you have to go above and beyond this to turn your patients into referral “warriors.”

First of all, the thank you card you send should be a nice one, and it should have a handwritten message inside of it. And if a patient should send you multiple referrals, don’t write the same message.

You should also strongly consider giving each patient who refers to you a phone call the day the person he or she referred to you schedules an appointment. This will really impress the referring patient.

Of course, you also want to do some of the basics for patients who refer, such as post their name on your referral board, include them in your patient newsletter where you thank all of your referring patients, etc. And once again, have a couple of patient appreciation events for them.

In fact, for your referral warriors you should have a separate patient appreciation dinner. You would only invite those patients who over the past year have given you at least one referral.

If patients know that they will get a lot of praise and recognition, then this by itself will improve the response of any internal marketing campaigns you send out.

3. Frequency.

As a rule, you can never mail your patients too often.

So, go ahead and send a stick sequence, a monthly newsletter, a postcard, invitations to patient appreciation events, notices about contests, etc.

Naturally, with these three things I have mentioned it does take time to produce consistent results. If you currently have a poor relationship with your patients, then it will take at least a few months to improve it.

And if you haven’t given much praise or recognition to your referring patients in the past, then it will be an even greater challenge to get your internal marketing to work well.

But it can be done, so make it a goal to begin working on the relationship, and go out of your way to offer praise and recognition for referring. In a matter of months, you’ll see a noticeable increase in response when sending out an internal marketing campaign.

IS YOUR FRONT DOOR REVOLVING?

Now let’s assume that your marketing program is so good that you almost never have to worry about new patients? You are probably one of those chiropractors who has been pushing, pushing and then pushing some more, listening to what I’m saying and doing it. But that doesn’t completely solve your problem, because these same new patients maybe walking right back out 7, 12, 20 visits later, maybe never to return!

Sounds familiar? If it does then you’re engaged in revolving door recruitment or as I called it in the earlier newsletters, the “leaky bucket” marketing syndrome. At first, you are all excited because the new marketing system you were taught by me is working, new patients are inundating your office, but you quickly lose this when you begin to realize that nobody is staying!

Think about it, at that rate how many more new patients will take for your practice to really grow? The more new patients you add, the more you’re going to need to keep up those big numbers when the first group leaves. Under this scenario your practice stays status quo. It never grows. It’s just like pouring water in a bucket with a hole in it, a leaky bucket. And the more you add to the bucket, the more flows out of the other side. Why? Because your efforts aren’t going toward encouraging continued lifetime chiropractic care.

Now let’s look at why these people are dropping out. One reason is that patrons of high new patient practices are usually seeking relief care only. These type practices are front-end loaded with high fees; causing patients begin to drop out even before their treatment plans are finished. This type practice is almost very insurance dependent, and it attracts patients who are never loyal.

A perfect example of this is seen in the Gym business. Right after New Years people will flock to the neighborhood gym or health club in order to “start the New Year right”, money becomes no object and they sign up for a membership after the club salesman cuts them a deal they couldn’t refuse.

The first couples of weeks were fantastic. The staff were pumped and helpful, offering training sessions and workouts, fitness and cardio-evaluations and all the attention he could have ever wanted. But, it wasn’t long before the excitement died down, the staff stops showing that special attention to detail and the member starts to feel just like another number. Three months later, guess what happens? That’s right they drop out because the staff did nothing to retain him as a member.

What if the staff had done just a few little things like followed up with personal phone call following, consultations, re-evaluations, asking how they felt after their first day of exercising.

Had the club done this? The client may not have gotten so discouraged. And it comes as no surprise to hear that the club is running yet another special promotion to try to make up for all those New Year’s members they’ve lost.

The same holds true in chiropractic and the people who are coming to your office with the goal of becoming healthy and fit shouldn’t be made to feel like just another number. This is done by providing quality follow up care and reevaluations that continually show them their progress. This way they will stay committed to you and your practice. Remember, it’s worthless to work at recruiting new patients if you’re not willing to do the work required to keep them.

It’s really not hard to plug your leaks, either. In fact, by implementing a few simple changes in your practice, you can stop the revolving door syndrome and double your high new patient practice in no time.

Begin by checking if your staff is service oriented. You need to implement very service-oriented systems. This starts with the people you hire and who work with you and the patients. The right people will ensure that follow up is happening in your practice and nobody is falling through the cracks (leaking out of the bucket).

For the front desk people should make sure that your patients are getting what you promised. Be sure to do your re-exams in a timely fashion. And like I said many times before, think about your wellness care plans, ask yourself could I afford to bring my whole family to me? You MUST offer a wellness-oriented fee system. This ensures that you will keep your patients regardless of whether they are insured or not.

By having service-oriented people and systems the chiropractor who’s a “new patient machine” can rest assured that his/her patients are getting the highest quality of care with a net result of the highest degree of patient compliance, commitment and loyalty. This will allow you to double your new patient retention rates.

Implement just one of these basic service-oriented concepts and strategies, you will never need another new patient in your office beyond those that you’re currently getting. Your practice could actually double overnight and your patients will be applauding your new service enhancements while you’re watching your practice explode.

USING HUMOR IN YOUR MARKETING

Ten years ago in their seminal work, 2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success, Denny Hatch and Don Jackson just about avoid the subject of humor totally. There are just three entries dealing with the subject.

However, Barbara Harrison in her ‘Break the Rules’ Rules of Effective Direct Mail Copywriting comments, “humor can prove highly effective.”

So why the change? The simple answer: BREAKTHROUGH.

We’ve experienced increasing clutter in the mailbox and in other media. Consumer radar to sales pitches is at a peak, and so is disbelief. Humor, done properly, can break through the clutter and suspend the disbelief. The humor must relate directly to the situation. Actually, most experts agree that humor done through graphics–photos or illustrations–works better than humor done through copy.

Obviously you should avoid photos and copy of a risqué nature. In fact, have someone read the copy to make sure you’re not committing one unconsciously.

So When and How Can Humor Work to Increase Response?

Here are some guidelines to follow if you’re using humor:

Don’t be funny for the sake of being funny. Use humor to get the prospect to your key selling point.

Your goal should be a smile (of recognition), not a belly laugh. The former achieves the same nod of affinity that an audience-targeting headline might. The best humor is often incredible insight into the human condition. Humorous quotations and photographs from the famous or infamous can hedge the risk you take. If Yogi Berra, Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, The 3 Stooges or H.L. Mencken said it, that will usually brand it as funny and non-threatening.

I recently read a hilarious story about the ad agency for Moose Mountain Trading Company in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. (Can you imagine how boring I am? I read story after story about advertising, my poor wife) Anyway, their ad agency came up with the idea of putting a moose head on the models in the ads, the result was a hilarious campaign that has really resonated with customers and even earned the blessing of the manufacturers of the sweaters were on the models in the ads and whose original ads were mutilated. People thought it’s very funny to replace the heads of gorgeous models with that of a big moose.

Humor is a powerful tool, says Mark Silveira, author of Ordinary Advertising (and How to Avoid It Like the Plague). In his book, Silveria makes the point that “humor is more than a punch line.” “You should look for whimsical or mildly amusing twists on your message. Such as the unexpected moose head on top of a model clad in the sweaters that the store sells makes a strong and funny connection.”

Roger Sakolove of Starmark International, (These people are experts in direct response advertising) makes the following observations

1. In direct marketing, breaking through is the primary task. There is precious little opportunity to make an impact. And while direct marketers understand that the list is #1, the offer is #2 and creative is #3 on the priority list, creative ideas catch the eye, capture the imagination and form the tip of the spear.”

2. Humor can be the ingredient that makes people stop, take notice and maybe even smile. The idea is to get prospects to pause long enough to consider your offer, whether it’s the benefit of a product or service, or promotional.”

3. There ís also the viral aspect of using humor. When people receive memorable messages in printed formats, they may hang them on their office walls or pass them along to colleagues.

This is why I’m such a big fan of the “3 STOOGES” patient reactivation cards. I have been speaking with the people at www.imagearchives.com about doing a special card and mailing just for my members. If you think you might have an interest in participating in this click here and if it becomes available I will let you know all of the details.

I give to you for free what many have paid me for!

PLEASE USE IT!

Awesome New Pediatric Office Poster

I just received word that a new pediatric poster for use in the chiropractic office will be available in about 2 weeks. A copy of the poster is below. The marketing benefit of the poster aside from the obvious is that it gives credibility to chiropractic and its ability to benefit children. The use of a highly recognizable and TRUSTED photograph, the famous “Little Rascals” adds to the creditability especially for parents. This is a perfect example of super advertising. The photo is highly recognizable and attention grabbing to all Baby Boomers and Gen-Xer’s. The photo will cause parents to start a discussion about how they used to watch the show; this will then lead to a discussion about chiropractic and children. I will have more details for all of you as soon as I get them. In the mean time if you wish to be added to a list of those interested in the 18×24 poster, clicking here.Your name will be added to a list and when the poster is available I will e-mail you with ordering instructions. It is estimated that the poster will sell for around $30. I suggest you add your name to the list as they will sell out fast and they are only printing a limited number. (You guys are the only ones who know about this-It really is a “SECRET”)

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 YOU INFORMATION TO ANOTHER THIRD PARTY. THIS IS MY PROMISE.

*Many of you have asked me to be your practice coach, as I said I only take on 10 clients at a time and like to stay on the East Coast, plus I charge so little that I actually lose money on most deals, it’s about helping not making money, when I have an opening or decide to expand I will let you guys know, in the mean time you get a lot of me for free