How to Market Your Practice in 2014
Webinar Notes
Marketing is one of the most misunderstood aspects of most businesses and
chiropractic practices are no exception. For many docs, marketing is a scary
“monster” that they don’t really want to have to deal with because they don’t
understand its purpose.
WHY MARKET?
To really understand why you would choose to market your products and
services to the world we need to go back to the 35,000-foot view of life and look
at this from a spiritual perspective.
SPIRITUALITY & MARKETING
Einstein said “You can look at the Universe as if nothing is a miracle or
everything is a miracle, you can’t prove it or disprove it either way, but the
consequences of your choice can and will direct your life.”
Are you a spiritual being having a human experience or a human being having a
spiritual experience?
As a spiritual being you have a desire to express yourself and experience life
fully. All living things have an Innate desire to express themselves in a certain
way.
What is it that is inside of you that wants to express?
You are giving life/birth to the energy of this by bringing it from the world of the
possible to the world of the actual. You are a CREATOR!
We are all links in a MAGNIFICENT CHAIN of interconnected purposes and to
not fulfill your purpose and express yourself as fully as you choose to or called to
is to be the “WEAK LINK” in the chain of interconnected purposes. I know
personally that once I “got” that I was not naïve enough or arrogant enough to not
take my place in the great interconnected purpose of the Universe. I could also
no longer hide behind my fears and insecurities about putting myself out there
and sharing my God given gifts with the world. I had to step up and step out and
share myself with the world. To not do that would be to break the spiritual
covenant I have with the Creator and my fellow brothers and sisters on the
planet.
STORY of the PLUMBER
STORY of the SECOND GRADE BOY
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The main purpose of marketing is to let the world know what a great and effective
product or service you have to share with them!
This is not being a “show off” or “braggart” or anything else that some people
think, it is simply bringing your “wares” to the marketplace to trade for dollars via
the oldest code in the world,
THE CODE OF THE TRADER!
CODE OF THE TRADER: In a free democratic country that is set up
using a capitalistic economy what you have in life is what you have earned as a
result of “trading” some of your time and/or talent with the rest of the traders
(read society) in your culture.
The more valued your time and talent is the more you will be able to trade as a
result. The system became more streamlined over time and instead of trading
“things” we now largely trade our time and talent for dollars.
Our time and talent ultimately comes from the power of our mind and the ability
of our bodies to perform certain activities or complete certain tasks. When we do
this consciously and of our own free will we are free to enjoy the “fruits of our
labours” without guilt or fear of repercussions.
We are free to “trade” the biggest and best that is within us with others for
the biggest and best that is within them (often using the intermediary of
dollars).
The challenge is that other people don’t know what the biggest
and best IS that is within us ……. that we are choosing to trade
on the open marketplace ……….. UNLESS WE TELL THEM!
THIS IS MARKETING IN A NUTSHELL……. TELLING
OTHERS WHAT THE BIGGEST AND BEST IS THAT IS
WITHIN US AND OFFERING TO TRADE IT ON THE OPEN
MARKETPLACE!
I contend that sharing the biggest and best that is within us isn’t just a right
but it is a moral/spiritual responsibility we share with all of the other humans
that share this funny little green and blue planet with us!
Now that we have a good sense of why you should be marketing it is time to start
to build a marketing plan for your individual office. One of the keys to effective
marketing (besides knowing who your target audience is) is to know yourself
and do the majority of your initial marketing using your strengths and doing
things that you know well or are comfortable with.
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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a
powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the
progressive narrowing of the personality and
prevents exploration and experimentation. There is
no learning without some difficulty and fumbling.
If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on
risking failure – all your life.
John W. Gardner, American Educator and Public Official
MOST COMMON BLOCKS TO
MARKETING
1/ NOT UNDERSTANDING THE “WHY”
2/ FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN
3/ FEAR OF FAILURE
4/ NOT WANTING TO WASTE TIME
5/ NOT WANTING TO WASTE MONEY
6/ FEAR OF REJECTION PERSONALLY
7/ FEAR OF REJECTION PROFESSIONALLY
8/ FEAR OF THEIR OWN LIGHT/GREATNESS
9/ SCARCITY CONSCIOUSNESS
10/ BURNOUT/CARRYING THE LOAD ALL ALONE
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HOW TO MARKET
Marketing in a chiropractic practice can be segmented into two general
categories.
1/INTERNAL
2/EXTERNAL
These can be further subdivided into two other general categories.
A/ PROCEDURES
B/ SPECIAL EVENTS
This gives you the FOUR general categories of marketing in a chiropractic
practice.
More mature practices tend to do more internal based marketing and
younger practices tend to do more external based marketing. The reason is
obvious enough as the younger practices don’t have the client base to draw on to
use more internal based procedures.
It is however an error in judgment to rely on only internal or only external
marketing procedures in your practice. There must ALWAYS BE BOTH !!
The real question is what % of each do you want.
A more mature practice may use 60% internal procedures, 20% internal special
events and 10% of each of the external forms of marketing. These ratios may be
completely reversed for a younger practice.
Planning on doing things that you ENJOY and are CONGRUENT WITH
YOUR CORE VALUES is paramount to your success in marketing. If it is not
congruent with your core values it is highly likely that you either won’t do the
event or if you do it will be “grating” against the fibre of your being so much that
your attraction light will not be on very bright and the event will not produce the
results you intended anyway!
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Let’s now turn and look at some common examples of the four types of
marketing in a chiropractic office.
1/ INTERNAL PROCEDURES
Examples: Article of the week
Table talk
Health Care Demonstration
Family Referral Request
2 Targeted referrals per day
2/ INTERNAL SPECIAL EVENTS
Examples: Patient Appreciation Days
Mini-Putt Tournament
Kids Day
Christmas party
Referral Contests
Gift of Health
A/ EXTERNAL PROCEDURES
Examples: Social media
Website
External sign
Regular talk show
Newspaper article
B/ EXTERNAL SPECIAL EVENTS
Examples: Health Screenings
Outside talks
Health fairs
Flyer distribution
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CREATING A ONE YEAR PLAN
1/ Create a list of all of the activities you presently do for marketing your practice
and put them into the 4 categories.
2/ Review what is presently working and consider how to upgrade it to a higher
level. There is no sense re-creating the wheel if what you do works, stick with it.
Hopefully you have some ROI (Return on Investment) date to help make these
decisions. If not, go with your gut.
3/ Dump whatever isn’t working ……….. once you have evaluated it and
determined whether a simple upgrade could make it valuable.
4/ If you need new or more ideas to make the list complete, go to things that are
congruent with your core values and that will put you in front of your ideal clients.
5/ Estimate your Return on Investment from each activity. Keep only the high
return activities. Some may be “neat ideas” but not profitable. Remember if the
idea does not produce a lead it is not a marketing idea/event.
6/ “Flush out” the project or idea as much as possible by writing out the steps
(storyboarding) you see will be needed to optimally complete the project. Don’t
hesitate to ask your coach or peers for help in flushing these out.
7/ Timeline (put specific dates in time and space) the steps by determining how
soon before the event you will need to complete each of the action steps to
ensure the event is a success.
8/ Delegate as many of these actions steps as possible, leaving the remaining
ones as potential Key Projects or MOA’s for you to plug into your monthly
planners!
9/ Go to your monthly planner sheets and write in the date of the event as well as
plug in the Key Project/MOA action steps YOU must complete in the appropriate
MOA/BE slots leading up to the event.
10/ Summarize the whole year by categorizing each activity into one of the four
categories and printing it out for every team member. This becomes a focus at
team marketing meetings. (Consider transferring it to an erasable year calendar
as well!)
11/ Track which marketing efforts created leads and which ones converted those
leads into new Practice Members with the Marketing Calendar tracking tool.
Have your team summarize your ROI once per quarter so you can celebrate the
success and also make shifts in the calendar as the year goes on.
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12/ Book time in your monthly planner for next October or November to complete
next years marketing calendar. Always start this process by reviewing your R.O.I.
from this year’s events. Keep your winners, upgrade or dump your losers and
add new events to keep life fresh and exciting.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
One of the questions I commonly get asked is “how much time and money
should I devote to marketing my practice.” While this is different for every
practitioner it is ESSENTIAL that you budget a minimum of 20% of your time
towards marketing. I consider an investment of at least 5-10% of your gross
income back towards marketing to be a good benchmark.
To track your R.O.I. it is imperative to know the CASE AVERAGE in your
practice. This tells you what an average new practice member is worth to you in
your practice. This is determined by taking your PVA (Total office visits divided
by total new members) and multiplying it by your Office Visit Average (total
income divided by total office visits).
Once you have your case average you can then determine your R.O.I. by
dividing the dollars you returned by the dollars you spent on the event.
For example, lets say your Office Visit Average is $30.00 and your PVA is 50.
Case average is $30.00 x 50 = $1500 (That means that every new practice
member you attract to your practice is worth $1500 to you (on average)).
Let’s say you put on a Patient Appreciation Day and the total cost to you was
$1,000. As a result of this promotion you attracted 3 new practice members.
R.O.I. = 3 x $1500 = $4500 - $1,000 = $3,500 = 3.5 x 100 (for percent) = 350%
R.O.I.
THIS WOULD BE A GREAT RETURN ON INVESTMENT AND A VIRTUAL
“NO BRAINER” TO REPEAT THIS EVENT IN THE FUTURE.
The other factor to analyze when you are looking at R.O.I. is your time. Keep
track of the total hours you and your team spend on any given project. From here
it is simple to determine your R.O.I. for your time by dividing the hours spent into
the dollars returned.
Example – Patient Appreciation Day – Doc spent 12 hours, team spent 30 hours
for a total time expenditure of 42 hours.
Total time return = $4,500/ 42 = $107.14/hour (A modest ROI)
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Doc time return = $4500/12 = $375/hour (A decent return on time investment)
You can then add this data into your thought process when you are deciding on
which items to keep and which items to subtract from next years marketing
calendar. Some activities are great for the Doc but very hard on the team so it is
important to keep both statistics.
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