Improve Profitability With SMART Marketing Plans
Building your chiropractic dream practice will greatly depend on how well you market your services. The hard part will be figuring out just which marketing activities will produce the desired results of attracting new patients and retaining existing ones without breaking the bank or taking up too much of your time. Regardless of your chiropractic marketing expertise, the best laid out plans will fail if you can’t find the time and discipline to follow through on them. It’s also important to set realistic goals that are ambitious enough to motivate you without overwhelming you into paralysis. Ideally, you should be able to use your marketing activities as patient relationship building tool to improve the profitability of your chiropractic clinic through increased patient flow. Measuring your success and ROI, however, will require a SMART marketing plan that complements your general business plan. And just like your chiropractic business plan, it should consist of specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based goals that you will need to iterate each month until you achieve them. For example, if you want to improve your chiropractic billing performance to increase your monthly income by $900 you would also need to improve your Patient Visit Average (PVA). As such you could tie your chiropractic marketing goal to this specific business goal and quantify it with 30 new patients gained from all combined marketing activities, or 30 rescheduled no-shows resulting from a successful email campaign to drive up your PVA. Needless to say, you will need to have the necessary framework in place to measure the results, such as asking new patients how they heard about your chiropractic clinic on their intake form, and tracking monthly no-shows as well as billing performance with your Genesis chiropractic software. If you end up falling short of your goals of increasing revenue and/or of attracting 30 new patients through your combined chiropractic marketing efforts at the end of the month, you will need to evaluate which of your activities worked and which did not produce any results, then create a new chiropractic SMART plan for the following month. Here are 5 SMART chiropractic marketing goals you should focus on: S: Attain a specific number of new fans on facebook, twitter, and/or any other social media account M: Achieve a measurable increase in monthly traffic to your chiropractic website (e.g. from 1,000 unique visitors to $1,500) A: Expect attainable results from chiropractic social media efforts (e.g. 30 new patients/month) R: Post relevant blog articles on chiropractic treatments and appropriate healthy lifestyle tips for your chiropractic patient personas T: Track time based numbers (e.g. number of monthly no-shows & monthly chiropractic billing performance with Genesis chiropractic software) and plan marketing activities for each month based on goals on previous months’ results Last but not least, you should also assess any monthly chiropractic marketing expenses for website maintenance, advertising as well as other marketing efforts to determine your actual ROI. Since marketing is a testing game you will need to adjust your monthly goals in accordance with the results you are producing.
5 tips for successful patient relationship building on Facebook
Building relationships with your patients via social media such as Facebook is vital for the success and long-term profitability of your chiropractic clinic. Not only can it help you retain existing patients, but also get new ones through patient referrals in the form of shared content. In other words, if you provide value to your patients with your Facebook status updates rather than try to sell them on your new fancy equipment, they will be eager to share your useful content with everyone they know. Granted, there is no simple way to get patient referrals and you can never control the outcome of your online marketing initiatives, let alone make patients talk about you. However, you can improve your odds without having to invest more time into your online marketing activities by applying general social media conventions that have proven to be successful. Naturally, it can be difficult to figure out just what kind of status updates would accomplish your relationship-building goals without alienating any loyal patients and fans on Facebook. The best approach is clearly not a one-size-fits-all sales pitch about your services. Instead, provide educational info for the various chiropractic patient personas you treat at your practice in bite-size format for easy consumption and sharing. People always like to share useful content with their friends and family, which basically generates a virtual patient referral for you practice. Here are 5 tips for successful patient-relationship-building on your chiropractic fan page: Post images with text: Although a picture may be worth a thousand words, adding text on the actual image with an easy-to-use picture editor like Picmonkey increases the effectiveness of your message significantly. Don’t forget to add a few words in Facebook’s text box when posting your pic as status update, though, especially if your account is linked to Twitter. People have no reason to check out your ‘new photo’ if they have no clue what it even is about. Share a TIP: Start your status update with ‘TIP’ to draw people’s attention to it. Then offer a useful tip or even a brief checklist that can help improve the quality of life for one of your chosen patient personas. Remember to be very specific rather than general. Tell patients/fans what to expect: Add a clarifying statement when you post the link to your educational blog or video so that your patients and Facebook fan know what it is about and how long it will take them to watch it. For example: “Here is a brief article/video for moms with small children on how to prevent lower back pain.” No one likes to be ambushed into reading or watching a lengthy post. Call to action: People generally like to help other people and a call to action, such as “Please share this video with someone who suffers from lower back pain,” will no doubt result in at least a few shares. Ask simple questions for one-word answers: Most people don’t have the time or desire to respond with elaborate answers to any questions posted on Facebook. If you want your patients/fans to interact on your fan page you need to keep it simple and make it easy for them to respond with one word only. For example: “What does health mean to you in one word?” An additional benefit of this approach will be your improved Edge Rank on Facebook since comments carry more weight than “Likes,” which in turn will make your post appear in more people’s news feeds. By applying these tips to your daily Facebook status updates you should be able to build stronger relationships with your patients/fans and generate more patient referrals via Likes, shares and comments.
Chiropractic Marketing | Google+ communities for patient relationship management
Patient relationship management without a doubt makes up a key ingredient in any chiropractor’s success formula. Since online communities provide an incredibly useful vehicle for building relationships with your patients and getting valuable feedback from them, it only makes sense to use free Google+ communities to achieve your chiropractic business goal of building your dream practice. Naturally, it will be close to impossible for you to maintain more than one online community in between patient treatments and practice management activities. For that very reason it’s important to pick the most effective platform for building your online patient community. Just how can you determine which social media site is the best fit for your chiropractic clinic and patient personas? For starters, choosing a site that most people are already familiar with, such as Google, will certainly help getting your existing patients involved. Also keep in mind that not all of your patients possess the same level of internet savvy, so simplicity is a must. Once again, as the most popular search engine used worldwide Google has already proven that it provides user-friendly and effective features. Building on the success of Google search engines, the new Google+ communities make it easy for chiropractors to strengthen their relationships with existing patients while also attracting new ones and increase the patient flow at their clinics. By providing free chiropractic patient education and allowing patients to share their personal experiences or ask questions, your online community can function as the go-to place for expert information on various chiropractic topics. Ultimately, interactivity will be a catalyst for community growth– online, as well as off-line at your clinic. How to use Google+ communities for your chiropractic patient relationship management: Identify patients who have a specific shared interest (patient personas) Select an effective name for your community that will attract patient personas (e.g. ‘Tennis Elbow Relief,’ or ‘No More Headaches’). You should avoid using your clinic’s name for this online community since that will not attract people looking for info on the health issues you treat. Decide if you want the community to be an open or closed (exclusive membership for existing patients) group. Open communities will help you attract new patients while closed ones have little to no potential for growth. Choose if people who find your group via Google search need your permission to join. Edit your group’s profile information and set up categories for discussion and content sharing. Promote your new online community on your chiropractic website and in your patient emails.
How To Add 10-20 More New Patients To Each Chiropractic Spinal Screening!
Need New Patients? Hello, my name is Dr. Tabor Smith and I have done hundreds, if not thousands, of spinal screenings in different cities across the country. I know how to conduct a successful spinal screening, and unfortunately I also know how to fail miserably at it (been there, done that, got the T-shirt). It took several years of doing 2-3 spinal screenings a week before I actually started seeing consistent, reproducible results with my procedures. I even started to research and implement different neuropsychology methods to help me get the edge, so to speak, when it comes to communication and sales. As anyone who has done spinal screenings before will tell you, “They are not as easy as just putting up a sign.” People of this day and age are so accustomed to being sold-to that any type of service being advertised for free is automatically interpreted as an untrustworthy sales gimmick. So how do we overcome these social avoidance reflexes that have become so ingrained into our society? I’ll show you. One day, as I watched hundreds of people walk out of their way to avoid going by my booth, I discovered there are really only two reasons why someone would not want a free spinal screening: 1) They don’t think they need one, and 2) they don’t believe I could help them even if they did stop and get a screening. What I began to realize is that there was really not much I could do about the people who didn’t think they needed a spinal screening. After all, you can’t really change someone who is that determined to not receive your services, and arguing with them never solves anything. However, I knew I could definitely do something about the second group. These people knew they needed something, and deep down they really wanted a spinal screening or were at least interested in one — they just didn’t believe I would be able to help them. So, I asked myself, “How do businesses overcome disbelief in their product and show the world that it works?” Testimonials! But instead of just creating a poster with patient endorsements (which I did do), I realized the importance of going a step further. This extra step is what adds 10-20 MORE new patients into every big spinal screening that I do. I will share this with you in hopes that you too can have better success at every one of your screenings. More success at your spinal screenings means more lives changed, and that means that together we can take the profession of chiropractic to a higher level. It starts with making each potential client (new patient) feel welcome rather than intimidated. The first person to approach a potential client at your spinal screening is your greeter. This person stands out in front of your booth and welcomes people in. The trick to increasing the number of lives you can touch at your spinal screening is to make your greeter a walking testimonial. If you have been in practice long enough, you know what I am talking about when I say, “Ask a sneezer to help you at your spinal screening.” A “sneezer” is a patient who has had such great results in your office that they share it with everyone they meet. This person has referred dozens of people to your practice, and they have already joined in your mission of bringing chiropractic to the world. These people make great greeters at your spinal screenings, so give this strategy a try, and chances are you will see how much easier it makes each screening. For example, sometimes I have people walk into my booth asking me where to sign up, before I even do an actual screening on them. Another great thing about it is that most of the time it doesn’t cost you a dime. My sneezers are happy to trade a month or two worth of free care in my office for a day or two of helping me share the life-changing message of chiropractic with our local community! Genesis Chiropractic Software recently hosted a special invite-only webinar with Dr. Tabor Smith! He revealed all of his tips and strategies that have helped him schedule 72 NEW patients at a single spinal screening! Click Below… >>> Watch Now: Spinal Screening Webinar! <<< Thanks for taking the time to read my guest blog. A special thank you to Genesis Chiropractic Software for allowing me to post on their blog, and for all the great things they are doing for the profession. I am proud to be associated with them. – Tabor Smith D.C.