Bad Chiropractic Marketing can be the Death of your Practice
We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Yet, it amazes me just how much I see this done within the chiropractic marketing and the profession as a whole. Far too many times I see chiropractors buying expensive media slots in the newspaper or on TV that are yielding mediocre results. It’s almost like these media sharks are feasting on “hope,” as the DC’s that I come into contact regularly with think they’ve just purchased a winning lottery ticket or something. Little do they know the startling reality on the other side. They’re actually killing their practice.
We are in seriously tough times in this country. The economy is in recession, and older forms of chiropractic marketing and advertising do very little good now. If you spend a fortune on marketing right now, you can be sure that your business is going to tank under all the pressure and expense. That means that chiropractors are marketing less to compensate, but continue to only suffer more. You need to market to get new patients through your door, but you can’t afford to do it the same old way. What’s the answer for today’s chiropractors?
You may think, “I don’t have the money, so I cannot advertise and implement chiropractic marketing right now.” This is a common, flawed perception many chiropractors have. But the truth is, the best form of marketing and advertising is free nowadays. It’s not TV, newspaper ads, magazines, telemarketing, or postcard drops either. Chiropractors have been scammed and led to believe that you have to pay for new patients and the best type of marketing costs money.
There is good news. Even though you may have placed all of your finances in ineffective paid advertisements, you can still get some high-impact massive exposure and tons of new patients for free. This comes in the form of doing your chiropractic marketing on social media outlets like YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, and many others. By the way, at least half of members on these networks are above 30 years of age, contrary to popular belief.
When you specifically target your marketing strategy online to people in the right demographic and right location, you are significantly increasing your chances of success and driving many new patients through your doors each month. But you need to begin in the right way! When you’re starting to meet people online, and your community is introduced to your chiropractic practice, you need to brand yourself in the right way to get great results. Don’t make the same mistakes that others do. You need someone by your side that has experienced success already, and knows how to guide you there as well.
Here’s a great way to start on the road to Web 2.0 success. Get an account started on a popular social media site, and begin to invite friends who live within a 5 mile radius of your practice. Let these people learn about you and start to communicate with them. Once you strike-up friendships, you are then able to share information about your chiropractic practice and draw people who are in need of your services.
You can also begin to be of value to these people by providing them useful information online. When you make daily video blogs or weekly postings about relevant topics, people will begin to see that you can help them, and they’ll take note. For instance, I posted a simple video about headache relief and 3,000 people viewed it within one week! Viral marketing was the cause of all this exposure. When one person saw it and found it helpful, they passed it on to a friend, and so forth. Do you see the power?
Social media marketing is the answer to your marketing problems during these difficult times. When you have the right coach by your side, you can instantly tap the power of Web 2.0 without wasting time trying to figure it all out alone. Watch your practice soar to unbelievable heights as hundreds of new patients walk through your doors each month. And not only that, but this success can be yours absolutely for free!
