Forward Thinking Chiropractic Alliance website members are going to receive frequent content from a handful of committee's who have volunteered to take on the task of producing valuable pieces of content for said members. This article introduces us all to the Business and Marketing Committee, and some of the things they would like to accomplish for you. Exciting!
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Are you stuck in the throes of starting your new practice? Have you joined an existing practice and you’re responsible for bringing in your own patients? Has your business plateaued, and you’re looking to give it a kickstart and make some changes?
This probably describes many or all of the FTCA, so you’re not alone. Welcome to your newest marketing and business resource, brought to you by the FTCA. We intend to provide you with monthly. actionable, content.
We want to be more than a blog that gives ideas with the intent of selling our services. We want to provide step-by-step instruction for tactics and strategies that are already tried and true. Look forward to monthly content for:
● business systems and resources
● content marketing strategies
● before, during, and after- unit marketing strategies
● digital marketing
● networking tactics
● and much more.
If you’re starting from scratch, we’ll have a quick start guide; several strategies designed to give you the biggest bang for your limited buck.
If you’re rebranding and have some resources at your disposal, we’ll provide you with some guidance, or at least some advice so you don’t get fleeced by a designer or agency.
If you’re an associate and you’re limited in what you can say and do, we’ll provide some tactics to work within those constraints. Basically, we all have our own needs or focuses, and we’re going to try to meet all of them, to some extent or another.
What are you doing right now in your marketing that is yielding the best results? How are you encouraging referrals? Besides “delivering great quality care,” what is an action you can take to increase your referrals?
This month and next we’re going to touch on branding, or messaging. We want you to be able to be crystal-clear in the message you deliver to others. We want your prospects to be able to understand what you do, and if they’re the right patient for you.
Most of us would think that any patient is the right patient for us, but the ever-popular Pareto’s Principle would say otherwise. The idea is that 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the effort, so the idea is to focus our message and our attention on the 20 percent, so we can maximize the effectiveness of our message.
This 20 percent would be described as our “perfect patient.” This is the person who has been so thrilled with our treatment that they constantly refer. This is the patient we get excited about working with, and we would like to multiply them. They pay without complaint, and reschedule without reminders.
Effective marketing is efficient marketing, so we really want to be able to direct all of our messaging to that 20 percent. To do that we need to truly identify who that is, what they want, and how we can deliver it to them.
There are many ways to do this. You could go through your files, with your staff if you have any (they will inevitably have insight that you don’t in this exercise), and identify patients that energize you, or at the very least don’t drain the life out of you.
Identify obvious common demographic traits. Where do they live? How old are they? Do they have kids? What are their hobbies? Shopping habits? Vacation destinations? Organizations they’re involved in? Employers?
You could identify a few patients that stand out, and offer them a cup of coffee in exchange for a quick conversation. In this conversation you could find out what really drives them, what they really want.
We all talk about getting people out of pain, but there’s a lot more to it than that. We want to find out what’s truly important to them, what they want to keep doing. Chances are, these activities or values are shared with others, and this could be a way to identify what you should be saying.
For example, instead of, “I get rid of back pain.” You could say, “I ensure that you’re able to keep playing in your tennis league,” or “We help you stay strong and healthy so you can keep up with your kids as they’re growing up.”
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, or at least some variation of it, but the importance should not be overlooked. Don’t presume that you know your perfect patient either. Some leg work has to be done, or there will probably be some incongruency, some disconnect that will get in the way of this strategy.
Make sure you have your values clearly laid out, your mission and vision locked in, and you can really hone in on your 20 percent by getting to know what really gets them up in the
morning. Because as much as your practice is all-consuming, it’s all about your patients. Make them the hero of their story (more on that in detail next month), and they will care about what you can do for them.
Exercise: Take action! Go through your patient files and identify some patients that you just seem to click with. In conversation with them, identify what is actually important to them. Find out what their values are. As above, where do they live? How old are they? Do they have kids? What are their hobbies? Shopping habits? Vacation destinations? Organizations they’re involved in? Employers?
Perhaps in your new patient histories you can identify what their pain is preventing them from doing. If you are just starting, maybe just identify who you enjoy working with through their activities (you have to start somewhere).
Again, don’t assume others’ values. Find them out in conversation, so you actually know what they are. You will probably need to step out of your comfort zone, but that’s ok. That will be necessary during many points in your career, and you’ve probably already done so, many times over.
Remember, nothing happens without you taking action. If you don’t take action here, this will be another useless blog article. You can learn all you want about business and marketing systems, but if you don’t implement, you will not see the results.
Next month we’ll be covering the creation of your message, using your perfect patient, in addition to some quick start ideas. If you have any requests, please get in touch with us, as we want to give you what you want and what you need. Remember to take action or nothing happens.
Andy Cook DC, Committee Chair