Creative Marketing
On a budget?
Want more bang for the buck? Marketing expert and practicing chiropractor Joel
Margolies tells how to make marketing work for you
By Joel E. Margolies, D.C.
In our present economic climate, an innovative businessperson must focus marketing
efforts toward getting the most impact for the least expense.
Advertising in various forms requires an investment, whether it involves hiring
a marketing firm, printing newsletters or flyers, incurring mailing costs or
buying media advertising space. Although exposure in any form is a plus, it
may be too expensive if your strategy is broad and uncontrollable.
The most common marketing plan is predictable, usually involving sending many
promotional pieces to potential patients. Is this a realistic strategy for cost
effective marketing? No.
Therefore, let’s explore a few alternative ideas that may cost you time
but will require less money and provide more bang for your buck.
Face-To-Face Marketing
Meeting people where they shop, work, exercise and live will not only allow
you to answer questions and promote your services one-on-one, but you will also
meet potential new patients with minimal expense. This strategy may include
postural and stress screenings, various workshops or lectures, ergonomic and
safety evaluations, as well as networking with community professionals.
In the usual demographic environment, you will find:
- Apartment complexes and
housing subdivisions with clubhouses to provide health and wellness workshops;
- Sports facilities, where
biomechanical screenings or lectures can be offered;
- Corporate facilities,
where you can discuss safety and offer your services for screenings; and
- Professionals, such as
attorneys, allied health professionals and community leaders.
You can fill an open calendar
quickly with multiple programs if you maintain your efforts and proper focus.
When there is a will, there is a way. In fact, only your resolve stands in the
way of being successful.
Begin a methodical program of reviewing your community contacts and list potential
areas to focus your attention. Establish a database of names, addresses, phone
and fax numbers, as well as e-mail addresses of civic and church program directors,
corporate human resources or safety directors, retail facilities where screening
may be useful, apartment complexes with clubhouses and lawyers concerned with
personal injury, for a start.
Although this may take some time, it will create awareness and begin the process
of expanding your base of new patients, as well as allow you to break out of
your comfort zone. Once you have established a database, you are ready to initiate
contact and provide various programs.
Each component of this process takes time and management. Therefore, focus on
areas you wish to explore, and slowly but surely keep going forward, adding
more ingredients to your recipe of success week by week. Before long, you will
have a strong base from which to promote.Create a generic letter that can be
tweaked depending on your programs. It may read something like this:
“I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our office. As a
community service, we provide various health and wellness and safety programs.
Our most popular programs are “Stress Management,” “Aging Gracefully,”
“Family Fitness,” “Biomechanics—What Is It?” and “Safety
at the Workplace.” We are in the process of scheduling our fall and winter
programs and would like to include you. Someone from our office will be calling
you soon to determine your interest. There are only a few days per month that
we have available, so if you are interested please call us at (phone number).”
At this point, it is only a matter of persistence and patience. Call several
contacts each day, and be sure to record the organization and person you contacted,
along with the action steps taken. Be prepared to discuss with them the programs
and schedules of workshop or screening dates.
Internet Marketing
Using technology to bolster your office marketing plans is available for free
through the Internet. Two areas to explore are using a web page and e-mail.
A web page is a worldwide business card that is always available for review.
On this business card, you have the ability to introduce yourself, your staff
and chiropractic; offer conservative advice; provide a pictorial tour of your
office; make appointments; and link to other community and related health-care
web pages.
If you spend money to create your web page and pay the fees to maintain it,
you get the most exposure for your investment. Like a business card placed in
a wallet, your web page is in cyberspace waiting for someone to view it and
take advantage of its contents.
Other businesses and professionals within your community also need exposure,
so this is a perfect means for you to connect with them. Just as we generated
a database from our demographic base, we can also expand it to include merchants.
Call them to determine if they have a web page and if you can link it to your
web page. This is your open invitation to place their e-mail address and business
web page link on your site for introduction to your patients and community via
your e-mail newsletter.
How can you use e-mail as a promotional tool?
Find a place on your case history form for a patient’s e-mail address.
Create a database and address book of these e-mails and be sure to send a monthly
e-mail to all your patients. This is a creative way to keep your patients informed
of office news and to stimulate reactivation of patients who have not been in
your clinic for a while. With a keystroke, you have the potential of reaching
thousands of patients with little or no cost.
Be sure to print your e-mail newsletter and have it handy for those walk-in
patients with no e-mail access. You can expand this to patients’ work e-mail
addresses, and you can direct specific ergonomic newsletters to them for sharing
with others. This also opens doors for you to conduct workplace workshops and
screenings in the future.
You can include within your e-mail newsletter the community merchant or professional
of the week. Besides sending your newsletters to patients, you now have expanded
it to the community by adding these merchants and professionals to your address
book, with a monthly reminder of your office, programs and skills.
E-mail newsletters can be elaborate or simple. Various professional vendors
offer a complete educational service for patients, but if you are concerned
about keeping expenses down, you can compile your own newsletters. You can include
timely office information, bios of yourself and staff, local topical information,
as well as health information gleaned daily from online, print or broadcast
news media.
Building Your Patient Base
The least expensive, but the most profitable, marketing tool is working with
your present patient base, requesting referrals and maintaining active promotional
programs.
New patient lectures, topical office workshops, seasonal promotions and asking
for referrals always generate the best, and most informed, patients. You should
also contact
former patients via timely
phone calls or letters.
Practice management is so much more than delivering a great adjustment. It includes
generating interest to help others and being assured that those you help have
a chance to reach their goal of health and wellness. Cultivate and stimulate
the promotional seeds you plant, keep up the momentum and wait for a bountiful
harvest of success.
About the author: Joel E. Margolies, D.C., a 1978 Life College graduate, has
managed a practice for 25 years in Atlanta and has written four chiropractic
books: Smart Start, Chiropractic Marketing and Public Relations, Chiropractic
Workshop Workbook, and the Personal Injury Workbook. He sends a free weekly
e-mail newsletter on practice management, public relations and philosophy topics
to more than 9,000 chiropractors in 30 countries. Inquiries should be directed
to him by e-mail at Joel3639@aol.com or through his Web site www.chirosmart.net.
© Copyright 2002 Today's Chiropractic