Hey chiropractors. We are ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, content marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry.
Kevin: All right, welcome. Another episode of The Modern Chiropractic Marketing show. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie, and today I'm bringing a solo episode to you, and we're going to discuss the difference between psychographics and demographics, and it's a key distinction and we're going to dive into that. I think a lot of people hear so much about demographics when marketing and when positioning or figuring out where you're going to open up your clinic and things like that. You know, not that demographics aren’t important, but I believe psychographics for marketing and positioning is more important for you, so we'll break that down.
Before we do, just a few pieces of information. [0:01:00.6] One is, as of July 1st, the Chiropractic Success Academy is closed. There is a waitlist you can join, but it is closed for the time being, for probably a few months. We're working on the members we have in there; we have now over 100 paid members, which just blows my mind, and it's great. We had the great CSA retreat in Portland, and that was fun, and so just overall we grew more than we, I guess, probably expected, and we're shutting down registration for a few months to focus on the current members, onboard them, and then we're going to make some changes to the Academy, some improvements. We're going to have a well-delineated success path, we're going to ramp up the content repository, we're going to have a preferred providers list inside the Academy and more collaboration with content producers, just really building this puppy out and making it something even more special than it is. [0:02:07.2] So we have closed that. You can join the waitlist, and it's just something where you can join that, and then once we do open it, we'll give you a heads up and let you know to do that. You can just go to www.CSACircle.com/waitlist to do that, and that will be in the show notes.
All right, next announcement, we've got three today and that was the first one. The second one is, I hope you join me at Forward 2019 in St. Louis. I'll be presenting there and hanging out there and having a good time and helping out people as much as I can. I'll be chatting and answering questions, so join us. That's going to be in St. Louis September 20th through 22nd, my alma mater. I'm looking forward to going back, haven’t been there in a while, so check that out. [0:03:01.1] You can go to ForwardThinkingChiro.com and register. This will sell out. It sold out last year, and it will sell out this year, so make sure you get on that.
And then lastly, Motion Palpation Institute, they are a sponsor of the podcast, and I talk a lot about what it takes to be a thriving chiropractor, and that includes communication, marketing, and business, but it also obviously entails clinical expertise. And I think sometimes we know that, but then sometimes we forget about it as well, and Motion Palpation just really builds a better chiropractor. Each year they have an Adjust-a-thon, and it's full spine analysis and adjusting technique, and this year it is going to be at Cleveland University in Kansas City, and that is September 28th and 29th. So maybe you will just hang out in the Midwest the weekend of the Forward event, and then the following weekend in Kansas City. [0:04:02.4] So check that out as well, and you can go to MotionPalpation.org/seminars, and again that will be in the show notes.
All right, let's dive into the topic, psychographics versus demographics. You know, typically we hear demographics, you know, like for instance, I'm a 39-year-old, white male, education, certain income level, things of that nature; those are your typical demographics. And then the psychographics is going to be more of what your patients' lifestyles, personalities, aspirations, values, and interests represent, so it's more like how they behave. That's why it's called psychographics and it's more about how they behave versus what they are. And yeah, sometimes they will match up, like certain demographics might have different psychographics, or certain psychographics might have a similar demographic. [0:05:00.0] One of the examples I use as a good psychographic that I'll break down, and you could apply this to different ones and I'll give a few examples, but CrossFitters, right? As chiropractors, we treat a lot of CrossFitters, and they have a certain set of psychographics, but they also have pretty similar demographics. There are different things, but you know, they typically have a certain age group and certain income level, certain education level, things like that. But as far as psychographics, I think when I say CrossFitter to you, it pops, like yeah, they are different. They're super health conscious, they're competitive, typically type A, they're focused, and they want to improve performance. A lot of times they will have a little bit of a tweak in, you know, the shoulder and they will come in for care for it; whereas, you know, Bob, the 50-year-old carpenter, probably has to be on his deathbed before he's coming in to see you. [0:06:00.4] But the CrossFitter, which is, you know, honestly why it's been such a good patient population for chiropractors is because of the psychographics of the CrossFitter. Now, there's maybe some negatives of the CrossFitter. From what I've found, you know, if you're not in network and very affordable, a lot of the CrossFitters tend to be in their 20s, and they're just struggling to pay their CrossFit membership, let alone coming and paying cash rates consistently in your practice. So it can be difficult if you're like my practice where we're out of network with almost everything now, except for one plan, and then we have higher cash rates, so it can be trickier for the CrossFitter. But you know, ultimately when I say CrossFitter, you understand the certain psychographics that they have.
And then the next thing, which was interesting. So I first started learning about the psychographic thing through the marketing seminar with Seth Godin, and he talked a lot about it and I started getting interested in it. [0:07:03.9] And then recently I'm reading a book that's really not about marketing, but it's called "Clockwork," and it's by Mike Michalowicz, and it's more a book about running your business to where it's like clockwork, like runs without you. But he has a whole section in there about psychographics, and what I read to you earlier about, you know, the lifestyles, the personalities, aspirations, values, interests, it's from that particular book. And then he brought up an interesting point that what you really need to then do is figure out where the congregation points are for the particular psychographic. And so using the CrossFitter analogy or example is great because now where is a congregation point for the CrossFitter? And it really lends itself to even what I think made CrossFit so popular. [0:08:04.9] And such a quick point was that the developer of CrossFit hit on these things, like he hit on the certain psychographics and realized there needed to be a congregation point, and they even named the congregation point The Box, right? They call their gym The Box; they don’t even call it a gym. They came up with a whole unique naming for the congregation point of these CrossFitters, and so you need to figure out where these congregation points are of the psychographics.
So, you know, if you want to position yourself as a, let's just, you know, I use my practice a lot as an evidence-based sports chiropractor, and you want to work with a lot of athletes, you need to get clear on the psychographics and then who falls into that. And so for me, a lot of the psychographics that I picked were, you know, the health-conscious, competitive, type-A, good education/job, has the resources, really cares about performance and health, needs results quickly, not afraid to come in and get care for their injury. [0:09:05.0] So that was what I really wanted my practice to be, and then from there I figured, okay, who is that? I started practicing before CrossFit was invented, so that wasn’t out of the gates; but some of the ones I really thought about were, okay, how about runners and triathletes? That's a big one, and they have a congregation point. There are going to be races and running stores and running groups; there are all kinds of congregation points. And then golfers, right? You know, with golfers, there are obviously certain psychographics that lend themselves to be wanting to come in for care, and then a congregation point would be country clubs and golf clubs and golf stores, and connecting with golf pros, things of that nature. So you have all these different types of psychographics, and then you're going to have groups that fall within, whether it's the runner, the triathlete, the golfer, the cyclist, the swimmer, the CrossFitter. How about the desk worker with a congregation point being corporate locations and doing health talks and health fairs at those congregation points, right? [0:10:04.5] And so that's the essence of psychographics, then figuring out what kind of group does this fall into, and so you figure out the different psychographics you want, then what groups would match up, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, but congruent with those psychographics. Then, what congregation points do they have, and then how can you obviously target that. That is kind of where your clearly defined message has to match that clearly defined audience.
Now, let's break down the congregation point into two things. You can have offline congregation points like The Box or the country club or the running group; and then you can have online congregation points, and sometimes that's like a closed Facebook group. For instance, the triathlon group that I sponsor, they have a really well-developed closed Facebook group, and they have given me permission to provide good content there, so that's an online congregation point for that group. [0:11:06.4] Or even with Facebook ads, the targeting is so great that you can target psychographics, and so Facebook is a congregation point for almost all of these types of people. You know, you could write an article on CrossFit injuries and target people whose hobby and interest is CrossFit, and so that is an online congregation point. So you can start getting clear on those and getting clear on your messaging, which is a whole other topic, and you now develop a content marketing strategy to target the online congregation points of these people. Then you would also target offline, which would be more of your networking and community outreach and public speaking, all those things, right? Like so many chiropractors have done so well with CrossFit because they have done a lot of trainings at The Box, or they work out at a Box; that's an offline, more connecting type of face-to-face thing, which is really, really important for some of these congregation points. [0:12:02.8] It's hard to be the expert in CrossFit if you're just going to only do online stuff and things like that. So that's the online versus offline congregation points.
To touch a little bit on the messaging, right, like the story brand thing, let's now use the golfers. We'll use that as an example, and you say, okay, how do I get a clearly defined message to that golfer? Well, what is the problem that the golfer has that would come and see you. Then as the story brand talks about, there's the external conflict, internal conflict, and philosophical conflict. The external conflict would be, let's just call it low back pain, right, very common. So you could sit down and write out, okay, CrossFitters, what are their external problems: shoulder, back, knee. Golfer: back, shoulder, wrist, elbow. Whatever you want to do, write out the external conflicts they have. Now with that golfer, the low back pain is the external conflict, but what the internal conflict could be is that they can't play golf, and what do they get out of playing golf? [0:13:08.1] What do they suffer when they can't play golf? Like maybe it's their escape on weekends; maybe it's their unwinding from a hard job; or maybe it's their way of getting away from their spouse; or it's camaraderie with the foursome they have; or it feeds that competitiveness that they miss since they left high school and they're not an athlete any more. There's all these internal things that it can be, and their back pain is impacting the internal conflicts. And then the philosophical conflicts could be they're afraid they're not going to be able to play golf anymore, or they're going to lose 30 yards of their drive, or they have to rest for eight weeks, right? All these different things that can come from that perspective as far as philosophical; they don’t want to rest, or they don’t want to have surgery, or they don’t want to not play golf, and they don’t know where to go and frankly they don’t have a solution to their back problem. They think it's just an it-is-what-it-is type of thing. [0:14:03.9] And so in your messaging, you can really handle all three of those conflicts, and so that's a little bit about having that clearly defined message to match up with that clearly defined audience. So your golfer matches up with the psychographics you're looking for; you know where the congregation points are, both online and offline; and you develop a plan to fill that need in the marketplace, right?
Then that's how you build the practice of your dreams, you know, because ultimately I think, and I'm just going to wrap this up, a mistake a lot of chiropractors make is they think they have to be everything to everybody—and that's not just a chiropractic thing, that's a business thing in general—but a lot of chiropractors tend to be generalists and want to do everything, and they don’t have a specific niche and they don’t target that niche properly. But if you do this right and you're consistent with it, you will then have the practice that will be mainly consisting of patients that match the psychographics you're looking for. [0:15:03.1] Yes, you're going to get other types of patients; I have Medicare patients here, but it's not the majority of my patient base. It's mostly active people, a lot of athletes, and then there's some of the outliers, which is fine. It's a well-rounded practice, but the majority of my patient base fit into that psychographic that I'm targeting, and you can do the same.
So, I hope that helped. It's something that I think can be teased out a lot more; I'm definitely teasing it out in depth in an exercise that I'm working on with some of my clients, some of my chiropractors that I'm working with, but it's definitely a topic that needs to be teased out a little bit more, and you can build your marketing strategy around it. Have a great week, I'll be chatting with you soon and looking forward to hopefully seeing you at some of these live events coming up that I'll be at.
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