Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry.
Alright. Welcome to another episode. I appreciate you joining me again this week. Today will be a solo episode that I will break down a couple of misconceptions with marketing as a chiropractor. But before we do that, I just wanted to give you a little run down of some of the things coming up that I'm involved in, and hopefully, I'll see you at some of them.
As I record this, it's middle of July, so coming up over the next eight months or so, I've got the Forward 2019 event in St. Louis, Missouri. I hope to see you there. You can check that out at ForwardThinkingChiro.com and get tickets. I'd love to have you there. I'm presenting with John Morrison, so we're going to really get a lot of good marketing done, get the clearly defined audience and the clearly defined messaging for you, and how to market in the trenches. So, I hope to see you there, for sure. That's one of my favorite events, and I'm really excited about that one. Last year was the first one and I presented at that one as well and just had a really good time. So hopefully, I see you there. [0:01:26.8]
Next, in early October, I will be in New Jersey for their Fall Summit on a modern marketing panel discussion on a Saturday morning there, so if you're in New Jersey, hope to see you there. I will be there for that Saturday, and then also in late October, going to be doing a virtual summit. Last year, we did two of them. This year, we're going to do one, and it's going to be a summit that I'm collaborating with the Motion Palpation Institute, so it's going to be building a better chiropractor, and it'll be half clinical videos and presentations and half marketing and business, and as it sounds, it's a virtual summit. [0:02:09.2]
If you're unfamiliar with that, it means you'll be able to register for free and watch it online. There's a platform that we use, and so you watch it from the comfort of your own home or work, and on your laptop or phone or tablet, and so that will be in October. I will be announcing the dates on that soon. Then following that, in December, December 14th and 15th, we're going to have our next CSA Retreat, and that'll be in Palm Beach, Florida - right here in my hometown. And so that will be up to probably 40 members, smaller group, really diving deep into stuff, but also having fun, as it sounds. It's a retreat. We had a great time in Portland. It went better than we expected, and we'll be doing two a year - East Coast, West Coast - and so this one will be Palm Beach, Florida in the winter - hard to beat especially if you're in the colder climates that time of year. So hopefully see you there. [0:03:01.5]
And then lastly on my list presently is going to be Parker Vegas again. I was asked to speak again there, so I'll be there in February, and that was just an amazing event this past year. So hopefully you join us there again, so check that out. But so this is just some of the things I've got coming up. I hope to see you. Come up to me and chat. I just like getting out there. It's fun. And try to help out as much as I can and vice versa. I get a lot of good information from talking to you out in the field there and be able to see what the struggles and successes and the excitements in the future are of our profession. So, hopefully, I will see you out there on the road.
Alright. So let's chat today, and the title of today, or the topic of today, today's episode, or this week's episode is the fact that you don’t have to be a celebrity. Alright? You don’t have to be a celebrity in your marketing. I think that's something that we struggle with where we don’t launch our YouTube because we don’t think we're going to be the famous chiropractor that's on there, and you don’t think it's worthwhile, or we don’t get traction with Instagram because we're not up to 100,000 followers and stuff like that. [0:04:14.0]
Yeah, on this podcast, I've had influencers. I've had people that are dominating all the different types of distribution channels out there, and they're doing very good things with it, and it is building their practice. And so, if you can make that happen, then great. There are a lot of things that have to happen for you to do it, you know. I've interviewed some people that are killing it on Instagram. I've interviewed a couple of docs who are killing it on YouTube, or they're doing amazing things on Facebook, or they happen to be a great writer and they've written books and that's done really well for them. Right? So there are a lot of different things that can happen, but I don’t, I don’t want you to assume that's going to happen for you. Again, we want to do everything we can to happen. It'd be great if it does, but I don’t want you to assume that's what's going to happen for you, and I also don’t want that to be the measuring stick of having successful marketing for your practice. Okay? [0:05:19.8]
I think there's a couple ways of going about this, and there's probably more, but just for the sake of this episode, you know, you can definitely hit a home, a grand slam, and end up having 100,000 Instagram followers and get 15 new patients a month from Instagram. Right? That can happen, and that's great, or again, YouTube and things like that. So, that's one way, and then the other way is just having a very well-rounded marketing strategy for your practice and being consistent with that in the different types of distribution channels and over time, your practice is going to have a very well-rounded referral system. Right? [0:06:06.9]
And I would say that's what's happened for me in my private practice is that I've done, I've been consistent and I've utilized different strategy.. or you know, I should say one strategy - content marketing, but through different distribution channels, and so at the end of the month, if we get 35 new patients that come in, I can look at it and say 10 came from Google, 10 came from referrals, five came from, like let's say Facebook, two came from Yelp, one came from a - what's the other one - I got one recently that was - oh, we got a Bing one. Right? Like if you still remember that - we got one from Bing. Maybe you get a couple from insurance plans. I'm active release technique certified, so maybe I get from that, get a couple of personal injury ones from referrals from the attorneys. [0:07:01.9]
Got a couple from MDs and so, it's just a well-rounded approach to where each month, I've got a predictable amount of new patients and my marketing is consistent on the whole patient lifecycle, which is that during, after and also the before unit of marketing and so now, I've got this, you know, fully involved marketing strategy happening to where I'm targeting new patients, I'm trying to optimize patient experience, and I'm staying top of mind from past patients. So what that then does is it increases my new patients, but it also increases my patient retention. Okay? If you have a really good patient experience and you use content during that, you're going to increase your retention of those patients. They're going to follow their treatment plans at a higher rate. And then third, by focusing on that after unit marketing and everything, you're going to increase your patient reactivations.
So that's a really well-balanced practice and you're not so reliant on new patients. Obviously, we need new patients, but because you're getting a good amount of reactivations, a good amount of new patients and they're sticking around for their treatment plans at a higher rate, that's how you have long-term sustainability and not having to get that sugar high of new patients. [0:08:19.1]
Like, I need to run a funnel or I need to go and do a screening and get 15 new patients in here or it's going to be a bad month. Right? And that has historically happened in our profession, unfortunately.
So, that's the path I think most chiropractors are going to succeed with. You know, there's going to be outliers, people just dominating one channel. We'll just call it that - right - just one channel. They're going to dominate that and it's going to really help fuel their practice and that's great. But let's just assume that's not going to be you. Definitely do the things to try to do that, but just don’t make that as like your determination if you're doing good marketing. Okay? [0:09:01.6]
And so that's the essence of what I wanted to talk about today is that you don’t have to be a celebrity on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook or whatever or the next thing that comes around, but what you can do is have a very well-developed marketing strategy, and that's why I developed the marketing roadmap, and that is the fuel - right? That's your contact marketing. That's the fuel of your marketing, and part of that contact marketing is really having a clearly defined audience, knowing who you're talking about and we have had an episode on psychographics. We had an episode on x - y axis positioning. That's all part of that good content marketing strategy, which is the fuel. Then we have got the GPS, which is the messaging, you know, where we're going to get to, and you got to get really clear on your messaging. And that’s a lot of that story brand stuff, but it's even more than just that, but you know, getting real clear with that. [0:10:00.5]
That clearly defined message has to be congruent with that clearly defined audience; that's huge. Okay? So that's like the real building blocks of the marketing. And then, you can go to the vehicle, which is the next part of the roadmap and that's going to be your distribution channel. It's the vehicle to get your clearly defined message out with your content and that's going to be things like Facebook and Google and YouTube, email, direct mail, blogging, networking, public speaking, getting out there - right - like that's going to be the distribution channels of the content and obviously, the message. And lastly, is the destination. That's your planning and having a plan and having the quarterly marketing plan that we discussed, having the editorial calendar written out. You know, it's becoming late July now as I record this and so, at late July, I'm going to plan out my editorial calendar for August, which is going to include the topics I'm going to discuss and these are the emails that are going to go out. [0:11:01.6]
This is the blog I'm going to write. These are the videos I'm going to shoot. This is the Instagram strategy. Right? So you just get ahead of it and you're not reactive. You're proactive with it and then you apply that through those different distribution channels and you've got a really well-rounded approach that is going to bring in results without having to be a celebrity or you know, catching fire and having just this huge following of people on a platform. Again, I'd love for that to happen for you, but it's not going to happen for everybody and it's not the measuring stick of having a successful marketing plan for your practice, okay?
And so that's what I want you to just really take home. It's just like the mindset. It's like you're going to consistently create good content. You're going to get really clear on your audience and your messaging. You're going to optimize your Google, and optimize your Facebook business page, and you're going to run Facebook ads, you know, like with strategy. [0:12:04.8]
Like, you're going to do that stuff and it's all going to work together to have a very predictable practice, and the growth that you want. You're just going to have to stay in action, and I think the planning part of it is a big aspect of that, so.
Today's going to be short and sweet. I really just wanted to get that out there because I've talked to a lot of chiropractors recently. I've had some on the show that are, you know, doing really well with certain channels, and I just wanted to get that out there that, you know, you can have a great marketing plan without being a celebrity chiropractor. If you can get it done, great. It does help. But again, being a celebrity chiropractor is not for everybody. It depends on your personality, your desires and things of that nature. So, I hope this was helpful. It's a take home point that hopefully will get you motivated to getting a well-rounded marketing approach.
Thanks for tuning in today. Please be sure to check our redesigned website at www.ModernChiropracticMarketing.com. Stay up-to-date with our blog, where content is regularly added by Kevin and guest contributors. You can also access our library of podcast episodes there. Go to www.ModernChiropracticMarketing.com and subscribe to the podcast today.
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