Hey, chiropractors. We're 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: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie. Today, I've got a solo episode where we're going to answer the question, "What does great marketing do?" And before we do that, I just want to let you know, you can still sign up, even though the early bird is over, but the prices are really still very affordable and I think we have such high value for the CSA retreat coming up in Palm Beach that if you're in the area or you want to get away from the cold, it's really going to be worth your time and money to come here. Jeff Langmaid, John Morrison, myself and Bobby Maybee present. We already have over 25 people registered. We're only taking a handful more. Check out the retreat. [0:01:04.4]
You can go and see that at the bit.ly link, which makes it easy for you to basically understand the URL, which is a marketing tactic in itself, so that's part of the episode learning material for you, but go to bit.ly/CSAPalmBeachRetreat.com and you can get that. What the bitly link does is it actually, it's kind of two-fold. There's probably multiple things, but really, it's going to give you the ability to take a long URLs and shorten then down so people can remember them, but it's also going to allow you to track. So if you're ever doing anything and you want to track if people are clicking, then this will do that for you as well, and that's just bitly and you can go and do a free account with them as well. But check that out. It's, again, bit.ly/CSAPalmBeachRetreat. We're going to be there December 14th and 15th, Del Ray Beach, Florida. It's in Palm Beach County, which is down in South Florida. It is always warm there. A cold day is like 55 degrees in the winter, but I doubt we'll have that. We're going to have beach time. [0:02:02.5]
We're going to have education. We're going to have a lot of fun, but at the same time learn a ton. We're going to dive deep with these four presentations plus we're going to have small groups to get into it, so check that out. We had the one in Portland. It was a lot of fun, a lot of connecting, a lot of good information shared and we'll be doing these twice a year, west coast and east coast, so I hope to see you there. Alright, let's dive into today's topic and I really just wanted to make a short and sweet episode of you know, what great marketing does because I was asked this question, you know, what marketing had done for me and obviously, the easy answer is it can grow your practice. Right? Like, good marketing can grow a business. It can grow your practice and the more I thought about it, there's a lot more that goes into it and before I actually give you that information and kind of run through it, I wanted to first just understand, like what… get an idea of what marketing is. Alright? [0:03:00.6]
I know you may think you know what it is. I may think I know what it is sometimes, but I really want to just read a short little blog from Seth Godin. You know, he does a daily blog and they're really short, very snackable blogs and really easy to read every day. It's not these 5000-word blogs. So, on January 2, 2019, the title of his particular blog was What Is Marketing, and you can Google this and find it out, but essentially this is what he has it defined as, and it's really, listen to what he says. It's really thought provoking, and that's what I like about Seth Godin the most is that he doesn’t just give basic information. He really dives deep into the psychology of marketing. So here we go. "If you need to persuade someone to take action, you're doing marketing. If you're looking for votes at the city council meeting or looking for a promotion, you're marketing. If you're writing copy on your website, taking a selfie for your social media profile or trying to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, you're marketing. Marketing goes way beyond advertising, email pitches, or the way you do pricing. In fact, most of the time, marketing has nothing at all to do with money. We're surrounded by people who would like a piece of our attention, a bit of our trust and some of our action. Those people are marketing to us, and it helps to know what they're doing right and wrong. If someone says, 'I don’t do marketing,' they probably mean, 'I don’t spend money on ads.' Those are very different things. Our culture is driven more than ever by marketers. The links we click on (like I mentioned earlier with the bitly), the shows we watch, the people we vote for, they're all marketing artifacts. If you don’t like the political situation, you're commenting on the marketing situation. As soon as we take responsibility for the marketing we do and the marketing that's done to us, we have a chance to make things better by making better things." [0:05:09.6]
And that last part that I love that he said was "By making better things." I love to apply that to the chiropractic profession and obviously, that would mean providing a better service, providing a higher quality of care and continuity of care and really giving really good treatment, evaluation and treatment and information. Right? And giving them way better content, educating the community - all that - that's going to into making better things. And I felt like this really resonated with what I'm trying to accomplish in my practice in the community and even helping chiropractors out on their own with it is you have to make better things, and then, you get that idea out. He finishes up in one of his books, and I took another quote from him that I really liked, just to kind of put a bow on it here with Seth Godin is "Marketing is about spreading ideas and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization." Okay? [0:06:14.8]
Yeah. Our civilization is not going to end if you don’t get your message out there in chiropractic, but the idea of spreading those ideas and doing it consistently and having a really good product or being a great chiropractor and having really good information is really important to your community and the more you do of it, the more you're serving the community and you will see everything benefit. Okay? You're going to receive a lot by giving a lot, and that to me, is what marketing is. It's not the cheesy tactics that we all are familiar with. Right? We don’t want that. So when chiropractors tell me that they don’t do marketing or they don’t want to do marketing, I really want you to think about what Seth Godin says there and that yes, you are always marketing and you can do it in a way that's elegant and very effective. Okay? [0:07:07.3]
So, you know, what is great marketing going to do for your practice? I think it's multiple things, but a lot of times, we have always heard about new patients. It's going to get you new patients, going to get you new patients, and that's great. But really, what it does is it's going to get you new patients. It's also going to help your patient retention and it's also going to help your patient reactivations. You're going to have a very well-rounded and sustainable practice with those three things humming and firing all on cylinders. A lot of chiropractors are focusing on new patients and only getting that and it becomes a problem. Okay? So if you're doing really good marketing, you're going to have a combination of the three things - new patients, patient retention and patient reactivations. Alright? And that's that whole before, during and after unit marketing. Right? That's what great marketing is - is when you're doing it for the entire patient lifecycle. [0:07:59.6]
The next thing that I thought about when I was asked this question was it actually, you know, really good marketing will decrease the cost of your marketing. You don’t have to spend as much. You know, there's always that stuff out there that you need to spend 10% of your revenue on marketing and things like that. I'm not going to argue that, but the reality of it is is a lot of businesses and chiropractors have to spend a lot more money and/or time, like they have to hit it hard to get people in there because they burn and churn their patients and so, they're not being sought after and so what happens is that they have to get a ton of new patients. Right? Whereas if you're making better things or you have great care, then you're going to get a lot more referrals. You're going to get people that stick around because they like your care. They're going to… you're going to get people that reactivate when they do hurt themselves and so, your cost of marketing is going to go down in that respect plus if you're doing great marketing, like your message is really good, your clearly defined audience is on point, and your content is consistent and creative and you're leveraging all the distribution channels out there really well, you're going to be able to do it for a lot cheaper than everybody else is. [0:09:12.6]
So that's a big aspect of that. I really want you to consider that. I want to read something. I'm not going to mention any names, but a chiropractor that I coach gave me this long - I'm not going to mention the numbers either - ended up with x amount of new patients in October, averaging x amount this year, up from, it was about eight new patients on average less last year and was really excited about that and interestingly enough, also spending 1/4th the amount on marketing as I used to. So this is someone that is exponentially growing their practice and doing it on one-quarter of the marketing spend that he was doing the previous year. So, that's what great marketing can do for you. Alright?
Now I think there's also three aspects of really good marketing and I don’t expect you to be able to do all of them all the time or not, you know, every aspect of it, but it comes down to community outreach. So we're just going to…everything under community outreach, we're going to talk about, you know, MD marketing networking, attorney networking events, public speaking, all that - getting out into the community. [0:10:20.3]
We'll call it offline, right. Like you're out and about and you're networking and you're connecting. You're public speaking. You're teaching. You're just being a valuable resource out in the community. That's number one. That's going to be really great marketing. Number two is that total web presence - everything online and email and Facebook and blogs and a website and Google. You want to have a really good total web presence, which I talk a lot about in many episodes and blogs that I've written. Then third is going to be direct mail. I think that's going unnoticed from a lot of chiropractors, is they're not doing any direct mail and direct mail doesn’t have… that's the physical mail, basically, you get in people's mailbox. It doesn’t have to be mailers for cold leads. That's one way of doing direct mail, but it doesn’t have to be that. [0:11:05.9]
It doesn’t have to be a monthly newsletter. Although it's very viable and very, very productive, it can be expensive, but ultimately, direct mail is anything. It can be sending out birthday cards every month, holiday cards, welcome letters to new patients. It can be thank you letters to patients that refer you new patients. Right? That would be the affordable way of doing…to at least start your direct mail strategy each month, and then from there, when your revenue hits a certain point in your profits that you can reinvest, then I think a monthly newsletter is definitely something you should investigate, consider and look at the ROI on that. So that would be a really good comprehensive approach in your community. So you're out there in public. You're on the, you know, the total web presence and you're in their mailbox. You're really getting in front of a lot of people that way. To me, that would be a really good, you know, distribution model of your really good message and your really good content. Alright? [0:12:02.3]
Then, one other, you know, a couple of other things that really good marketing does is it will allow you to increase your cash rates. Okay? It will allow you to potentially consider getting out of network with insurances that aren’t reimbursing what you think you deserve, and I don’t think that's for everybody. I'm not saying you have to get out of network. I think many, many, many, many cases, you want to be in-network. But if you're doing really good marketing and you're building a really good practice and you're developing a tribe in your community, if you decide to get off of insurance - I've done that a few times - down to only one insurance now. I used to be in-network with all of the big ones in Florida. If you build up that tribe and that expertise in the community through really good marketing, then you'll be able to drop a plan and it not impact your practice and many times actually benefit your revenue and profits. So that's what great marketing will do as well. Right?
I'm sure there's a bunch others. If you've got any other inputs on this, you can, you know, mention it in the Facebook group, but that to me is what great marketing can do and why you need to be doing it and understand that it's not the cheesy marketing. It's the spreading of ideas. Right? And making better things. So, listen to Seth Godin and start making sure your practice has great marketing. Have a great week and I'll talk to you next week.
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