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: Hey docs. Welcome to another episode of The Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie. Today, we have got a solo round and it's just going…I'm going to riff on a topic that I discussed with a chiropractic who's got a practice that's just doing really well and you know, and as I was thinking about the conversation I was having, I don’t think I discussed this quite a bit, but what do we do for clinics that are just really killing it? Right? What would you do? What would be that next level of marketing if you're just a very high revenue and assuming a very healthy profit practice? Right? Like 50, 75,000…100, 150,000 a month with good profit. [0:01:07.6]
So everything I say today is going to be with that because I know practices that bring in 65,000 a month and they really have to bring in at least that to pay all their bills and so there's not a lot of wiggle room. But let's assume we're a high revenue and a very healthy profit practice and whatever that, you know, healthy profit means, but we can definitely afford to reinvest in our marketing a little bit more than maybe other chiropractic practices. So what does that… you know, what does that look like? Because I do think it's different. Let's just, for the sake of argument, let's just say we're doing 75,000 a month and again, 50,000 a month, 40 - those could definitely fall into that. I know practices that are 45,000 a month in revenue with pretty low overhead considering and so there's quite a bit of profit margin and that particular chiropractic is not overspending in their personal life. [0:02:06.0]
So there's definitely money left over each month and that person, let's just say they're interested in taking that next level in the marketing. I think a question that people will ask is well, if you're killing it like that already and you're only spending, you know, 1000 or 1500 on marketing why spend more? I think there are a few reasons for that. One is, you know obviously, you have a growth mindset and you want to push the envelope further but that brings up another question is can you handle the volume? Right? So there could be a practice that is at 75,000 a month but is busting at the seams and just frankly can't handle the volume, can't hire another associate because frankly they don’t have the space. Right? There's those scenarios where you're just maxed out and maybe you have a long-term strategy of you know, in a couple of years I'm going to buy a new building that's bigger, but for right now, I can't. But let's just assume you've got a growth mindset and you can handle some more volume or you decide, you know what - we can't handle more volume, but I will raise our cash rates or I'll get out of the network with that worst insurance plan there is or we'll target some, you know, in Florida maybe a little bit more auto accident patients, so that could increase our marketing budget and things like that. [0:03:28.0]
So, you know, for the sake of argument, we're going to say that we are looking for the growth. We're at 75,000 a month, very healthy profits, and we're looking to grow for sure. That's one aspect of why you would want to potentially invest more in marketing. Two is you know, I really believe in chiropractors trying to have a self-managing and self-multiplying practice. You know, that's a couple of terms that we learn a lot and instill in us with Strategic Coach. They call it more of a self-managing business or self-multiplying business and the difference being of self-managing versus self-multiplying is that self-managing is that it is managing itself and it's running without you, but is it growing without you? [0:04:14.5]
Whereas self-multiplying would mean it's also growing without you or growing independent of say you physically having to do things. Right? And that's where marketing can come into play - where yeah, maybe you've got 75,000 a month revenue but you want to make sure that you're growing and it's happening maybe without you having to take on five meetings a week and networking or all the different things that I could take to try to grow. Right? So marketing, reinvesting in marketing could definitely do that. Right? So, some of the things that I thought of with that question, and I've thought about this quite a bit and honestly, you know, in my practice, we are into that high monthly revenue aspect. Right? We do a lot of high level marketing in the practice and some of the things I'm going to mention now we do. [0:05:06.4]
I don’t do all of them and honestly, I spend a little bit less per month on marketing than most people would suspect, but some of that is because I feel like our marketing is very effective in what we do. We're very laser focused on it. We do have a fair amount of community outreach that we do and then, you know, messaging and positioning has helped out. Then I just leverage some of the technologies out there and reduce some of the costs. But that's a different story. So what would we do - we find ourselves in that range, you know, 75, 100,000, whatever - plenty of meat on the bone and a lot of the profits. What are some of the stuff and how much would you spend? I'm not a big fan of the blanket 10% number like of revenue. A lot of people, that's kind of a number that people throw out there. It's like how much should you spend on marketing each month? Oh, 10% of your revenue. So that would be, you know, if it was 75,000 a month is your revenue, then you would spend 7500 on your marketing. That's not just ad spend. [0:06:03.2]
Right? That's everything from my Mail Chimp to print to mail, postage, like those are the things that are going to add into it as well, not just your ad spend or if you outsource your Facebook and Google Ads to a company and it costs you 1500 a month, like that's part of your marketing budget. Right? If you've got a $6000 in one offs for the year, right, you're going to revamp your website, you're going to order a bunch of shirts, you know, like tee-shirts with your logo. You're going to sponsor a group for $2000. You would take that number and potentially divide it by the amount of months and put that into a sinking fund. So let's say, for the sake of numbers, $6000 in one-off's for the year, you know, it's spaced out over the 12 months and you're going to divide that by 12 months, so that's going to be 500 a month into a sinking fund for January, 500 a month for February, so on and so forth. So you would add that to your budget. Right? [0:07:01.0]
So, out of that 7500, 500 is for the one-off costs that are going to be for that year. I could probably have a whole episode on that. Maybe I will. So, I don’t think you have to do the blanket 10%/7500. I'm not saying it's wrong. Right? If you have gotten very clear on your marketing and your content and the audience you're going to target and the messaging and you're doing really good and you've got the profits to reinvest in it, I'm all for the 7500 a month, absolutely. I think it would work. Sometimes it's even more…like if you're spending 7500 a month on marketing and it's working and it's basically printing money so you could…now you'll get to 85,000 a month in revenue, hopefully, and so now you can bump it up to 8500. That's fine. But I'm not saying you have to do the 10%. I'm probably more at like 4%, the last time I checked, which was a few months ago. So it doesn’t have to be at 10%. There are a lot of different variables. [0:08:01.0]
Maybe like I would say I invest a little heavier into the people in my practice and pay a little bit more, high quality people I really focus on having an A team at every position and so that does cost a little bit more, but I feel like I could make that up by having a great team, it's just…it's just huge for your practice. So I spend a little bit less on the marketing and you know, to be completely transparent is that I've built up quite an audience and so I do get some services done for me that aren’t costing me money. That are kind of an exchange for things that I have capabilities of. So that's something that I've been able to leverage over the last few years with the Modern Chiropractic Marketing Group. So I highly recommend you get very clear on what you can spend and go from there. But let's say we have a lot of money and we want to have a good time and we want to have fun with some marketing. [0:09:06.6]
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Kevin: Some of the things that I would think we would want to do is first consider a community outreach person. Right? I first kind of discuss this with Noel Lloyd on a virtual, it was a video presentation on the virtual marketing summit we had in 2018 and he talked about that. There are lot of different ways of doing it. You can reference that. It's inside of the Chiropractic Success Academy if you're a member of that. But it's just, I really like the concept in having a person that is out in the community and they're setting up a lot of different types of connections and meetings and events that are congruent with your practice and getting out there and really setting it up for the doctors - setting up meetings; setting up meeting with MDs, attorneys; maybe it's running stores; it's golf courses - like all these different types, you know, when you get clear on your audience and where these groups are found, they're really that liaison to get out there. But then they're also helping you out with some of the marketing things too. Right? Maybe they're being delegated to run your emails and do a lot of the internal and external communications and putting together the editorial calendar with you and maybe you have a newsletter and they're getting the topics together and making sure that all the team members that are responsible for that are working together. [0:11:07.3]
So they're kind of the integrator of your marketing. That might, you know, honestly, that person might cost you $3-$5000 a month, so that's going to eat up a lot of your spend. Right? I think you got to be definitely high revenue to hire that type of person, but that would be something that I would do, especially if I was in that 75, 100,00, 125,000 - there are practices out there doing that. So I would consider that. That would be one thing I would definitely look into and make sure I hire the right person. I think investing in a Kolbe RightFit would be huge. The Kolbe RightFit, it's K-o-l-b-e. You can check that out at their website, but essentially you do a Kolbe profile for the position. It usually costs a few hundred dollars, 350 or maybe 400 to really get clear on the position and then it's $55 or $60 for the Kolbe for the individual to match up with it, but basically, you're …the Kolbe is how you function. Right? [0:12:14.2]
It's certain things like quick start, follow-through, implementer, how are they…you know, I'm a high fact finder, but I'm also a high quick start, which I get going on stuff. I do my due diligence, but then I get moving on it where some people are a low fact finder and a high quick start and they kind of just throw a bunch of stuff on the wall and hope it sticks. But there are different characteristics of jobs and they run you through and so if you're hiring a community outreach person, they would run you through all, what are the characteristics you want of that person. They come up with a Kolbe Index. It's four numbers. So like my Kolbe is 7473. It doesn’t meant a lot to you maybe if you've never done it, but then they'll give you a 7473 number for that position and then when you go to hire, you're trying to find someone that really is matching up or congruent with that Kolbe score. So I would recommend doing that. It's going to be an investment but could be very beneficial to the growth of your practice. So that would be one thing I would consider. [0:13:08.7]
Two is I would become…honestly, I would become the absolute leading educator in the community bar none. Like I would invest in the technologies of it and make sure that we're really getting as much of the content out there as possible and just, there are so many technologies. Like we're doing a lot with online courses right now, free online courses and we did one on injury prevention and performance for runners and triathletes. We did one on the desk jockey. We're about to do one on low back. This is going to go on our website. It's going to be a nice free course that we're trying to get out there in the community and we're just going to do a bunch of things that will leverage technology. I would double down on it. Right? Like, I would have that free online course and then I would promote the heck out of it and put a fair amount of ad spend on Instagram, Facebook, Google Ads - get it on the website, email it to the patients. [0:14:02.3]
Really start to think about how you can be the ultimate in education in your community and just be that resource for people and double down on it. So that would be the next thing that I would recommend doing. I think you can do it affordably, but you could take that next step. I guess what you could start doing, you know virtual summits. We did a virtual summit around injury prevention and performance for runners and triathletes. Then that became actually the content that we took from it and repurposed it into an online course. So what we did with the virtual summit was pick the topic, obviously running injury prevention and performance. Then I went out and some of these contacts I already had and some I didn't, but I went to the local running store and had him do one on shoe basics. We did a triathlon coach, talked about training programs for that. We did a bike fit person. We did a fitness gym area and they did a whole video on exercises for triathletes and runners and I obviously had my part. [0:15:06.0]
I think we had eight experts total and we did a whole virtual summit around it and the virtual summit software that I use, and that's the name of the software, is like $1500 a year, so it's not bad. I think there's even a monthly option, maybe $100 or something. So you can start to afford some of that and having outsource some of the backend of it for sure and run a really nice virtual summit around something. That's next level marketing. Then we took that, those eight videos that were provided by the experts locally, and then we wrote it right into a free online course. Then now it's a course instead of a one off, one day virtual summit. Right? So those are next level things that we really were able to gain some traction in the community to do. So that… to kind of recap so far is the community outreach person and then really becoming that leading in content and education but leveraging some of these exciting technologies that are a little bit more expensive or cost money to have someone do it for you because I don’t want you, especially if you're a high revenue/high profit practice, I don’t want you doing this yourself. [0:16:13.8]
This is where you start reinvesting in getting this off your plate. You're focusing on the things that really fascinate and motivate you and maybe running a virtual summit doesn’t. But you could be one of the experts on the virtual summit and obviously you might have the connections or reach out to certain connections to have them be a guest presenter. Right? So those are the two so far. The third one I would do is a very well-developed, nice, monthly newsletter. Okay? I would direct mail that to my patient list, the last 18 months of anybody that's been in the practice. I had a good episode with Sean Buck from Newsletter Pro and they're a great service. You can check them out. You could do it on your …you know, there's probably someone in your community that could do it. Either way, it might cost you anywhere from 1000 to 2000 a month to have it, but at that high revenue number, I think it's a great way - great, great way of separating yourself and really staying top of mind awareness from your patient base and it could easily have a good ROI for you. [0:17:20.7]
So I would check out having a nice, well-developed monthly newsletter. From what Sean had mentioned, two of the key things was monthly as the frequency and the last 18 months of your patient list seem to be the sweet spot. Anything past that seemed like it wasn’t as fruitful and anything less than that you weren’t maximizing the potential ROI on it. So consider having that type of newsletter. Okay? So those are the three things that I would really consider for high revenue practices with plenty of profits. If you're not there yet, hopefully you continue to keep on doing great marketing, hitting the ground, getting out there and connecting, making accurate business decisions and in no time, you should start to creep up into that high revenue practice with good profits and you can start to have some fun with your marketing and then, like I mentioned earlier, a big part of this, which might cost a bit more is that you're outsourcing a lot. Okay? [0:18:25.1]
And that's kind of the fourth thing is just a lot more delegation and outsourcing is happening. So you're going to probably spend money to do that. Right? You're going to probably spend a little bit more money on Facebook ads and Google Ads, but you're also going to spend money on somebody else doing that for you. So you might write that check for 1250 or 1500 a month to that company that's running all your Google Ads and campaigns and Facebook and then you're spending another 1000 on Facebook and 500 on Google Ads and then another 1500 on a newsletter. Right? So you're getting into that 5, 6, 7, 8000, $10,000 a month in marketing but you're seeing that revenue. [0:19:05.4]
If you're at 75,000 a month and you're not doing a whole lot with marketing and you decide to go into that 7000 a month, hopefully now all of a sudden after six months of this, it gains traction and you find yourself …you know, you have to have the proper systems in place in your practice to handle it, but maybe now instead of 75 a month, you're at 90 a month. Right? And it's a lot more self-managing and self-multiplying. So, that's my take on the high revenue/high profit practice and why you should consider really taking that next level in your marketing. Again, maybe you're not there yet, but hopefully this is a little bit of motivation that, you know, it's out there. There are plenty of chiropractors, chiropractic practices doing it the right way. Right? I think sometimes we think that the high, high revenue practices are doing things that are unsavory, but I know a lot of great chiropractors and great practices that are high revenue/high profit and it's time that we start thinking of that, if you want. [0:20:09.8]
You know, if you want the simplicities of life and you're happy with it, that's fine. I'm not here to say anything, but if you really want to grow into that, there's no reason why you can't. You just got to start really making the right decisions and marketing is part of that.
So, I hope that was helpful a little bit. I know it's kind of a niche topic. A lot of my audience isn't into that high, high level, but we're hoping to get there and we're all looking to grow together. So, I hope you enjoyed it. Have a great week and practice. We'll talk soon.
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