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: All right, welcome to another episode of the Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie, and today I'm bringing a solo episode with a little bit of a unique spin on it. I'm going to narrate a chapter from the book that I wrote.
I'm really excited about this. I'm collaborating with Parker University. They're publishing it and I've been working with them hand-in-hand on this. It's a book and a workbook and it's going to be called Doing It Right: Modern Chiropractic Marketing, and it's going to have a workbook that's associated it to help you work through some of the marketing planning and budgeting and checklists, and be able to read the book, understand what good marketing is, what content marketing is, how to distribute it effectively, how to have proper messaging, getting your audience down, and then it's going to have a workbook that you can work through it to actually apply this to your practice. [01:14.3]
And I couldn't be more excited about it. It took a lot of effort. It took probably six months to write, but it was actually streamlined a little bit, because I've been creating this content for a few years now and it's a great example, and I've been preaching this for a while where if you create content consistently, you can start to pull from that and repurpose it, and put it together in a different format or reorganize it a little bit differently. Or when things good hectic in your life, maybe it's your personal life or your business life, like for me right now, we obviously just … a lot of people know I had my first child and trying to create content for my practice while in isolation with a baby is just not happening, but I can pull on six years of content that I've been creating for the clinic and cherry-pick certain things out that are really appropriate for this time and so we've been distributing content and repurposing it, just not necessarily creating it right now. [02:12.4]
So, writing this book was a lot of writing, a lot of piecing together things, taking interviews from the podcasts and blogs, and putting it into a nice format that really guides you down the roadmap of marketing, and I think it's going to be really applicable for your practice. We're hoping to release this in June at some point and I think it'll be a good time for you to start really implementing this for our practices to really jumpstart things as we come out of the back end of this COVID-19 crisis.
I cherry-picked a chapter, which is perfect timing for what's going on right now. I wrote this … I probably finished this chapter back in November and I wrote a blog on this a couple of years ago, and I really refined it for the book and it comes from Peter Diamandis, who has written a few different books and this one comes from Bold. Okay. [03:11.4]
The name of the book is Bold. His first book is Abundance, so I highly recommend that book, and then followed up with Bold, and then he has another one that just came out. I listened to it on audiobook and that's called The Future Is Faster Than You Think, and that was a really good book about the future, which is kind of ironic. I listened to it probably a month before all this happened with COVID-19 and you can start to see some of the things speeding up because of this, what's going to happen with this crisis, and it's going to kind of put a warp speed on some of the technologies and advancements that they are talking about in that book.
But this particular chapter is titled Tech Disruption And Becoming A Media Company, okay, and I'm going to break that down for you. But before we do that, I want you to go to the “Bit.ly/FTCA Virtual Summit.” Okay? [04:06.0]
And so, the Forward 2020 Virtual Summit is happening in mid-May. It's free to join. There are some upgrades. I'm excited to present on that and the topic I'm presenting on is how to write a blog effectively, the perfect chiropractic blog, but then also how to interject a video into it and really putting together this nice robust blog that not only goes onto your website and gets sent out as an email and social media, and you've got videos that's coming from it, but it really helps. You can take pieces of that and distributed out for a whole month and it really demystifies the whole blog thing, and got a lot of bonuses and things like that that I give in that virtual summit.
And it's not going to be boring. I know blogs, talking about blogging sometimes seems it could be boring, but this is going to be very useful for you, how it's more than just a blog. And that's what I'm going to talk about and that's at the Forward 2020 Virtual Summit. This is in place of the live event that was going to happen for obvious reasons. [05:11.1]
Go to “Bit.ly/FTCA Virtual Summit” to register for that now. It's coming up next week. There's just a ton of presenters. It's just a really great summit that Bobby has put on. I've put on a few of these and he has taken it to a whole other level and has a lot of great speakers, a lot of good presentations over three days, and you can access that for free.
All right, let's dive in. I'm not a narrator by profession. It's always different narrating something versus just spewing out information like I tend to do all my solo episodes, but we're going to give it a shot. Don't mind my stumbling over some words. I can read, I promise, and let's get going with it.
Okay, this is actually Chapter 6 of the book, Tech Disruption And Becoming A Media Company, and as I mentioned, a lot of this information is pulled from Peter Diamandis and some of his strategies, but it's also pulled from a really good blog article that was written and it just broke it down really good by Vanessa Bates Ramirez. [06:18.5]
And part of the interesting thing about writing this book and Parker Publishing, it was I had to just move mountains to get all of my references and all those written agreements. I had to get written agreements from people that I never thought I'd be able to get an email response back from like Seth Godin. He actually replied right away. Ryan Holiday and a few others were just like, Oh wow. They actually cared and they emailed back, and got written agreements on some of that, so it was nice to be able to do them. Yeah?
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Let's take a break from today's episode and announce our first sponsor. This is going to be Propel Marketing & Design.
I've known Darcy Sullivan for years. We've worked hand in hand on my websites. I don't trust anybody else to do this search engine optimization. She does a great job. There's so much to it. A lot of the lingo and the words are beyond my comprehension, but it's just amazing work that she does, and if you really going to get results with Google, you have to make sure your website is SEO optimized and I really don't want you doing it yourself as a chiropractor. So, you just have to have this type of stuff done. [07:27.6]
And if you're looking to get more organic online traffic that pulls in new patients, Propel Marketing & Design is currently offering chiropractors who listen to this podcast a free SEO website review. The free review will help you uncover methods that will improve your website and boost your search engine visibility.
Head over to PropelYourCompany.com/chiropractor and schedule your free SEO website review. You won't regret it. She gets great results. Your website needs this. Your search results need this. Head on over there to PropelYourCompany.com/chiropractor to get your free SEO website review. [08:07.1]
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All right, so let's go Tech Disruption And Becoming A Media Company.
The capabilities a small business or practice now has to exponentially grow is part of what makes it such an exciting time to be a chiropractor. Your practice can now grow in a way that was reserved for only big businesses just 15 to 20 years ago.
You can turn your chiropractic practice into a marketing and media powerhouse with need of only a tiny budget. This is not in the sense that you will be an ad agency, but it's in the concept of creating and distributing content like a media company. This will build your audience and grow your practice without having to spend thousands of dollars to do so. The aim is to educate your audience and to be a value add, and in return, they will patronize and recommend your practice. [09:02.4]
The book Bold by Peter Diamandis details disruptive technologies and the six Ds of exponential organizations. When I first grasped the concept in its entirety, I didn't find it applicable to chiropractic. Then it hit me, this is how a small chiropractic practice becomes a media company.
There were a few marketers at the time discussing the concept of turning your business into a media company, but I didn't find it applicable to small chiropractic practices until I understood the concept of the six Ds and how it was, how it would keep getting easier, better and cheaper.
But how can you as a chiropractor on a limited marketing budget, pull this off? That's where modern technology is converging with marketing principles to allow the chiropractor to accomplish this on a limited budget.
What are the six Ds of exponential organization and how does this relate? How do they relate to your marketing? [10:02.9]
I will use Vanessa Bates Ramirez’s thoughtful and concise article to describe how you can just translate this into your business growth. Okay, so The 6 Ds of Tech Disruption: A Guide to the Digital Economy by Vanessa Bates Ramirez.
“Technology is disrupting traditional industrial processes, and they’re never going back.”
A little sidebar—doesn't that sound familiar with what we're dealing with right now? We're never going back. The new normal is here.
And so, here are the six Ds of exponential organizations: digitized, deceptive, disruptive, demonetized, dematerialized and democratized. Let's break that down in a minute.
“The Six Ds are a chain reaction of technological progression, a road map of rapid development that always leads to enormous upheaval and opportunity.”
And that's a quote from Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler from the book Bold. [11:04.8]
I want to reread that again, okay? Let me reread that as it pertains now in your mind to what we're dealing with right now in today's environment. “The Six Ds are a chain reaction of technological progression, a road map of rapid development that always leads to enormous upheaval and opportunity.” And that's where I think we're at right now. We're in the upheaval mode, but a lot of opportunity is going to come from that. Now, how does this relate to your chiropractic practice? Let's break each one down.
So, digitize. One of the first six D’s was digitized. Anything that becomes digitized enters the same exponential growth we see in computing. Digital information is easy to access, share and distribute. It can spread at the speed of the internet. Once something can be represented in ones and zeros from music to biotechnology, it becomes an information-based technology and enters exponential growth. [12:02.1]
I break down some old-school marketing, right? Direct mail, phone books, being on insurance plans, business cards, in-person networking, which is still great, public speaking, which is also still great. Those are kind of the old-school things we had to do.
And now modern chiropractic marketing, social media, email, webinars, Facebook Lives, videos, funnels, websites, digital learning centers, virtual summits—I mentioned that earlier in the intro—and now what we're seeing, and this is not in here in this particular chapter, we're talking about telehealth and virtual consulting and appointments, right? So, that's digitized. They're actually right now in a grand scale, clinics are digitizing the whole experience. So, number one is digitize and you can see it just firsthand what's happening.
All right, let's move on to number two, deceptive. When something starts being digitized, its initial period of growth is deceptive because exponential trends don't seem to grow very fast at first, doubling 0.01 only gets you to 0.02, then 0.04 and so on. Exponential growth really takes off after it breaks the whole number barrier. 2 quickly becomes 32 which becomes 32,000 before you know it. [13:21.3]
And it's just kind of showing where when something digitizes, it becomes … we all can think of that. Think about what your cell phone used to be like in 2000 and when it is in 2020. It can hold more computing power than computer data in the 1980s, right? And so, with modern chiropractic marketing being deceptive, you can go from being an unknown in your community to a well-known thought leader with a fully involved marketing strategy, and your competition will be left behind.
I've got plenty of examples of chiropractors that go from opening a practice to having a ton of followers in a year. That used to not be the case. Now you can. I did this in Boca Raton, Florida, which is saturated with chiropractors, but many of them are old school. [14:06.7]
I've been cut. I will give myself credit. I really dove into the technology early on when I opened my own practice in 2010 and tried to do as much as I could at the time to make sure that I was always staying ahead. So, that's deceptive and you know you can relate. I'm going to relate a lot of this to the telehealth even though I'm not particularly doing it my practice, but a lot of people are. People have been doing telehealth before the coronavirus. It just was a deceptive growth, and then now it's hit that point where it's obviously not deceptive anymore.
And it leads into number three, which is disruptive. Right now as much as the whole coronavirus is disrupting healthcare, telehealth is going to disrupt it as well, and so let's dive into that. The existing market for a product or service is disrupted by the new market the exponential technology creates because digital technologies outperform and effectiveness and cost. [15:06.2]
Once you can stream music on your phone, why buy CDs? If you can also snap store and share photographs, why buy a camera and film? The modern chiropractor is disrupting the industry in many ways, including leveraging technology to educate his or her community and get messages to the public for a fraction of the cost that it used to take.
Going back, social media versus phonebook, right? Chiropractors used to spend $1,500 a month or so depending on what town city you're in on phone book ads. Now imagine if you spend that on Facebook ads that are effective. What's more disruptive? If you do not implement these disruptive technologies, you run the risk of being disrupted by the modern chiropractors in your community and the health of your practice may suffer. And that's the biggest thing I want you to get from this. If you're not doing it, somebody in your city or town is going to be doing it and multiple people are going to be doing it at some point. [16:03.0]
And so, I want you, listener of the Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show and someone that I consider ahead of the curve, if you are, to make sure that you are staying front and center on this stuff and really trying to push the envelope with the technologies out there. And that's what I dive a lot into this book about and really just separating yourselves. It's amazing what you can do now if you follow this roadmap.
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Let me take a break from the podcast for a minute and I want to discuss my clinic, Health-Fit Chiropractic & Sports Recovery, Boca Raton, Miami, Florida. We’ve got two offices. And we just redid our site.
We hired Jon Morrison and his team at Get Clear Sites to give us a great look, a clear message, compelling content, and I just love working with Jon and I know many of you do as well. Jon specializes in working with chiropractors and he's got great pricing packages for all budgets.
Jon promised me that if you mentioned the Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show or MCM, he will give you a great deal on your new site. So, take a look at GetClearSites.com and schedule a demonstration of their amazing platform. You won't regret it. It's user friendly. It looks amazing and just is going to be a game changer for your practice. [17:18.2]
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Number four of the six Ds is demonetized. Money is increasingly removed from the equation as the technology becomes cheaper, often to the point of being free. Software is less expensive to produce than hardware and copies are virtually free. You can now download any number of apps on your phone to access terabytes of information and enjoy a multitude of services at costs approaching zero.
And for the modern chiropractic marketer, creating great content on your website increases your organic Google Search drastically. No more cost on phone book listings and ads like we mentioned. Digital newsletters, no cost of postage. Facebook Live is free. So, all these things are demonetized. [18:03.8]
Facebook ads are extremely underpriced for its effectiveness and targeting capabilities. What you can do on Facebook now would cost you thousands of dollars when you had to do it on radio ads and TV ads. Think about it. All the chiropractors used to run radio ads. I'm sure some still do. It would cost them tons of money to do that. Now you can get more bang for your buck and better targeting through Facebook ads, so it's demonetize.
YouTube videos increase your Google SEO because Google owns YouTube and they're inexpensive. Email has a very low monthly subscription cost. Some of them are free if you have a low level of subscribers, but if you get into a higher level, it might cost you 50 or 60 bucks a month for an email list of 5,000, and you get in front of a lot of people. So, those are some ways where the modern carpeting marketer has demonetized the marketing.
Information on marketing has been demonetized as well, right? This particular show and the Facebook group that I have, you have a lot of free information on marketing strategy that you never used to be able to get before, so that's something as demonetized. [19:05.5]
Things like Fiverr or Upwork, and other virtual assistant services to handle all your production needs for extremely low costs, again, examples of this whole process being demonetized and not having to be a backbreaker financially.
And then, this rolls into number five, dematerialized. Separate physical products are removed from the equation. Technologies that were once bulky or expensive, radio, camera, GPS, video, phones, maps are now all in a smartphone that fits in your pocket. Right?
And so, how does this relate to modern chiropractic marketing? Cell phone to shoot videos instead of full photography setup and videography, right? Digital marketing instead of mailers. Great demographics targeting.
Full disclosure, I still believe in the value of a direct mail newsletter, but you can do other things. You don't have to do that. I send out direct mail, birthday cards, welcome letters, thank you letters for referrals, micro break cards. I don't necessarily do the mailers. Sometimes you'll see dentists do that or they're trying to drum up new business through that. But I do believe in a really good newsletter to your existing patient base. [20:15.1]
Another example is electronic medical record systems that reduce clutter, increase patient communication throughout the appointment, and obviously through appointment reminders, text reminders. Those are all examples of things that have dematerialized to get in front of your audience.
And then, lastly, six is democratized. Once something is digitized, more people can have access to it, which is the definition of democratized. Powerful technologies are no longer only for governments, large organizations or the wealthy, and that goes back to the whole point of you being able to do this on a small budget, being a small business and really acting like a bigger organization, which is what I love about today's environment. And I'm not talking about just today and COVID, but the last few years really, and I think it's going to grow even more. [21:03.9]
And how does this democratization apply to the modern chiropractic marketer? You can now become a media company at minimal costs, which was the title of the chapter. It used to cost a lot of money to have a fully evolved marketing strategy as a chiropractor. It no longer does.
I wholeheartedly believe in delegating and outsourcing and when you can afford it, outsourcing your marketing. As well, if your marketing dollars are producing great results, I believe in putting more money towards that strategy. You are, in effect, printing money. Don't forget that. And, once again, marketing information is democratized and readily available for all chiropractors to learn.
And to kind of sum this up here, a really good quote that Vanessa Bates Ramirez has is –
“The Six Ds are a road map showing what can happen when an exponential technology is born. Not every phase is easy, but the results give even small teams the power to change the world in a faster and more impactful way than traditional business ever could.” [22:03.2]
I want you to understand that, okay? I'm going to read it again because I really want you to understand that you don't have to be a big practice that has $50,000 a month in revenue. It's 15,000, 10,000, 25,000, 40,000. I don't care what it is, but if you follow, “The Six Ds are a road map showing what can happen when an exponential technology is born. Not every phase is easy, but the results give even small teams the power to change the world in a faster and more impactful way than traditional business ever could.”
And maybe for you changing the world is just changing your community, right? And really being an educator in a community, being a valuable resource and being someone they look to, to get them the information they need to help themselves, and they will come to your practice in droves.
This is Chapter 6 of the book. Dive into Section 1 with a lot of different information, and this one really sets the tone for the rest of the book in making sure that you understand that, even whether you're a small practice, a big practice, a group, a lone wolf, whatever it may be, if you apply the six Ds to your marketing and your business, you can have exponential growth and reach more people, and have the practice that you really deserve. [23:20.2]
I really liked this chapter. The information that Peter Diamandis shares in his book Bold is great and I think I did a pretty good job of distilling it down into how it relates to the chiropractic practice, because each one of those six Ds I break down, as you noticed, into our world and what that means, and then from there and the rest of the book, I show you how to do it.
I hope that was useful. I want you to start in the terms of this, especially as we go through definitely a changing environment and our practices and in the world, and I think this can lend some insight to you.
I wish you the best. I'll probably be cherry-picking a couple of other chapters of the book, and then there are 21 of them. It's going to be a couple of chapters that I think will help you as well as we go along. So, hope you enjoyed that and I'll talk to you soon. [24:10.9]
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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