HI, I'M DAVID
I help doctors ethically, effectively, and enjoyably grow their practices without expensive advertising, long coaching contracts, or screenings.
Chiropractic marketing doesn't have to be expensive to be effective. You don't have to give up huge amounts of money, time, or dignity to see your practice grow. All you need is a proven system to share the benefits of chiropractic care with people who can and will use your services. I'll show you how!
The Problems with Chiropractic Marketing
Facebook Chiropractic Marketing
I cringe to think of new doctors graduating with over $200,000 in student loans and another $150k+ in practice startup thinking that a few Facebook Ads will easily and cheaply flood their practice with new patients. Facebook Ads are truly an art. Even worse, they can feel like a moving target where what works one day can be less effective the next. Based on my research there are just two main formulas that are working for doctors. The first is pretty simple. Offer a voucher for a $27 first visit (or if you're really desperate throw in a massage and an adjustment or three). Problem number one with this formula is that it devalues chiropractic. Problem number two is that you attract clientele who are only looking for a deal. Their attitudes when you propose an actual corrective care plan will take the joy out of your practice. Many of these new patients have no loyalty and will be watching their Facebook feed for the next "killer deal" to come their way. The demographics of these voucher claimers makes it hard to get your return on investment. Even more frustrating, the peers who said this style of ad worked for them openly admit that there was a distinct drop-off in effectiveness after just a few months. Unfortunately this is not a successful strategy to grow a new chiropractic practice.
Ultimately, Facebook Ads for chiropractic marketing appears to be an art we all probably should be working on mastering. However, its nature can be prohibitive for those new to practice or working with a tighter budget. It's possible to throw a large amount of money at Facebook Ads without seeing the hoped-for return on investment.
Screenings for Chiropractic Marketing
They suck! They work, but they suck!
I've heard there are doctors who enjoy these things but I'm not sure where these strange chiropractic unicorns reside and what they smoked to rot their brains. Perhaps I'm just bitter. My practice did not get off to the rapid start I hoped and screenings were the only effective AND cost-effective strategy I could get to work for me. I set up opportunities to do screenings at the front of about seven different gyms. I had a booth each month at a local mall's Family Fun Night. Eventually I signed up to have a screening at a local farmer's market. I stood out there for four hours every Thursday in 90 and 100 degree heat. I'd ask people if they'd like a quick spine check and they'd say "I just want to know where the wine samples are." The worst was two Saturday mornings spent outside of the Sleep Number Store. Everyone walking by thought I worked for the mattress store. "Would you like a quick spine check?" I asked. "Already bought one, love it!" was the answer. Two Saturday mornings spent hating my life.
Yes, I eventually hired a practice representative to do the screenings for me. Effectiveness went way down and cost to me went way up. Then she quit. Attempt number two: SAME RESULT. Dang! That would have been great if it worked.
If you are new to practice, you should be doing screenings. You should be doing anything and everything that is cheap and effective to get momentum in your practice. Within the course, I outline best practices for you to follow at screenings as well as a number of ways to engage people walking by at a range of budgets.
Feeling fresh at the start of a farmer's market. 4 hours and hundreds of rejections later... not so much
Networking for Chiropractic Marketing
Chamber of Commerce, BNI, Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions Club. I'm not going to tell you it's a bad idea to join these organizations. Join, get involved, make friends, take on leadership positions. Just don't expect them to rapidly grow your practice. These are forms of relationship marketing. You know what I've noticed about relationships. They take time to develop. If you stick with these organizations for the long haul and work to contribute to the success of the organizations and the other members' businesses, you will eventually see a nice group of them move their care to you. It just doesn't happen over night
Overall when it comes to networking, I recommend that you become involved in activities and groups that you are naturally passionate about. Coach your kid's sports. Join the PTA. Become involved in a church if that's congruent with you. Be friendly, helpful, and generous. Become a leader. Ultimately these people will become champions of your practice. Just don't expect it to grow your practice rapidly.
Medical Doctor Referral Chiropractic Marketing
Would you rather move $20 from your front pocket to your back pocket, or give $20 to me?
The problem with medical doctor referral marketing, at least in my mid-size city, is that almost all the family doctors are a part of three hospital systems. Each of these hospital systems have a group of physical therapists, many of them doctors of physical therapy trained in Grade V Mobilization. So when patients come in with neck pain, back pain, headaches, hip pain, shoulder pain, knee pain a family doctor has the choice of "moving $20 from the front pocket to the back pocket or giving $20 to me." What would you choose if you were that family doctor?
We still tried meeting with many of the local doctors offices. We focused on the independent clinics but also headed to the hospital-affiliated clinics. We brought in lunch and chatted. I tried to highlight how I was different. I offered their staffs an incredible free "trial of care" to try to win some fans on the inside. Some of those nurses and CNA's did continue with care for a while. Over the years we got a referral here or there. However, if I had been looking at this as a main source of new patients I would have been disappointed.
The Solution for Your Chiropractic Marketing
Lunch & Learn and Health Fair Chiropractic Marketing
From my very first lunch and learn I knew I was on to something special and sustainable. People in the room laughed at my jokes and perked up at my stories. I had time to explain why spine health was important and where modern medicine lets us down. People gasped when I told the incredible story of how my family was first introduced to chiropractic. And finally... people scheduled to come in to my office at the end of the talk. I was elated! Finally! I had found chiropractic marketing that worked that was inexpensive that I actually enjoyed. A new patient from that first lunch and learn still comes in for maintenance care. He comes in for a visit once every two months, but his care has still contributed over $4,000 to my practice.
That first lunch and learn was scheduled through a person coming in to my office as a patient. After that first taste of ethical, effective, and enjoyable chiropractic marketing we started to look through our patient files to find where the rest of our patients worked and whether we might be able to provide a lunch & learn.
After that, I asked myself the question, "If someone wanted to cold-call my office and provide a lunch & learn for my team, what would I need to see in order to say yes?" That, my friends, is what I'll share with you in the free training. The answer to that question has worked phenomenally and predictably for us. As a result, we've been able to attend over 200 lunch & learns and health fairs over the last seven years. This chiropractic marketing strategy has brought in over $800,000 to my clinic. In general we've booked two to even eight events per month! We can even counteract the "slow-down" periods of January and the summer months strategically by booking more of these events. It's December as I write this and I have two lunch and learns booked at local schools during the first week of January. Then in the fourth week of January we'll be attending the health fair of the giant Bridgestone Tire Factory. Think I'm stressed about a January slowdown?
HEALTH FAIRS! We have truly scheduled over 30 new patients in one day at a health fair. I wish I could tell you every one of them walked in the front door of our office, but I'm a little too honest for that. People scheduled at health fairs are a bit more flaky. Still though, many of the scheduled patients did show up. A-MAZING return on our investment of time and money!
This system of providing lunch & learns and attending health fairs has made my practice a success and set me free! I'm excited to show you how to get your own program running as quickly as possible, but first I'd like you to understand...
Why Lunch & Learn and Health Fair Chiropractic Marketing Works
"Someone Thinks They're Amazing"
The first few businesses we provided a lunch & learn for did have one of our patients among their ranks. Time went on and we got the puzzle pieces in place to effectively reach out to ANY business and get them to invite us in. We increasingly had NO patients working at the offices where we were doing these events. I'd estimate 60% or more of the businesses we've worked with had no patients coming in to our office at the time of our first lunch & learn. And yet, any person sitting in the room during one of our lunch and learns would be thinking, "they wouldn't be here unless someone thinks they're amazing."
If you can get in the door, everyone in the room assumes you have been fully vetted and endorsed by the lunch and learn organizers. This is a huge help when you invite people to come in as new patients at the end of your talk!
Choose Your Avatar
In marketing lingo, "a customer avatar is a fictional character that represents your ideal prospect." Our avatar lives or works near us, has a job, has health insurance that we take, and/or can afford a series of chiropractic corrective care that extends beyond what's covered by insurance. With lunch & learn and health fair chiropractic marketing you can focus on only paying for meals or health fair giveaways for businesses who employ your customer avatar. As a result, when you present the benefits of your care to these people, there are minimal barriers keeping them from proceeding.
If you name your talk right, people who show up have some amount of interest in what you provide. I recommend doctors start their program with my talk, "Four Stretches for a Pain-Free Day." People who show up in the room have an interest in getting out of pain. You give them the self-care strategies but also educate them on the need for a more thorough assessment of what's causing their pain. You also teach them how your solution is different and "voila!" They schedule appointments to get checked out.
All my presentations can be customized for any other avatars you want to pursue. I have given variations of my presentations to personal trainers, cyclists, retirement communities, and Mothers of Preschoolers groups! All of these brought in new patients as well!
Negative Nellies Don't Show Up
Not only does this type of chiropractic marketing let you focus on your ideal avatar, the “non-believers” at these companies generally rule themselves out of lunch & learns or courteously walk on by at health fairs. With over 200 marketing events done, I’ve never had someone in the room criticize chiropractic while I was in the room.
The Rewards of Lunch & Learn and Health Fair Chiropractic Marketing
Success
This type of chiropractic marketing was the one thing that took my practice from struggling to success and instability to stability. Prior to developing this system I was working my butt off doing things I hated to bring home $40-50k a year. I was making just enough to make minimum payments on student loans and purchase fresh produce at the grocery store. I sure wasn’t getting ahead though. When I implemented this system there was about an 18 month period trying to dial in a system that works. My income gradually went up during this period. When we got our chiropractor lunch & learn and health fair marketing system firing on all cylinders my income jumped to $155k a year. I experienced the success I’d been working for all those years.
I am so excited to help you leap-frog the trial and error period straight to the $100k boost in annual income when you rapidly implement my strategies for success!
Freedom
What does more money mean to you? To me, it became a means to take off the chains of debt wrapped around me. I started my practice with $135k in student loans and another $110k in business startup debt with my parents co-signed on that. There’s a saying that “Thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you owe a family member money,” and my cranberry sauce tasted extra bitter for about five years. If I took a vacation during those years, it was essentially borrowing the money from my parents. Any money spent could have gone to getting us financially untied. When this marketing system and success kicked in I aggressively paid down debt, starting with that co-signed loan. I can’t begin to tell you how great it felt to treat my parents to dinner when I finally got free, and know that it was 100% MY MONEY I was spending!
Next I tackled my student loans. I got completely debt free, and then got married in April, 2017. Guess what Val gave me as a wedding present? Yep! $65k in student loans. I paid that off by September. Debt freedom is true freedom! Highly recommended!
Val and I enjoy wonderful vacations. We eloped for 10 days in Costa Rica. I surfed the morning of my wedding, climbed a volcano, zip-lined, swam in waterfalls, and walked hanging bridges. We take trips to Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Riviera Maya, Arizona, and have a realistic list of future trips to look forward to. We love being debt free and free to travel!
Stress Reduction
Lack of new patients was my top source of stress prior to finding this chiropractic marketing program. I constantly imagined a bucket with a hole in the bottom streaming out a flow of “water” totaling $15,000 in expenses and overhead. I somehow had to get more than $15,000 of "water" pouring in the top to get ahead of this devastating situation. This vision weighed me down along with the $245,000 debt gorilla on my back and made sleep difficult. Now I sleep like a baby. I am so grateful I had the courage to start doing lunch & learn chiropractic marketing and the diligence to fine tune our system to what it is today.
Elimination of Staff Turnover
My first three years in solo practice I experienced frequent staff turnover. Though I made some poor hires, lack of new patients also made me a worse boss. It made me a nagging backseat driver who was hard to work for. CAs felt a constant tension coming from above. As mentioned Practice Representatives joined our team and left because it was a miserable, hard-to-succeed-in job.
When we started seeing consistent new patients coming in, I was a better boss and able to increase pay when I did get a new hire I thought was great. As a result, I have had virtually no staff turnover for the last seven years! I'm so grateful for the peace that consistency in my team brings to my life!
Pride
I wasn't proud to do screenings. It was necessary, and it was effective, but it wasn't what I dreamed of when I signed up to become a doctor.
On the contrary, sharing the path to better health is incredibly rewarding! I am proud to be the doctor who educates my community! People's eyes light up during talks and they come up and thank me afterward. People who come in as patients bring us gifts and refer in their family and friends. I'll never forget how one woman stopped me and started crying as she shared that my talk, "How to Eliminate Stress & Take Control of Your Life," had been the inflection point that caused her to go back to college. Some of the people in the audience go to other chiropractors as a result of my talks, and I'm OK with that! It's the right thing to do and I'm proud to be the one doing it!
Someone needs to educate our society on how to win with their health. It might as well be you!
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