Do you know who your patients are? I don't mean in the sense of knowing their name. I mean do you know who your patients are that you want to treat? What are their conditions? What are their needs? What services do you provide to meet those needs?  

We work in a high burnout profession. To improve your professional quality of life target your medical marketing to  appeal to the patients who have the conditions you want to treat? This means if you have a love of managing migraines - find the specialists in your area who also manage migraines. Love workers comp? Great, look to reaching out to occ. med, orthopedists and other specialists who would be likely to have these patients. 

This might seem obvious but I talk to so many chiropractors who try to appeal to everyone and fail to really specialize in one or two specific niches - often trying to claim patients with all sorts of ailments. From a marketing perspective this doesn't help direct or steer your target market in any specific direction.  I'm not suggesting that you can't be "family" practice oriented. Of course you can, but even this has a special focus and more generalized conditions to talk about in your meetings with MD's. 

Look to your own strengths and passions to appeal to the patients who have the conditions you excel and enjoy treating. Not only will you be more targeted in your outreach but you'll be less likely to suffer from burnout by making yourself available at all time to all patients to ensure your practice remains stable. 

That's the magical opportunity in marketing to medical professionals - you can really be selective and find the MD's in your area to build the practice of your dreams and enhance your professional quality of life! 

Hi everyone! 

At the start of class today, I asked my students the following question:

"Today is Valentine's Day, what marketing strategies could you put in place to attract new patients and could you also use those same strategies to double down and focus on patient engagement?"

I have to say whenever I ask these questions I am always impressed at the ideas that come forth - watch out for them when they graduate!

From educational to civic service to good old patient appreciation the ideas were wide ranging.  It's too late to plan a celebration for Valentine's Day for this year, but what about other upcoming celebrations? Are you Irish or just love green? Perhaps St. Patrick's Day might inspire you to start planning an event? 

What I love about these events are that they can capture both new patients and work towards patient appreciation and retention goals as well. 

Take a moment to look at the calendar for the remaining year and start planning some events to enhance awareness of your practice in your community. There are multiple holidays and multiple directions you can take each one to make it fun and engaging for all. 

Christina

Being active in your community is essential to your marketing. The more your name (clinic or personal) is heard, the more it is seen, the more recognizable it becomes and with that comes an implied reputation as an expert in your field. 

I spoke recently of analyzing your statistics and growth twice a year. If you did so and feel there is a need for change or room for improvement consider being more active in your community.

There are multiple ways to achieve this, some known and some that may take some digging or networking to find.  

Community talks are an obvious choice but personally I get tired of the same expected talk so traditionally associated with chiropractic. Twenty years ago when I first started out, these talks almost always included the history of our field. No offense to our founding fathers, but we have precious moments to educate our communities and talking about our history just simply isn't necessary. I'm quite sure they would forgive the oversight and appreciate it if you stick to educating potential patients about conservative care that should take place before more invasive strategies!

Even if you leave out the history don't you lose enthusiasm over time of repeating the same general chiropractic overview? You know the one about the hose being kinked? 

Look to the cases you love to manage and think outside the box on how you might offer more on the topic within your community. In turn you'll spark your creativity, your enthusiasm and certainly you'll be more enthusiastic in improving the reach in your community to gain more market share!

Hi everyone! Welcome back to the site and Happy New Year!

The New Year is always a clean slate. Reflections on the previous year are pondered and new goals are set.  Hopefully you were satisfied with your business stats but there is always room for new growth and adapting to changes in the market place. 

When you reflect on the previous year at what you did from a marketing perspective it will likely coincide with your business statistics. If you did little, your business likely grew little and those with stable businesses may have even seen a decline from the comfort zone.  This happens frequently when you assume you've made it and marketing is no longer a necessity. 

For others, where more marketing effort was put forth you may have found success in expected areas, success in unexpected areas or even lack of results in what you thought was a sure thing. I think we all struggle with any of the above situations. 

Your marketing efforts should be ongoing for the life of your business and so should your analysis no less than twice a year. Right now is the perfect time to pull the numbers from last year and try to correlate where the growth came from and emphasize those efforts while cutting back from marketing campaigns that did not perform reallocating budgets accordingly. 

Analyzing your numbers will help you tell the future, catch declining trends before they hurt and be strategic in your efforts. 

Hi Everyone,

Due to increased response and outreach I am now opening a portion of our site to those who just need a little push, a little insight or just aren't sure what they need in the moment but want to participate

To meet this need, I will offer twice a month open access blog entries focusing on basic and more simplified versions of my members only entries and other topics that stand out at the moment. 

I invite all to participate through comments which I am sure will grow in time or to just sit back and be a silent observer - the choice is yours! I ask that all comments consider all view points and are posted with respect. 

If there is something you would like me to post about feel free to suggest it as post response here or in future entries. 

Happy New Year everyone!

Christina