Marketing can be easy…and maybe even fun
with a simple attitude adjustment.
If you ask most chiropractors their most dreaded task, marketing usually makes the top 5. Most chiropractors will attest that marketing ranks second only to public speaking as their most dreaded activity.
Since ignoring the marketing of your practice is perhaps the WORST thing you can do, and you will naturally avoid doing something that you absolutely despise and/or fear… then let’s engage in an attitude adjustment about marketing your practice.
As a chiropractic professional, you have invested a considerable amount of time/energy/ money into your education. You probably did so because you recognized that you have a real talent for healing. If healing is not your passion, then perhaps that is because it is your obsession. (I’ve known several chiropractors whose passion for chiropractic MAY BE the reason they don’t get invited to more social events!)
Just as accountants and bookkeepers solve accounting, tax and financial problems, you are charged with solving a myriad of different health “problems” or issues. However, unlike the accounting professional, your potential clients may not KNOW that you offer the solution to their health issue. Your potential client may have seen dozens of other health care professionals, only to be told there IS no relief for their pain.
While the IRS may provide a wake up call for the accountant’s potential client, who is going to provide YOUR potential clients with the answers they need.
Instead of viewing your marketing as a way to bring new clients into your practice, perhaps you should view your marketing as a way to EDUCATE your potential clients.
With this perspective, marketing and advertising are merely the PROCESS of educating people in your area to the benefits of chiropractic medicine.
Suddenly, your direct mail campaign will take on a different twist. Instead of “selling” you’re “solving”. Instead of pushing someone to call for an appointment, you’re offering solutions to their problems. Instead of trying to “sell” potential patients via your web site, now you’re educating them on what chiropractic can do for them.
When you view your marketing as merely the act of educating people about the solutions you, the chiropractic professional, offers to everyday health problems, suddenly the world is your oyster.
Those grains of sand irritating your potential patients
are your golden opportunity to shine.
Armed with your new rose colored marketing glasses, you may be able see the different avenues available to you to “get the word out”. For some chiropractors, just removing the stigma of “selling” from the equation is enough. For others, recognizing that their marketing efforts are merely educational in nature is all it takes to open the floodgate of ideas.
This simple attitude adjustment helped one chiropractic client of mine revisit the tried and true “educational activities” he had done in the early days of his practice with renewed vigor. He began holding “new patient orientation sessions” again and began promoting himself as a speaker at the local civic clubs. Suddenly, marketing wasn’t about “selling”… it was about educating. He quit reading the “how to sell” books and got back to his passion…. healing through chiropractic.
Remember, marketing is merely the act of spreading the word about the solutions you offer to potential patients with health problems. Keep that in mind as you plan your next “marketing” campaign.
