Creating a successful chiropractic marketing strategy is essential in establishing a six figure chiropractic practice.

If you’re a chiropractor who has a love/hate relationship with your marketing and advertising, then you’re in good company. Many chiropractors often find themselves chasing after an array of marketing tactics instead of implementing a cohesive chiropractic marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, marketing tactics which may result in great success for one practice may fail miserably for the next. Yet many chiropractors attend seminars, buy books and subscribe to newsletters that do little more than provide a never ending list of various marketing tactics. They keep gathering these crumbs, hoping to collect enough crumbs and the finding the magical marketing tactic(s) that will turn this collection of crumbs into a slice of toast.

The search for tactics to increase the return on investment dates back to the earliest recorded history. One tactic used by early farmers to improve their farming “return on investment” was to plant discarded fish parts to improve their production of corn. Modern science has shown there are practical scientific principles behind this ancient practice. The decaying fish parts provide the steady supply of nitrogen which corn needs to grow abundantly. It seems the decaying fish parts are a great “lo-tech” method for providing the steady fertilization needs of growing corn plants.

It turns out that in ancient cultures there were two schools of thought about the role of the planting fish with corn. On one hand, there were the cultures that, at some level, seemed to recognize the science behind the practice. Farmers in these cultures believed that the corn was literally feeding upon the decaying fish. So while they used the “tactic” of planting fish parts with corn, they were aware of the overall strategy behind the tactic which was to provide nourishment for the plants so they could produce an abundant crop.

However, there were other cultures that also planted fish parts with their crops but did so without any understanding of the science behind the practice. For these cultures, the fish were thought to have magical properties. They believed that the spirit of the dead fish magically helped the plants to grow. These cultures were using the same tactic; however they were using it without any understanding of the strategy behind the tactic’s success.

From our 21st Century perspective, it’s easy to see that the farmers that viewed the fish as having magical properties were putting themselves at a severe disadvantage. Without being aware of the underlying strategy of feeding the plants, the farmers who subscribed to the fish spirit as magic tactic could not understand how placing too much fish in with each seed could actually lead to undesirable results. (If you are a dog owner and have brown spots in your lawn, then you’ve seen firsthand the results of excessive nitrogen on vegetation.)

Imagine that you were a farmer who subscribed to the fish as magic school of thinking. At some point as you watched your corn fail to grow, you would have to ask yourself: Is there such a thing as too much magic? How can some magic be good but more of the same magic be bad? Only when you adopt the scientific view of using the fish as part of a fertilization strategy can you begin to see where too much of a good tactic can actually lead to undesirable results.

The same is true in modern marketing. For example, offering a limited time discount is a time honored way to improve patient counts initially but when used excessively, consumers become conditioned to wait until the next big discount to buy. Even the biggest players in the market, like GM and Macy’s aren’t immune to the underlying principles at work.

No matter what size your practice, the going gets tough when you learn that there is such a thing as too much marketing magic.

When you understand the underlying principles behind creating a successful marketing strategy and successful marketing message, then you’ll be able to choose the right marketing tactics that will help you to achieve your marketing objectives.

Pick up a copy of the book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results to learn more about developing a marketing strategy for your chiropractic practice.

Finding new patients for your chiropractic practice is hard. It’s a mixture of art and science. One of the most essential keys to finding new patients for your chiropractic practice is two fold:

1. You must know WHO your potential patients are.
2. You must get your message in front of those potential patients.

Honestly, #2 gets a LOT easier when you take a moment to define who your patients are.

So who are your potential patients?

If you answered “everyone”… you’re wrong… dead wrong.

If you narrowed your answer down to “everyone within 10 miles of my chiropractic office location”… you’re getting warmer.

If you said, “My ideal potential patient is a man who is 30-55 years old. He’s educated, he’s a professional and he lives within 15 miles of my office. He suffers from chronic back pain and wants to avoid surgery at all costs,” then you’re right on the money.

Once you have him in mind, now try to think about how he might go about trying to find your solutions to his problem. Now it becomes easier to create articles for your chiropractic website that will “get in the path” of this prospective patient BEFORE he/she heads to the yellow pages for answers.

The potential patient may NOT be searching the web for chiropractors.  As a matter of fact, he probably is searching for solutions for “back pain”.

Make sure your message reaches your potential patient BEFORE he heads to the yellow pages.  Waiting until then is almost waiting until it’s too late.  I mean, what if he heads over to orthopedic surgeons or pain management clinics.  You want to reach him BEFORE he makes that decision!

There are lots of ways to put your practice makreting message in your prospective patient’s path.  You chiropractic website is one way.  Radio, television advertising is another.  Direct mail yet another.

The more often you can get your message in your prospective patient’s path, the better the chance you’ll be declared the “winner” when the patient chooses a treatment provider!