Chiropractic Marketing Tips: Sports Teams Sponsorships

When you launched your chiropractic practice, you launched a business. Every business needs to “get the word out” about the products and services the business offers. Your chiropractic practice is no different. Marketing is merely the act of getting the message out about the products and services your practice offers the surrounding community!  When you start viewing marketing as merely a way of introducing your practice to people, then it begins to take on a whole new meaning.

Chiropractic Marketing Tips: Sports Teams Sponsorships

Picking a target audience to which you wish to educate about your services is essential for marketing your practice. By picking a target marketing audience, you narrow your marketing options considerably.  This reduces the “spray and pray” marketing tendencies to which we ALL fall victim.

For example, let’s say you would like to specialize in treating families with children.  Because you’ve narrowed your target audience, it’s now easier to pick successful marketing activities.

When you’re trying to reach families with children an exceptional marketing tip is to sponsor a local sports team.

Yes, you read that right.  Sponsoring a sports team is a GREAT investment in marketing for your practice if you don’t just write a check and let your relationship with the team end there.  Try to view sponsoring the team is the opportunity to build RELATIONSHIPS with the players (and their parents).

When the coach contacts you to pick up the check for the sponsorship, be sure to have brochures prepared  for the coach to hand out at the beginning of the season.  Ideally, the brochure should cover things young athletes can do to avoid injuries and what to do if injuries occur.  Of course, the brochure should also cover which injuries can best be treated with chiropractic care.

As the team sponsor, be sure to watch at least a few of the games.  Learn the players names.  Cheer.  Then, offer to take the team out for ice cream after the season ends to celebrate the season.  Make it a fun evening out for your staff and the team.  During the party, be sure to take LOTS of pictures of your staff with the team.   Frame and display these later in your office and be sure to offer copies to the families just for stopping by the office.

Most importantly, make this a HABIT instead of a one time event.  Get into the habit of sponsoring THIS SAME TEAM every year and soon you’ll be known THROUGHOUT the entire league as THE team on which every kid wants to play - not because they win championships but because they have such a GREAT end of season party.

Sponsoring a children’s sports team can be an EFFECTIVE way of marketing your practice, but  only if you take it as an opportunity to build relationships with the team members and their families.

I don’t recommend blatantly “marketing” your practice during the party unless it’s passing out balloons filled with helium with your practice name printed on them.  Beyond that, make the end of season party all about connecting with the team and their families.

Why Chiropractors Must Actively Market their practices

One of the cardinal laws of marketing your chiropractic practice is that it takes 8 “touches” before a potential patient will pick up the phone and schedule an appointment.  An email newsletter is a tried and true way of delivering those essential “touches”.

Aweber is an email newsletter service provider that has a post on their blog about 4 reasons why physicians must actively market their practices more.

While this post is targeted towards MD’s, it makes for an interesting read, especially for the chiropractor who may be feeling like chiropractors are the only ones who need to engage in patient education. Indeed, chiropractors are LIGHT YEARS ahead of their MD counterparts in the area of practice marketing and patient education.

In the post, reason #4 should stand out as a red flag check point for the chiropractic professionals.

Written from a consumer’s view point, the post says,

#4. We haven’t got the time

Finally, something that might actually have as much to do with doctors and your offices as it does with us.

Most physicians operate during “normal” business hours - that is, during the same hours that many of us work.

Whether it’s a fair generalization or not, doctors’ offices have a reputation for frequently running behind schedule. Which means we expect to:

* Sit in the waiting room for a while
* Move to the examining room and wait some more

With the doctor eventually showing up (often preceded by a nurse and some more waiting), taking up more of our time and then sending us back to the waiting room or reception area, possibly to be called back later.

There’s no way we can get through all of that on our lunch break. And we don’t want to burn a vacation or personal day on a trip to the doctor’s. So we just don’t bother.

Are your patients left in the waiting room for hours on end? Are they greeted professionally by your reception staff?

In his book “How to Become a Marketing Superstar” author Jeffrey Fox spends the first half of the book focusing on factors INSIDE THE BUSINESS to achieve marketing superstar status. Jeffrey Fox doesn’t mention a single advertising medium… a single marketing tactic…. he doesn’t even encourage you to map out a marketing strategy…. instead, he pounds home the point that any business that doesn’t enjoy repeat customers has no business investing A SINGLE PENNY in marketing or advertising.

An email newsletter is a GREAT tool to remind patients of who you are and what you offer. Providing a resource which provides answers for your community is a GREAT marketing tool, the best! However, if patients are greeted with a surly receptionist and a long wait in your waiting room….. you might find it a better investment of your time and money to correct those problems within your office before extending an invitation through marketing to new patients.