Chiropractic Marketing Changes Forever On July 15th

Have you caught wind of the news?
Some doctors are panicking about the pending price increase
hitting us on July 15, 2007.
Meanwhile, other doctors are chuckling with delight.
What price increase am I referring too, and why are some doctors
excited while others are totally bummed?
The answer in a second.
First, a quick chiropractic marketing question...
What is the worst number in the entire chiropractic profession...
especially chiropractic marketing?
Yeah... the worst number... what is it?
Do you have any idea?
At a loss?
Ahhhh, I'll just give you the answer.
The worst number in the entire chiropractic profession (and
chiropractic marketing, in particular) is the number ONE.
ONE of anything in the chiropractic profession is a bad thing.

For example:
ONE person in your office who knows how to use your computer
system... a bad thing.
ONE business in your area responsible for all of your
professional referrals... a bad thing.
ONE patient-attraction method for your office... a bad thing.
And, ONE chiropractic marketing medium used to promote your
office... a bad thing.
Think about it like this:
Anytime you have ONE of anything you and your practice are
extremely vulnerable.
What happens if the ONE person in your office who knows how to
use your computer system quits.?

Then what?
What happens if the ONE business in your area who's referring
people to your practice decides to stop referring?
Then what?
And, what happens if something radical happens with the one
chiropractic marketing method or chiropractic marketing medium
you're using right now to promote your practice?
Then what?
I'll tell you what...
PANIC!
And, that's what some chiropractors are doing right now as we get
closer to July, 15, 2007.
What happens on July 15, 2007, you're wondering.
The postage rates for direct mail go up again, that's what. And,
some pretty significantly.

If you have the stomach for it, you can get a quick glimpse at
these new price increases by going to the United states Postal Service website.
Frankly, for the doctors who have yet to embrace the Internet as
a serious chiropractic marketing medium, these postage increases
are just another shot to their pockets.
But, as history has shown us, this is what happens to businesses
and professional practices when they rely on just ONE marketing
method or medium.
When something happens or changes with that ONE approach they're
screwed (excuse the frankness).
How the chiropractors relying on just offline chiropractic
marketing don't see the power of the Internet to grow their
practice is beyond me!
Truly!

I mean, let's look at the statistics:
* 70% of American adults already use the Internet. That currently
represents about 141 million people.
* 91% send or read email and 91% use a search engine to find
information.
* 65% of American adult Internet users, about 92 million people,
use the Internet on an average day (that is, on any given day).
And, those numbers are certainly only going to increase as more
and more people come online everyday, right?
Add into that the fact that with the Internet it costs pennies to
reach those people compared to offline (direct mail), and,
online, those people can be reached with video and audio messages
at no additional cost, and it should become obvious why the
Internet has quickly become an explosive marketing vehicle for
chiropractors.

This is why the chiropractors who are using the Chiropractic
Dashboard are chuckling about the postage rate increases.
Because it doesn't effect them in any way.

It helps them because they know that some of their competition
who relies solely on direct mail to promote their practices will
either stop using direct mail, reduce what they're doing right
now, or simply make less money from their current chiropractic
marketing.

Either way, the docs using the Internet benefit.
The moral of the story:
1. Never rely on ONE of anything in your practice. It makes you
vulnerable. And, it's only a matter of time before that ONE thing
is changed, tweaked, altered, etc., leaving you panic stricken.
2. Start promoting your practice online today. No longer is it
the wave of the future in chiropractic marketing. It's here now!
Think about it.

Chiropractic Marketing - A 'Must-Know' Lesson For Chiropractors From Bill Gates

Bill was once quoted as saying something along the lines of,
"Microsoft has had lots of competitors over the years. It's a
good thing we have museums to record those moments in history."

Ouch. Not a good thing to think about if you were one of those
competitors, that's for sure.

But, you certainly don't need to be a competitor of Microsoft to
feel the sting of business competition.

With the quantity of chiropractors in practice today, and the
quantity of new doctors coming into the profession every year,
I'm sure you'd agree, it's a pretty darn crowded and competitive
chiropractic marketplace out there.

The number of shrinking incomes and struggling doctors, certainly
confirms that.

So, how do you go about being on the winning side... the success
side... of chiropractic business competition, instead of on the
losing, struggling side?

2 ways...

1. DIFFERENTIATION.

2. USING YOUR PRACTICE METRICS PROPERLY.

Let's talk about differentiation first.

In order to excel in a crowded profession, you must be able to
show prospective patients and active patients what makes you and
chiropractic care in your office different from what every other
doctor or chiropractic office is offering.

Mainly, you must offer patients benefits and unique value they
can't get from one of the other local doctors competing with
you.

And, if you really want to protect your practice and income from
current competition and any future competition, you must learn
how to position your chiropractic practice uniquely in the mind
of consumers.

In other words, you've got to learn how, through your marketing,
to have prospective chiropractic patients view your chiropractic
practice compared to others, as if comparing apples to oranges.

This only happens when you take proactive action to create that
differentiated, unique positioning through your patient
acquisition and retention methods.

And, here's where your practice metrics come in...

Plain and simple, the only way to rapidly grow a chiropractic
practice (and sustain it) is to understand and manage your key
practice metrics (measurements/numbers).

Just like acquiring wealth and becoming financially free is all
about properly managing and measuring certain numbers (i.e. your
bank balance, your income, your expenses, etc.). The same applies
to your chiropractic success.

Sadly, most chiropractic schools never teach this concept to
graduating docs.

New chiropractors then go into an insanely competitive
marketplace, with tons of practicing chiropractors, struggle to
build their practices, and end up tremendously frustrated.

Can you blame them?

I certainly can't.