By Jimmy Mack

When it comes to marketing your practice, making marginal improvements is not enough to stay competitive. You can get 5%, 10%, and 15% improvements in what you’re doing by doing the same thing, only a little bit better. Meanwhile, some of your competition may be going for improvements in multiples.

To attain 100%, 300%, and 500% improvements, you cannot do the same thing better. You have to do something fundamentally different and, in the process, your practice can be transformed.

One of the biggest opportunities for doctors of chiropractic to make these types of dramatic improvements is to market effectively using the Internet and related database management.

These three tips can help:
1. Databases filled with the names of your patients and prospects enable you to gather a wealth of information about each of them. This information allows you to establish lasting relationships of mutual value. Obtaining this kind of information is one of the best strategies you can initiate. Database management allows you to fax, e-mail, direct mail, cross-sell products, and create renewal and referral programs.

The Internet provides for communication with e-mail. Its speed and convenience allow businesses to be of better service to their customers and themselves. You can mail to multitudes with the ease and simplicity of mailing to one. Although we are in the Information Age, we are also in the time-saving age, and e-mail has become a way of living in both ages at the same time.

To begin implementing basic database strategies, ask yourself these questions:

• Have I asked all patients for their e-mail addresses?

• If they do not have an e-mail address, how can I help them get one?

• What incentives can I offer to patients who supply me with their e-mail addresses (e-mailed patient newsletter, etc.)?

• Do I have a list of my patients’ birth dates, anniversary dates, etc.?

2. Even though the Internet seems to be about machines, it’s really about people. Simply put, the web is where people are learning to look for things they want. As they learned to use the Yellow Pages in the past, they’re learning to use the Internet now to search for the best values in the world and in their communities.

For chiropractors, this represents an incredible opportunity to talk to targeted prospects that single themselves out by visiting your website. The Internet allows you to maintain control of your relationships, saves time for you and your patients, and increases your ability to educate your patients, resulting in better patient retention numbers. It enables you to lower your costs of pleasing patients while increasing your productivity.

Fostering patient satisfaction isn’t a sometime event; it’s an all-the-time habit. Moreover, it applies to every patient.

3. Link, link, and link. The minute you go online, you should be looking for opportunities for fusion marketing - connecting with others. Fusion marketing describes that phenomenon of joining a frequent flyer program and learning that the airline has connected for marketing purposes with a hotel chain, a car rental firm, and probably a restaurant chain as well.

Free links, traded links, and small-fee links can make you marketing partners with businesses around the corner from you. You should have your web address on every header and link with every merchant in your community who is willing to do so. The Internet and related database management of e-mail and other information are powerful and cost-effective marketing tools. So what are you waiting for? Seize the day.

Mr. Mack is a managing partner in Health Club Experts.com, an association comprised of specialists in their fields. His expertise is in lead generation and database management. He has more than 20 years of experience in the health and fitness industry, and has also worked with the chiropractic profession. Mr. Mack may be reached at jimmymack@ttinational.net or 864-972-1139.