Patients to Profits

According to Jerry Vass, author of Soft Selling in a Hard World, “the Buyer forgets 40% of what you say in thirty minutes, 60% in twenty-four hours and 90% in one week.”

For most chiropractors, the Report of Findings is your time to help a new patient understand how your services are going to benefit their health and life and either commit to your recommended care plan or politely turn you down. Anyone that leaves saying “I’ll get back to you” or “Let me talk to my husband (or wife) about this,” is politely saying “No thanks” to your care.

Why do I say that? Well, in most cases the patient that states they will ‘get back to you,’ will take at least 24 hours to do so. If Mr. Vass is correct, they will have forgotten 60% of the valuable information you shared with them by that time. The odds are quickly dwindling that they will still see the value in following your recommended care by that time.

So what does that mean to us as chiropractors.

It means it is imperative that the patient completely understands and agrees with the treatment plan we recommend during the Report of Findings. Otherwise we run the risk of a clinic that is required to constantly have new patients through the door as the existing patients fade away once the pain begins to do the same.

To significantly increase the chances that your patients will be excited about your care, agree with it (verbally and mentally) that day and not need to ‘go home and think about it and get back to you,’ incorporate what I call the 3C Communication Principle and you will ‘see’ your patient response to your recommended care begin to improve many fold.

The Principle is simple but very powerful. It says:

Clear, Concise and Convincing Communication results in

Better Case Acceptance and Follow Through.

Let’s look at the 3 Cs a little deeper.

Clear

You are no doubt familiar with the KISS (Keep It Simple Silly/Stupid/Seller/Etc) formula of presenting a message to someone.  That is the principle you want to follow here. Don’t take the chance of losing your audience with technical terms or any other impressive words that are unnecessary to get your points across.

There is only one time you want patients to hear words they do not understand…the examination. It is only during this part of any time you spend with any patient when they get to marvel at your exceptional intelligence level. Any other time, they need to understand your message or else you are reducing the odds they will believe and accept your message.

Concise

Learn to talk less and listen more. The reality is that patients want what they WANT and not what they NEED.  The more you listen to their pain and what their concerns are about the affect it is having on their life, the better you will be able to determine what they are trying to accomplish.

By finding out what they hope to achieve by coming to your office, you can now better position your recommended treatment plan to be in line with their goals. You will find it is much easier to get the patient to understand and agree that they do need to see you 3 times a week for the next month when it will help them accomplish their goals…not just yours.

Convince

Don’t let this term throw you because you feel it has a sales-ish connotation to it. People want to be convinced that they need something so that they feel good about committing to it and purchasing it.

This is the most important aspect of helping a patient commit to your care and where most doctors fall flat on their face!  The way this works best is really pretty simple but as doctors we tend to complicate because our brains are bigger or something – not sure. But either way, we tend to screw this up.

Nonetheless, the way to help patients understand or ‘convince’ them that your care is what they need, it is essential they hear

1. The BENEFITS
2. The CONSEQUENCES

Remember that their care is about them and not you. Well, at least in their mind it is. By wrapping the benefits to getting your treatment and the very real consequences of not getting it around your recommended treatment plan, you will drastically increase their ‘emotional’ understanding of why this makes sense for them. This is very different than their ‘logical’ understanding which comes into play as you educate them about chiropractic during subsequent visits.

When you don’t explain the benefits of your care and be frank and honest about the consequences of not getting it to a level where they feel that emotional desire to commit to your care, they just hear 30 visits and $2,000. Not so sure that’s convincing anyone!

As chiropractors, we know that everyone ‘needs’ our care but the reality is that a patient that is not convinced of the benefits will never be able to justify the cost of care or the investment of time required to make chiropractic an integral and long term part of their health improvement plan. By not helping patient make that connection, you truly are doing a disservice to your community and your practice.

Dr. Daron Stegall is a chiropractic marketing and business expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 16 year career while taking the time to be a chiropractic coach for hundreds of fellow doctors on how to make business success simple.

Much of his advice can be found for free on his blog found at www.successfulchiro.com.

 About pages are virtually everywhere on the web. You see them on just about every single website and blog and, while typically in a condensed format, on pretty much every social site.

Most would agree that the About page is simply the area of a website where people go to discover more concerning the you and your practice.

However, despite its importance – which I will try to convince you of as we go along – the About page is often treated as the ‘forgotten page of pages’ by most doctors when setting up their chiropractic website. Continue reading…

[A great guest post from my business partner and fellow creator of Patient to Profits...Enjoy! Dr. D]

Here’s the thing. We became doctors. If we wanted to be marketers or salesmen then we surely would have chosen a different profession. No chiropractor “likes” to market themselves or their business – we’d rather be saving lives!

We may learn to “like” the challenge of marketing or the challenge of out-marketing our competition, but again, we became chiropractors to help others, not to go out and figure out creative, fancy and sometimes pushy ways to get our name and services known in our local community.

Nonetheless, knowing we HAVE TO market ourselves, most of us take it upon ourselves to conquer this challenge. And for most of us that means we really do have a tough road ahead. Continue reading…

If you have spent any time studying search engine optimization (SEO) strategies then you have probably read about the power article marketing can have in driving traffic to your chiropractic website and propelling it to the top of the search engine ranks.

Article marketing is based on the old adage that still holds true today that says ‘content is king.’ People are always looking for answers and anyone who is willing to take a little time to write and post a few short articles here and there supplying those answers can and likely will be rewarded handsomely with increased traffic to their website and increased credibility within the sometimes very finicky search engines.

How do the most popular search engines keep their users happy? It is by providing quality content and answers to the questions they put in that little search box millions of times a day. It is not by providing them a bunch of websites offering them products or services when they search for ‘How to fix Sciatica.’ When you help supply the search engines with good content to index and provide for their users, it begins to build your reputation as a good addition to their business model which as I said will improve the ranking results they give your website linked to that content.

Writing an Article

A great part about chiropractic article marketing is that it is very easy to write the content because you will be giving tips and solutions for the same conditions that you discuss with patients everyday.

The length of the article should be at least 400 words or else it may get rejected by the online directory you are going to submit it to. Do not get too hung up on how long it needs to be; it could be 400 words or 1000 words. Your focus should really be just on writing an article that provides the reader quality advice or help for the problem they are having. If you do that, everything else will work itself out.

Keep the content blocks short and easy to read. Most people don’t really enjoy reading a paragraph that is 15 sentences in length. Break up your paragraphs into smaller 2 or 3 sentence chunks of information. This will help keep readers engaged in what you are saying.

Choose a title that ‘indicates’ to the reader that they will find quick and easy to understand solutions or advice in your article. Titles like ‘6 Simple Steps for ________’ and ‘2 Top Tips to _________’ help the reader feel like your article is going to supply them the answers for their problem in a simple, concise format. Don’t under estimate the importance of the adding sizzle to your title. An enticing title will stimulate more people to open your article which leads to more people clicking the link to your website that is going to be at the end of your article, and of course better rankings with the search engines.

Posting your article

Now that you have a great article ready to go, you need a place to post it – or I should say places to post it. One of the most beneficial and yet overlooked benefits of article marketing is that one article can go a long way.

The first place you should post your article to ensure maximum backlinks and search engine optimization of your website is to an online article directory. Ezinearticles.com is probably the most popular of these sites right now and the one I recommend you use to get your feet wet. However, there are a ton of these sites out there like Articlesbase.com, Goarticles.com and many more.

Submitting the article is relatively painless. Create a new account, populate it with your picture and a lot of information about you to bring it to life, and then just click to ‘submit an article’ and get going. The service will walk you through the rest. Just make sure you don’t forget to include your website and blog site links in the Resource Box as this is an important component of the backlink building puzzle.

If you do anything wrong the service will pop up a message letting you know and you can just keep fixing errors right on the spot until it gets what it wants and accepts the article. From there you will get a confirmation email that the article was received and is pending approval.

There are also plenty of services that will submit your article to multiple article websites for you these days. Most do have a fee associated but are worth the cost since they will get your article pushed into 100 sites or more in a relatively painless process and short period of time. Just do a little searching to see which are the most reputable before you jump in and use one. That will help ensure you do not develop a bad rep with the search engines by using a shady ‘black hat’ service.

Dr. Daron Stegall is a marketing expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 16 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple.

Much of his advice can be found for free on his blog found at www.patientstoprofits.com

He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com. 

Dr. Daron Stegall is a marketing expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 16 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple.

Much of his advice can be found for free on his blog found at www.patientstoprofits.com

He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.

As we get ready to begin the second half of the year, this week is a great time to…

1. Review what you set out to accomplish this year
2. Determine if you are on the right track for hitting those goals
3. Create a second half strategy to ensure you and your team accomplish the goals

Most of us go into a new year full of optimism and fire with goals to have a greater impact on the lives of our local community, grow our practice to a new level and of course improve upon our own lives both professionally and personally. 

We are just coming off the holiday season ‘high’ where we were basking in the spirit of giving and appreciation for how great life is and how fortunate we really are and so it only makes sense that we carry that positive change outlook over into the New Year.

However, somewhere between January 1 and now, this little thing called life often begins to creep in and slowly impact the visions and direction we laid out only a few months earlier.  If the daily grind has slowly nudged you off the path you set for you and your practice or even if you just sauntered into this year with no particular direction in mind, follow the simple strategies below to get back on course and retake command of the ship for great second half success.

Regain Perspective: With everything that happens around us during each day in the clinic, i.e. seeing patients, doing paperwork, dealing with insurance companies, putting out fires, etc., it is easy to develop the mindset that all of these disruptive things are happening to you when in reality they are just everyday parts of life happening around you.

We are human and the hassles of everyday practice, and life, can and often do impact us personally and slowly change our outlook on what being a chiropractor is really all about. Now is a great time to take a few minutes to regain your perspective on what your role in healthcare, your community and even life in general is really all about.

Celebrate Your Victories: What have you and your staff accomplished this year that can give you a reason to celebrate. And I am not just talking about a big obvious success but rather even just the small ones that often are overlooked.

Are you above your average patient volume from last year? Even just a little? Did you collectively make it through a tough period as a team…say a big change in insurance in your area or some other change that shook your foundation but in the end you made it through?

Whatever the victories, large or small, write them down right now and then set up a couple of hours in the evening with your staff to meet and give them the pleasant surprise of a positive recap of ‘our victories so far this year’ and of course use that to also springboard into the action plan for the remainder of the year.

Take Action: As Michael Masterson says in his book Ready, Fire, Aim, it is often better just to take action first, and then make corrections or alterations later. Otherwise, you risk never taking action at all.

Think of 2 or 3 changes or improvements you have been planning to take action on and just do it! If you have a staff person that you have been meaning to replace because he or she has proven to be nothing less than an anchor pulling the clinic down, cut her loose. 

If you have been thinking about gathering patient emails and beginning to send out promotional and educational emails to your patients every couple of weeks as part of your chiropractic marketing plan, now is the time to take the action steps to get that going. If you have been planning a new strategy to improve your patient recall and reactivation system, now is the time to start teaching your staff the new protocol.

Whatever it is that you have been planning to implement, improve or crank up a notch, get going on it now; you can always refine it as you go along.

The reality is that you are the captain of the ship. You may have an office manager or C.A. who can ‘do it all’ but the fact still remains that at the end of the day you set the tempo for those that follow your lead. Take an honest and unbiased look at what is working to further your growth and prosperity and what is holding you back.

As well, don’t forget to take an honest look within. In what ways are you contributing to catapulting your practice to new heights and where are your short comings that are preventing you from achieving the level of prosperity you envision for yourself and those that count on you for income.

If you find you are lacking in your knowledge in one or more areas of practice and it is holding your clinic back from the growth you are aiming for, make the commitment and take the steps towards gaining the knowledge or even seeking the chiropractic consulting you know you need to get you on the path to success.

Drs. Daron Stegall and Troy Counselman are co-founders of Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System, a 3-Pillar training system that teaches doctors turnkey clinic protocols, online and offline chiropractic marketing strategies and business skills designed to help chiropractors thrive in today’s healthcare environment. They have personally owned 12 successful chiropractic clinics during their 16 year career while coaching hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple.

Much of their advice can be found for free at www.successfulchiro.com. They can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.

Throughout my 16 years of practice, I have owned, managed and directed the chiropractic marketing plans for 12 clinics of my own and consulted with hundreds of doctors on how to ‘beef up’ their marketing in an effort to grow their practice. The reason I mention that is so I can follow that up by saying that during that time, one of the most effective ways I have found to market my practice both internally and externally is through massage.  

When it comes to external marketing, the super successful and savvy chiropractors will tell you that one of the most effective types of marketing is face to face. By face to face marketing I of course mean getting in front of your prospective patients so that you can actually speak to them.  

When you personally interact with a prospective patient, you not only establish credibility by giving this person insight into your vast knowledge and understanding of their condition, but you also create familiarity with you which in turn breaks down the barrier of the ‘unknown’ about who you are.

Gaining familiarity with you leads to the potential patient becoming more comfortable with you and this in turn significantly increases the likelihood that they will use your services now or in the future.  

FAMILIARITY —>  COMFORT —> TRUST

Nevertheless, the problem with this very effective type of face to face marketing is first grabbing the attention of the public long enough for them to give you an opportunity to wow them with your expertise and shining personality and gain their trust. 

Whether you are at a health fair, grocery store, or standing out on the street, one of the best methods to get people to stop and speak to you is by having a massage therapist with a chair right next to you.  

It is very hard for most of the public to resist a free 5 to 10 minute massage with no strings attached. People will curiously begin to gather to see what the catch is or to find out how much a massage would cost. Once they are told that it is free…bam! they are ready to get after it!  

Now, giving away a rejuvenating massage obviously does you no good unless you also

1. Have an opportunity to tell the patron about you and your business.

2. Get information about the patron so you can follow up by whatever means you feel is best.  

I recommend having each person who would like a free chair massage fill out a form that I call a Stress Survey (See example below). This easily created form gathers each person’s data to whatever extent you choose; it also includes check boxes to mark any areas of pain. This not only gives you all the information you need to follow up with each potential patient but also gives you information about any condition they are suffering from so you can discuss it with them.  

You may choose to gather all or some of the above information on each person getting a free massage; that is up to you.  

Even though I often have 2 or 3 massage chairs operating at one time, I will still typically have a line of people waiting to take their turn at relaxation. During this waiting period I will introduce myself and while looking at their Stress Survey ask them if they have any health concerns they want to bounce off me.

More often than not the dialogue turns to how chiropractic can help their condition which in turn leads to discussing how my clinic and I may be of benefit to the prospective patient.  

In addition to me giving insight about my clinic and discussing any health concerns with each person who is waiting to get a massage, my therapists are also trained to accomplish the same task. During the massage, the therapist asks questions to find out more information about the clients complaint regions marked on the intake form with dialogue such as…

“Let’s see, you were just saying that you have pain in your ___________. 

“How long has it bothered you?

“What treatment have you had for this in the past?  

If no problems were reported then the massage therapist will begin work on the client until some unusually tender/sore area is noted and discuss it. The therapists will make them aware of any areas of muscles spasm, ‘possible’ subluxations or other notable areas. The therapist will also make me aware of the findings so that I can further discuss this with the person.  

Once a person is done with the chair massage, I will ask them how it was and naturally the answer is invariably “it was awesome.” From there I can discuss any notable areas mentioned to me by the therapist.

I will then let them know about any ‘special’ offers I have to come into the clinic and try our services to help their condition. If they show interest, I let them know how and when my office manager will contact them to get them set up for an evaluation or consultation. Additionally, if you offer massage services in your practice it is also a good idea to offer the prospective patients that speak with you a complimentary half-hour massage as a way to invite them in to see your practice risk and cost-free.  

If you have not used chair massage as an effective marketing tool to grab the attention of passersby in any setting, I would highly recommend it. Your return on investment will typically far outweigh the average gain seen with other marketing strategies.  

Dr. Daron Stegall is a marketing expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 16 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple.

Much of his advice can be found for free at www.successfulchiro.com. He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.

Optimizing your chiropractic blog posts and articles for search engines so they can find and use your information is a no-brainer…it must be done if you want to build links back to your website.

As someone that has been preaching the last 4 years about the importance of article marketing and blogging as a vital component of your online chiropractic marketing strategy to dominate your local market, I have to make a confession.

When I first started submitting chiropractic articles online and writing blog posts for my clinics, I just wrote them without too much regard for optimizing them for the reader. Not that I delivered bad content in the least but rather my main focus was to just to create links back to my website by getting my address out there in cyberspace.

Today is a different story. Because of the volume of information and competition that has exploded onto the web, now more than ever your articles and blog content must not only give the search engines what they are looking for so that it will help your rankings but should also be the highest in quality for the reader as well so they will

• Find Value in your Article
• Enjoy the Reading Experience
• Make Positive Comments
• Click on your Website Link
• Share it with Friends

In other words, your article or blog or even Facebook post should not only be search engine optimized but also Reader Optimized to help increase the likelihood they will stay on it and take action with it.

Hitting the ‘back button’ and moving on to the next article that promises to give them the answers they are seeking is all to quick and easy to do.

Follow these few simple rules for making your articles and posts a reader friendly experience for anyone who stumbles onto them and it will significantly increase the likelihood they will help your chiropractic marketing campaign by taking further action.  

• Keep it Simple: Minimize your technical terms and if you use one (notice I said ‘one’) make sure to define it. Think of an article the same as when you are face to face with a patient; using a term they don’t understand may mean you lost them for the rest of the consult or ROF.

• Give Value: Let the person know in the title of your article what they can expect to get from it and then deliver on that promise in the body. This ensures a high value experience.

• Use Formatting: Don’t let this part scare you. All I am saying here is that you should not expect anyone to just read paragraph after paragraph of your super-solutions to relieving headaches. Regardless of how good your information is, people want it delivered in short chunks or else they will back up and try the next Google search result. To give easy to read information, use headings, bullets, sub-bullets, bold print and italics. And most importantly…keep the paragraphs short so there is a lot of white space left in your article.

• Check Spelling and Grammar: The last thing I’ll add is to be sure you have ‘spell checked’ and ‘re-spell checked’ your article. There is little more distracting than getting hung up on a misspelled word while perusing someone’s article. And in addition to that, many of the article submission sites are becoming more strict about the quality of the content submitted of which grammar and spelling is a big component.

• Get Keyword Rich: This means that the article title and body has the keywords that someone in your area would use to search for your service. So for example, if you are a chiropractor in Dallas and your article is about relieving sciatica then you want to ensure those keywords are listed as such in the body and even title of your article. This will help remind your reader where you are and what you do AND of course help you tremendously with ensuring the search engines connect your article with people in your community that are searching for your services. Sorry, just had to get that search engine ranking plug in there…it’s in my blood!

When you are writing your next blog post, Facebook Note or submitting your article online, keep in mind that it’s not only the search engines you are trying to woo. You also want to use the power of the people to spread your message and create traffic to your website.

My motto is they need to read it, love it, click it and share it.

Dr. Daron Stegall is a marketing expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 15 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple.

Much of his advice can be found for free at www.successfulchiro.com. He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.

Your chiropractic clinic is rolling, it’s busy, it’s making money; you have a satisfied and growing patient base. Your practice may be doing well profit-wise but you might be overlooking an area that could very well be eating a substantial, and sometimes alarming, hole into your monthly or annual profits. This is the area of ongoing purchases.

Ongoing purchases or payments can easily get out of control and once there, it’s hard to rein them in. Once your ongoing expenses are at a new level for a while, it is very easy to start believing that this is now the standard and become comfortable with continuing to make those payments month in and month out.

It’s similar to hiring a new employee. You hire someone with the thought that if they don’t work out you’ll let them go. The reality is, that’s not often what happens. You get to know them. They become a normal part of your practice family and life and it’s hard to let that person go even if you realize they are no longer needed or are not a strong asset.

It’s the same thing with those ongoing purchases. Keep that in mind when you’re committing to things like a subscription for your website, monthly payments for your software, monthly payments for billing and marketing and purchasing new equipment, all those little things that sound cheap on an individual basis quickly add up. If someone says, “This will cost you a hundred bucks a patient, I’ll send you 5 patients a month,” because you know you can make more than a hundred bucks a patient, it makes sense to sign the contract. However, that’s still 500 bucks a month going out. At some point you have to step back and ask yourself, what are the quality of these patients and are they worth the expense, could I negotiate this service for less money, can I do this myself and save the expense.

The same may hold true for expenses such as linens or parking garage fees, both of which are good examples of recurring costs that you may be able negotiate a better price on or find for less with another company. Whatever the expense, unlike one-time charges that go out and are behind you, ongoing costs are tougher to control because once you’ve locked yourself into those then you’re often mentally stuck even if you don’t sign a physical contract.

To help reduce your recurring expenses, try doing the following:

1. Evaluate your needs verses your wants. Our wants are always so much more than our needs, in every aspect of life. A great way to balance the two is by looking at your practice from the patient’s perspective. You need what it takes to make that patient comfortable with being in your clinic and you also need what is required to get them well. That doesn’t require a $10,000 flexion-distraction table, the completely digital $30,000 x-ray unit, a decompression table or $50,000 worth of artwork on the walls.

Remember, it doesn’t take a lot of space to get people well; it doesn’t take a lot of fancy equipment to get people well. It literally takes one room, a table and your hands to get someone well. Sure you need to impress patients somewhat, but you can do so without just going crazy with it.

That is so important…to recognize the difference between what you need and what you want and to really go with the needs first. Try to connect your ‘wants’ with your need for ‘write-offs!’

2. Take the time to do your research and find the best deals. When it comes down to the outgoing flexible purchases, and single payment purchases for that matter, doing research is worth the time. Take the time to do your online research especially because it is so much quicker. We are so fortunate to have that as an option nowadays. If I know I want a piece of equipment, I can spend 10 minutes online and find such a great deal on it.

3. Be wary of the software costs. I mention this specifically because I often find this is out of control when a client asks me to assess their expenses. There are so many great programs out there but they cost hundreds and some of them thousands of dollars a month to get started with and maintain.

You likely need a program that will allow electronic billing (essential in most states now), but you may not need to also add on the electronic records option. You also likely don’t require the hottest new version of EMR software that is out there. Sure it would be nice to have, but it’s just like having that nice Jaguar over your old Chevy – it’s not a necessity.

Just as you manage your chiropractic patients and staff, it is also imperative to manage those recurring costs. The more conscious you become about where your money is going and begin to make more informed choices about your expenditures, the more in control you will be over those costs as opposed to them controlling you. If you have never or haven’t reviewed all your ongoing cash outflow expenditures for a while, maybe now is a great time to sit down and have a look at what you really need verses what you have just come to accept as a ‘normal’ monthly outflow. And, once you have trimmed the fat, take another look at what ongoing expenses you still have to determine if you can modify or negotiate a better price. After all, every buck you save is another dollar of profit.

Dr. Daron Stegall is a chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System. He has owned and managed 12 successful chiropractic and multidisciplinary clinics during his 15 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple. Much of his advice can be found for free at www.successfulchiro.com. He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.

Despite how you envisioned a press release (PR) to be in the past, in today’s internet age the press release is a powerful promotional tool that should be a part of your internet chiropractic marketing strategy to help drive more traffic to your website and hence have more people calling your office. The benefits of press releases include:

• Direct traffic from those who read your PR and click on your blog or website link
• Building your ‘brand’ in your local community
• Increasing your credibility and authority
• Improving your search engine ranking by providing more backlinks for your website
• Potentially land you in an interview with a local newspaper or magazine

The main benefit that small business owners, including us chiropractors of course, will get from a press release is improving their local search engine ranking.

Most of us understand the benefit of popping up as one of the first few results when someone does an online search for a chiropractor in our area. The good news is that submitting press releases is definitely an important and legitimate part of helping you accomplish that goal of ranking your website as number one on Google.

To help ensure you get the biggest bang for each release you should try to make sure it is

1. Distributed via a ‘credible’ PR distribution site
2. Newsworthy
3. Search engine optimized

There are several PR services that can provide you maximum visibility and credibility on the internet without breaking the bank. As a matter of fact, some are free.

Without going into the Alexa and Google Page-Rank details or search engine optimization (SEO) reasons of why I like certain services over others, suffice it to say that I have used several and I like the following in no particular order: PRLog.org, Free-Press-Release.com, PRLeap.com and PRWeb.com. The first two will allow you to distribute your PR for free while the other two are paid sites.

Whether you go with a cost or free service depends on how you feel about what you read in their sales pitch to you on their site and if you think it is worth the expense or not.

Once you get signed up with a service to distribute your press release through, it’s time to step up to the plate and write it. Basically you are just going to write about something that has happened in your business that is ‘newsworthy.’

• Have you added a new service to your practice such as spinal decompression, weight loss or laser?
• Have you added new staff that will have a significant impact on the clinic? Hired a new PT or DC perhaps?
• Have you been featured or quoted in a blog, newspaper, or magazine?
• Have you added any enhancements to your website to better serve your patients and community?
• Are you running or about to run a food drive or other event to help the community?
• Have you or your company recently earned any awards or accolades?

Writing a press release is where most people get stuck. They freeze up at the thought of having to craft one and then submit it for the world to see.  However, don’t let that be a stumbling block. The key to a great press release is just a few main essential elements in addition to ensuring it is search engine friendly, i.e. can be found by the search engines.

First you need to ensure you have a great headline. Don’t get pulled into trying to be clever as search engines don’t understand puns or play on words so keep it straight forward and try to include key search terms for your area when possible.

You will also need to write a summary. I recommend that you do not just paste in the first few sentences of the body of your PR. Write an original summary that makes your release sound like it’s going to be interesting. As well, this is a great place to insert any keyword phrases you can’t squeeze into your main headline.

The body of your PR should just be a few paragraphs, and remember you are announcing something factually; not trying to obviously promote it. State what it is about and the benefits it will have to your patients and the community

Throughout your release try to include anchor text when you can. For example, if your PR is about your new associate chiropractor, then have his name set up as a clickable link that will take the reader back to the bio page on your website that introduces this new addition. Any PR service that allows anchor text will have instructions on how to include these in your release.

At the end of your PR is where you can and should have information about you and your clinic including location, phone number and website/blog links. Just like anchor text, this is a critical part of building your backlinks and improving search engine rankings so don’t forget this step. Additionally, it gives details on how to reach you in case a local new organization wants to follow up with you about your release.

Some services will allow you to add search term tags to your press release or upload photos. I recommend that any photo you upload showcases what your PR is about. If you just got a new laser, then get a crisp looking picture of it off the website for that product and add it to the PR. If you just added a new staff member, add a picture of him or her.

There is absolutely no reason for you to not be able to fully utilize the great advantages of submitting press releases as part of your online chiropractic marketing. The best way to get started is to spend 20 minutes at one of the websites noted above and read a few of the press releases to get a good feel for how they are written.

My recommendation is to send out a few at the free level just to get your feet wet and save the paid and supposedly better search engine optimized submissions for after you are more experienced at writing them or when something bigger happens at your clinic that truly is newsworthy.

Dr. Daron Stegall is a marketing expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer of Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 15 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple.

Much of his advice can be found for free at www.successfulchiro.com. He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.

Like most of us, at the end of last year you probably spent a little time setting some patient number and marketing goals for your practice for the New Year. And as we surge through the first half of the 2011, this is a good time to step back and see if you are still on track with the goals you set.

If you find that you are not achieving the new patient marketing success you planned coming into the New Year, there is one element that you may be missing that is critical for staying the course and accomplishing your goals. After 15 years of marketing experience (both successful and unsuccessful) and teaching over 200 doctors how to build an annual marketing plan that truly creates a steady influx of new patients and reactivations, the missing link that I find most doctors have in common on my initial interview is a lack of detailed direction in their chiropractic marketing plan.

For example, saying your goal is to establish a co-treatment and referral relationship with local medical doctors is not enough to accomplish it. You will succeed much easier and faster if you take it a step further and write out the details required to make it to your goal verses just stumbling toward it with random ideas and haphazard promotional attempts.

By breaking any larger goal into details, you make it easier to stay on course so you don’t get lost within your own ‘big idea.’

What do I mean by details? The easiest way to define it is the specific steps that actually comprise any chiropractic marketing strategy. These details or steps are what actually turn a marketing idea into a Marketing Action Plan (MAP). This MAP is what prevents you from piecing together a weak marketing strategy that you end up getting mediocre results from or stopping all together because of a lack or direction. It’s like if you lived in Texas and you wanted to drive New York. Sure you have a general idea of how to get there…you just go Northeast, but without some detailed directions, it would take you 5 times longer to get there if you didn’t just get bored or frustrated, decide it was too difficult and give up somewhere along the way.

In the case of setting a goal to ‘stimulate referrals from local medical doctors,’ your MAP may look something like this:

• Make list of all new patients seen within the last 3 months and send out typed update summaries to the primary care physician listed in their file – Complete by ( date  )
  • Flag patient files to let them know a report will be sent
• Send a typed new patient evaluation summary report to the PCP of every new patient coming into the clinic whether referred directly or not – Begin by (  date  )
  • Send out same day
• Do a Special Treat Delivery day promotion to all medical doctors that have referred to me this year and an additional 10 that I want to develop a referral relationship with
  • Deliver the unique snacks during first week of December – Complete by (  date  )
  • Attach full color marketing piece outlining benefits of using our practice
• Call the office of the 10 medical doctors that I have the most patients in common with and schedule to take them lunch and introduce myself and a couple of staff members – Complete by ( date  )
• Create list of all medical doctors to whom I need to refer patients to help build the co-treatment relationship – Complete by (  date  )
• Begin credentialing for _____________ certification to help set myself apart from other DCs soliciting medical referrals – Begin by (  date  )
• Etc

Because you now have specific steps listed along with sub-bullets to help give extra guidance within each step, it is not only easy for you to quickly remind yourself of each detail within your MAP but it also makes it very simple to assign any part of your action plan to a staff member which takes a little of the load off you and helps get you to your goal much quicker by leveraging the efforts of your employees.

Notice at the end of most of the action steps there is a space to enter a date. This is just as critical as the specific steps themselves to ensure you and anyone who has a step delegated to them is held accountable to getting each component of your marketing campaign launched by the specific time period you set.

The importance of using a MAP holds true in virtually every type of chiropractic marketing strategy you want to succeed with. And the more ‘involved’ the goal is, the more critical it becomes to have that detailed marketing action plan to follow.

Daron Stegall, DC is a marketing expert, chiropractic consultant and co-developer for Patients to Profits – The Complete Chiropractic Success System and Chiropractic Marketing Dominator.  He has owned and managed 12 successful clinics during his 15 year career while taking the time to coach hundreds of fellow chiropractors on how to make business success simple. Much of his advice can be found for free at www.successfulchiro.com. He can be reached at info@PatientsToProfits.com.