GREAT NEWS!!!!!!! My new website WWW.FreeDCHelp.COM is up and running. This site’s purpose is to provide a repository of materials that will be helpful to those in the profession. On this site will be posted archived articles as well as sample reports, letters and marketing materials — FREE. I also hope that as much assistance that this site may be able to provide to you, that you will see the need to pass along this “Secret” to others.Please do not hesitate to contact me, drvernonchiro@aol.com, if you feel that you may have information, resources or web content that could provide additional assistance to those in the profession. Please feel free to write me with comments or criticisms.

Remember: To get the most out of this newsletter, I suggest that you print it out and read it-don’t skim it-Refer back to it when implementing your marketing plan

(There are number of samples of various products and a monthly CD that I will be sending out starting this week. If you have not signed up yet you need to do so in order to receive the material.

I WILL NEVER SELL, LOAN, SUPPLY OR IN ANY WAY GIVE YOUR INFORMATION TO ANOTHER THIRD PARTY. THIS IS MY PROMISE.

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Remember the golden rule of all your marketing “What’s In It For Me?” Or in this case, your patient or prospective patient. If your marketing is not focused on what’s in it for them, all the money and effort you’ve invested in your marketing is going down the drain.

Direct Mail Marketing, How To Do It Correctly And Not Waste Your Time & Money

Many of you has contacted me and told me that you use direct mail marketing as a technique to obtain new patients. The majority of you also told me that it hasn’t worked very well. When I questioned how this was being done there was a common thread, that thread was poor targeting.

There are a number of services out there that will promise you the world and deliver nothing, many times it is not intentional it’s just that they are not familiar with the chiropractic market and what has worked for other markets they assume will work for chiropractic as well. The most common of the direct mail marketers are what I call “the post card guys” These are the people who ask you where you have your practice and tell you that they will mail out 5,000, 10,000 or even 50,000 4 color postcards to everyone in a zip code or zip codes that you select. They will show you very pretty cards that have been personalized in the back with your name and address and phone number. In your mind you think “well they are mailing to 20,000 people in my zip code, I should get at least 10 patients from this.” You convince yourself that you have nothing to lose because “at the minimum it will pay for itself” Like so many of you now know this is WRONG! It will never happen. If you get one patient consider yourself lucky and if you get more then one then you were very lucky. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, do a blind mailing. These are a waste of time and money and in today’s data rich age there is no reason to.

You can obtain special lists, specific lists. You can buy people who are suffering from fibromyalgia that reside in your zip or within 5 miles of your zip. People who have arthritis, you can purchase lists of almost any condition known and have that list further filtered to specific zip codes. You can buy lists of people who subscribe to natural or alternative health magazines or newsletters, there are lists of people who have bought vitamins, the availability of specific lists are innumerable. So why send to a “junk” list, when you can target people. This is really not rocket science, but it is a science.
You must learn to maximize every one of your marketing dollars. It may cost you 20% more to get a specific list versus a generic list, but so what if you got no patients from the mailing. The other thing is the card and the message on the card. I spoke about this last week and told you that the average time you have to capture the readers action is about 4 seconds. It is in this time frame that the reader will determine if they want to continue reading your message or put it in the round file. Find a reputable list broker and ask them when the last time the list was scrubbed, this means that all the deceased people have been eliminated and people who have moved have had their addresses updated.

Merry Christmas: Yes It Really Is That Time Already

I’m sure that you all have started to get the annual Christmas card samples packages in the mail. I know that summer just ended, but like the retail stores we need to start preparing our Christmas marketing program. And the question many of you have during this time is “what should I do as far as Christmas cards are concerned.”

I know that many chiropractors send holiday cards, postcards, or calendars out to their patients, and this is what I’m going to talk about - ways to get the most bang from your buck, or in this case your Christmas mailings.

The first thing we’re going to talk about is what NOT to use. I’ve seen many holiday cards and postcards with a chiropractic theme to them. Most of these are useless.

Whenever people receive a Christmas card from a dentist or a chiropractor or a company that that they do business with and the card is about their profession, most people just throw it away.

The reason is, is that the holiday card does not come across as being sincere. It is obvious to the person receiving it that the card is being sent out to tons of other people, and that the person sending the card is not thinking of me, or for all I know, even realizes that I’m still alive.

On the other hand, if the patient received a card that looked personal, like it was sent to them as an individual, then they would keep it and place it with the other cards they had received from friends and family.

But how do you know if your holiday cards are having the effect of being sincere, or are just ending up in the trash can? Well, one method that seems to hold water is the number of cards you receive from patients. The more cards you receive (after sending out your own), then the more sincere and personal the cards you sent were. Of course, another factor that can contribute to the amount of Christmas cards you receive is how much your patients like you.

You’ll find that doctors who are well liked by their patients tend to receive more holiday cards in relation to the number of patients that they have. So this could be a very good way to quantify how you are liked by your patients, especially if you keep a record every year as to the number of patients you have versus the number of holiday cards you receive.

Anyway, from experience as both a marketing guy and a person who receives a lot of Christmas cards, I recommend you stay away from postcards and Christmas cards that have to do with chiropractic.

So what kind of cards should you send? The same exact type that you send to your family and friends. These are the most personal, sincere, and effective.

Another type that is also effective is the blank cards. I’ve seen these sold in Staples and OfficeMax. They’re basically cards that are not folded and do not have any writing inside. Other than that, they are like all other holiday cards, with a nice texture and colorful pictures. You would then run the cards through your laser or ink jet printer and print out whatever message you want. The really great thing about this kind of card is that you can do a mail merge with your patient records, and customize the patient’s name and personal information in the card itself - it doesn’t get more personal than that!

Either way, you want to have a brief message in each card wishing a happy holiday, and the card signed by you and your entire staff. The envelope should be either hand addressed, or computer printed - no labels! You will also want to use a “live” first class stamp. Don’t use metered mail or bulk mail; they don’t look personal.

A question that I get frequently about Christmas cards is who should you mail to? Well, everyone in your database. Current patients, inactive patients, and prospects. Even if a patient hasn’t come to you in years, you should still send them a holiday card. You see, different things work to bring in different people. Some people react to a great sales letter, other people to a phone call, and some by a sincere show of caring, which your Christmas card accomplishes. So you might just be surprised to see some of your inactive patients and old prospects coming to you for care, even if you don’t make any offer in your Christmas mailing.

Should you make an offer in your Christmas mailings or not? I would recommend that you do. It’s true that making an offer will cause your Christmas card to lose some of its sincerity, but if you do it right, that will only be to a very small degree, and the return on investment will make up for it.

My advice to you would be to enclose two gift certificates. Please notice that I said “gift certificates” NOT “coupons.” There is a world of difference between the two. A coupon is worthless; it has a very low perceived value since it is assumed that all it is is a discount where the issuer is just using it to get more new customers.

On the other hand, a gift certificate has a high perceived value. It gives the impression that it’s something that someone had to pay money for, and it’s held in much higher regard. Also, people give and receive gift certificates for the holiday as presents; they do no such things with coupons.

You will want to include one gift certificate for your patient (preferably offering a free exam and adjustment), and a gift certificate for them to give to their friend or family member (offering a free exam). You want to print the gift certificates on index stock paper, so it looks and feel important. In the headline, you want to mention that it is a gift certificate. You will also want to mention the normal value of this gift certificate, and include a deadline (oh, say close towards the end of January).

If you do it right, you will give the impression that you care about your patients and appreciate them as friends, while at the same time making a great offer via the gift certificates that can really work wonders in getting you referrals and reactivating inactive patients

A Must Read Classic

Think and Grow Rich is a classic motivational book. Every marketing guru in chiropractic recommends it and this is one of those rare occasions that I do as well. I think every chiropractor “NEEDS” to read this book and refer to it often. Especially while trying to increase your practice numbers.

Written by Napoleon Hill and inspired by Andrew Carnegie, it was published in 1937 at the end of the Great Depression. The text of Think and Grow Rich! is founded on Hill’s earlier work, The Law of Success, the result of more than twenty years of research based on Hill’s close association with a large number of individuals who managed to achieve great wealth during the course of their lifetimes.

At Carnegie’s bidding, Hill studied the characteristics of these great achievers and developed fifteen “laws” intended to be applied by anybody to achieve success. Think and Grow Rich! itself condenses these laws further and provides the reader with 13 principles in the form of a philosophy of personal achievement.

Reflected in these principles is the importance of cultivating a burning desire, faith, autosuggestion and persistence in the attainment of one’s goals. Hill also discusses the importance of overcoming many of the most common fears that can adversely affect one’s thinking and potential.

Hill in his introduction to the book refers to the “Carnegie Secret”; a conception which he reports is the foundation of all success and appears to be the premise of the book. Hill promises to indirectly describe this “secret” in every chapter, but never state it plainly, believing the use of the secret is only available to those who possess a “readiness” for it, a disposition Hill describes as essential to the concept itself. You can order an e-book version for instant download for $3.00 (3 measly bucks to increase your brain) by clicking here and putting the word BOOK in the subject line. You will receive a Paypal invoice for $3.00.

This e-book is a service that ImageArchives is providing for me. They are a new web-site with alot of potential, and to show their gratitude for increasing traffic to their new site they are making this e-book possible. The process is that ImageArchives asks that you email them and provide your email address so that they may send a paypal link for the measly $3.00. Once the transaction is complete a Adobe Acrobat PDF document will be sent to you via email. ImageArchives assures me that they value their client base as much as I do and have promised me that they too, will not sell, forward, provide or give your information to any third party.

YOU’RE WELCOME:

I want to just say “you’re welcome to all the docs who have written me regarding the great “3 STOOGES” cards. I knew you would like them and that the response rate would be great, however I really didn’t think it would be as great as some of you have indicated. Many of you have said that your reactivations have soared since using the cards. That’s fantastic. This is what makes you part of the 20% who will succeed while 80% will fail. You take action and have followed through. You’re the same group who will begin sending out newsletters to your patient lists and formulating a marketing calendar. Keep up the good work. You are the docs that keep me going.

I will be posting my patient newsletter for September/October WWW.FREEDCHELP.COM in the next few days and will let you know when it’s up. It will be prepared in Microsoft Word, so you can edit it and get it off to the printer almost immediately.

Until next week,

Yours in health

Lenny