A while back, as a part of an employee agreement, I went through a marketing “boot camp” given by one of the old-timey dinosaurs of practice management. It was supposed to “jump start” a new chiropractic associate’s ability to generate new patients. Not a bad idea, and I’m always open to learning what other people are doing out there, so I agreed to go through it.
It was awful.
You’ve probably encountered this as well, if you’ve ever been to a dinosaur’s seminar. First off, there was a lot of fluff; you know, busy work or material that had no real use but padded out the size of the program to try to justify the cost.
Then there were the scripts. Oh, Lordy Ba-Gordy, those scripts. I think they actually built a time machine back to the ‘80s so they could find the worst, most outdated, crude, hard-selling used car salesman scripts possible.
Not only were they clunky and crude, which is bad enough, and not only were they creepy and hard-selling, which is even worse, but worst of all, they made no sense.
Here’s what I mean. They made no sense in the overall context of how a practice actually works. The message that they sent out to the patient, didn’t actually line up with the care that the patient would receive later on.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let’s take a theoretical dinosaur guru, and he tells you that you need to hit the bricks and do a million spinal screenings, because that’s what good chiropractors do, by Crickey. And when you go out there and do that spinal screening, you should take along one of those ancient, steel monstrosities known as a SAM unit, so that you can check their posture and show them just how crooked they are.
Now, that might sound reasonable on the surface, mostly because it’s what’s been told over and over to chiropractors since the dawn of time. However, let’s look at what happens.
All right, so you’ve got a prospective patient, who sees your FREE POSTURE ANALYSIS sign, and they come over, get checked, their posture is a mess, and they agree to come in and get an exam. What a win, right?
Except then, they show up in your office… and there’s no talk of posture. Instead, the dinosaur guru has given you a script on how to “sell” the subluxation, or something similar to that.
Sound familiar?
If your promotional message doesn’t line up with what you deliver, you end up looking like this guy.
Of course it does. This is Dinosaur Marketing 101. Capture a lead using spinal screenings, and then hard sell the crap out of them in an exam and report of findings. It sucked before, and it’s beyond useless now.
I’ve written extensively on the subject of why you should avoid the hard sell… if you want an in-depth discussion of this topic, you can click here to go through the first module of my Basic Training online seminar (the first module is free). In this article, I want to focus on the terrible sin of an office’s marketing and promotions not being consistent.
Look at this from the prospective patient’s perspective. They met you, and you were talking all about posture. Then they come in… no more posture. Now all of a sudden there’s an uncomfortable conversation about something else, something that they’ve never heard of. How’s that supposed to work?
They expect, naturally, that since you talked about posture at the screening, that you’ll, duh, talk about posture at the exam. That the exam will focus on posture. That the report, and subsequent treatment, will be focused on posture. And that there will be posture exam follow-ups to track their progress.
But that’s not what they get. What they get, looks like a bait and switch, from their perspective.
Imagine if you did a cholesterol screening at a local drug store, and then, when you went into the office, expecting to talk about your cholesterol, not only did they not examine your heart, you got a bunch of mumbo jumbo about how you really need anti-depressant medication? And there was never again any talk about your cholesterol? What would be your reaction?
You’d think the doctor was full of it, that’s what you’d think. Even if the doctor had the best of intentions, you’d think he was a lying liar liar-face who loves to lie.
Why do the dinosaurs teach this inconsistency, if they’re so great? Beats me. Laziness, maybe. Or maybe they just don’t think things through. But the point is, you need to avoid this pitfall that they’re setting you up for and stay consistent through your marketing.
Lead capture, exam, report, care plan…all should line right up.
What you talk about at your screenings, or in your ads… essentially, any of what would be called “lead capture”… needs to line up exactly with your examination. Which then need to line up with your report of findings, which needs to line up with your care plan.
Said like that, it probably seems so self-evident that you might be saying “well, of course!” to yourself right now. And yet, so many chiropractors have gotten fooled into the mistake of using marketing or lead capture methods that are not consistent with what they do, that the profession has gotten a bad name for being dishonest.
So don’t make that mistake. Help yourself, your practice, and the whole profession, by stepping back and looking at the entire promotional and educational process or “funnel” (we’ll talk more about that term in another article), and making sure it’s all consistent with the other components and what you actually do.
