When it comes to building and promoting a practice, external marketing is usually what gets all the big press. When we ask ourselves, “How do I get more new patients?”, what we jump to mentally is the process called lead generation, which, expressed in business terminology, is finding cold leads and turning them into patients.
But by fixating on lead generation in a “cold” environment, we end up ignoring the part of practice building that the big boys know is easier, cheaper, and far, far faster… so-called “internal” marketing, or using your existing patient base to blast your numbers into the stratosphere.
Usually at this point, somebody wants to say to me, “but what if I don’t have many patients right now?” And the answer is, of course you need to do lead generation, but if you do it right, you can quickly and easily set up an internal marketing system that will essentially turn your marketing viral in nature.
That’s a big buzzword these days, isn’t it? Viral. Everybody likes to throw that around, especially in the digital marketing industry, because frankly, it’s the Holy Grail of promotion… promotions that feed off of themselves so much so that it becomes a self-generating phenomenon that takes on a life of its own.
Sounds pretty great, right? But how does that work in a chiropractic practice? What can we learn from these other industries that are all striving to achieve this viral promotion, and how can we apply it to our chiropractic practices so that we, too, can have a practice that only minimally relies on external marketing resources (which are usually expensive, time consuming, and annoying as all hell to do)?
Let’s use some numbers to illustrate the difference that can be made between focusing simply on lead generation (brand new patients) versus creating a viral internal marketing campaign. Let’s say we have an office with relatively poor compliance… we’ll pick a PVA (patient visit average) of 6. Now, every time they fight and scrape to find a new patient, their office numbers only go up by 6.
On the other hand, increasing compliance and thereby increasing PVA to a more reasonable number… let’s say 12… instantly doubles the entire practice, and does so without having the expense and effort of chasing down new patients.
Furthermore, an effective internal marketing campaign not only increases compliance, but it also increases reactivations WITHOUT having to resort to undesirable and counterproductive tactics like a cold calling campaign. I’ve written before about the dangers and pitfalls of using this outdated technique, but suffice it to say, with a solid automated internal marketing campaign, you don’t need to bother with reactivation cold calls, because your inactive patients will still receive communications from you in a non-invasive way that will keep you in their thoughts without pestering them.
Added together, these two effects will dramatically increase overall numbers without ever having to need a “new” patient. But a properly conducted, automated internal marketing system also draws in new patients, from the power of something called “Front of Mind”.
Front of Mind just refers to being in the front of someone’s thoughts, rather than being forgotten in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Remember that your patients all have crazy, complicated, chaotic lives, and they’re running around putting out fires all day long. So the second that anything can be de-prioritized, and then usually forgotten, in order to free them up to chase after whatever problem has popped into the front of their attention…
Well, it’s easy to see how we chiropractors end up forgotten. And this has an effect not only on compliance, but on referrals as well.
If your patients have forgotten about you… if you’re not in the front of their minds… then when a friend or family member or co-worker has a chiropractic problem, they won’t think to refer their friend to you. Not because they don’t like you or don’t trust you… because it simply doesn’t occur to them. You’re not in the front of their thoughts.
When patients are thinking about you, they remember to refer without even being asked.
However, if you do keep in their thoughts with an effective, automated internal marketing campaign, now when their family member or co-worker or whoever hurts their neck or something like that, now they’ll think to make the referral to your office. Do you see how that works? They’ve just received your newsletter a few days ago, or something like that, and so thoughts of your office are dancing around the corners of their consciousness, still somewhat fresh in their minds, and so now when their friend mentions their problem, it all clicks.
This is a surprisingly powerful way to get strong numbers of referrals without ever even having to ask for them. And if you do it right, it’s all done on autopilot, so not only it is effortless, it never gets forgotten (do YOU remember to ask all of your patients for referrals?).
And of course, as those referrals come in, they then become potential sources for referrals, and at a certain point, the numbers reach a critical mass that allows for a viral marketing office… an all-referral office. Now putting resources into external leads is unnecessary… you’ve reached the Holy Grail of an all referral practice.
So how is this done? How does one set up an internal marketing system that will start this process of creating a viral marketing, referral based practice, without becoming so time consuming or difficult to manage that it becomes impractical to implement?
As I mentioned, automation is key. You can’t do this properly with sticky notes and unrealistic hopes and dreams of “remembering to do it”.
An automated system never forgets to do its job. It also never is sick, or distracted, or in a bad mood. Plus, you know… automated. As in, you don’t have to do anything. Which, of course, frees you up to focus on the parts of practice that CAN’T be automated (or you could just eat Pop Tarts while you binge watch Netflix, whatever you like, it’s your time, do what you want with it!).
HOW IT’S DONE
What does an automated internal marketing system look like? I use a system that incorporates a series of email autoresponder sequences, periodic broadcasts, and tripwire headlines that lead to landing pages and additional, more specific autoresponder sequences.
Here’s what all that means.
An autoresponder sequence is an automatic series of email messages that are pre-loaded and saved, which are delivered in sequence when a person opts in to your email list. The emails can be spaced a day apart, a week apart, whatever you like. The act of “opting in” to the list is what triggers the sequence.
Broadcasts are manually loaded and sent out to the entire list at once. A good example would be a periodic newsletter. Your patients don’t get a broadcast on the day they opt in; they get it at the same time as everybody else on your list gets it. Broadcasts are good for keeping people engaged with your practice over the long term, but there is a (tiny) bit of recurring work involved. It’s still better than trying to chase after people in person.
Tripwire headlines are a subtle way to identify who among your patient base might be interested in a product or service you’re promoting. Say you just implemented nutritional supplements in your office. The most effective way to promote them is with a single line embedded in one of your broadcasts saying something like “Are you unsure if your vitamins are worth the money? Click here to find out.”
That would then lead to something called a “landing page”, which is a page on your website that offers information on whatever topic you’re promoting. And, you can dramatically boost the overall performance of the page by incorporating an additional autoresponder sequence designed to follow up with that particular person.
All that probably sounds like a lot to put together. But once you know how to do it, it’s not that bad, especially if you have a little help. If you’re intrigued by the idea of boosting your practice closer to that all-referral, viral marketing ideal, using automated systems that are a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than what you’re doing now, I have a Basic Training program on how to do it.
It’s basically an online seminar with a bunch of templates attached, so that you not only learn how to do what I just described, but you also have the majority of the work done for you ahead of time (you just tweak it to your practice). It doesn’t require any technical skills; I don’t know computer coding or any of that mumbo-jumbo.
If you’d like to get a look at it, you can click here to go through the first module of videos for free. As of the date of this article, I’m also running a special on the price, so if you like what you see, jump on board before the price goes up.
