Each month we will give you a proven marketing tip or program that, if done right, will work for you. Collect, read and use all 36 of them over the next three years and you will have put together an effective powerful marketing program to help grow your chiropractic practice.
Last issue’s idea: Producing an audio cassette
This month’s idea: Why Not the Yellow Pages
The advertising done in Yellow Pages is no less than several billion dollars each year.
You may even have several ‘Yellow Page’ books competing with each other, each being hundreds upon hundreds of pages in size.
Just look at the chiropractic listings and you could find pages and pages of ads ranging from small to very expensive quarter, half and even full page ads.
The Yellow Pages should not be high on your list of marketing spending options and here is why.
Your goal is a simple one. When someone in your community needs the services of a chiropractor, if you have done an effective job of pre-selling them, then the only reason they may need to refer to the Yellow Pages is to capture your phone number - not to determine which chiropractor to see.
Simply put, you want everyone in your community to realize that you are the chiropractor of choice long before they ever decide to use a chiropractor. So when they do use or need one there is no one to compete with.
The decision has already been made and that decision is to call you.
Trying to get someone’s attention with an expensive Yellow Pages ad is letting the decision process advance too far.
Will they select the doctor with the largest ad, the best wording, or the ad that includes a picture?
Good luck.
So if you are depending on Yellow Pages advertising to get the phone to ring, you are failing in the art of pre-selling the community.
If you had a magic wand, you would want everyone in the community to wake up tomorrow morning convinced that you are the person to see. That you and only you are the doctor that could help them.
That everyone else, be it chiropractor or medical doctor, is running, at best, a distant second to you.
Well, magic wands don’t exist but with a lot of hard work and not a lot of money, you can accomplish the same thing.
Get out and meet the community. Develop workshops, seminars, tapes, CD’s and lectures where you will educate the community, not with hard self-promotion advertising but rather you will show the world how educated you are.
You will create a comfort level (a bond between you and the community) that no other medical professional will be able to break.
You will become the chiropractor of choice.
Yellow Pages advertising is a good place to find a local pizza shop - not for establishing your golden reputation in the community.
With a little creativity and a lot of hard work, the next time anyone within a 10-mile radius of your office needs or wants a chiropractor, it will be you they are calling, not letting their fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages.
The choice is yours.
Want to discuss? Feel free to call me at 1-800-696-7788, ext. 112.
State Legislation Updates
New Jersey
On Monday, March 7, 2005, Dr. Steven Clarke, ANJC Legislative Chairman and Dr. Sigmund Miller, ANJC Executive Director, traveled to Trenton to speak in support of S 1690, commonly referred to as the Insurance Parity Legislation.
It requires that chiropractic physicians, podiatric physicians, allopathic physicians, and osteopathic physicians be reimbursed at same rate under various health and accident plans.
Dr. Sigmund Miller testified on chiropractic utilization and cost-savings compared to other professions. His past experience with utilization review gave him keen insights into costs of various professions and chiropractic clearly was a cost-reducer in health care.
The insurance industry as well as NJ Chamber of Commerce and NJ Business and Industry (NJBIA) testified against the bill.
After testimony was given, a roll call was taken and the bill was voted favorably out of committee by a vote of 5-0.
Illinois, Virginia, Maine, Iowa, New Mexico
The Medicare Chiropractic Demonstration Project will test expanded access to chiropractic services for America’s seniors in a two-year, four-site demonstration project beginning in April 2005. Sites include Maine, New Mexico, the Chicago statistical area (including Scott County, Iowa) and central Virginia. |
What's Working if You Haven't Measured the Results 
