It's time to examine a different way of envisioning the marketing and promotional flows in your office. This 10,000-foot perspective I like to call your practice's "marketing Legos." Much like the Legos we all played with as kids – now you get to sort them out in practice!
The Lego: An Orchestrated Patient-Acquisition Campaign
There are many different funnels, or unique marketing avenues, that produce prospective chiropractic patients. Each of these unique flows is a marketing Lego. The Lego is a complete orchestrated campaign that produces a certain type of new patient in your office.
Another one might be if you are working with corporations, having developed relationships with an HR manager or generalist, or possibly a department head within a division of a corporation. You may be delivering lunch-and-learn lectures there on a quarterly basis, or even going in once or twice a year for an "Employee Appreciation Day" you orchestrate (which generates a ton of corporate new patients). That would be another marketing Lego.
Document Your Lego "Recipe"
It is vital that you preserve the procedure of each of these Legos in writing. This is probably one of the most important points to remember as the practice owner, the entrepreneur – making sure you codify the procedure as a fully reproducible "recipe."
To completely dial in this recipe for your Lego, you would describe each step in the establishment of the program in detail, formulate a checksheet so one can just check off each step required in the process of performing the things necessary to make it work. Place it in a manual (possibly as a thin, stand=alone hardback binder).
Now you have a successful action in writing and any new staff member, such as a new marketer or a hybrid marketer (part-time front desk / part-time marketing) can just pick up the manual and perform the Lego without any assistance.
Watch Your Legos in Action
As you build your "library" of marketing Legos, you will soon see that each produces a particular type of new patient. Some of these Legos may consistently produce 10-20 new patients every month; some Legos will produce 3-4 each month. Each has its own "show percentage" (the percentage who show up for their initial visit), as well as their own "start percentage" (the percentage who start your recommended care plan).
In the manual, include some evaluation sheets so the staff member applying the program can document the results of the campaign. This gives them a glimpse of their successful past actions, as well as things to avoid; and also documents the return on time / effort / investment so you can allocate your resources more efficiently in the future.
In my experience, for a practice to thrive and be well-insulated against local economic changes, shifts in companies, changes in the Internet and social media, etc. – a practice needs to have at least eight workable and unique marketing Legos in play. For offices serving more than 400 patient visits per week, I recommend having 12 established marketing Legos.
These all do not need to be operating each day; however they will be campaigns running in the background that you (or your marketer) are nurturing and guiding each week.
Many practices have only few well-documented marketing Legos. That is a frightening scene, as it shows reliance upon only a few sources which, if they change or dry up, leaves the practice in a contracting state. I do not want you to go out and suddenly plug in another 4-5 Legos – instead, pick just one source that has shown to produce well for you.
Break that source down into its own recipe. Create a checksheet for putting the plan into action and then get this into a binder. Do this for each of the sources that currently are producing for you so they are easily trainable (and out of your head).
Now you can go and find a new Lego to pilot toward your goal of having 8-12 marketing Legos dripping new patients into your practice. The key is to make all of these campaigns teachable, so each can be replicated easily, even by a brand-new staff member.
Build It and They Will Come
Using this strategy in your practice, soon enough you will have a powerful arsenal of patient-producing campaigns at your disposal, armed against any change in conditions that could otherwise cause a loss of income from reduction of new patients. Your goal is to ensure continued expansion and have "cool" problems to deal with such as "not enough parking spaces" or "now I pay much more in taxes." I wish you success as you build your marketing Lego castle!
Dr. Bobbee Palmer is one of the founding partners of the Chiropractic Business Academy. Employing the same tools he teaches in the academy, he built a thriving million-dollar, staff-driven cash practice. With more than 18 years of intensive, "in the trenches" chiropractic marketing developments and real-world testing, Dr. Palmer's passion and interest center on developing innovative chiropractic marketing techniques and methods to help DCs serve more of their community.