Just Wondering
Posted on February 7, 2007 - Filed Under General |
I’ve just gotten a few comments on this blog and they’re some of the few comments that I’ve gotten that aren’t spam or notes from folks with blogs that I’ve quoted. I appreciate the response.
It makes me wonder about why I don’t get lots of comments. It occurs to me that perhaps it’s because people who do acupuncture really don’t think of the web as a way to market. If that’s the case, perhaps they should check out this article on Juliet Austin’s page. My personal site isn’t all that I want it to be YET. However, I think half the fun is tweaking and playing with the whole thing until I get it just right.
I’m not sure that this is the full problem. I have to wonder if it’s because acupuncturists don’t even know what they don’t know about marketing. Honestly, it took me 6 years in practice to start hunting down marketing information that would work for an acupuncturist. My copy of Lynn Grodzki’s book was published in 2000. I’d never heard of it until now. I opened my first practice officially in March of 2000. What perfect timing had I seen it back then! However, I didn’t know about it or how to find it.
Now, as I write this blog to be useful to other acupuncturists who are just starting out, I find that it’s hard to find good marketing articles that are relevant to acupuncturists. I look around at some of my online marketing stuff and share that as it seems relevant. I’ve searched technorati, google blogs, google and yahoo for the keywords ‘acupuncture marketing’, ‘practice management’ and ‘practice building’. I come up with very little relevant information. I do find a lot of consultants who claim to want to help me do just that. I worry that they will require that I pay more than I can afford. After all, I am not a large practice who expects to have employees. I’m a sole proprietor who just wants to make a decent living. I think that’s true for most acupuncturists, even those who might have slightly different legal definitions of their practice. I know very few who have more than one employee and none who have more than two (and these women are both part time).
I read statistics of how many acupuncturists fail in their business. It makes me think that there is a demand for marketing information, but as students we are so uninformed about marketing that we don’t even know what we don’t know. We don’t even go looking for it! I certainly didn’t and I didn’t know anyone else who did. I’d love to think that acupuncture schools started contacting people like Grodzki or Austin for weekend workshops or seminars. At the very least, it would be nice of they would inform students about the seminars that Austin holds in Vancouver, B.C. I went to school in Portland, Oregon. It’s not as if the distance was prohibitive.
I don’t know anyone who goes to acupuncture school because they are great at sales. Putting ourselves out there and selling ourselves is hard work. It’s not what any of us really wants to do. It is even more important, then, to give us as many tools as possible so that we can work as successfully as possible. It’s not a problem I can solve but I hope that by raising awareness amongst those people who are reading that maybe someone will talk to the right someone and at least acupuncturists will learn what they don’t know about marketing!
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Hey Bonnie,
You are bang on!
I often tell those in the healing professions that “they don’t know what they don’t know.”
The good news is that a lot more in the healing arts are realizing that they need marketing help…finally! In fact, they are very hungry for it once they realize how much it can help them.
So, it’s is happening slowly.
I rarely get posts on my blog unless I tell my newsletter subscribers to leave a post when they go there. If I invite them to do so they will, but otherwise they don’t.
I do know lots of my subscribers from my newsletter visit my blog though and also I get a lot of hits from search engines.
Many practitioners are not real technical and few have their own blogs. We are pioneers in our field and have to wait for the rest of them to catch up.
Keep up the great blogging!!
Thank you Juliet. I think your site was one of the few that actually comes up as useful on those searches. I think I found the blog first.
I think it would be helpful if more schools who turn out people who are going into private practice maintained some sort of continuing education on marketing for their students to at least show the importance of keeping your marketing skills fresh. Even a one day or a half day seminar each year can give out a lot of information and if they had different marketing speakers, a number of different techniques and approaches could be used.
I found it disheartening to read marketing books getting out of school and feeling like they all wanted me to market my products as if I were a car salesman!
Bonnie,
Yes, I am with you…and one day hopefully it will be the case that schools offer more in terms of marketing training.
By the way– I not only do my marketing workshops in Vancouver, I am increasingly doing more in other cities, and also hold monthly free teleclasses on marketing.
AND, I am very excited about a new membership program I and another marketing coach will be offering via the Internet and telephone within the next few weeks.
I am so glad you are out there waking up all those acupuncturists to the importance of marketing!
I love reading your blog. I’m helping a acupuncturist establish himself and I have read your and alternativehealthpractice.com I know nothing about marketing, but I know what I want to see as a consumer. It’s great that I have a resource to learn about marketing specifically to acupuncture.
Keep up the great work!
Juliet, thank you for the information. I hope there are people here who will read that and perhaps be in a position not only to contact you for themselves, but for those they teach.
Joanna, thank you for comment. It’s hard to market as a private practice healthcare provider–of any sort. There are lots of marketing books, but so often what they teach there just doesn’t work in the trust building relationship that we have to be in. Good luck with your assistance to the acupuncturist!