No More Closed Clinics
Posted on February 20, 2008 - Filed Under Marketing Sites
I’ve been reading Burton Kent’s blog and read the free chapters of his ebook, which I heard about via a mass mailing. He’s offering help to those practitioners who might be thinking they need to close up their clinics.
You can read more about this over at his blog here. While you’re there, if you are an acupuncturist, you might consider getting his book too!
Where Do I Start?
Posted on February 13, 2008 - Filed Under Marketing Sites
Cristina Favreau over at the Savvy Entrepreneur has an interesting post on focusing on one goal at a time. How many of us have said we want to earn $X dollars a month or week and get $X patients? Instead of asking for both of these things, Cristina suggests that we focus on only one part of the goal. Do we want to focus on the actual increase or the patient load increase or perhaps some other measure of how well we are doing?
Very often we have so many goals that it can be difficult to focus on any of them. Check out her post if you think you’ll want to focus more.
Cristina made a great comment that isn’t exactly what she was focused on when writing her article. It’s more about being specific about your goals which then allows you to track them more easily. However, as I read through her article I got so excited at the different ways I felt thinking in terms of patients versus money and how easy it is to get off track when you are trying to build up patients AND money coming in.  They don’t have to be the same.  If you are worried about how much money your practice makes, you may need to rethink your prices, your insurance billing or whether to add something else to your practice to bring in more passive income. If you want to just build patients, then focus on that. It suddenly made sense that those two goals were not actually the same!
The Law of Attraction and Marketing
Posted on February 3, 2008 - Filed Under General, Marketing Sites
Jenn Givler over at Create a Thriving Business had an interesting post about the Law of Attraction. Jenn credits Mark Silver with his post about the same subject that made her think. So I am passing on the credit to the two of them for my thoughts on this post!
I’ve been reading about the Law of Attraction and trying to practice it for a few years. I’m not always good about remembering it.
Very often those who are new to the Law think that the Law of Attraction means that you visualize something you want and if you do that well enough, your desire will come to you. Few people get results when they try and implement the Law in this manner. I think that if you want something, you get very excited about it and act that way. Excitement manifests differently for everyone, but excitement is contagious.
If I want to be a successful acupuncturist with lots of patients, then wouldn’t I talk about that with the people I meet? Wouldn’t I start telling the lady in front of me at the grocer who complains of chronic headaches that acupuncture might help her? Wouldn’t I be fishing out my card because I’m excited to see her? Don’t I get excited to talk to anyone who asks about what I do? If I’m that excited about what I do, isn’t it possible that I’ll have more patients?
If I’m not outgoing and that’s too scary, won’t I at least be working at home on writing up flyers to tell people in words? If I’m not a writer either, maybe I’m looking around for someone who can write and design brochures for me. Maybe I can focus on creating dream patients who tell the world about everything they love and insist all their friends try it out. Maybe I start thinking about where people like that might hang out so that I can get cards or brochures to those places.
I have to ask the question, if you insist that you are excited about your business why wouldn’t you be doing those things? Why are you sitting around doing something else and not focusing on your business? If you are focused on something else, you’ll get results in that area but not necessarily more patients.
Yes, thought and excitement plays a huge role in the Law of Attraction. However, we also need to act in accord. If we can’t act like we want what we say we want, then maybe there’s more going on that we need to look at.
Who Else Targets Your Market
Posted on January 28, 2008 - Filed Under General
We all hear how important creating our niche is. There are many good reasons for having a niche. One good reason that we may overlook is that having a niche allows us to focus on places where we might find our ideal patient.
I’ve used myself and the other acupuncturist in town as an example of two practitioners who have very different ideals. She would be very successful marketing herself to physical therapists and chiropractors in town. She works with the same types of issues they do and their treatments can be very complementary. She is likely to find her ideal patients with PTs and Chiropractic.
My ideal patients have long term illnesses. They might go to a PT but not because of their main problem. They might go to a chiropractor, but more because the practitioner is part of their overall health care team. These people are far more likely to be working with a psychologist or perhaps know their nurse practitioner very well. They may know their oncologist, their doctor’s receptionist quite well. They probably go to support groups.
My patients need to be sought out in these areas, not at the physical therapist’s office. The more I can focus on my particular niche and who my ideal patient is, the more I can focus on who else is going to be working with my ideal patient and can give me referrals.
Craigslist
Posted on January 20, 2008 - Filed Under General
Do you market on Craigslist?
I was talking to a friend of mine who has been using it as a way to market herself more effectively. I have not tried it. I am wondering if anyone has and if so, how successful you have been?
I mean, Craigslist is free. It gets a lot of traffic so you have a lot of potential people to see your ad.
However, is it a place people looking for your services would go to search for you?
My friend said a lot of people in her area were using it. She was seeing a lot of advertisements that were offering half price visits or a free initial visit.
That type of marketing may bring in people, but is it going to bring in the patients you want to bring in? The people who respond to that are more concerned about dollars than their health. Do you really want to cater your business to them?
These are just some initial thoughts. I’d love to hear from people who have used Craigslist. What type of referrals are you getting from them? Is it working?
A Year of Living Sagely
Posted on January 1, 2008 - Filed Under General
This is slightly off topic but then again maybe not. How many of you read Deepest Health? Eric has set up a challenge for acupuncturists and students of acupuncture called the Year of Living Sagely. Each month is a different theme, based on the organ systems of Chinese Medicine.
While this is geared towards practitioners of Chinese Medicine, anyone with an interest in developing themselves can benefit from this year long commitment to self cultivation.
Eric is a wonderful writer and an enthusiastic student of Classical Chinese Medicine. As a result, Deepest Health is one of my favorite acupuncture blogs. I am looking forward to being able to link to him in February, when the topic is about business (and this is the topic of the blog).
Yes, I am taking the challenge although I am not likely to blog about it regularly. I think to have too much on that topic would be outside the scope of this blog. Deepest Health will have many thoughts on each topic, which encompasses all parts of our lives. You don’t have to be an acupuncturist to participate.
This month is scholarship. I’m not sure that January is the best month for me for scholarship. Winter is traditionally a time of rest and rejuvenation. January is the first month when the days begin to lengthen. Therefore, yang is gaining ground. It is still a passive time. The thinking is that scholarship allows us to rest and rejuvenate but still be a little bit yang with our work. In my life and rhythms, I always found January the worst month for study. While I am normally a sedentary person, in winter I ski. I like the physical activity with little activity of the mind. Perhaps this is because I find myself being so mental all during the rest of the year, that it is my body’s turn?
At any rate, I ponder these issues and consider how I can make scholarship part of this month in a way that suits my body. I have a running fascination with learning about yoga more deeply–not just as an exercise, but as a medicine as well. Part of this is requires practicing both the meditation and the movements so I may have to commit myself to learning more about this aspect of energy medicine.
Do you Really Have Competition
Posted on December 28, 2007 - Filed Under Marketing Sites
Jenn Givler writes a marvelous post on your competition, or lack thereof. It was particularly timely because I had just had a lecture on really focusing my target market and learning to describe it.
For example, there is one other full time acupuncturist in town. She has a lot of training that I don’t. She worked as a physical therapist for years before becoming an acupuncturist. When I go in to see her for neck and shoulder pain, I am in awe of the things that she can do that I’ve never learned.
Who is her target market? People with sports injuries. She also does some women’s health and depression.
So what do I like? I have a lot of background in psychology. I no longer say I treat depression. I found that people then expected acupuncture to be a long last Prozac. I ask for people who have complicated illnesses, that are having trouble dealing with them. I use fibromyalgia as an example, but I say it’s just a common example. I will tell people that another favorite patient is anyone who feels left behind and unheard in the traditional medical field. I don’t care about a 100% cure. I care about quality of life.
In an ideal world, she’d send those tough patients that are having a hard time healing to me because she likes to see results (although not always fast results but she likes to know she really is helping). I’m fine with those people. Most of my most successful cases have ended up leaving me to go into therapy and then feeling better. My patients and I know that I got them to a place where they could deal with the issues they needed to confront.
In my ideal world, I’d send injuries to this other woman.
Although we are both acupuncturists, we are not in competition. We have very different interests and talents.
Check out Jenn’s article with an eye to focusing on your target market.
It’s the Little Things that Count
Posted on December 22, 2007 - Filed Under Marketing Sites
I was just reading a post over at Advance My Practice. The post discusses why you should think about how your restroom looks. It is the small things, the attention to a thousand different details all designed to make your patient’s experience not just good but exceptional that counts.
How can you create an exceptional experience for your patient?
Know Your Stuff And Act Like It.
Posted on December 5, 2007 - Filed Under General
I have been trying to figure out how to say what I want to say about his situation for about a week now. I think the issue at hand for me is the lack of respect. It’s also a little about a lack of caring. Whatever we sell, I hope we can show compassion for our patients and respect for the medicine we practice.
The story I have is about a friend who is also a patient. My friend lives about an hour from my office. Given that I am not a specialist in her particular problem, I referred her to someone closer, who happened to a specialist in the problem she was seeking help with.
My friend showed back up at my office. Talking with her about what the other practitioner had done, so that I could make sure that there some continuity in the treatments, I found out that she had been given herbs. I asked nicely if he had told her what the herbs were for. Her response was a frustrating one to me.
“I think herbs are just a way to make a little more money off of each patient,” my friend responded quite frankly.
I realize that many of us have had classes where we learn that the more services we can offer our patients the more money we can make. I also know that supplements and herbal formulas often fall into the concept of adding services or products to raise the bottom line. To a certain degree I can understand that.
I am appalled that this practitioner cared so little for the patient that it was blatantly obvious that the only reason he was sending a formula with her was to help his bottom line. When we make choices to practice in a certain way or to add services, we need to respect the services we are offering. They can’t just be about adding to our bottom line. Patients pick up on this and they know that. They then have less respect for not only the practitioner but the medicine as well.
We can’t always expect that we will get feedback on this either. How does a patient approach this? There is something very impersonal about this type of selling. Patients may not like it, but they don’t always understand it’s not something they have to expect.
The more we know and respect our own services, the more our patients trust us. However, we need to offer that knowledge with compassion and understanding for each individual who walks through that door. If we do that, the bottom line will take care of itself.
This post has been slightly modified from the original as too many readers seemed to feel that this was about whether or not the practitioner gave out a good formula. It is not my intent to suggest that he did anything wrong. It is my intent to point out that when you send formulas with your patient (or make any recommendation for that matter) then need to understand why you are doing it for them. They should not walk out feeling as if they only reason something happened was so a practitioner could make more money.
Advance My Practice
Posted on November 12, 2007 - Filed Under Marketing Sites
I just learned about a blog on marketing for health care providers. It’s a group blog and their backgrounds include marketing, finance, and journalism.
Their focus includes doctors and dentists, who typically have larger practices and more capital to spend on marketing. However, many of their tips and ideas are applicable to other industries.  Check out Advance My Practice.
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