Randi Drinkwater is the president of Alternative Growth Streams (AGS), a company whose mission is to help alternative health care professionals grow their patient base. She’s also a colleague of ours from IntegrativePractitioner.com, where we both contribute to the growing community of practitioners.
We asked Randi for a case study from AGS’s work with CAM practitioners, and she was kind enough to share this story. Enjoy! -Dan & Tara
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For some time, Google’s been showing search results differently for geographically specific search terms. In English, that means when someone searches for something like “Chicago chiropractor”, “Las Vegas Acupunture”, or “Miami Massage Therapy” the results that come up look a little different.
To see the difference in the search results, click on these two links (they open in a new window):
Reader M writes:
I’m wondering what the best way is to network with other practitioners in a small area. I’m feeling uneasy, shy, and even slightly pushy just cold-calling people, especially in planning exactly what I want to say. I don’t want to inconvenience people, and I don’t want them to feel like I am trying to take business away from them.
We’ve touched on leveraging professional referrals (one of our 5 P’s), but I want to go into this in more detail and give you a step-by-step system that works.
I had an inquiry last week from Taradel, a print services firm that does some specialty print work in the CAM/holistic industry, particularly with chiropractors. If you’re in the US and considering any print work, particularly newspaper inserts, you may want to check them out. Here’s a snippet from what I received from them:
Business owners who visit Taradel.com are able to plan, design, target, print, and deliver full-color newspaper inserts and flyers directly into the homes of potential clients.
After the post on marketing with integrity, I thought it’d be useful to provide an example of putting the principles to work.
Referrals from existing patients are critical to growth. Good patients tend to refer other good patients, and that cycle is an important one for growing your practice with the kind of patients you want. If you read the post on marketing with integrity, you’ll know that aligning the type of patients in your practice with your health care and business philosophy is important.
It’s no secret that CAM practitioners, on average, aren’t keen on marketing. It isn’t something most students desire (or get) training in during school, and as practitioners, there’s a sense that marketing is just a little bit dirty – that it’s the sleazy side of business that simply must be done to get ahead.
It ain’t true. Welcome to marketing with integrity, where everyone feels good about marketing and more people get healthier.
With all the work that it takes to run a practice, it’s easy to forget that business is not all about you - it’s about your clients. There are a thousand little things that make up the client experience, but making things easy – simple, fast, pleasant – tends to keep patients returning and referring.
And of course, making it easier for your clients tends to come around and make it easier for you.
For their 50th anniversary a couple of years back, Chiropractic Economics posted a pile of free marketing articles on their website. There’s enough weekend reading here to keep you busy for a while…
http://www.chiroeco.com/50/market/index.html
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Practice Help for Chiropractors
Although it’s by no means the only method to promote your CAM practice, email marketing is one of the easiest and cheapest. Add to that the fact that a growing proportion of your patient base is going to prefer email as a means of communication, and it’s worth considering.
