Chiropractic Marketing During a Recession

With the economy continuing to worsen, almost by the day, many chiropractors are becoming more and more concerned about the future of their practice, income, and livelihood.

Questions like, "Are people going to be able to afford chiropractic care" and "What the heck's going to happen to my practice in the future" are only some of the thoughts and concerns many chiropractors are dealing with. And rightly so. The economy IS terrible and it IS more difficult than ever to be a successful chiropractic doctor. However...

It's in times like these that fortunes are made!

It's times like these that separate the "real-deal" from the "ordinary and average".

I believe that wholeheartedly because history has proved it time and again.

The question is... do you?

Do you believe that you can still thrive in a tough economy?

If not, the battle is already over. You've already thrown in the towel.

If you do believe it, than hopefully you understand that it's going to require change, adaptation, and flexibility.

Change, because times are different today than they were even just 24 months ago. You can't expect to practice and promote the same way you were then, and yet get the same (if not better) results. It's just not going to happen.

Adaptation, because you're going to need to adapt your practice and chiropractic marketing to what works. In other words, you can not continue hoping things are going to improve for you (and not get radically worse). You need to adapt what you are doing to the economic environment as if you were a chiropractic marketing chameleon.

Lastly, flexibility, because you need to be willing to do what works. As you may have heard me say before... and it's one of the profound pieces of advice I can give you... you must be mature enough to do the things that work in your practice, NOT the things you're most comfortable with. When you're in business for yourself, as you are as a practicing chiropractor, you MUST remain flexible enough to do the chiropractic marketing things in the best interest of your practice.

In combination, the willingness to change, adapt, and be flexible with your practice and chiropractic marketing, is what will help you THRIVE in these tough times while other chiropractors remain rigid and eventually go extinct.

So, how do you put these three in action in your practice?

Great question!

First, recognize that chiropractic marketing... especially now... is the engine that drives your practice-growth. Right now, you should be leveraging online chiropractic marketing technologies out the wazoo (i.e. email, online video and audio, webpages, etc.). Of course I recommend the Chiropractic Dashboard. These technologies are not only free in most cases or extremely low-cost, but, they can also be automated and are extremely effective right now.

You should be leveraging these chiropractic marketing technologies to educate patients on the value of chiropractic care in these somewhat stressful economic times. As well, you should be using regular online communication to establish yourself as a trusted health and wellness expert and resource, if you haven't already. Remember, you're really in the relationship business. People have a hard time quitting a relationship, but an easy time quitting a service.

Second, I recommend you begin conducting Virtual Health Classes for patients and prospective patients. You can do this with weekly teleseminars that you could legitimately do in your underwear from your kitchen table (not that I'm recommending that). This is a great way to overdeliver value to patients and add another step in your prospective patient marketing funnel with zero additional expense.

You see why I said you must adapt, remain flexible, and change. For most doctors this is completely foreign and outside of their comfort zone. But, it should be "whatever it takes".

Lastly, you need to concentrate as much on patient retention as you do on patient acquisition. Remember, the most expensive activity within any chiropractic practice is new patient marketing. Not too mention, 2 of the 3 ways to grow a chiropractic practice take place with existing patients.

Examine your chiropractic marketing system to see how often you're marketing new services, products, offers, etc., to existing patients to fulfill more of their needs and deliver greater value. If you're not making at least 8-10 new offers to patients per year for more "stuff" you're missing the boat.

The point is this...

You CAN thrive in tough economic times. You CAN!

It just takes some maneuvering.

Are you willing to maneuver?

I hope so.

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Does the Balanced Scorecard Dashboard Really Exist?

So many people make the mistake of thinking that the balanced scorecard and the dashboard are similar in terms of purpose and function. Some people even think that there is such a thing as the balanced scorecard dashboard. In essence, this common misassumption has certainly caused much confusion in the arena. Simply put, scorecards and dashboards actually serve different purposes. Yes, a lot of people use these terms interchangeably, which should not be the case at all. Each of these terms actually has different capabilities to their names.

But why the confusion? There are so many reasons circling the common act of confusing both balanced scorecards and dashboards. Firstly, both of these tools give you methods to track accurate results. With this purpose in mind, it is already easy enough to mistake one for the other. Secondly, both tools make use of dials, traffic lights, sliders, and other types of visual aids for the representation of their data. Both also have thresholds, alert messages, and targets to keep in mind. Lastly, both come with linkages and are used to drill down onto other reports and metrics being used by the company for related purposes.

The difference lies in the context as to how the tools are applied. Back in the day, managers and executives have already been dealing with so much information being thrown at them. All sorts of information would just be given at them to deal with, from sales reports and production to marketing and logistics. This was precisely why traffic lighting was conceptualized, wherein virtually all sorts of reporting then made use of this concept.

The balanced scorecard is meant to be strategic. The tool is used to align and direct the proper behavior both employees and employers should emulate while keeping in mind strategic goals and objectives that have once been formulated by the members of the company's executive team. Dashboards, on the other hand, are meant to be operational in nature. Dashboards exist for clearer data visualization. Your dashboard can easily give you a vivid representation of what is going on in the company during a certain period of time. Most of the time, organizations start by identifying what are the things that are already being measured and from there, a dashboard dial is then constructed. The drawback here is that dashboards do not really explain why certain things being measured really matter. They do not really explain why the company should give importance to a certain reported measure or the probable impacts or effects there may be, should a declining measure of an undesirable nature continue.

It is actually the scorecard that can do this - providing the information that dashboards are not capable of giving. A more in-depth analysis comes with the scorecard, as well as drill-down abilities, forecasting performance potential for the determination of motivational targets, and traffic light alert messaging. The balanced scorecard does not really begin with data that already exists, unlike the dashboard. The scorecard starts with the identification of strategic projects that the company can complete and the very core processes the company needs to improve on as well as excel in.

With this basic difference outlined, it is clearly fallacious to think that there is such a thing as a balanced scorecard dashboard. The basic differences should then be kept in mind.

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Article Marketing is The Key to Building Targeted Website Traffic

In today's increasingly Internet-driven global marketplace, it is essential that you have a Web site that not only helps to sell your products and services, but that is also highly visible online. Studies indicate that your Web site ranking on search engines such as Yahoo! and Google can literally make or break your business and can make a million dollar difference in your profits. Therefore, in order to be a success online, you must be diligent in your online marketing efforts.

Online marketing relies largely upon the use of keyword rich SEO (search engine optimized) articles to inform search engines as to the content and purpose of your Web site. SEO articles are generally about 500-words in length and include specific keywords at least once in every paragraph of the article. By including as many SEO articles on your Web site as possible, each with targeted keywords relating to your business, you increase your chances of driving traffic to your site.

How SEO Works

SEO relies upon proprietary algorithms that each search engine (such as Google and Yahoo!) designs and implements. The search engines employ "robots," which constantly browse Web sites to record data, similar to the way a satellite rotates Earth. As the robots browse Web sites, they record which sites have which keywords, links, and other pertinent information. The robot then reports that information back to the search engines, which use the information to rank the Web sites. The better your search engine ranking, the higher you will be on the search engine results page.

For example, if you sell apples online, then it is important for you to mention apples on your Web site as often as possible, including related terms, such as "fruit" and "Gala apples." (Listing the related terms will help to differentiate your site from a site relating to Apple computers.) The abundance of keywords will help to indicate that your site is very serious about apples.

When someone types the word "apple" into the search engines, your Web site may come up on the first page, if you have successfully optimized your site using SEO articles and other keyword online marketing strategies.

A Word of Caution

Keep in mind that many search engines are aware of the misuse of SEO articles and keyword marketing techniques. For example, some Internet businesses will publish articles on their sites that have very little relevant information. Instead, the articles will simply repeat a series of keywords so as to draw the attention of the search engines to the site. However, if a search engine comes across such an article, the site owner will be "blacklisted", which means that the search engine will remove the site from the database. Therefore, it is important that the SEO articles that you use to draw website traffic are not only keyword rich articles, but that they are also actually useful to visitors.

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Marketing Resolutions Worth Keeping in the New Year And Beyond

I will believe that conventional wisdom can be sexy. Even with new, emerging and "sexy" marketing technologies and techniques, we must remember fundamentals such as: know your customer, positioning, WiiFM ("what's in it for me" benefit-oriented copy), KISS ("keep it simple stupid"),plan the work-work the plan, etc. These seem simple, yet they seem to be absent more often that they should be. Conventional marketing processes are necessary to make the new, sexier marketing activities perform also.

I will make friends with IT. These days and into the future, without information technology, marketing is dead in the water. Bake cookies for the IT team if you have to! In an increasingly competitive market and certainly with the economic downturn, the fates of marketing and IT are tied together now more than ever.

I will test, test, test. Set aside 10% of your budget to test new opportunities. This will alleviate the numerous two-hour long meetings speculating about which marketing ideas will work. Also, using the "Opportunity vs. Effort/$" internal method of prioritization helps get things started. Remember this, "It is only expensive if it doesn't work." So, determine the cost-benefit relationship of media by testing.

I will have a dashboard. How many active customers do you have? What are your top 10 selling products? Who are your top customers? What is your gross margin? What is your current customer satisfaction rate? When everyone on the team can recite key performance metrics at a moment notice, you have a fine-tuned marketing machine! A marketing metrics dashboard that pops up on your computer everyday is a goal we believe all marketers should achieve. If you already have one, we say, "Bravo!" Other important concepts that should be top of mind so they can guide all decisions include: your organization's mission, core values; and positioning statement.

I will avoid "needy greedies." Tortoise or the Hare. Or a different version by Jim Collins, the Fox or the Hedgehog (Good to Great). Even in desperate times, the steady, focused approach is the successful one. Brandishing discounts, sales, and other "bribes" to get customers may help in the short run. However, knee-jerk reactions may lead to near-term decisions that may hurt you in the long run.

I will use a synergistic approach to marketing. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." By ensuring that you use Synergy in planning marketing campaigns, your overall return on investment (ROI) can be higher. Each one-shot activity yields limited results. By having all related activities well-coordinated and well-timed, each email, web banner, TV advertisement, magazine advertisement, and direct mail piece will not have to work as hard when they are accompanied by the other activities.

I will swallow my pride. When you've tried to optimize everything else-media, creative, offers...maybe it is the your product your service that needs to be reconsidered? improved? shelved? Also, instilling a culture of "which" idea instead of "whose" idea also helps. This mantra has served us well, "It is not about being right, it is about being successful."

I will finally keep this year's resolutions. Like our New Year's resolutions we make in our personal lives, the challenge is to keep these marketing resolutions beyond March 2009. By adopting some or all of the above resolutions, you may benefit from staying strong in down cycles.

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The Best Product Launch Marketing Plan Advice You'll Ever Get

When it comes to product launch marketing all the experts agree on one thing.

To have the absolute best chance of success when launching a product or service, new or old, online or offline, you have to use a product launch marketing plan that has been proven to work.

Why would you try and reinvent the wheel, and throw away your opportunity to have a stellar launch by ignoring what works and trying what has not been proven?

There is no shame in copying, or legally stealing an idea or strategy that has been proven to work across hundreds of markets.

There is shame however in, after weeks, months or even years of development, launching your product or service as a total flop because your launch plan did not work.

An extra tip - While it is ok and encouraged to swipe another business's launch marketing ideas. It is never ok to steal it verbatim without taking the idea and making it your own.

There is never any excuse for implementing a marketing plan which you have no right to use. And it really doesn't take much to make it your own.

The idea here is take the core ideas and principles, then adapt it to your market and your product. Change the words to suit your market's language. Change images and photos to represent your product or service. Use the strategy not the copyrighted materials.

If you do this you will have as much a guarantee as it is possible to have that your product launch will be a success and not a failure.

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Effective Online Blog Marketing Strategies That Eventually Guarantee Blogging Success

Anyone can succeed in online blog marketing for as long as they carefully draw a strategy and observe effective blogging practices. Just launching a blog does not necessarily mean that the following day you will have loads of visitors. There are millions of blogs on the internet and you need to plan well to make sure that you stand out from the rest.

Nowadays, internet access is everywhere thus I advice you begin a blog especially if you want to earn extra cash online. But the challenge would be to gain credibility from your readers. Coming up with a meaningful blog is crucial in ensuring online blog marketing success. Here I am not say that you have to be an internet marketing guru to begin a blog on website promotion, but the money making secret is to start from somewhere and build your way up hence gradually gain trust from your visitors.

Before you launch a blog, it is imperative to first research from well known online blog marketing experts, and share your findings with your audience based on facts. Explain to your target audience your interest and credential and at all cost avoid exaggerating. With time as you build your credentials you can update your profile. Note that even the internet gurus started from somewhere.

Measure your success by setting goals for your online blog marketing campaign. This could include setting revenue target, RSS feed subscription target or setting a target of the number of visitors you intend to have in a given time frame. This will help you to periodically assess your progress and thus evaluate which areas of your blog marketing you need to improve.

In any business, you need to be patient and persistence since nothing is achieved without a price tag. Online business success stories always detail on how someone spent countless hours trying to establish their business before they began reaping the rewards. Therefore, you too can make it real big.

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Marlon Sanders' Promo Dashboard (Review) - Stress Relief For Internet Marketing

Internet marketing and stress relief don't often occur in the same sentence. And what in the world does Marlon's Promo Dashboard have to do with stress relief anyway? Or with teaching us about stress relief. Read on and find out.

Imagine yourself in a situation where you're stressing over a huge big project, or way too long a to do list. Anyone, online or offline, probably knows that just about anything big enough to matter usually includes both of these elements.

There's an easy way to relieve that kind of stress though. Stop multi-tasking. Stop even thinking about what you'll have to do later. Just take things one task at a time, and while you work at whichever one it is you're working on at the moment, keep your focus right there.

I've been teaching this to my students for years: The key to being less stressed while taking a test: Approach it one question at a time. And that's exactly what Marlon Sanders' Promo Dashboard makes you do too.

Promoting a new product launch can be a challenging project with lots and lots of details to keep track of, and when any of the steps are missing, it all grinds to a halt.

And things seem to get ever more complex. In fact, just getting people to hand over their first name and email address is quite a project these days.

So what did Marlon Sanders do about those daunting tasks? He took that prime stress management approach of "one task at a time" and applied it to online promotion. The result: The Promo Dashboard, which makes product promotion, well, not entirely stress free, but much less stressful and overwhelming than I would have expected it to be.

Like all of Marlon's dashboards, the Promo Dashboard has 6 rows of 6 icons each, every one of which represents a step in the process. Within each icon, there is a detailed tutorial that explains what to do. If tools are needed, they are either provided, or a link to a free trial of the tool is given instead. And here's something for Mac users: for the first time, he has included instructions for Mac users as well!

Of course just looking all those icons - and seeing that once you click, there are multiple tasks to complete under each one of them, can feel pretty daunting too. Yes, that dashboard has got a heck of a lot of stuff on it.

But imagine what all that stuff would feel like without the dashboard. At least here it's all organized and served up in bite-sized pieces, thoroughly explained. There are even videos and audios, as well as graphics and screen shots.

So you can just focus on each of the thirty-six tasks one at a time and not worry about anything else until the one you're doing is done, and then you go on to the next one, and so on. Once you click on an icon, you get immersed in the little world of that particular task - and the other stuff is temporarily out of sight - and no longer clogging up your mind.

Now here's how I came up with the idea for this article: not only does the Promo Dashboard work as intended, but it's also a great model for other kinds of projects.

Marlon knows that of course. After all, he has applied the dashboard principle successfully to a whole range of internet marketing tasks:

He created the Info Product Dashboard, the Marketing Dashboard, the Affiliate Dashboard, and the Design Dashboard, not necessarily in this order, before he even got near the Promo Dashboard.

And they're gold mines for learning all sorts of things. For example, there was this one major task I knew I really needed to do (tracking), but I just never quite figured out how. Then I found the appropriate tab on the Promo Dashboard, and voila! Turns out it's actually easy.

Which means, the Promo Dashboard makes me feel like I have a personal tutor at my beck and call. It walks me right through things, step by step. I also found similarly easy explanations for tasks I had only recently learned the very hard and sometimes expensive way. I really wish I had had that dashboard sooner.

Would you like to create promotions that sell like crazy? You can -- with Marlon Sanders' Promo Dashboard And the best thing: the dashboard turns it into an (almost) fool-proof paint-by-the-numbers process.

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This Chiropractic Marketing Tip Is Almost Too Easy

If this doesn't get you excited, nothing will.

And, frankly, I probably shouldn't even be telling you this because it DOESN'T even require the Chiropractic Dashboard to work like crazy.

In fact, you can start benefitting from this powerful chiropractic marketing tip immediately after you finish this email.

Excited yet?

No?

Just hang tight, you will be. Trust me.

First, a question...

Have you ever stained a deck?

Yeah... a deck... a wooden one... have you ever stained one?

No?

Well, me neither.

I was absent the day the Big Guy upstairs handed out "handyman" skills.

Anyway, when I lived in New Jersey I had this really nice cedar and Trex deck installed overlooking my backyard of about a 1/4 acre.

It kind of had this mid-western feel to it... really nice.

If you're not familiar with Trex, it's sort of like a tough plastic that doesn't require any maintenance, and is sometimes used as decking.

Perfect for a 'home repair challenged' guy like myself.

The only maintenance it did require was an annual application of the cedar stain on the cedar.

Of course, I had to call our handy man in each year to do it for me, but nevertheless, it got done. :-)

I think we paid him around $400 or so to restain all of the cedar which was fine by me and good for him.

What amazed me, though, was that every year when it was time to have the deck restained again, if I didn't call the handyman to come back he would never call me.

And, because of that, there were many years where I didn't end up calling the handyman back for well over a year and a half, if not more.

What the heck does my deck and lack of maintenance skills have to do with your chiropractic practice?

A heck of a lot!

Here's why:

Most of your patients are just like me.

No... not bad with tools... but... busy.

Sometimes so busy, running around with tons on their personal To Do list that their chiropractic care falls by the wayside.

In some cases, it falls by the wayside for so long that they either forget about it altogether or, more likely, they become uncomfortable calling your office to schedule a new appointment, embarrassed that it's been so long.

What happens then?

They don't call and don't come back for care with you.

And, the typical chiropractic office chalks them up as a former patient... a lost patient.

Meanwhile, they're not lost.

They're just what we would call INACTIVE.

And, until you do something proactive to REACTIVATE them, they're going to stay inactive.

The good news is that statistics show over 50% of your inactive patients would become active again in your office if you simply contacted them about getting started again.

That's 5 out of 10 inactive patients you're currently not seeing right now, that would come back in to your office and start-up their care program again with you, if you simply contacted them.

Contact them, how?

Doesn't matter.

Postcard, letter, staff call, email, online video, audio postcard.

The key is just letting them know you're concerned about them, not angry or upset with them, and would love to get them back on the right track again.

And, if you can contact them more than once, for the ones who don't respond to your initial contact, even better.

Most of the time 3 properly written contacts to a list of 10 inactive patients will turn into 4 to 6 reactivated patients for you.

Really!

Now, because of the automation and ease that comes with email, and online audio and video, I'm personally partial to using the Internet with chiropractic marketing to reactivate patients.

But, again, you don't have to use the Internet.

However, with something online like the Chiropractic Dashboard you don't have to worry about sending out letters or postcards or whether your staff is making the calls to your inactive patients at the correct time or not like you do with traditional chiropractic marketing.

Online, with something like the Chiropractic Dashboard, you can have the 3 contacts being done for you, with email, audio, and video, all on total autopilot without you ever having to think about it.

Regardless, though, remember...

Don't lose patients and cash flow just because they haven't been into your office in a while.

Even if it's been months, it's important to recognize, with some simple contacts executed at the correct time you could start bringing back half of your inactive patients.

Think of the financial impact that would have on your practice and lifestyle.

HUGE!

Sidebar: I wonder how much money our former handyman is losing ever year by not contacting former customers about having their decks restained.

Probably THOUSANDS!

With some simple contacts he could probably reclaim most of that.

You too, in your practice, with your chiropractic marketing.

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