Signs of the Times
Creating Signs that Educate, Motivate and Attract New Patients
By Peter G. Fernandez, DC

Well-designed and strategically placed wall signs are highly effective patient educators. A series of signs throughout your office can help tell the chiropractic story, and they prompt patients to ask you and your staff questions.

Outside Office Signs
When done properly, the outdoor office sign can be one of your best advertising investments. However, it remains one of the most overlooked. An exterior sign is a one-time investment that works 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, year in and year out. No other type of advertising does this.

The most important objective with outdoor advertising is to create a sign that beats out all of the other signs vying for the attention of everyone who passes by your office. The second objective is to sell, and your exterior sign only has a few seconds (the time it takes someone to drive or walk by) to accomplish this.

First compare your sign with all the other signs on your street. Your sign must compete with, and win over the other signs in size, shape, color and message. If all the other signs are square, a rectangular, triangular, or circular sign would be a better choice for you. If all the other signs are white with black print, perhaps a black sign with white print would work well for yours. If all the other signs are red in color, perhaps a blue sign would be a winner. Do something different to attract the most attention, yet always be professional.

The verbiage used on your sign is also important. Too much verbiage is a turn off and won’t attract new patients. A well-designed sign should bring in approximately four to six new patients per month.

An enhancement to the verbiage and graphics on your sign would be “time and temperature.” People’s attention will be drawn to your sign by this feature (what time is it? how hot/cold is it?), but it is a relatively expensive enhancement that should only be considered if your practice’s location is ideally suited for it.

Another attention-grabbing feature that may be added to your sign is a storyboard with a message that can be changed on a regular basis. Any one-sentence message that you use in your office to educate your patients can be placed on the storyboard. Change the message every week to constantly keep your drive-by people interested in looking for it and looking at your office. When these passers-by are suffering from back or neck pain or other health problems, they will know you can help them and where you’re located.

In some localities, you are allowed to use exterior electric storyboards, an electronic sign that automatically changes the messages. If a driver is parked at a red light and looking at your sign, he or she may see three or four different messages before the light changes. Message boards keep people looking at your sign.

Wall Signs
Strategically placed referral signs throughout your office will stimulate your patients to refer and/or prompt them to ask questions about their friends’ or relatives’ conditions that you will be happy to answer.

A good example of a wall sign is one that explains you take care of automobile accident patients, i.e., a “Have You Been in an Accident?” sign. Many of your patients don’t know that you treat accident victims. Often times when people are in an accident, they call their insurance company and/or family MD for advice on whom to go to. Your patients won’t know to go to you unless you tell them or have your walls tell them.

What about workers’ compensation injuries? The general public doesn’t know that DCs treat these injuries. Place an “A Word About Workers’ Compensation” sign on your adjusting room wall and your wall will help tell them.

Be sure there’s a “Our Practice Has Been Built on Referrals” sign at the front desk, a different “We Accept Referrals” sign in an adjusting room, a “Family Plan Available” sign in another adjusting room, a “Please Give Literature to Your Friends” sign, and a “Please Take a Business Card” display at the front desk. All these signs state you welcome referrals.

Also consider posting “The Most Common Conditions a Chiropractor Treats” signs in your office. That way, patients will realize the depth and scope of your practice, and more backache patients will refer headache patients, shoulder patients, knee patients, etc.

In your reception area, post a “Meet Your Doctor” sign that describes your qualifications. In addition, have chiropractic assistant course completion certificates professionally framed and hung in your X-ray room.

How about a patient of the month award, or an honor roll of referring patients? All of these signs say you do accept referrals and you appreciate patients who refer to you. When these signs “talk” to your patients, your referrals will increase.

Reception Room Resumes
Your professional resume (abbreviated curriculum vitae) should fit on an 81/2 by 11 sheet of paper. Copies of this resume should be placed in a literature holder located at your receptionist’s desk, or on the literature table in the reception room. This resume should include your picture, name, the college you attended, your areas of specialization, and any specialized course of instruction you have taken. This resume should also contain a brief discussion of the various conditions you treat.

Patients will take these resumes home with them. When they talk to their friends/relatives about your office, they may pass on a copy of the resume. Your office address/phone number should be included on the resume, so prospective patients can call and make an appointment if they are interested.

Rules Regarding Signs
All signs should be professionally made or should have a professional look and feel. Homemade-looking signs are tacky, and detract from the professional image you consistently want to be conveying to your patients and prospective patients.

Any signs placed on a wall should be framed. No thumb tacks, no scotch tape - no exceptions.Place three or four signs on each wall. Don’t overdo it; however, a single sign won’t make the impact you need, either. Use several.

Also, it’s important to realize that if patients see the same signs every time they come into your office, they soon don’t notice any. Therefore, establish a policy of rotating your signs every month. Take the signs from adjusting room #1 and put them in adjusting room #4. The signs in adjusting room #4 are to be put in the therapy suite. Signs from the therapy suite are placed in room #1, etc. When you change the signs regularly, it keeps your patients interested, stimulated, excited, learning and referring.

Dr. Fernandez has more than 20 years of experience as a practice management consultant. He has written hundreds of articles and 17 books on practice-building. He is based in Seminole, Fla., and can be reached at 800-882-4476; or visit his website at www.drfernandez.com.