If you have a new service to offer, experts recommend you start with internal marketing.
When everyone thinks of marketing, they think of attracting new patients. Getting a complete stranger to come to your office is the most expensive and most difficult aspect of marketing. Experts recommend you should start in your waiting room, that’s internal marketing. Do all your patients know about all your services? DCs who offer nutrition often have patients who are just there for adjustments. Make sure patients know about the other kinds of conditions you treat.
You have a captive audience in your waiting room. You control the material they see; take advantage of that. Get rid of all magazines and other materials that do not support what you do. People magazine has drug ads—get rid of it. Everything in your waiting room should be about you and the services you offer. Here is what you should have instead:
- A newsletter. A current newsletter featuring health tips and exploring the kinds of conditions you treat
- Quizzes and questionnaires. People love to take health questionnaires. It will entice them to come to you with questions about their health.
- Promotional signs, banners and flyers. You can promote a specific health solution (following a single theme like wellness).
- Free health reports (targeting a single condition)
- Social media access. Encourage your patients to visit your social media sites. You can even have YouTube or TikTok videos set up in your waiting room.
Marketing in your waiting room is free. Not only does it encourage patients to try your new services, it also gets them to refer. “I didn’t know you treated allergies; my Aunt Meg is really suffering. Can you see her?”
Internal marketing for patients you haven’t seen for a while
It is easier to market to people who know and love you than it is to attract total strangers. Keep in touch with former patients. Birthday cards are a good idea if you plan on executing internal marketing. Email your newsletter to old patients. Make them an offer. Here are some things you can offer:
- Free health quiz or assessment. Have a quiz your patients (and potential patients) can take. You can even put a computerized quiz on your Facebook page or website.
- Free wellness evaluation. This is not a full exam. It is just some basic tests. Take blood pressure, pulse, height, weight and respiration. If you do kinesiology, do some basic muscle testing. Giving away services is controversial, but sometimes helpful to new docs or practices that need to grow.
- Free webinar or workshop. This is a great way to get new patients. People want to check you out before they come into the office. Even if only a few people come to your event, most of them will become patients.
- Free reports. For your wellness plan, you would give a free report about wellness. You can also have reports about allergies, natural pain control, digestive disturbance, etc.
The materials you send should have offers in them. Your newsletter can offer a workshop or webinar, a free report or quiz. Your report should offer a consultation. Everything they get from you should encourage them to take the next step.
People who know you, but haven’t been to the office
These are people you may do business with, like hairdressers or insurance agents. You may know them from service clubs or see them socially on occasion. Include them in your email list; send reports and newsletters.
Marketing to strangers
There are only two kinds of marketing: direct response and informational. Here are the basic differences:
- Informational marketing. Provides the audience enough information to make an informed decision and then hoping they do. Ads contain things like where the doctor graduated, how much experience he has, his services and that he passed the National Board. Did the ad really create any interest? Does it create a desire or solve a problem? Usually not.
- Direct marketing. Uses a targeted message to create interest. It makes an offer and tells the audience exactly what action to take. There is no thinking or consideration involved. It specifically says what you will do for the patient and tells the patient what action is necessary. It targets a single condition—not a laundry list of things you treat.
You see a lot of informational marketing in healthcare. “Our board-certified doctors are waiting for your call.” Nobody cares—they expect their doctors to be qualified. Nobody cares about where you graduated from, your extra degrees, your techniques or other mundane information about you and your practice. Nobody cares how long you have been in business. This kind of advertising will not fill your office with patients. People don’t care about you — they care about what you can do for them.
The problem with direct marketing in healthcare is that your reputation is vital to success in your practice. You can use direct marketing, just do it tastefully.
In healthcare, you must be careful about direct marketing. Offers must be crafted in a way to enhance your reputation—not detract from it. People do not go to bargain basement doctors. Because of this, health practitioners tend to do either informational marketing or nothing. In developing your message, you must be tactful. Your message to patients should create interest, but also communicate confidence and professionalism.
The rule of five
There is a widely used tactic in internal marketing called the rule of five. It simply means a consumer has to see something five different ways before he or she will act on it. There are dirt-cheap and free ways to get the message out there.
- Co-op. Find a related business or talk to a friend or patient who owns a business. Offer to promote that business in your office by displaying their cards or flyers. In exchange, that business will display your newsletters, quizzes and other promotional material.
- Signs and window displays. If your office is street-level, put signs or posters in the window.
- Your website. Add fresh content regularly. Publish a newsletter and collect emails of people who sign up for it. Make informative reports available to download. Have something interactive, like a wellness quiz, to keep them engaged.
- Learn keywords to improve SEO. You may also consider creating several landing pages, each for a different condition, where the potential new patient can download a report.
- Create an internet presence. Go beyond having a website. Write a blog, use social media, comment on other sites and use YouTube and TikTok.
- Join a referral group. Make your newsletters and reports available to members.
These are, of course, free ways to get your message to potential new patients. You can also pay for better SEO. You can use Google ads or advertise on social media. Just make sure to write an ad with a compelling headline about a single condition.
Of course, the ultimate marketing tool is to get the patient better. Continue to hone your skills, learn from every difficult patient, and, if you can’t help them, find someone who can. Build a reputation that says you care about your patients.
Final thoughts
America’s annual healthcare bill is $4.5 trillion ($13,500 for every person in the U.S.). If practices like yours succeed, that bill can be drastically reduced.
PAUL VARNAS, DC, DACBN, is a graduate of the National College of Chiropractic and has had a functional medicine practice for 34 years. He is the author of several books and has taught nutrition at the National University of Health Sciences. For a free PDF of “Instantly Have a Functional Medicine Practice” or a patient handout on the anti-inflammatory diet, email him at paulgvarnas@gmail.com.
