Full Access: 8 Marketing Numbers Every Chiropractor Should Know

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Daniel: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Tuesday webinar series, Chiropractic Economics webinar for doctors of chiropractic. I’m Daniel Sosnoski, Editor in Chief of Chiropractic Economics. Today’s webinar, “Eight Marketing Numbers Every Chiropractor Should Know,” is sponsored by Mudlick Mail. And as always, our program is being recorded and will be archived at Chiropractic Economics’ website, chiroeco.com/webinar, for one year. Our expert is on board here today to speak with you, and when his presentation is complete, we will follow with a question and answer period.

You can submit questions throughout the presentation by clicking on the appropriate icon on the right side of your screen. We’ll do our very best to get to all of your questions, but if we run out of time, we’ll forward the remaining questions to our expert and notify you via email when the answers are posted on our website, chiroeco.com/webinar.

Our presenter today is Tim Ross, the president of Mudlick Mail, who’s here to help you understand the key metrics you need for successfully marketing your practice. Tim, thank you for taking the time to participate in our webinar and for sharing your expertise with marketing analytics, and helping our audience understand how they can leverage their data to gain more patients. Before we get started, Tim, please give us a brief background on yourself and your work with small business marketing.

Tim: Absolutely, Dan. I appreciate that. Let me just go ahead and get to the right screen here. President of Mudlick Mail, one of the fastest growing businesses in the country. We do specialize in the chiropractic in medical advertising. I think, in today’s world, especially in the chiropractic industry, it’s real critical to be able to find the right people that need your service, and then to be able to target them with the appropriate message that will drive them in. So that’s becoming a really great opportunity for a chiropractor to take advantage of it.

For us, personally, we work with thousands of businesses around the country. We’re mailing actually closer to 12 million direct mail pieces each month. We’ve obviously…we have been rated as a top 10 direct mail company for the last couple of years, and it’s just how we take more of a holistic approach to marketing. I think a lot of doctors that we work with just appreciate the fact that not only are we helping them with not just putting ink on paper but we’re actually kind of going through the entire process with them on how you market, where you market, what do you do when they call in, how do you measure it?

So it’s just a different holistic approach where you’re more in the trenches with the doctors. So we’ve really appreciated some great success, Dan.

Daniel: Okay, well, very good. Now, Tim, would you like to go ahead and begin our presentation?

Tim: Excellent. Yeah, we’ll go ahead and get started. These are the things that we’re gonna talk about a little bit today, the eight marketing numbers. I think this is important not just in the chiropractic industry, but this is important for every person’s business, to know real key factors. They call them KPIs, a lot of times you’ll hear, key performance indicators.

And so these are the things that I think are really important for us to talk about today. Patient acquisition rates, that is, what is your rate of acquiring new customers? Patient attrition rate: how many are you losing? Website sessions: how many times are people actually going on your website? Form completions: so the ones that are going on your website, are they bouncing off or are they actually filling out a form? Do you have a form or something for them to communicate with you? What are your monthly sales? Are you tracking those annually as well? How much does it cost per lead? And what is the cost per acquisition? So, we’re gonna go through these particular questions and then we’ll leave some time at the end to answer any additional questions you might have.

So let’s first start off with patient acquisition rates. So, patient acquisition rates, it’s basically the cost of convincing a potential customer to buy a product or service. And so that’s basically, what are you marketing? What’s your marketing and advertising spend? You divide that by how many customers have come in from that spend, and that kind of tells you what your rates are. Now, this is important for us to know because we need to understand and be able to monetize, how much are we spending at a customer end, and then how much is that customer actually worth?

A lot of customers are worth a one-time spend, some might be worth a year or two years or three years. So, understanding what is that given time period where you can have value for that customer? Meaning, what’s their lifetime value? In the chiropractic industry, that’s pretty predictable. Meaning, when they come in, there’s a plan that we put these folks on, and there’s some that have more intense plans than others, some come in for more routine visits, some are coming in for specific ailments. So there’s more of a regimen or a routine involved. And so it’s key for us to understand what is it worth to us, a patient worth to us? And so that is a key indicator.

So when you’re figuring out how much you’re spending, a lot of times businesses, they just don’t know how to put the numbers together. And so it’s real critical that you understand, yes you might be spending, say, $10,000 to drive in the customers, and yes maybe you only got $5,000 worth of money from that first month that you spent that money. But if that customers is gonna come back over and over and over, then really, the money that you’ve made off of that customer is a lot more residual, and so there’s a longer term profitability there.

So we need to make business decisions on our marketing based on, what is that customer actually worth? And then, what’s the margin on that customer? If you’re charging $200 for a visit, how much of that is gross profit, net profit? And so, you know exactly how much goes back in the advertising spend, and you know how to make those calculations. So, really understanding that’s a real critical component.

The other one is a strategy, so, your marketing strategy. There are lots of ways to touch customers, and I think as business owners…and I myself use multiple touches, not just direct mail. And so, the acquisition strategy for you may be different than other offices. The key thing that everybody knows about is a website. You have to have a basic website. Well, a lot of times what people don’t understand is, what do I need for that website? What kind of…how much money should I be spending on the website? And how much money do I pay for pay-per-clicks and all these other things that they try to tie on to those websites?

So what I’ll tell you, with small businesses, most people are gonna check you out, obviously, off your website, right off the bat. But from there, you just want a localized search. You want people in your local area who are convenient, that you’re convenient for as far as distance-wise to be able to find you. And so, I think between that and the specific ailments that you’re trying to reach, there are certain specialty, depending on how specialty and how granular you need to go, your spend on your pay-per-clicks and your AdWords have to be proportionate to not only the type of customers you bring in and what their revenue opportunity is, short and long-term, but where do you need to get them from.

And so, a lot of times some of the problems businesses have is they just overspend in that category. Because Google will gladly take your money. And so you’ve gotta be very careful and very targeted on what you do. Direct mail is something, obviously, we’ve talked about a lot of times for our industry, for the industries that we work with. It’s really easy to build a target of someone with diabetes or someone with a thyroid problem. And so, when you can target that and send a postcard to a person who has that particular ailment, and track it to the mailbox, it’s very easy to track the redemptions and measure it.

Classified ads, I’ve had a lot of doctors use newspaper, and it’s done very well for them. It’s a good place to add, in a paper. Typically small town and typically in areas where, depending on what you’re going, if it’s retirement area, you’re looking for that type of a customer or you’re looking for a real specific kind of customer, the key is, are you putting it in one of the most read areas of the newspaper? And then, are you doing it consistently? And then, do you have something compelling on there?

Seminars and dinners is by far one of the best ways to convert customers. One of the biggest things that when we work with doctors, majority of the doctors that we do postcards for do it to generate a response to go into seminars and dinners. And so that’s a great way for a one-on-one interaction with the doctors, to ask questions, it’s more intimate. And so, the conversion rate from there to the office, and the office into a treatment plan, are very high because of that intimacy there.

Social media, we talked about. It’s kind of an over-talked about thing in our industry, in our world of marketing. I think it’s important, but I think a lot of people…people don’t follow businesses a lot of times at that level. It’s great to use social media to interact with your customers, especially your patients, your current staff. Those are great ways to interact. And so, I’m not saying don’t do that. I’m saying, understand what that social media does, just gives you an opportunity to interact with your customers. It’s not necessarily an acquisition strategy. Although I’m sure with…again, you have good relations with your customers, that will build referrals for you. And so, there’s definitely a need to do that.

We talked about pay-per-clicks. Again, important to be very localized and targeted. It can be very expensive. Most people really shouldn’t have to be spending more than $300 or $400 or $500 a month. If you have a more specialized service, that could go up. But again, it varies per type of industry that you’re going after, type of customer, type of patient.

Billboards. Again, just another thing for you guys to take a look at and use. I will tell you, in the chiropractic industry that we work with, it’s usually more used for directional purposes. So, it’s just really hard to communicate a message in the short time frame for people to pass by. But it’s definitely something you guys are getting probably people coming up and talking to you about. I’m not sure if that’s a great fit from an acquisition standpoint. It’s hard to track it and measure it. The same thing with radio. Again, a very expensive, a lot of production cost, it’s hard to track it, you don’t know the person listening meets your criteria.

It’s the same with TV and radio. I’m a big advocate, if you’ve listened to us at all around the country or these different webinars, a big advocate of ROI. Meaning, if I’m spending $1,000, how do I track that I got $1,000 in response? Well, actually, if I spend $1,000, I might need to make $2,000 just to cover my $1,000 marketing spend.

If you’re using a marketing vehicle on this list or anything outside of this list, and you can’t track it and judge it and make sure you’re getting a return, that’s when, as a business owner, you’ve gotta decide, is it worth using it? Because there’s gonna be lots of sales guys out there that are gonna have great stories and case studies and testimonials, and all kinds of data that they maneuver. I’ve been in the television and the radio industry prior to this company. And so there’s data that’s gonna be out there. At the end of the day, nothing works for everybody the same. For you guys as business owners, can you track it and measure it and get a quantifiable documented return? And if you can’t, that’s where I would be looking to maybe move my advertising dollars to another marketing tactic that would be better suited for you guys.

Patient attrition rates. Again, this is another key, key thing for you guys. This is a combination of, “Am I targeting the right customers coming in in the first place?” And then from a staffing perspective, “Am I handling the customers, the patients the way I want to?” So, all you do is, you’re adding your short term or new patients and dividing that by the number of your total patients for the year. A great way to do it is you review the past 12 months, categorize your patients into different groups. And then once you’ve done this, you can kind of determine, how many patients are leaving and why are they leaving?

But it’s important for you guys to understand that if you get…you spend your money, you spend $1,000 or $2,000 to drive customers or patients in, and if you’re not able to get that long term benefit from that customer, that’s where we have to figure out, what changes can we make? Do we need to change the way we handle the phone calls? Do we need to change the way we verify appointments or follow up? Do we need to have a more precise treatment plan or a program in place when they get there? So there’s a process, the patient comes in, what’s the next step? What’s the next step? What’s the next step?

I’m a big process guy. The most successful businesses in the country can really boil down their company’s success to systems and processes. It’s all about accountability, measure and track. And then follow up, follow up, follow up. So, a very big part of a successful business is understanding attrition.

So, retention strategies. Kind of falls right in the line as the next one goes…as we’re talking about attrition, is, how do we retain these folks? Your database, you have your customers right in front of you, all the patients that have come there, [inaudible 00:12:45], their past. There’s lots of ways to reach out to these guys. Current ones, there’s appointment reminders, whether you do mailings with postcards. You can do text mailings, you can do phone calls. But are you following up with that customer, that patient before?

And if they don’t show up, are you following up with them afterwards? Maybe they forgot, maybe something happened with one of their children at school or something happened at work. A lot of times patients, they don’t show up for something and it’s nothing to do with us as a business. But if we don’t follow up with those folks, then we won’t know. And a lot of times, either they’ll forget about it, it becomes a low priority, maybe they’re embarrassed that they missed it. There’s a lot of reasons, but simply reaching back out to them is a great way to get them back in the door.

Saying things like “We miss you’s” and the…if you have different products and services, I think that’s critical for you guys. When people come in, do they have supplements? Are there diet plans? Are there exercises, stretching? What else can you do? Is there videos? What else is there to tie into your customer so that you can build more of a relationship than just maybe basic chiropractic services or basic…maybe you’re doing cold laser therapy, or whatever you’re doing, what else could you build in so you become more of a staple in that patient’s life?

And then again, educational. People adjust as consumers. You and me, when we feel comfortable with someone and they know what they’re talking about, there’s a sense of credibility there, that starts to build that fabric of trust which then allows people to wanna continue to do business with you, and refer other people to you. Which referrals are the least expensive way to get the best customers.

So, some other things we talked about here. Again, the email marketing. You guys should definitely be grabbing the emails of your customers, of your patients, so that there’s a great, inexpensive way to stay in touch with these folks. Seminars and dinners, again, as we mentioned earlier, a very high conversion way to do these. We work with a lot of different chiropractic organizations. Freedom Practice Coaching is an example. Those guys really have it wired in on the seminars. If that’s something you like to do, it’s just one of many ways. All the doctors who I work with don’t use those, but some that do, do a really good job. You just gotta like to talk to people and build those relationships. If you can do that, it’s a home run for you.

And then again, social media connections. I think the place for social media is it’s the great way to stay in contact with your existing patients. You can offer all kinds of suggestions, nutrition, health, exercise. It’s just a great way to tie in to your customers while your patients are not at your office. So that is a great retention strategy, as I mentioned earlier.

Okay, as we keep moving on, website sessions, aka visits. Real critical for us to kind of evaluate that. So if you have…and everybody has a website. There’s a dashboard, there are analytics built into that website, regardless of how robust that site is, where you can get some basic information. And the basic stuff that you wanna know is, how many people came on to the website? And when they were on the website, were there certain pages that they spent time on? And if they did, how long did they stay on those web pages? The idea is, how are these customers engaging actively with my website? Which is kind of like your first office person, your front desk person. This is their first experience of you. So, how are they doing?

So it’s important because we can then take that, from a marketing and advertising, we can look at the response rates. Are people that we’re sending postcards or emails or doing dinners, are they going to the website? What information are they clicking on? Are they filling out a form and then sending it in? So it just allows us to understand and gauge where people are coming from and what they look like.

And then, prospects, laying prospects on high conversion pages. For us at Mudlick Mail, we really track where people are coming from, what pages they land on. And of the pages they land on, which pages converted better? So if I have a bunch of people landing on my home page and they continuously bounce off, they just don’t stick around, they don’t fill out forms, they don’t engage at all, then I don’t have my front page set up to where it is educational, or interesting, or compelling enough for them to want to learn more. Or, somehow within the search criteria, my website popped up and it was nothing that they were considering doing, and so there’s some negative keyword issues there.

If you guys use someone to manage your pay-per-click program, there are times when people will land on your site inadvertently, and it’s because there’s some kind of keyword in your site that’s tracking the wrong kind of person. Well, you can figure that out and eliminate that word so that you don’t get charged the pay-per-click cost for someone inadvertently landing on your site. That can save you a lot of money.

But understanding the ones that are bouncing off, how do we fix that? And then the ones that are converting, how are they converting? A lot of times, do you have a good call to action, something that compels these guys to listen, look, fill out a form? And so, that’s why those high conversion pages or where do they land allows that conversion that’s important to you guys.

And then, again, just the overall look and feel of this thing. You’ve gotta have…your site’s gotta be seamless. It’s gotta look like it’s one site that’s kind of seamless together. But again, the idea is, through these unique website sessions or visits, there’s a lot of great information that you guys can get from this. And so, if you’re having troubles getting that kind of information, I’d seek out the person who helped build your site and get into some of the analytics. If you’re using Google or Bing or any of those guys from a pay-per-click standpoint, there are dashboards that you should have access to, that you can kind of see where people are coming from, and how long they’re staying on there, and how much money you’re spending per keyword.

It’s just a great way for you to kind of stay engaged. And as a small business owner, sometimes it’s hard to spend the time doing that but it’s definitely a critical component for you guys.

The one thing that I’ve spent a lot of time talking with business owners on is the web form completions. A lot of times people get onto your website and they just don’t know how to communicate with you. There’s a phone number but a lot of times people, they either don’t know what questions to ask or they don’t wanna talk on the phone. For whatever reason, they don’t wanna engage with you. And so, you’ve gotta give people multiple ways to contact you, and that in itself will improve your conversion rate.

And so to get your conversion rate, all you’re taking is, as mentioned here on the slide, is you divide the total number of conversions with the total number of visitors to your site. You define the conversion, as I mentioned here, and set the value of each conversion. Meaning, a person who fills out a form, signs up for your email and newsletter, completes a new patient form, monetary transactions. There’s a lot of ways to define a conversion. The goal for you guys is, do we have an easy way for customers to interact with you, for patients who have an interest in talking to you but don’t have to pick up the phone? Is there a way for them to reach out to you?

A lot of them have questions [inaudible 00:19:52] and waste your time or their time. They have some questions about what ailment you work with, or what special services or what’s wrong with…how does this specific therapy work? And how do you guys interact nutrition with your services? And so, a lot of times if we can just provide them some ways to interact with you by filling out a form or sending you an email, you’ll improve your conversion rate.

There’s some different considerations I’ve listed on here – marketing, advertising, response rates, other considerations. You’ll get some folks that will bring in some kind of offers. You can look at how many calls for us. The ones we use for our customers, we have tracking numbers on ads with local numbers that belong to our customers. It allows us to kind of see how many calls came in, and then we can…our calls, for us, are actually recorded as well. So not only we see how many calls came in but they’re recorded. So we can make sure, “Hey, are our front counter folks handling the calls the way we want them to?”

And it’s not a gotcha thing, it’s more of a training thing. It’s very easy to turn new customers off by getting voice mails, nobody calls them back. You’ll see missed calls, people just won’t even leave a message. So our program allows you to see who missed the calls and then we can proactively follow back up with them.

But again, just making sure that we have customers that are being handled the way we want to. And then, obviously, you can look at your patient count, when you do your marketing and advertising, is your patient count up or down? And a lot of times the best way to compare that is not month over month, but year over year. Every industry’s got their seasonality. So look at what you did in September of last year compared to this year. If you didn’t make any changes and you’re doing the same thing you did last year that you’re doing this year, then unless there’s something that happened in your market, some sort of competitive issue or some sort of construction or geographic or environmental thing happened, or something with a product or service you’re offering got some sort of negative publicity, likely you’re gonna do the same thing you did the year before, give or take.

And so when you’re looking to impact what you did, it’s a key to understand where you’ve been and what kind of growth, what kind of changes do you wanna make to have a different response this year. So tracking your phone calls, as I mentioned here, not a gotcha thing but it increases your ROI, your return on investment, by a lot. And a lot of times the main reason it does is it just keeps the folks on the front counter alerted to how you want the phones answered. And then more importantly, it allows you to proactively reach out to people that are handling the calls early on in the marketing campaign. And for my company, we’re listening to the very first couple of calls when that campaign goes out.

Because if there’s a change that needs to be made, we wanna make that change right off the bat and not wait 30 days so that we can…if we do that early, we can impact the campaign early so that we have a positive impact, and we can get the response we’re looking for. So that’s how that ROI gets improved.

Monthly sales. As we kind of work our way through the presentation [inaudible 00:22:47 to 00:22:50] sales are critical. How do you measure it? Year over year, month over month? The things that you definitely should consider are your seasonal fluctuations and other things that might economically…the economics in your market that might impact you. But I will tell you, demand for chiropractic care is exploding. It’s an $80 billion industry.

So, when we talk to doctors that are out there starting practices, a lot of times the difference between the ones that are making the ton of money, that are seeing just tremendous growth and those who aren’t, it all comes down to, are you marketing your business properly? And then when the customers get there, are you handling them…is there a system and process in place to handle those customers? And then that would include some sort of a follow up process and then a way of staying in touch with those folks.

And so if you’ve built that program in here…and again a lot of the folks that we deal with that have a lot of success, revolve around some kind of an outside dinner seminar. I think the folks that we’ve worked with that have done well without dinners and seminars are those that have very efficient front counter staff and systems and processes within their organization where they tie those folks in to a specific program and they’re building credibility early. And those are the ones that do really well. But it’s the greatest industry to be in, and every year it gets more and more recognition of being very standard medical practice use. So we’re very excited to have this industry continue to grow.

But then, annualized sales. This is the sales data that can give business managers and owners an idea of what your growth is, what’s your business growth each month or each year? What months seem to be the best months? Which ones seem to be the worst months? You may structure your marketing and advertising around those patterns. So you may market a little bit more, do more seminars, do something different during those slower months. And then the ones that you’re really busy, you can maybe back off a little bit. And so, if you know what your sales are from month to month, it really gives you a better idea of how to market your business and how to control the process systems that are going on that impact your business from a sales standpoint.

But it’s real simple. As you look at the time period covered by the number of your annual…that you had, each month, you divide it by 52 weeks, by the time period to determine the number of periods per year. So I won’t go through the calculations, but to make it real simple, it’s, take a look at your customers that come in each month, each week and each month, and you can determine, what are your best weeks? What are your best months? And then, in addition to that, what services within each week, within each month, tend to do better for you? And do you know the margins to those and the sales that go with that? And that can help you decide, where do you wanna spend a lot of your time?

We’ve had a lot of folks that they started doing some basic chiropractic adjustments, then they started working on thyroid, and they were working in the thyroid industry, they tried some diabetes. Diabetes took off for them. In their market, diabetes was a better ailment to stay focused on than thyroid. So they pushed thyroid. They still handle thyroid but they don’t spend marketing dollars on that. They focus on diabetes because that’s a great return for them. And they can track it, and they know how many customers come in, how much they spend, when they come in. And so, again, knowing that data is critical. And then building that consistency with your marketing program. You can’t mail out or market or do whatever you’re deciding to do once or twice, and expect things to take off. You’ve got to build some consistency in there.

These last two are really important to me as a business owner, and they should be for you guys as well. Is, what does it cost per lead? Based on how much you spend in your channel…your channel is your marketing tactic. How much are you spending to get that person to come in? And so, that’s the key here so we can kind of measure what’s the value of the opportunities that are created by each channel. You may get…and I just listed whether it be direct mail or pay-per-click, print advertising, telemarketing and email. You can list them all out there. And now analyze and determine the dollar value of these sales opportunities. Because what you needed to understand is, how much money…it really becomes a math problem of, how much do I have to spend? If I spend X amount of dollars…or if I spend $2,000, I’m gonna get 30 patients, 30 leads.

And out of that 30 leads, maybe I close seven or eight of those. So that’s the calculations you need to be looking at. So if you go back to your business, say, “Okay, for the month of September…” Let’s use August, “For the month of August, I spent $2,000 on this program. It generated this many phone calls and leads of people who came in to my practice. Of that, I’ve closed this many.” And so that’s the calculations you need to know. How much did you spend and how many people came in, then how many did you close? Because the next one’s even more important, is the cost per acquisition, the cost per sale. What’s your average revenue per customer? So when you get a customer in, how much are they worth?

And what did it cost you to get that customer to come in the door? So I think it’s important to really understand that. This here, it just kind of gives you a basic understanding of cost per acquisition by select direct media. If you look at the bottom, you look at email, mobile, social media, direct mail, paid search, internet display. Now I’ll tell you, every tactic works differently in different markets. A lot of it has to do with the systems and processes you have in place at your practice.

But understand too, response rate can be lower. Like, for instance, email, response rate’s really low but the cost is extraordinarily low. And so, your return on that is gonna be, especially if you’re going after existing customers, will tend to be higher. If you’re going after new customers, it’s a very hard tactic to use. So, just understanding how much revenue is each customer worth, and then when they come in, how much…and how much are they worth weekly, monthly and annually? And then how much did it cost for you to get that customer in? So, seven and eight kind of tie together.

Well, that’s really kind of the end of the presentation. One of the things I was telling Dan when we got on the phone was, it’s real critical that you kind of understand your market area and you understand where your customers are coming from. So what I do at Mudlick Mail, and I offer all the ChiroEco folks, is that you can contact Mudlick Mail and we will give you guys a complete analysis of your area. Whether it be a list sample saying, “Well, how many people are diabetic in my area? How many people with thyroids? What would it even look like?”

I would encourage you guys, before you buy anything, before you spend anything, truly understand who’s in your market, “What are my opportunities?” Because you’ve got to then look internally and say, “Well, what’s my practice best suited for? Where do I spend my time? Am I in the diabetics? Am I in thyroid? Am I cold laser? Am I just general practitioner? Where do I wanna spend my time? What are my expertise?”

And then for us, what we’ll do for you is, we’ll tell you, “Hey, these are your options. This is what your market looks like, this is where you could focus your time, and you can build more of a plan.” I think when people just kind of pick up the phone, they call a media, someone to buy media, we really make sure there’s a plan in place. And so I just wanted to offer, Dan, that out to these folks, is that, it’s just a great way to get basic information and so that you then can decide, “What are my next steps?” To me, you gotta know what is the step before you can decide how to act. And so, I just wanna offer that up to everybody, Dan.

Daniel: Okay. Well, that’s been extremely informative. And we have been collecting some questions from the audience. So, I’d like to go ahead and move to the question and answer section at this point.

Tim: Okay.

Daniel: First of all, you’ve been mentioning a number of marketing metrics that chiropractors can and should be tracking. So the first question we have, a doctor would like to know, “How often should I be reviewing marketing metrics like these?”

Tim: You know, for us, it’s as granular as you want to be. I would say, at a minimum, you need to be evaluating these things on a monthly basis, which means, first off, if you don’t have access to your website analytics, I would get access to it. Find out who’s helping you do it, and they’ll show you the access. If you’ve got someone not doing your AdWords for you on Google or Bing, get involved with that. If you’re doing it yourself, you’ll have access to those dashboards. So, ideally, you should be looking at it on a week to week basis, because you can kind of get a good feel for how your weeks are going. But at a minimum, you’re gonna want to at least evaluate what you’re doing monthly. And then you can build in all your other marketing tactics.

Whatever you’re spending on marketing throughout the month, you should have a chart on how much do you spend, and then throughout the month you’re calculating how many patients can directly be attributed to that particular marketing spend, and what revenue is associated with that. So by the end of the month, you’ve kind of built your plan on, “Okay, here’s what my return is.” And then whatever marketing company you’re working with or media buyer, should be able to walk you through the return and help you get to the numbers you need to be, or as an owner you have to make some changes. Good question.

Daniel: All right. And another question for you. This doctor says, “We have a very small marketing budget and do the same marketing tactics every year. Does it even make sense to track and measure?”

Tim: Oh, absolutely. I think, as a business owner, if you’re not tracking the dollars that you’re spending, then it’s really challenging for me as a business owner and for those… For Mudlick Mail, I’ve grown this company out of the side of my house basically, and we’ll do a little over $44 million in sales this year. And so for me, tracking is vital. So every dollar I spend, I demand a response, a return for that. And so if I can’t get that response, [inaudible 00:32:51 to 00:32:53] to make it quick. And so whether you’re spending $100 or $100,000, it’s hard earned money. And I call these marketing spends, that’s the owner’s money. So if you’re spending $100 on a desk or $1,000 on a desk, and it’s cash, would I wanna know what was going on with that?

And so sometimes when you use credit cards, and it’s like when consumers go out there and they shop, because they’re not using cold, hard cash, it’s not as impactful. But if you had to pull out $500 out of your wallet, yeah, it’s a little more impactful. And so I take that approach. The owner should be as if they’re giving allowance to their kid, “What have you done to earn it?” And be very greedy, don’t be so quick to give money away without getting some kind of response in return for what you’re doing with that money.

Daniel: I think we could all relate to that. And one last question for you. A listener would like to know, “How can I use direct mail to enhance my online marketing efforts?”

Tim: Well, that’s a great question. A survey just came out with the Direct Mail Association not too long ago, where direct mail is actually the largest marketing tactic, the best marketing tactic to drive online service. Because what happens when people get stuff in the mail? What’s the first thing people go to? They go right to the website. So what’s happened is, a good direct mail program coupled with a website, and an online program, a digital program, has worked very well for all kinds of small businesses. Because they work in tandem together, where the post card is a very proactive way to reach out to customers, to grab their attention, to compel them, and it pushes them to do the next kind of investigative step, which is they go online.

Web, online, and digital is very reactive. People have to be searching for you. So you’re not reaching to them, they’re reaching to you. And so when you put direct mail in context with a digital strategy, an online strategy, they work very well because the idea is you’re directing them to a page on your site, has a high conversion that allows you then to get that customer to either call or come in. So, they work very well. When done right, they work very well together.

Daniel: Okay, very good. And Tim, I understand that you have a special offer for those attending today’s webinar.

Tim: Yeah, we just want to make it a little easier for folks to get on board. If you have some interest, I would encourage you guys to call, just to get your information about your market and how things are going and what changes…what options do you have? But if you decide that you want to do some direct mail, we’re gonna do $100 off for any attendees of today’s marketing webinar. That offer will be good through the end of the month. Just a little way to help us help you guys get started.

Again, we have no contracts or monthly fees or set up fees. So it’s very easy to do business with us. And I’m very much into results. And so, my guys are trained to help you evaluate your market and see where you’re at, what you’re doing, and then to determine if direct mail is a good fit for you. And if it is, we’ll take $100 off to make it even easier.

Daniel: Yeah. And our magazine has been pretty consistent in reinforcing the message that although it’s easy to get carried away with all the bells and whistles of digital marketing options that are available, direct mail is still a solid player. It still delivers great results, and it allows for extremely precise targeting of specific regional customers and specific demographics, and you’ve done a great job of walking us through some of those advantages.

At this time, we’d like to thank our sponsor, Mudlick Mail and Tim Ross for today’s webinar, and thank everyone for attending. Remember, this webinar, including our speaker’s PowerPoint presentation, has been recorded. If we did not get to your question during the webinar, the questions will be posted to our expert and the answers will be posted shortly at chiroeco.com/webinar. We’ll alert you when the webinar is available.

Thank you again everybody for attending, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great day.

Tim: Thank you.

 

About the speaker

Tim Ross is the president of Mudlick Mail. He has 15-plus years of small business sales and marketing experience. Ross holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Dayton. He has spent the last eight years building Mudlick Mail into one of the fastest growing small businesses in the U.S. Under his leadership, the company has grown at least thirty-percent year over year. Mudlick Mail specializes in chiropractic marketing and has partnered with thousands of practices in North America to develop sustainable sales growth. Ross hosts a series of learning webinars for practice owners, covering a range of topics on customer acquisition techniques, and increasing patient count. Click here for free practice owner resources and tools.