You bought a PEMF machine. Now what?

In a National Health Interview Survey, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) learned that 8.4 percent of all Americans engage in either chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation sessions.

That’s almost 20 million in total.

This number was more than those who used meditation (8 percent) and massage therapy (6.9 percent), and just slightly less than those who practice yoga (9.5 percent) for higher levels of health.

Though chiropractic is known most for the manual or instrument-aided spinal adjustment, what many people don’t realize is that it can actually encompass a variety of different treatment options.

One of the most notable is pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, or PEMF. So, how can you market this service to patients in a way that they’ll not only understand it, but actually want to try it for themselves?

Highlight the benefits of PEMF versus its features

It’s often said that, to market effectively, it does not require that you share a product’s features, but its benefits. What’s the difference?

The marketing company Printwand explains that features are how something works or its specifications whereas benefits are the results it can achieve. For instance, if you were selling a toaster, one of its features would include being able to toast two pieces of bread at once, but its benefit would be enabling you to finish making breakfast faster so you can go about your day.

In the case of PEMF specifically, research has found that its benefits include:

• Reduced swelling and increased range of motion for individuals with osteoarthritis in the knee
• Partial or complete relief from diabetic peripheral neuropathy symptoms
• Stronger bones after sustaining a fracture
• Relief from the pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome or tennis elbow

While this list certainly isn’t all inclusive, the main thing to remember is, when marketing PEMF therapy, think from your patients’ points of view. Why would they want PEMF? What type of relief would it bring them? That’s the type of information your marketing efforts should focus on providing.

Address potential concerns about PEMF up front

When people hear “pulsed electromagnetic field therapy,” oftentimes, one of their major concerns is safety. Therefore, if you can address this issue up front, you can help ease their worries before they have the chance to shut down the idea of PEMF therapy.

One way to do this is to share that research has deemed this remedy safe as a treatment method. For instance, a study published in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage set out to determine how safe PEMF was for knee osteoarthritis (OA).

After performing treatment on 58 patients for three months, researchers reported that these types of instruments “significantly improved symptoms and function in knee OA without causing any serious side effects.”

It should be noted that this study also found that 18 percent of the actively treated patients did develop a rash where the electrodes were placed. However, 21 percent of the placebo group developed the same, suggesting that the rash was a response to the electrode itself and not necessarily the pulsed electrical stimulus.

Another potential concern that patients may have about PEMF is whether it’s going to hurt. So, when marketing the fact that you offer PEMF, you may want to address that issue by sharing that it doesn’t inflict pain on patients. Instead, they just feel little magnetic impulses at the treatment site, and nothing more.

Hold seminars and workshops demonstrating PEMF

You can offer the best services in the world, but if people don’t understand them, it isn’t likely to do you any good. That’s why one of the best things you can do to market PEMF (or any other new or different service for that matter) is to educate the people who would use it most by showing them in person.

You can do this by holding seminars or workshops at your office, demonstrating a typical PEMF session. This also provides a secondary benefit of letting your patients ask questions about this particular remedy right as they come up.

If this isn’t feasible, another option is to show individual patients who you feel could benefit from PEMF how this modality works when they’re in for a regular visit. Granted, this does take more time by presenting it in a one-on-one fashion, but it’s also a great way to educate patients who are either unwilling or unable to attend a demonstration.

PEMF offers a lot of value and these three actions can help you relay that value to your patients more effectively.