LAUREN SUTER:
Hello and welcome to our webinar Revitalizing Your Practice with Robotic Laser Therapy. My name is Lauren, and I am a member of the marketing team at Cutting Edge Laser Technologies, the sponsor of today’s presentation.
I am pleased to introduce Dr. Tim Brennan, owner of Brennan Chiropractic and Laser Pain Solutions in Annville, Pennsylvania. With 30 years of experience, Dr. Brennan is committed to offering his patients the latest treatment options, including Robotic MLS Laser Therapy. Joining him today is his son Patrick, a graduate of West Chester University, certified MLS Laser Therapy technician and marketing coordinator at their practice.
During this presentation they will provide insight into how you can successfully incorporate laser therapy services into your practice. And now, I’d like to welcome Dr. Tim Brennan.
TIM BRENNAN:
Good afternoon. With Lauren’s introduction out of the way here, we’ll jump right into the subject matter here. As a general overview of my practice, for the chiropractors that are tuning into this, I’ve been in practice for over 30 years. And my practice is a very well-rounded musculoskeletal chiropractic practice of all ages, from children to seniors. Adjusting wise, I use a variety of techniques from the Palmer package as well as soft tissue work and instrumentation. I use the Sigma Ultralign instrument.
Therapies in the practice over the years: we’ve used muscle stimulation, ultrasound, decompressive traction, and, obviously, within the past four years have been emphasizing the MLS robotic Laser.
My philosophy has always been one of wanting to have and lead by using technology within the practice and using the best available therapies in order to get the best outcomes from my patients. So, the MLS laser has been of tremendous value to us and in out practice.
So as an agenda here—just going over what we’re going to discuss—certainly, the importance of cash-based services into your practice, strengthening the cash flow using MLS Laser Therapy. We’re going to talk a little bit about integrating the laser therapy services into your practice and what we’re done that has been successful. We’re going to talk about managing patient expectations for laser therapy. It’s crucial to have the expectations of the patients’ established upfront.
Then Patrick is going to give you some good information about marketing. Marketing this laser is a crucial piece of success for your practice.
So, we started with “Why add a cash-based service to your practice?” Well, it’s kind of a no-brainer to add any and all worthwhile cash-based services to your practice. It’s kind of common sense. Anything that is going to benefit the patients and improve your outcomes that can also be cash-based is obviously a good practice.
It’s a very dangerous thing to have all your eggs in one basket. I practiced in Oregon in 1989 and in ’91 the legislature took work comp away from chiropractic. The practice I was in was about 80% work comp and PI and within one week the practice was decimated. And that’s how I made my way back to Pennsylvania from Oregon based on that very challenging time in Oregon. So, having a diversity of your practice is crucial. It’s very important to begin to reduce your reliance upon insurance reimbursements. In Pennsylvania, right now, to do muscle stim or ultrasound, we may change $20 or $25 but we get reimbursed $10 or $12 per service. So, it is a loss almost operating at that cost.
Giving you the opportunities to specialize your practice. Many of my fellow chiropractors have specializations in nutrition or sports injuries or pediatrics, per say. We have taken the opportunity to use the MLS robotic laser as an extremely effective tool to set our practice apart from our competitors. It allows us to offer, again, cutting-edge therapy that is extremely effective and has made a significant different in our outcomes for our practice.
Differentiating the patient types that you get. As a 30-year practitioner, I’ve treated all kinds of conditions and extremity conditions. But this MLS laser has opened the door to conditions that I never would have seen before. Of course, you need to follow your state’s guidelines and regulations and practice acts and your scope of practices, but it in general allows you to treat conditions—inflammatory conditions—in a variety of extremities that are not typically things that come walking in your door. We’ve had great success helping those patients.
In general, in our practice, as an overview, we’ve done over $200,000 in cash-based laser services over the past three years. The potential is significant if you do it correctly.
Leveraging the marketing trends, right? This is what it’s all about. Pain management is a growing modality. One in five Americans suffer from chronic pain according to the CDC—Chiropractors know this very well. Americans spend more on neck and lower back pain than any other condition but they’re also, beyond that, looking for safe, non-invasive, non-addictive means to receive and get relief from these conditions. They’re considered about potential harmful side-effects of the opioids, obviously. They want to avoid downtime after surgery.
Patients are generally unsatisfied with care received from traditional medical avenues. Most of our patients that we’re getting in for this laser are people that have been through the medical mill and they are looking for an alternative that is, again, safe and non-addictive and effective and we have the ability to offer that with the MLS laser.
I think it’s important for us to look at how we use the MLS laser to capitalize on these trends, but I think first its important for us to go over just some general information about the unique laser therapy that we have available to us in this MLS robot.
This is one of our slides from a class that we do and basically, you’re answering two questions: what it is and what it’s not. MLS stands for Multiwave Locked System. It’s the description of the patented system that was designed within this laser. It uses specific wavelengths of infrared light to relieve pain, reduce inflammation, and most importantly promote wound healing and soft tissue repair.
It reduces the needs for medication. We have many patients who are able to stop taking medications that can be very harmful to them. And it can certainly delay potential surgery.
There’s no negative side-effects. Say that again: there’s no negative side-effects to this laser. It was the reason I purchased this specific laser because of the safety that is build into the design of the laser. There’s no risk, therefore, for patients. There’s very few contraindications to offering this therapy. And it’s been proven to be effective in over 90% of the cases.
What it’s not: it’s not a cure-all. This isn’t magic, it’s based on biology and the body’s reaction to this infrared light as it interacts with the body. It is not an invasive procedure in any way, shape, or form. It’s very safe. It is not laser surgery. We’re not operating or cutting any kind of areas of the body with this laser.
It’s neither hot nor cold. The terms out there now when we have people that come in and ask us about this, “is it a cold or a hot laser?” MLS is really in a category of its own within the Class IV lasers because of the controlled mechanism built within the safety control mechanisms built within the unit that protect the patients while providing the dosage that we’re providing.
It’s not a replacement for common sense. This is important for people to understand. If you keep doing the same thing every day, day in and day out, you’re not going to get different results.
So, that’s a little bit about what it is and what it is not. It’s a unique type of Class Iv therapy laser, as I said. It’s synchronized dual wavelengths—you have a continuous 808 and a pulsed 905 wavelengths. These do different things, but the beauty of this laser is that no matter what setting or technique you’re utilizing, the patient is getting a constant interaction of both the continuous wavelength and the pulsed wavelength.
The continuous wavelength provides a reduction in the inflammation and in the edema—that’s where we see the swelling reduced very, very quickly with this laser. And the pulsed 905 creates the analgesia—it reduces the pain the patient may be experiencing. It’s the coupling of these two wavelengths in such a safe way that allows us to get the results that we get.
So, this is the beauty of this: it’s robotic and unattended. I had the first version of the MIX-5 in the state of Pennsylvania. It was a good instrument, and I was able to help people, but it was very frustrating because every two minutes in an eight minute treatment, I had to come and move the laser. It’d shut off, I had to reposition it, I had to restart it. It was very time consuming.
The other factors that play in there is that you end up moving the head, you’re losing your focal point, the effectiveness of the treatment was less than optimal. The robot and the ability to position it and create your target zone is very effective at improving the dosage and the outcomes you get.
You get multitargeting functionality that evenly scans wide treatment areas. It calculates necessary energy emission based on set parameters. The controlled temperature stays below the threshold for thermal damage. This is, again, a crucial part of this. We can go through post-surgical areas, screws, plates without creating a thermal effect that would be damaging or problematic to the patient.
It increases your productivity. I am blessed to have my son with me as my certified laser technician. I do the diagnosing, I set up the treatment protocols and he allies the therapy so he is with the patient through the process and he can take care of two or three people at a time. As a single provider though, as a solo-practitioner, this robot is an excellent tool to be able to set-up your protocol, be able to leave the room, go take care of somebody else, and come back and know that the treatment dosage was done very specifically and accurately. It facilitates a much more effective treatment. And then within this COVID environment, the ability to have social distancing and to protect patients and yourselves with the ability to not have contact and to be able to stay a specific distance certainly is an advantage that you don’t find with handheld lasers. There’s a tremendous upside to the robotic aspect of this laser.
How does it work? This is a mouthful, but photobiomodulation is the term we utilize. It’s essentially the conversion of infrared light into biochemical energy which has a cascading effect. Specifically, you get the release of vasodilating chemicals—nitrous oxide. The improved microcirculation increases the supply of cellular nutrition. You have an increase transport of nutrients into and out of cell membrane and organelles. Thereby increasing the production of ATP due to stimulation of the mitochondria. The end results is you have an escalated production of cell building blocks—the RNA and DNA. So, this is so much more than just sticking a needle into a joint and squirting some cortisone into it and getting an anti-inflammatory effect. This creates a reparative process which is really why the laser is as effective as it is. The end result is this process results in normal cell functions being restored and an accelerated healing process.
So we tell our patients there’s are the basic results of photobiomodulation. You have the anti-inflammatory and anti-edema effect. This basically is due to the vasodilation and the lymphatic drainage. This is the first thing you see with patients. The swelling and edema reduces very quickly. It’s a very important part for patients to see the effects that they’re getting right up front.
We get an analgesic effect. It blocks the pain in the nerve cells. It releases localized endorphins and more importantly, again, its repairing damaged nerves—not just blocking the pain. There’s a repair reparative process.
You end up with optimal tissue repair. Our bodies know how to repair themselves but the concentrated light results in an accelerated and more efficient healing process.
You end up with improved circulation and nerve function. This is a critical one. One of the primary questions that we get from patients all the time is “How long does this last?” In my opinion, it’s this restoration and formation of new capillaries, of new blood flow, of fresh blood flow into well underserved areas which is responsible for the long-term positive effects that patients get, long after the therapy is done.
The other benefits: it’s effective in both acute and chronic conditions. In my 30 years, I have not had a therapy that is as effective as this laser is with reducing acute injuries quickly. Patients are extremely satisfied with the results when they are acute. The chronic conditions respond well, as well. It just takes longer, basically, to get them where they need to be. They have to understand that the condition’s been there longer. It takes an accumulation of the therapeutic effect of the laser to get those changes, but we see those changes all the time.
It minimizes the need for medications. Again, no negative side effects for this and it decreases the time it takes to resume normal activities. Ultimately, that’s what we’re after is getting our patients the ability to return to the functions and the things they want to do with less pain.
How has this been determined? Well, there’s been over 100 phase-III, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials since it was discovered in 1967. That research can be found at the Cutting Edge website.
We’re going to talk a little bit about cost structure and pricing. I want to outline this first by saying that we received training after we purchased our first laser through Cutting Edge. That training was critical for establishing a business model. You can not just buy this laser and put it in your office and expect it to work. It will therapeutically work but in order to grow the practice, you have to have a business structure. You have to have a guide to follow and we received excellence training which gave us the groundwork to build and kind of create our own business model. So, we didn’t invent the wheel here. We took what we were given, and we transformed it based on our market and our practice so it’s a critical part of the process. If you get a change to have training, please take advantage of that.
You know, the cost structure comes down to one thing: it’s your zip code, essentially. You know what your region can tolerate. I called around to different practices in different parts of the country. I found prices varying anywhere from $50 to $100 per service. I took into consideration the region in which we live in and then I established our prices. You, as the doctor and the staff, need to be very comfortable with what you decide to charge. It is a crucial part of confidently dispensing to patients the value of this specific therapy that you’re providing.
The structure can be varied. We were given a model that we utilized to start with. It was effective. It was something whereby you might have a round one, which was the initial phase of treatment, which was a certain price. And then if there was more treatment needed, in round two you would discount and then there might be a maintenance price for people that wanted to utilize this as a maintenance therapy.
As we evolved and through the process of COVID, we now have a single price for one area or if it’s a double area. So, for instance, someone who has a bilateral knee condition, the pricing that we set is the same price for both treatments. It goes from 20 minutes to 40 minutes so its twice the treatment time. But you can vary that. There are ways to do that very creatively. There’s no one right way of doing this.
We have found that having a single price and carrying that through is the most effective way for us to do it. If you need to know your cost per service, its important that you are charging enough to have this be a profitable part of your practice. It’s important to really understand the costs that are involved in providing the service and making sure that you have it priced very competitively.
Payment options are fine. You need to be flexible, but we have found that it is most effective to sell this in packages of at least six or twelve. We do not recommend doing this on a pay-as-you-go type of process. People could do two or three lasers and no see the effectiveness and decide to quit. So, it’s important that you sell a minimum of six. We believe two weeks of this therapy is enough to demonstrate its effectiveness and then carry on from there. We find it’s best that patients pay upfront for the services. We do that most often, but we do have options for paying one half and one half. Your office can determine, knowing your area that you practice in, what’s best.
You got to be comfortable talking about finances and money. You have to be structured in how you’re presenting that to patients. And it’s important that everybody in the office is comfortable dealing with those things.
In our office, we have typical treatment packages, as I mentioned before. Its important to note that all treatments are based upon a thorough consult and examination and any special studies that you may need. Its critical to know what you’re treating, specifically so that you can set the appropriate techniques up to get the best outcomes. We have a process whereby patients—new patients to us—will go through a consult. They will be examined and then, again, if x-rays are needed or they bring in MRIs or x-rays we want to make sure we study them.
In the office as well, some of our patients go through a two-day process whereby we collect this information on the first day and then the second day they would return for what we call a report of findings. In that report it’s my job to answer four questions: Number one, what’s wrong? Number two, is it a condition the laser can treat and help and be effective with? Number three, how long is it going to take? What’s the schedule going to be? And number four, how much would that cost?
That process is typically a two day process but there are cases that can be done in a single day, it depends upon your practice, but its very important upfront to understand what you’re treating so you can set the appropriate plan up.
Patient scheduling, obviously, depends upon the condition. Most of our conditions, they’re either two types, there’s chronic or acute. The acute conditions are typically treated on what we call a round one of six. And the chronic conditions, things that are present for longer than a couple of months, are treated on what we call a round one of twelve. Typical plans consistent of two or three treatments per week for two to six weeks.
Here the most important part that we find: this laser is tremendous and in and of itself is effective but it’s really critical that you couple it with any services that you provide in your office that you believe will increase your results. If it’s a spinal case, obviously, adjustments or spinal manipulations. If it’s a disc condition, we use decompressive therapy—traction therapy—in our office. Exercise is crucial to get patients once they’re out of pain and moving into exercise programs and more active plans. This is one of the really positive upsides of this laser is you take a person that’s had chronic immobility and inflammation and you reduce it and they’re able to start exercising again, where they couldn’t before. We use soft tissue mobilization in order to couple with much of the extremity work that we do. And there are supplements, obviously, that can help people cope with and deal with inflammation that helps the process. So its important to get it right upfront and make sure that you present this to patients so they understand exactly what they’re looking at with regard to the treatment that you’re proposing.
And in this report of findings, you know, in this time up front it’s critical to establish some outcome expectations. What do I mean by that? If I have a patient with bilateral bone-on-bone knee with a VAS score of 8, it would be silly of me to sit there and tell that patient after twelve visits they’re not going to have any pain. I often utilize a 50% goal for my chronic patients. So, that patient with a VAS score of 8, my goal after four weeks and twelve treatments would be a 50% reduction in that pain. People are thrilled to hear that their pain is going to go from an 8 to a 4. It sets a reasonable expectation and it also gives you room to then continue with treatments based on the progress that they’ve made.
In acute cases, I’m often able to tell people in six visits they’re going to be 80 to 90% better. It depends on the case, but its important in your report of findings that you establish that up front. It’s really important to have reexamination processes. In our office, we don’t charge for the laser reexams. It’s a part of the package up front. But when they’re done with their package, you sit down with them and you review their progress and it enables you again to have a mini report of findings and perhaps establish a second round of treatment if further progress is desired.
Educating up front. Establishing value. That’s a part of why we are successful. We had—pre-COVID—we had classes. We would have a couple classes a month where the public was invited to learn about laser therapy. We have now a video that we have put together that we show our new patients that are prospective laser cases during their visit to the office so that they’re able to understand what they’re getting and why it works, how it works and the cost. Education is critical. You want to have materials ready and you certainly want to have a website that you can refer people to. Patrick’s going to talk a little more about this in the marketing aspect of the program here.
Ideal patients. There is a term out there called “low hanging fruit.” There is so much low hanging fruit out there that is just prime for this laser. Acute injuries, again, I’ve never seen a tool that’s as affective at reducing inflammation and pain as this laser. There are so many patients that are trying to avoid surgery for knee replacements, shoulder surgeries, ankle, feet; There’s so many conditions that are treatable with this laser that you want to target those cases that are going to get you the best outcomes first. Don’t start with—if you can avoid it—the failed back surgeries, or the bilateral diabetic neuropathies. There are much better cases to start with. It’s important to pick those cases so that you can have confidence utilizing this laser and you’ll get more referrals from those patients that you’ll be helping—they’ll be feeding into the practice.
You got to remember that you’re having patients coming to you, for the most part, that have been through the medical mill. They are looking for hope, so you’re providing and offering a safe non-addictive, very effective treatment for the types of conditions that they’re presenting with.
You have to be able to handle the insurance questions and be able to clearly understand why the insurance companies are not paying for this. It is a cash-based service, so you need to be prepared and well versed on how you’re going to answer that. It’s a very straight forward question. It’s simple not covered by the insurance companies and it’s a cash-based service. They consider it experimental at this point in time. We don’t have any problems with it. You just need to have everyone in your office prepped to handle that question. It’s probably the number one question besides “how long does the laser last?”
You want to promote common sense. People can’t continue to do the same thing in the same way incorrectly and expect different results. You need to work on behavioral modification with these patients. And really importantly: you need to be able to let people go. This isn’t for everybody. You don’t want to have people that are not going to be consistent and are not going to respect your treatment recommendations. Sometimes the best thing to say is that this is just maybe not for you as a patient.
So those are the basic overview of how we at our practice manage this. What we are going to talk about now for a few minutes is the marketing of this. I will say that it is critical—Patrick will review these points—to have a very well-established marketing plan. People do not know that this laser exists and how it works, so I am going to let Patrick talk about the marketing here.
PATRICK BRENNAN:
Hi everybody. This is Patrick. I’ve been marketing the laser for four years. Almost five years—this summer is five years. And you can do as much as you want with the laser. You always are trying to keep the bucket full because that’s been the major challenge with marketing the laser. It’s so effective and people get better very quickly, and then you don’t see them again until they get another injury, and they want your services. So, you’re always trying to strive to keep that bucket full, keep people coming in the door, acquiring new leads.
I’m not going to make this too complicated. I’m not going to talk about specific budgets because the cost of advertising varies everywhere. I am going to discuss just some basics and what worked for us when we were first starting this project and how we grew the laser business. The general agenda is going to be why you need to market, how to get started, some goals to work towards and attracting patients from outside of your office.
Why the need to market the laser? As Dr. Brennan just said, there is a general lack of public awareness even though this has been around for years. Most of the public—90% of the public—has no idea infrared laser therapy exists. It’s probably due to a lack of insurance coverage, a lack of recommendations for family doctors, physical therapy doesn’t utilize therapy lasers people just don’t know that this is an option.
Number two: you need to inform potential clients about the value propositions for this. Why would people use this instead of their insurance? Why should they circumvent the normal system to come see you?
Some basic propositions is it’s very unique. It helps you avoid shots, injections, surgeries. It can help you get off your medications. You know, those are all major selling points for people. It’s very safe compared to traditional medical treatments because there’s no side effects. Usually everything that’s done in medicine, besides physical therapy, you know, is going to have some sort of side effect so that’s a big selling point. It’s non-invasive. We’re not cutting or burning. You cannot—I can’t hurt anyone with this laser. And another one that is very crucial is that there is an actual healing response that is going to occur. We’re not just masking pain. You’re actually going to get better. You’re not going to have to continuously do this the rest of your life. That’s very important to establish to people with your marketing.
Another reason to do marketing is that it sets you apart from other providers in your area. People need to know that you have this exclusive option to treat your pain that no one else has and it’s very effective. You need to let people know that you got this to get better patient outcomes. It’s all about your patients. It’s all about enhancing their experience and getting better patient outcomes.
And the last reason here is you need to start letting people know that you’re treating a wider variety of injuries. A lot of people think about chiropractors and think they treat low back and neck pain. That’s not going to be the case anymore once you get this laser. You’re going to want to treat all different types of joint injuries. You want to try and get as many different types of injuries as you can add into your office.
How to get started with marketing? Before your start date—about a month and a half prior to when you start doing these therapies, you want to make some public announcements and you want to continuously announce this to the community. You can do this through social media, radio, newspaper. You can send email blasts out. You can mail flyers to different communities in your area. You want to get the word out repetitively and in as many ways as you can so you can reach as many people as you can.
About one and a half months prior to the start date in your office, start posting to social media one time a week. You want to hammer home those value propositions that we just talked about as your main content and marketing that this is an effective treatment for knee arthritis or sports injuries—you want to start getting the word out there to people. Little tidbits and you want to increase the frequency of these tidbits the closer to the start date. So, like I said, maybe you start out with once a week. You go to twice a week with posts on Facebook. Continue to do more and more. And definitely the week before you start you want to have you heaviest rotation of advertising.
You want to start talking to patients about it and create a buzz in your office around the laser. Get your patients excited that you’re doing this; that they’re going to have this option that they needed. You want to get them to start talking to their friends and family who they know that would benefit from this treatment.
You want to put some signage around your office. Get brochures and handouts to give to people. You can use this information in a referral packet; You can hand people an envelope with this information. It’ll be an easy way to spread the word to someone else—really nice packages information.
Something that we did in our office is we got all the addresses for our current patients and anyone who had been to the office in the past ten years. We sent out a letter to everyone explaining the treatment, letting them know what it treats, how it works, and we offered them a free laser exam if they wanted to come in. They just had to reference the letter.
Another really important thing to do is create a dedicated page on your website about laser therapy. You want to have your information on there so that anyone that sees you on social media or hears you on the radio, if they don’t call you, then they can go to your website and get the information and get more detailed information. Usually on the phone you don’t want to get into the too nitty-gritty details. People can read that online if they want all of the information.
And additionally, you want to build a PowerPoint presentation so you can educate people in public. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to get new patients into your office. You can sign people up at the event for an exam. Offer them some sort of discount for coming. But the PowerPoint presentation is something you’re going to want to have. It’ll make your life a lot easier.
Before you run ads—Dr. Brennan talked about this before—you have to be prepared to talk about the laser and answer any questions. People call and ask all kinds of stuff about price, treatment plans, effectiveness. Is this covered by insurance? How long is this going to last? Does this help this pain? Does this help that pain? I’ve had this for years. Is this still going to work? You got to be ready to answer these types of questions. Your staff should also be very positive about it on the phone. Something that we did for our staff to help them was we built a script out and we hung it in front of the phones. It was a script that described what the treatment is and explained the primary benefits and also told the patients those value propositions.
You want to have a plan. I talked about the plan for your announcement. You want to keep your marketing consistent. And you want to keep your budget strict.
You want to have your marketing planned out about one or two months ahead of time. If you’re doing classes, the timing of your advertisements is very important. And you don’t want to be rushed when you’re doing these things. Something that I did to start was, when we would have a class, I would plan the marketing out, I would plan the dates of the classes our ahead of time, and then I would plan the dates of when I would need to submit articles so they ran two weeks prior to the class so people had time to call. You want to have this planned out ahead of time so you can have your content planned and you’re not rushed.
For social media content, I try to plan out two weeks ahead of time, so I’m not rushed. And I can do this on the weekend, so I don’t have to think about it on my workday. You really need to have time to think of good content so you’re not just posting bland things or reiterating yourself all the time.
Planning will also help you keep control of your budget and you can track your return on your investment better.
We’re going to talk about some goals here. You want to work towards having a brand, building your brand, becoming recognizable just based on your colors, and your logo, and your tagline. Some examples of some taglines are: beat the pain, get better faster, live life on your terms, don’t let pain hold you back, etc.
Overtime branding will help the public better identify you. You will become synonymous with your colors and your taglines. When people see your ads, they’re not going to necessarily need you at that moment. When they do have an injury and something does happen, they will more readily be able to remember you if you have consistent branding and advertising slogans.
Another thing I usually tell people about marketing is a consumer has to see you five times before they remember you. Again, you want to have your ads at a consistent frequency, consistent branding to promote people to remember you when it comes time for them to need your services.
A very important tool when you are first starting out are testimonials whether they’re video or they’re written, because, number one, patient testimonials are free. They don’t cost you anything and you can use them ubiquitously throughout your marketing plan. You can put them on your website. You can put written testimonials on your blog. You can put video testimonials on YouTube.
Anyone that calls the office and they’re not necessarily sold on the laser, they don’t know if they want to come in for an exam. Let’s say they have knee pain. You can just send them to a video on your website with a patient talking about how much the laser helped their life get better because they have less knee pain. They’re just invaluable.
A video would be preferred because it could help a patient visualize what the treatment looks like, and show people that it doesn’t hurt to get the service, it’s easy to do, the patient is comfortable.
Some recommendations for written testimonials, people sometimes don’t trust them because they’ve just been used over and over again, especially in TV. People just sometimes don’t trust written testimonials so what we try to do is we try to tell someone’s story. You want to talk about what their life was like before laser therapy, how their experience was in our office, how easy it was to do the treatments and what types of positive changes have happened. That will really hammer home to people why they should get the therapy. You won’t even have to focus on those value propositions. If you get a great testimonial from someone, people will be calling you left and right.
You want to use a combination of print and digital marketing. Maybe a little bit of radio as well. You want to reach the most people that you can so you need to combine print and digital because not everybody reads the newspaper or the local magazines and not everyone is on the internet looking at ads. A lot of our patients with arthritis they’re still reading papers.
Unfortunately, you don’t have a crystal ball to tell you what’s going to work and what’s not going to work so it’s important to, like I said before, have a plan and stick to your plan and make some changes after a few months. But you have to be patient in order to find out what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.
If you really aren’t having success gaining leads, don’t be afraid to consult with a professional. Any news agency in your area will be to send a sales representative to you to talk to you about what to do, how they can help, and you can usually control your budget.
Last but not least here, we’re going to talk about attracting new patients to your office. These are people that are not referrals, and these are people who are not currently patients. We did this by heavily marketing public teachings. I know that this is a little bit more complicated now a days but there’s a lot of availability to do this through Zoom. There’s also Facebook Live. There’s different ways to market those things. But just in general, you want to funnel everyone calling the office about the laser to your classes. It’s the best way to build repour with these people. That way, they’re not on the phone with your staff asking them all kinds of questions. They can just come to the class and ask you. That’s really important.
People that come to the class, they get to see you, they get to know you and you can build repour with them and build trust so that if they do want to come in for a laser exam it’ll be a really easy sell.
Again, funneling everyone who’s calling to these classes unless someone calls and you tell them the cost, you tell them it’s not covered by insurance and they know they want to start, then just have them come in for an exam, but everyone else you want them coming in and talking to you in a group setting.
Your target clients for this: it’s chronic pain, especially arthritis. Knee, ankle, shoulder arthritis. People with chronic low back pain or neck pain. Maybe they lost their range of motion and they haven’t been able to move right for years and, Dr. Brennan talked about this a lot. A lot of the patients we saw initially were people who were failed by the traditional medical system. People that have been through the wringer. They’ve been to P.T. They got shots. They’re on pills. They’ve been to multiple doctors and they’re not satisfied. Nothing’s helping them. Those people are people who will be willing to try the laser because it’s totally different.
Make sure you have a great website page with some videos on there and some pictures of the laser. There, in case they can’t make the class, they can go get some information online, think about it, and then make a decision.
On the next few slides, I’m going to go over some images that I have there of a variety of different types of ads and where we used them. This picture right here is a picture of a coupon that we would give out at our classes. Something that we did in our marketing, and you’ll see this in future slides, we would advertise a treatment discount for coming to the class and that was a big deal to people. Believe it or not but $50 really matters to clients. $50 would essentially cover the cost of a single treatment or it would cover the cost of their laser exam. It was a definite draw, and it was nice to just hand people a coupon. It’s really easy. We just made this in Word—in a Word Document, printed them out and cut them out.
I talked a lot about branding. I have four examples of our logo. We have two on the left-hand side that have different formats. I have two on the right hand side that, when I’m trying to create content on Facebook or other ways that I advertise, if I want to advertise a specific body part, I have our logo next to someone holding their low back. They have low back pain. Or if I’m advertising plantar fasciitis for that week, I’ll post a picture of our logo and this foot picture. Again, focusing on creating content and creating better content over time.
This picture on the left is a poster from Cutting Edge. This is one of my favorite things. I think this is a very attractive poster, very eye-catching. I use this on Facebook. You can print this out and hang it up in your office. You can put this in your referral packet. It’s an excellent piece of information. The bottom right is a screenshot from a commercial. We’ve don’t three different versions of commercials and the one week I was trying to figure out how to create some content to advertise foot and heel pain and I took a screenshot of this and I posted it as a picture on Facebook and I wrote a caption for it. And in the top right, that was actually a newspaper ad. You can see our tagline there: beat the pain. The value proposition: without shots, surgery, or medications. We have our website on there. Schedule your free laser exam, $50 value. It shows the different types of injuries that are treated, and it has our logo. Those are also very important things.
Also, this ad shows a middle-aged woman with shoulder pain. Middle-aged women are probably 60% of my patients so we do a lot of ads targeting those people. I did a whole campaign around that woman. And, on the top, a man holding his back. It looks like he’s moving something. Those were digital ads. Again, the value proposition, the tag line. What does it do? Your logo.
The bottom middle, we put this in a gym. This ad was clearly targeting athletes. On the right-hand side was one of those advertorials, or our testimonials I was talking about were we wrote someone’s story and we ran this in a local newspaper advertising our classes. It’s a knee article. I said knee arthritis is a very common treatment that we do. It says, “treatment discount for class attendees.” It has our logo.
We used somebody to do our interviews for us. Her name was Joan Carey and she helped us design a lot of our ads. She was very important to us first starting out. If you’re having problems getting started with your marketing or figuring out the right things to do and say, this woman, Joan Carey—I believe she is contracted by Cutting Edge—she is the person to go to and your sales representative should be able to refer you to her.
These are some digital ads. These are ads that were on Facebook. These were made by another media company. “Discover the path to less pain without drugs or surgery.” That’s a tagline/value proposition. And the grab here is schedule a free consultation. I did have some commercials here that I wanted to show you guys too.
Like I’ve said before, we’ve don’t three different versions of commercials. This is by far the best one we’ve done. These are each thirty seconds. I’m going to show each of them to you. You can see how each one was marketed towards a different audience. One was to an older audience. One was to a younger audience. These don’t necessarily hammer home and value propositions, but it leads people to a conclusion that laser therapy is the best way for them to get better.
VIDEO:
I’ve worked really hard to accomplish my fitness goals. The last time I twisted my ankle it took me weeks to get back to normal and back to my routine and I lost so much of my progress. Brennan Chiropractic has the solution to help you rapidly recover from an injury through MLS Laser Therapy. The faster the treatment, the faster I can get back to my full strength. We can start treatment the same day you call. Continue to pursue what you love to do. Don’t let an injury slow you down. Call or click today to schedule a free laser consultation.
PATRICK BRENNAN:
That was obviously for a younger audience and we have the “free laser consultation” at the end.”
VIDEO:
I want to be able to play with my grandkids on the weekends, but I don’t think this medication is going to help me do what I want to do. Don’t settle for the endless path of prescriptions and injections. I want a chance to actually get better, not mask my symptoms. Brennan chiropractic has a salt alternative to relieve pain through MLS Laser Therapy. Don’t miss out on what you love to do. Call or click today to schedule a free laser consultation.
PATRICK BRENNAN:
Dr. Brennan and I have been doing this for several years. These commercials were very expensive, but we’ve built our practice up to the point where we had the budget to do something like that. I personally am just always trying to do things better. If you’re having success with your practice, and you have room to grow, definitely start to investigate some more expensive marketing tools. You want to get in front of as many people as you can. It’s not something you need to worry about right away but it’s always good to have goals in mind and you’re always trying to improve your content. And that’s what I have to say about marketing.
TIM BRENNAN:
Finally, one last piece before we wrap up here is just talking about staffing. It is critical that you and your staff are on the same page and that you’re well versed with discussing the laser in a variety of settings: phone conversations, front desk conversations, during office visits. Having materials ready is very important. As Patrick said, we script the staff on how to answer basic question. It’s an important part of the success. You want to have your paperwork in order and planned an organized such that your treatment plans and the phase of care that the patient might be in are easily accessed and can be discussed with the patients very clearly. So, you have to spend some time training your staff, especially the front desk and the people that are going to be on the phones answering questions.
I certainly see this laser as an effective tool in a solo practitioner’s office. Again, the robotic features enable and allow for a solo practitioner to be able to manager this very easily but if you’re able to hire and have a laser technician available, it will certainly make it more efficient for you.
How many lasers your practice may have—We started with one. As soon as I had one, I knew I would need two. When I had two, I knew I would need four. So we have four lasers. We utilize about two every day. We have a third that we move in and out as a way to decrease the wear and tear on the other laser. We will be expanding out practice and shortly anticipate—hopefully in 2021—to be using all four lasers at one time.
This is what you need to ask yourself—these are your final considerations. How can a cash-based service strengthen the bottom line of my chiropractic business? We have clearly shown over the last four years that you can exponentially improve the cash-based services
How can laser therapy fit into your current business model? Chiropractically, again, this is just a no-brainer. You have people in pain. You have people with inflammation and there is no better tool on the market to improve outcomes than this MLS robotic laser.
How can laser therapy elevate patient care at my practice? Again, you have a tool that will reduce pain faster, stimulate a healing response, and improve your chiropractic outcomes in just about any case that you’re treating.
What current patients would be ideal candidates for laser therapy? I used to just target certain but basically in my report of findings now, if I have a musculoskeletal patient in front of me, and they’re having pain and inflammation, the laser is recommended as a part of their treatment plan—as long as I understand the condition.
How could automatic treatments improve the practice productivity? It’s, again, a very clear cut. I worked with the MIX-5, which was a good tool. It was effective in therapy but the robotic nature, the ability to set your treatment protocols, have a much more specific dosage to the patient, and be able to the ability to move in and out of the room while a patient is being treated will greatly improve the productivity of your practice.
Thank you for watching. I hope this was helpful in helping you make a decision to incorporate the MLS Laser Therapy into your practice.
Thank you, Dr. Brennan and Patrick, for today’s presentation. And thank you to everyone watching.
If you have questions about this presentation, you can email Dr. Brennan and Patrick at info@drtimbrennan.com. If you would like to learn more about MLS Laser Therapy from Cutting Edge Laser Technologies, please visit celasers.com/cewebinar or email us at cmodzel@celasers.com.
Thank you.
