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You’ve gone through chiropractic school. You learned about anatomy, physiology, and the elusive subluxation. You’re a master at adjusting the spine.
Now it’s time for you to become ensconced in your daily role as a chiropractor. Or is it?
Despite what most chiropractors have been taught and how most operate, your primary function as the owner of your very own chiropractic practice is NOT as the chief deliverer of chiropractic care.
Your primary function is in the acquisition and retention of patients.
It’s in the building, growing, and securing of your practice first and foremost. Because without a consistent and predictable method for acquiring and keeping patients long-term you practice will always struggle.
As my friend, mentor, and best-selling author, Michael Masterson, explains in his book Ready, Fire, Aim, there’s nothing more important or critical to an entrepreneur (something most chiropractors unfortunately don’t acknowledge they are) than a reliable method of acquiring and retaining new customers, clients, or in your case, patients.
In the early stages of the financial growth of your practice, your priority must be in the developing of that reliable patient-acquisition process. In other words, until you reach a certain critical mass in your practice, you should not take your focus off of developing a solid process or system for acquiring new patients.
Later, once you have that reliable system in place you can then shift a portion of your time and focus to the internal marketing of new services and products to existing patients. But, no matter how financially flush your practice gets, a portion of your time must always go to towards to maintenance of your new patient acquisition system.
You see, even though the bulk of profits in a chiropractic practice come from the marketing of long-term care and additional ancillary services and products to already-acquired patients, the long-term growth and security of your practice comes from the external, front-end marketing to acquire new patients. Without a solid system in place to consistently acquire new patients, your practice and cash flow will eventually diminish right along with patient attrition.
Patient retention, no matter how stellar it is in your practice, always entails the loss of a certain percentage of patients. It’s the nature of the beast. This is why it’s essential to have a process in place that regularly brings new patients into your practice.
The aim of your front-end marketing efforts is to find evergreen sources and marketing funnels that predictably bring new patients into your office.
This can include methods such as: monthly new mover mailings and sequences, small space lead generation advertising, pay-per-click advertising online, the friendly-neighborhood postcard process, direct mail list rental, and many other proven methods.
The point is just this:
There’s nothing more important to the life, security, and success of your practice short and long-term than being able to profitably acquire new patients every month. Not your knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Not the decor in your office. Not the quality or quantity of chiropractic tables your office has. And not your ability to “fix” a patient’s spine.
The lifeblood of any business… including your chiropractic practice… is the steady stream of new blood.
So, can you honestly say you have new patient acquisition nailed?
If not, analyze your time to see how much of it your spending on the priority of new patient acquisition compared to anything and everything else.
If you find you’re falling short in this area, here are some actions you should consider taking right away:
First, schedule time in your calendar EVERY WEEK to focus on finding media you can test new patient lead-generations effort within.
Second, commit to testing at least one new source of patient leads every month. Use lead generation to acquire the names and contact information of prospective patients from the new source, then those leads through a multi-step follow-up system to convert a percentage into paying patients.
Third, monitor the ROI you get from each new source of leads. For now, if you break-even on the initial acquisition of new patients, continue to run that campaign each month monitoring the ROI.
Lastly, start the process over each month, while continuing to monitor the existing break-even campaigns you have going.
Over time, what you’ll find is that some media and sources just won’t work for you. You won’t be able to break-even on the front. Those you’ll dump. But, as you do find sources of leads you can make work, your stable of new patient sources will grow.
The end result is that over time you’ll have several different sources of new patients that routinely bring you new patients every month.
You’ll have a reliable process for acquiring new patients, and you’ll be able then shift your focus to maximizing the profitability of those new patients coming into your office with back-end, internal marketing processes.
And that’s your primary role as the owner and operator of your own chiropractic practice.
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Here’s a complete, done-for-you New Patient Acquisition System “In-A-Box”…
If you’re like most chiropractors – too busy right now to find time to focus on the new patient marketing – or, you just don’t have the confidence in your marketing knowledge to develop a reliable and predictable system that brings you new patients every month, this is for you.
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