140- On-Boarding New Patients to Stimulate Practice Growth

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor, providing you with elegant and efficient research based content to help your practice prosper and succeed. Now get ready for a variety of dynamic communication tools designed for immediate growth courtesy of your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmey. This week is a great episode where we are going to talk about the number one thing you can do to get more new business into your practice and the truth of it. It is communicating with your current and former patients. We'll talk about what I mean by that action, steps you can take and even a little bit of a strategic plan to get moving with it asap. And that is this week's episode. But before we get started, I will talk a little bit about Rock Tape. Rocktape is proud to be a sponsor of the Evidence Based Chiropractor and if you have not picked up your tickets for Rock Stock 2018, be sure to do so. It is taking place in Miami, Florida the weekend of October 27th. You probably checked out the videos I shot at last year's Rock Stock. It was one of the best events that I've been to last year or any year for that matter. And additionally I have some special announcements coming up soon regarding what we at the Evanist Space Chiropractor will be doing at Rock Stock this year. So be sure to get your tickets, get locked in on that event and I'll look forward to catching up with you there for sure. And as I talked about at the top, this week's episode is going to be about really how you remarket to your current or past patients. And when I say that remarketing is really about communicating with people who have already utilized your service. So you know, I'll tell a little bit of a story regarding this and then we'll kind of dive into some tactics and some specifics as well. But you know, this may sound familiar to you, but imagine coming out of school, maybe you work as an associate for a little while, you kind of grow within that setting and then you desire to grow your own independent practice. You get out there, you try a bunch of things. Of course it's always much growth is always much slower than you anticipate and you end up on the treadmill and of new patients needing new patients coming in every single month. And while you may be doing well, there's a sort of a hamster wheel effect of that. And believe me, I'm a huge proponent of getting new patients into your practice. But here's an alternative to that story, and it revolves around the ability to communicate with your past patients, engage them so they will utilize your services in the future when needed, but. But also that they'll communicate that message to their friends and neighbors and be stimulated to do so. And that is really the heart of remarketing or communicating with your current or past patients. I find some docs out there, maybe you're one of them. Deliver either a digital or physical newsletter one time a month to your patients. That's not bad. That certainly is better than nothing, but it is not the way that communication happens in, in the year 2018 that we're in today. The communication channels, they need to be consistent. And I've talked on other episodes, and we'll talk on future episodes about the social media components for that. But on today's episode, I really wanna focus on the email. In my opinion, if you're not emailing your former patients, your past patients one time per week, you're missing out on a massive opportunity to grow and that relationship, to deepen that relationship, to build more trust, build more rapport, and ultimately be the person that you hope to be for them, which is their doctor, their physician, their healthcare advocate in their life. And for me, that begins when you onboard them as a new patient. And a lot of this crystallized for me because I recently redid the entire onboarding sequence from members of the evidence based chiropractor. I frankly looked at it and I said, you know, the number one reason that people, you know, don't stick with the evidence based chiropractor is implementation. You know, they just don't get going with it. So I looked at my onboarding and said, what can I do to make the onboarding for the evidence based chiropractor as simple, as seamless, as easy as possible, and also support the members as best possible throughout that implementation. So I want you to think of it in the same context for your practice where when somebody comes into your practice, how are you onboarding them? Are you touching them outside of the individual times? And you know that they're physically in your office because if you're not, you are just missing out on a massive opportunity to build a far better relationship than you're doing today. And that directly equates to referrals into your practice and to people being evangelists for what you're doing instead of casual fans. So as we work through that, let's talk pragmatically what that means. I kind of want to lay out an entire system for you. And you might want to pause this and take notes or just throw a few things in the back of your mind as we work through this. But I've actually built this off of specifically what I've done within the evidence based chiropractor and what I've done within practice. So this has been, you know, battle tested, so to speak. But when somebody comes into your practice, I'd encourage you to within that day, send out a welcome email. So we'll go through kind of an email sequence here. Number one is send out a welcome email. Tell them you're happy they're there, that your office is there to take care of them. They that you're gonna be there to support them along that journey. Just send a welcome email as soon as somebody comes in. The welcome email. What it also does is set up what you're going to do, right? So in that welcome email you can allude to the fact of you'll be hearing from us quite a few times over the next few weeks via email as we outlay the most important things to get you where you want to be and reach your goals and aspirations so you can kind of set the stage for what's to come. What we found to be very successful as a follow up to that would be, for instance, a frequently asked question email. So every time somebody comes into your practice, if they're a new patient, quite often they're gonna have questions, right? What are the okay, I knew if I needed to change an appointment, who do I call? How do I do that? What are the hours of operation? These are things that can easily be addressed or anything specific to your practice, specific techniques. Frequently asked question As a second email is a great way to go because it can lighten the load on your front desk and it also can really empower patients with the information that they're desiring, which could become roadblocks or friction points in their ongoing care if they don't think they can get that answer. I think this can really decrease no shows. It can also decrease reschedules as well as you sort of address those items that are frequently asked up front. Best way to find out your frequently asked questions. If you're saying, I don't know what I'd put in there, ask your front desk staff tomorrow or today. Hey, what are the most common questions that patients are asking on their first couple visits? They'll get a wonderful list right there that you can address from there. I like to go through a sequence which touches on the major things that you take care of in your practice. So for instance, I then like to highlight where chiropractic care fits in. Let's say in a three in an email, 1, 2 and 3. In this case, I on let's say headaches, neck pain and low back pain. It doesn't have to be that I'm making it really middle of the road. If you're a sport focused practice, you could go that direction. If you're a pregnancy practice, you could go that direction. But in a very general sense, you can hit your welcome email that day, the next day, hit your frequently asked questions, email out to that individual, and then over the course of that first week, divvy out three more on the three most common things that you see in your practice. And here's why you would not believe I always say this to docs and it always gets a chuckle because it's like how many times if you had a patient come in, they come in because let's say in this instance, their low back hurt and you take care of them. You talk about, you know, holistic care. You talk about what you can do in your office, you know, and then down the road, it could be years, months, they come back and they're like, oh, I like went to the physical, I hurt my neck and I went to go do this other thing because I didn't really know that you took care of necks. You know, it sounds obscene, but you piecing things together, you know, leading your patient down that trail of knowledge is absolutely essential. And it's something that all of us, in my opinion, can do a much better job of. So you should still have your in office communications, you should still have your social media communications. But please, in your onboarding email sequences, lay out some of the most common things that you see in your practice and find great results with again, this, if they're there for one of those things, it's going to reinforce that they're in the right place. The other aspect of this is if they encounter one of those challenges down the road, you've preemptively addressed that you're the place to be. They know trust and like you already. So that's great. And then it gives them the opportunity to spread that word. When it's something as an email, they could forward it to a friend, they could save it. It's just a great communication channel that's drastically underutilized. And then as you go through. So now you've hit your welcome email, right? You've hit your frequently asked questions email, you've touched on some of the things that you commonly see success with in practice, then it's a great opportunity then to showcase perhaps some ancillary services. If you're doing fitness in your facility, great opportunity to showcase that on that sixth or seventh email. If you are big on the supplements and nutraceuticals, showcase that. It's an opportunity to showcase different revenue channels and different verticals of your practice. And again, don't think that the patient is just going to see it in the practice or you're gonna talk to them once during a visit and it's gonna sink in. As with all marketing, it is multiple touches over a period of time that is the driver of success. So utilize a solid new patient onboarding email sequence. It doesn't need to be expansive. Something even between six and ten emails over those first few weeks. Get people deeply embedded in your culture in the office. Have them understand what you do at a higher level. Start that communication chain. It will do wonders for patient retention, for reducing no show rates, and ultimately for driving more new patients into your practice as well. So this is a topic, as you can probably tell, I've been deeply passionate about and diving really headfirst into over the last few weeks and kind of coming full circle with that. I've been developing some templated emails that some of the docs, if you're listening to this and saying, gosh, that sounds great, I know I need to do that, but it's something that either I'm not a good writer or I don't have a good resource for that I'm going to be developing, I'm in the process, I'm about 80% done developing a series of templated emails that you can just plug and play and it'll give you a huge leg up in terms of again reducing any attrition of new patients, reducing cancellations, improving your retention and just deepening that bond with patients which leads to long term practice success. So keep up your social media, keep up your MD marketing, keep up your events, and if you do workshops, fantastic. But please do not sleep on the communication through email and start that with your onboarding of new patients with an email sequence. If you have interest in what I am developing, just shoot me an email. Jeffevidencebasedchiropractor.com, say, hey, I'm interested. I'll make sure you get the information once it's released, which should just be in the next week or two. So I hope you have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon.

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