239: Doing it Right: Chiropractic Marketing with Dr. Kevin Christie

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now, here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. And on today's episode I'm I had the opportunity to sit down with an old friend of mine, Dr. Kevin Christie, and talk marketing. This episode is a fantastic opportunity to learn tactical tips and strategies to improve the marketing results in your practice. Additionally, check out the show notes. I've included a link. Kevin has recently released a book, Doing It Right. It's all about modern chiropractic marketing. It's in conjunction with Parker University. I'm going to drop that link in the show notes. Be sure to pick up the book. Check it out.

I'll.

I am super excited and happy to say Kevin asked me to be featured regarding email in the book. But definitely check out the book. Ton of awesome information. Tune into this episode where Kevin and I dive into a whole bunch of stuff that you can utilize to market your practice more effectively and more efficiently starting today.

All right. And as promised, I am here with an old friend and somebody who knows a heck of a lot about marketing, Dr. Kevin Christie. Kevin, how are you doing today, man?

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to chat with you again. It's been a little bit.

It has. I feel like it's feast and famine. We see each other a ton and then it can go months and months. And especially these last few months, it's been a little while since we've connected and I want to dive right into. You have a lot going on. We have a lot to get to. But I want to get as much practical information out to docs as possible. You've just are really experienced in the online marketing world. Your chiropractic group devoted to marketing is fantastic. Csa. You're involved in a lot of stuff. How has chiropractic marketing changed maybe in the last six to 12 months? What are those biggest things that you've kept an eye out for and seen change?

Yeah, definitely. For the last year. You know, you're not going to just start running Facebook ads and get 27 new leads in the door and hopefully 10 become new patients. That was a thing for sure at one point and it, I think it caused a lot of chiropractors to get into the Facebook ads. Some did well with it, some didn't some did well with it and then got jaded by it because it stopped working once Facebook kind of changed their algorithm a little bit. And so I would say the big thing now is you can't focus on the distribution channel like Facebook or Instagram, whatever. You can't only focus on that. And so you have to make sure you're creating good content, getting it out there. It's got to have a really good message. And then your audience development and targeting within the social platforms has to be really good. But too many chiropractors are putting that cart before the horse where they just start running Facebook or Instagram or whatever, YouTube, and it's not working for them. And they blame the distribution channel. But really their marketing has been the problem.

Yeah, it's such a good point because there's been such an arms race kind of thing in the Facebook marketing realm. And I think I was saying this yesterday. It's like if I had a nickel for every doc who feels like they've been quote unquote, burned by Facebook ads. Ad companies be a very rich man. And it's not all those ad companies fault. You're 100% correct. A lot of docs built it on sort of false foundation or quicksand, and they were so reliant on the discount to get the person in. And as soon as the cost per lead goes up, that starts to. It's a challenge situation to begin with, but sometimes there can be a veneer or gloss on it. And tying into this, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see docs still making today with their marketing?

Yeah, I would say one is random acts of content. And so I'm a big fan of content marketing strategy. Okay. And that's different than content. And so when you put those words together, a content marketing strategy, it means a lot of things, but essentially you're going to have a plan with the content that you create. You're going to have a clearly defined audience that you want this to land on, and you're going to have good messaging, and you're going to do it consistently with a goal in mind. Right. So you might have this content plan going to take that person from cold to warm to, you know, obviously coming in your office. Or even better, sometimes I get new patients that will refer to me in my practice from people that have never been in my practice, but they're in my kind of world of content that they get. And so if you do content marketing correctly, that's what will happen. But it's going to Take consistency, creativity, and making sure that you're actually having that message resonate with that audience. Whereas the mistake people are making is they just do these random acts of content, which is a quote I heard Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute talk about where it's just like, oh, they'll find a good piece or they'll finally shoot that one video, or they'll, you know, find that one blog and they'll just randomly share it and they won't have any strategy behind it and it just doesn't work.

That's such an important piece of it. You know, I always talk about the two things that docs struggle with is content creation and then consistency. Sometimes there are content producers out there, but they're inconsistent. Others can't get it together either way and it ends up to be super challenging. I guess when we talk about content, like why, why is content so important and why does it need to be at the forefront of how docs think about their marketing?

Yeah, because the ultimate goal of a chiropractor in my mind, is to become the leading expert in their community. We'll just leave it at that. There's some chiropractors that might have a wider reach, but for the most part, you want to be known as the leading expert in the community around a niche or a set of niches, whatever it may be. But many chiropractors fail to ever get to that point. And I think there's a few ways you can get there. One is if you just have this unique personality and charisma and skill set and communication.

Oh, thank you.

If you listen to Jeff's podcast every week, you'll have that. And so, you know, there's some of those people out there and you know, they would have been super successful in almost every profession they would have got into. So let's just assume we're not them. Then there's going to be people that are just out in the community networking boots on the ground, and they're at every event, they're public speaking. That's phenomenal. Like, I am not here to say you don't need to do that. If you have good online marketing. That's how I've built my practice and that's how I continue to still do it. So that's going to be a big part of it. But then you can also do it through content. Basically, it's education based content. You're providing them with health information that's going to serve them and be very valuable to them, and that's going to Kind of move you up the ladder of expertise in the eyes of your community. And if you do it consistently right, you will grow an audience. When you grow that audience, you'll have a whole lot more people that think you're an expert and they come to see you and they refer to you. And that's the key with content. And I want to tell a quick kind of. It's been interesting the last few months with this COVID 19. And not to harp on it, but a lot of chiropractors reach out to me, frustrated that they're. Because they. All of a sudden, you saw, I'm sure you saw Jeff, all these chiropractors started posting content all the time on Facebook and social media. And they weren't doing it before COVID 19 but now it was like the combination of desperation and more time on their hands and things like that. But then once they started doing it, after a few weeks, they were like, oh, I didn't get any traction on it. And they're asking me all these questions like, well, you know, you didn't have an audience, right? Like, it takes. It takes some time to build an audience and you have to do it consistently. And then when you do have that audience, they're going to be there for you during trying times. And. And that was something that really helped my practice. We closed for a month down here in South Florida because it got pretty hairy in early April. So we closed for a month, but once we reopened, we just, you know, we kept content going the whole time we were closed. And then once we reopened, we've got right back to capacity. So it's very important to make sure you're creating that content.

You bring up a really good point, because it's something that I saw with some of the docs that I've worked with as well. You know, those. Those docs that had invested that time, that energy to exactly as you said, build that audience. Now if they started offering telehealth, they were able to do so. If they chose not to, they were still able to keep in communication for when their doors open. And it became, you know, not only something that they could theoretically produce revenue, right. Depending upon their services and their interests. Right. But they also were able to build back up so much more quickly. And it really dives back to the importance of sort of building that brand and building, staking your claim to who you are and what you do and having people know and trust and like that, you know, throughout the community. And that gets back to audience building. And I think so many docs were seduced by sort of, you know, these. And there's a. There's still great ways to do retargeting ads. There's still great ways to go about true advertising. But I think so many docs that don't spend day in and day out doing it, they misconstrue advertising as marketing instead of, hey, there's marketing, and maybe 10% of that's advertising, but 90% dives into all of those other things that you can do. And when we talk about all those other things that you can do, what are some of maybe your favorite new opportunities that you've seen sprout up? Even if not new, maybe just things that you think are pillars of what you do in your practice, potentially to enable you to weather the storm and continue to grow. And as you were talking, you've been able to even free up some time as you've been growing your clinic staff over the last year or two.

Yeah. So I love that question and I'm gonna preface it by saying, because sometimes people get overwhelmed with having to create a lot of content, right? And I look at it three ways. It's create which is gonna definitely have the highest value, right? If you're shooting that video and they're getting to know you with great information, but you also want to supplement that with curated content. And so I know, like Jeff, you provide so much good content and I use you as an example all the time because I get your monthly newsletter for the evidence based chiropractor and I take that and it becomes one of my emails, right? And that's an example of me curating. What I do is I take a picture of it because it's a PDF you send us. I take a snagit picture of it, put it on email, but then I also take all the. You put those nice little like tidbits on there, really summarize it, and I make that an email. So that's an example of me curating somebody else's content. Obviously, you give full credit to the person doing it. And then there's also repurposing, right? So if you shot that video, it could be a video on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram, it could be plugged into your blog, on your website so you can repurpose it so the content overwhelm doesn't happen. And then to that point, what I'm excited about, to actually answer your question, is that if you start getting this content momentum going, then you can get fun and creative with how you distribute it. Out. Right. So I talked about before, Facebook is just a distribution channel. Well, two of the things that we've done a lot recently is online courses. Right. So an example of repurposing was last two years ago, 2018, we did a virtual summit, which is going to be the second thing I talk about. But we did a virtual summit for runners and triathletes in our community. And we had eight experts on different things like the running shoe store person and the trainer for runners. And all the different people do a presentation and we ran it as a virtual summit. Well, I then took those presentations with their permission and made it also an online course on my website. So. So it is a lead capture on my website. Plus they value the information and they get a lot of good education out of it. So I'm really excited about online courses. We've got a few on our website now. And I am also excited about virtual summits. I think you can do those for your community. I do a lot of them obviously for chiropractors with the modern chiropractic marketing group. But you can do it around certain topics in your community and it gives a lot of good reciprocity in the community. Like if you go to like 7, 8, 10 different experts in a topic and you give this opportunity for them to be to get some exposure and meet people, they're really going to be thankful for that. That's a great way to start building a network as well.

That's such a great point and a good idea. It's because it's again building that network. And you know, we sort of call it gift of endorsement. Right. You're essentially endorsing somebody else. Who are those favorite people and things in your community? You might even be already using their products and services or referring back and forth to them. And I think here's the real beauty of it and I'd love to know your opinion on this. Typically then if you're the one that hosts that sort of thing, it's like you're the most popular guy when you're the guy that hosts the party kind of thing. But it also you're going to see very commonly that those individuals are going to share that opportunity because you're highlighting them with their audiences, which further creates a bigger reach for you. Is that something you've experienced and seen as well?

Oh, absolutely. You kind of co op their audience. Right. So they're going to do everything on their end to promote the heck out of that virtual summit. And so for instance, the running shoe person, it's someone that's really well connected in the area and did he did a bunch of stuff to get it out there. So now I'm getting in front of that audience and then, you know, same thing with the other experts. So. And it doesn't have to be running and triathletes. It could be golfers. It could be around pregnancy and pain. It could be around whatever like yoga for back whatever you want it to be. It could be a back pain virtual summit. And then two things from that is use the experts you already know like and trust in the community. But then you might have some gaps you need to fill and you can meet new people, new experts in the area. And if you come with them with that opportunity right in the gate, you're going to. Right out of the gate, you're going to build that rapport with them.

I love it. I love it. And I want to do a slight transition here because I know you've been hard at work on a book that puts together a lot of what we talked about already and much, much more. And I'd love to just know I've done one in the past. I've been trying to write the second one for about an eon and a half. What was your process for writing a book really, that dives into marketing a modern chiropractic practice? What was your thought process and how'd you go about even starting to execute something like that?

First, I want to thank you for being a part of it. You are one of the contributors around email. We did that together, which was helpful. And that is kind of an example of repurposing. So to go back, I started the closed Facebook group the Modern Chiropractic Marketing in July of 2016, and then that spawned the podcast of the same name in April of 2017. I've been creating a lot of content consistently now. I ended up repurposing it and I sat down with when I spoke at Parker Vegas In 2019, it was on the Modern Chiropractic marketing roadmap. I had the framework now and then I talked with Parker University about making it a book and they were really receptive. So they're publishing the book. And so I sat down probably July of last year and getting up at 5am and for two hours pounding out writing as much as I could before I went and saw patients. And that was before my baby was born, which I was like, I knew I had to get it done before then. But it was a combination of creating and curating and repurposing Right. So there's stories in there of chiropractors doing certain things the right way. There's taking transcripts of podcast interviews like I had with you on email, and fine tuning a little bit and putting that in there. And there's some interview stuff. And just a lot of. And taking the eight different tools that I have that I work with chiropractors on it and putting them in the book. It's actually a book and a workbook combination. So when you. When you do purchase it, you get both. And so you can actually work through this marketing concept. It's not just theory. And just started plugging away. And then from there, you know, you always want to try to leverage people with expertise that you don't have. And once I was able to connect with Parker, I knew I was going to be in a better situation because they provided an editor, which it would have been a nightmare if I didn't have an editor.

I've been there.

Exactly. So I had a really good editor. And then they're turning it into an actual, like, real book. The design looks great. The layout, I mean, it's just. It's going to be an actual real book, which I could not have done on my own. And so I definitely utilized the help of them. So we're really excited about it.

Well, congrats. I think it's. It's going to be awesome. I appreciate the amount of work it takes to get done, and I think it's awesome that you're going to be able to put it out there. What. What are some of your goals for it as it gets out there in the marketplace? What are you hoping for?

I'm hoping that the chiropractor can buy it and actually apply it to their practice. And almost like if they were listening to my podcast for three years or getting a coach or something like that, which I don't think it supplements a coach. Having a really good coach is very useful, but you should be able to buy this book, read through it, and work through the workbook and actually know how marketing and some business can apply to your practice. I think so many chiropractors struggle with that. They have no idea where to even start. And this is going to really take them on a. A path to get there. And once they get through it, they should be able to have that and say to themselves is, wow, my practice now has a marketing strategy that is sustainable and reproducible. And so that's my goal with the book. And obviously, I shouldn't say, obviously, I'll Be speaking at Parker event in October if they have it. I think they will. So I haven't heard anything otherwise. But you never know with this virus. So I'll be out kind of talking about this more and I've chatted with Parker a lot about it. We want to get this information to the masses within chiropractic so chiropractors stop struggling. There's no reason why we should not all be thriving in practice. And I'm hoping that this can help some chiropractors get there.

I think that's awesome. What do you think? What do you think are some of the major roadblocks? Right. So, you know, I think there's this really weird thing within chiropractic where there's just, just real inability to get the wheels moving from a practicing doc perspective. Right. And there's just so many. It just seems like it's very difficult for a practicing doc to really put what I'll call put it all together and get forward momentum. And you know, there's just this real appetite which I think is awesome for, for all of the clinical stuff.

Right.

You see docs and I was like, I'm a chiropractor, I don't know any of these letters after their last name. You know, it's like it doesn't make any sense to me. But I respect the fact that they're trying to treat at the highest level. But there's like this weird inverse relationship with those docs also tending to really have a challenged time getting anything of significance going in their practice. What do you think the root causes of that or what do you think those hurdles are?

Well, I would say if I had to design the perfect chiropractor from a all encompassing thing, it's four things, it's clinical. Like that is table stakes. You have to be good clinically. So we're going to assume that you're good clinically. If not, you got to keep getting better. If you're young, you're going to get better, but you got to really have that. So that is the foundation. But you also need to have some marketing skills, some business skills and communication skills. So if I could wrap those four things into the provider, it's amazing what they'd be able to do. Unfortunately, a lot of them hang their hat on being really good clinically and struggle at the other three, or maybe they're good at another one and they struggle at the other ones and they can't put it all together. And there happens to be these misconceptions of that, you know, if I just, you know, am a good clinician, I'll definitely have a good practice and I'll make good money. That unfortunately is not the case for a lot of people. The other misconception is that marketing is kind of evil. And I'm a doctor, I don't, shouldn't have to market. That's why I like the marketing that I talk about and that you talk about because it's ethical and elegant marketing. That is really just education based marketing. And so if you do that, you're going to really not turn people off. You're just providing value. So I want to get those misconceptions out of the, out of the way. But then it can be challenging because think about it, right? Those four things that I just mentioned, being a good clinician, that took eight years for chiropractors to get there, right? So that's four years of undergrad and then four, four years ago, three and a half, four years at chiropractic school. Business, that's a whole degree in itself. And then most people nowadays get a business degree, have to go get an mba, right? And then you got marketing, that's a four year degree. And then you got communications, that's a four year degree. So you're talking about people that get full degrees in these topics. And I'm trying to tell you you need to have all four. It can be difficult, but it's a process and you can get there. So lay that bedrock foundation of clinical and then layer on the other things. And, and I'm hoping that this book will layer on the marketing for your good clinical and then you can handle the other things. There's some communication there, some business, but I'm sure there's some other books out there that are really geared towards that. So that's, I think, why it's so hard for a lot of chiropractors to get traction. And then you could talk about the other things, like there's just no meat on the bone anymore, right? Like, you know, insurance reimbursement is so low and so it's hard to also make enough money to pay yourself and a staff and all that. So there obviously can be a lot of variables, but I think what I mentioned is definitely a few of them.

I couldn't agree more. And I think that really drives home the importance of. I'm going to encourage everybody that's listening and watching. Be sure to head over and pick up the book for, you know, for a very small, you know, books are the best investment. You can make right. So you get out there, pick up the book, start to really develop and fine tune based off of Kevin's expertise and what he's seen working with hundreds of docs and you know, take it and run with it. There is a lot to learn. You're not going to be able to learn everything, but certainly having a great resource will help you go 10 steps ahead. If you're not already in the Modern Chiropractic Marketing group or listening to the podcast, please check the episode notes of this. We're going to link those down below. Get involved, get engaged. It is no coincidence that those individuals who do things like purchase books and and read them, those who join groups and become engaged are typically the docs get get the most out of it. What you put out is what you're going to get back. So Kevin's been doing absolutely awesome work for years and he's put together some fantastic tools and resources, whether it's the podcast, the group, and I can't wait to read the book, so be sure to check it out. Kevin, where can docs go to learn more specifically, where would you like to point them to?

Yeah, the book's called Doing It Right. Modern Chiropractic Marketing. And you can go to this is a marketing strategy as well. If you take those long ugly URL links and turn them into a nice pretty one, you can go to bit ly.com and so it's bit.ly doingitright mcm as in modern Chiropractic Marketing. And that's bit ly doingitright mcm.

There you go. We're going to drop that link down below as well, head over, pick up the book and go see Kevin when he's out there speaking. He's going to be talking all about this throughout. So if you have questions, be sure to hit him up. Join the Modern Chiropractic Marketing Group. Engage with the community over there. It's an awesome group of docs and if you want even more content, be sure to tune into Kevin's podcast where he breaks down the topics that are involved in that book at a consistent basis. Kevin, I really appreciate you coming on. Best of luck with the book. I can't wait to get my copy and I'll see you very soon.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based on Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.