Proven Strategies to Attract More New Patients to Your Practice | Podcast Ep. 307

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. And today's episode I want to break down what I have discovered over the last 15 years around patient attraction. There are some items, some thoughts, some ideas, some strategies and tactics that that I see happen correctly time and time again and some areas that I see happening incorrectly in many practices time and time again. And this is a big deal in most chiropractic practices. How are you acquiring and attracting new patients? Most importantly, in a way that you can be proud of, in a way that builds long term relationships, and ultimately in a way that serves both your patients needs and your needs as a business. I wanna break down some of my overarching thoughts around this, what I've learned again over the last decade. Pl plus I got a feeling there are a few, at least a few items that you're gonna discover on this podcast that you will be able to put into action and improve your patient attraction acquisition and marketing pretty much this week. Now, before we get started, I wanna say a few words about novopulse. This is a tool that is where recovery meets performance. You can learn more about this incredible new technology that reduces pain and inflammation while also improving function@novo pulse.com recovery novo-pulse.com recovery I talked with their founder. He has a wealth of knowledge around inflammation. This is a tool that is unique in the marketplace. There's nothing like it. And I'm gonna really encourage you, check it out, see what's going on. See if this would be a great fit to help your patients improve in your practice. But as I said at the top on today's episode, we're breaking down everything around patient attraction. And this is a big topic, there's no question about that. There's a lot that goes into it, both from a strategy and from a tactical standpoint. But there are a few pillars that I think are really important for all of us to talk through messaging. Things like messaging, consistency, leaning into gravity, and also having systems and processes. All of these are critical components to having a fantastic stream of new patients into your practice and maximizing your patient attraction and acquisition. But I think many of us, we focus so much on just these minute tactical elements, we never take a step back and view our marketing holistically in terms of messaging, consistency, leaning into gravity and systems and processes. I want to talk those down and showcase this in the vein of what we're doing with a smart chiropractor with the patient journey. There's three phases to that journey if you remember from a few weeks ago, we broke it down, there's the potential patient, phase one, phase two is an active patient and phase three is a proactive patient. Patient attraction, of course, sits on the front end of that, right? This is having people move from potential patients to active patients in your practice. That's really patient attraction. Now we broke down the touchstones of that, which is teach and invite. How do you move somebody from a potential patient to become an active patient in your practice? Right. They don't know anything about you. They're just a potential person. There's somebody out there in your community, in your audience, they've never been an active patient. How do you move them into becoming an active patient? Well, the best way to do that, there's a bunch of ways to do it, but we've discovered the best way to do it is through a process of teaching and inviting. That's why those are our two touchstones in that phase. Teach, get out there, teach. Showcase something educational, inspirational, engaging with that person, with your audience. Proactively answer their questions, right? Everything around teaching and then invite, that's your call to action. Invite them to take a next step in your practice. That might be a verbal invitation. If you're doing a talk, it might be something like a call to action, like a link. If it's in an email or on your website or to your online scheduler, there's a lot of different calls to action that you can utilize. However, the framework that I'm going to encourage you to think through and it's what we practice, what we preach with the smart chiropractor and the evidence based chiropractor for that matter, is teach and invite. When you get out there and you build trust, you build rapport, you're showcasing who you are, what you do and proactively answering the questions that your audience, these potential patients have, well, you're going to be in a really good position for them to choose you as their chiropractor. Now, let's talk messaging, because I think this is a key component of it. What's your messaging? And I mean that in every way possible. How are you getting out there? When you meet new people at maybe a local networking event, what's your website look like? What's the actual words on your website? Right? What are those words? And does that match what you're putting out with your social media content? Is it really attracting your ideal patient? And this is a constant work in progress throughout all the businesses I'm involved in, our spinal imaging company Cairo matchmakers, the smart chiropractor, the evidence based chiropractor. It doesn't end. Messaging is a constantly evolving item, but it's so important. I think many docs out there, you might use a website and then kind of move on from it and don't think about it. And this is a congruency issue, meaning the more aligned your messaging is on your website with what people are seeing and experiencing in your practice, with the conversations that you're having in your community, you're going to attract and ultimately convert more new patients. In so many docs out there, I think it ends up being a little mixed up. In other words, they might have some messaging on their website that's feature driven, not benefit driven. They're having different conversations in their community. And while they might like their practice to be one way, when they look at it, when you look at it, it might be a slightly different way than really attracting your ideal patients. And part of this is all the problem, meaning when you have messaging that's incongruent, that's sort of mixed up, it's gonna be very difficult for your ideal patient to choose you. So I like to think about messaging in terms of reverse engineering. Who is your ideal patient? Is it older people? Is it younger people? Is it super fit people? Is it chronic pain patients? Is it post surgical patients? Really, really focus in and think about. And you might say, well, I'd like to take care of everybody. Okay, I'm gonna encourage you to be more specific. And what I mean by that is there's an old saying in marketing. If you're trying to appeal to everybody, you're going to appeal to nobody. And I think that holds true. I've seen it hold in 99.9% of cases with very, very few exceptions. So from a messaging standpoint, what do you have on your website? What should you get out there in terms of communication? Reverse engineer it. Think about it in terms of who's your ideal patient? Are they younger, Are they older, Are they fit, are they unfit, are they healthy, are they in chronic pain and start to then identify what are those individuals dealing with? What are the pain points and struggles that my ideal patient is dealing with? Now, if you start putting out messaging and content, answering those questions, you are going to be positioning yourself from a patient attraction standpoint, very, very well to have more of those individuals come into your practice, because they're going to know trust and like you, you're going to be answering their questions, of course. And it then becomes the obvious choice that you are the best fit for them. And if you again, you might be thinking, oh, I can't make that decision, that's hard. Think about it this way. When you have a full list of patients coming into your practice in a day, who are those individuals that get you most energized? We all have patients that get us super energized. We all have patients that are total energy sucks on our day. And it might be a personality issue, but there also might be some consistent attributes of those individuals. Again, are they older, are they younger, Are they post surgical, are they non surgical, Are they looking for performance gains, Are they pain and rehab, Are they sports related? When you start to identify your ideal patient avatar, it's going to really, really inform the messaging that you can put out in community and how you can attract more of those individuals. So if you haven't considered messaging in your marketing, I'm really going to encourage you to do so. And the second piece I want to touch on is consistency. Again, I found that messaging, when messaging goes awry, everything else is really, really difficult to overcome. So dial in your messaging. Now, let's talk a little bit about consistency. You've probably heard me say this before on the podcast, but the number one factor of success when marketing your practice is consistency, bar none. And consistency is something that so many practices struggle with because marketing is a side activity, it's not a focus of their practice. I've been looking through, we're creating a new document for new docs to launch into practice. And it's really a checklist, a guide for timing, et cetera. And I can tell you I've been looking at a lot of dental, the dental field, in terms of what they provide. Wow. You want to talk about a real emphasis on business from the get go and marketing from the get go. Dental has this dialed in, let's put it that way. And I think there's a lot that we can learn in the chiropractic space from what's going on outside of the chiropractic space. And consistency is a key component of this with all marketing activities. If you're not getting out there, consistently posting on social media, consistently touching your list via email, and getting out on Google, my business, that's kind of the bare minimum, right? You know, so there's a lot of things you could do. But I also don't think you should have FOMO or fear of missing out because you don't need to be on 17,000 different platforms doing everything each and every day. What you need to do is pick a few of these core items. If you're super passionate about one, go for that. But if you're not, pick a few of these core items and get rocking with them. And what are those core items? Email is number one. This is the biggest missed opportunity in most chiropractic practices is inconsistency when emailing their list. This is why with the smart chiropractor, obviously we have great messaging, but we also have such consistency built in. We automate it so you don't have to mess with it. Because we know if it becomes a task to do, it's going to fall to the bottom all the time, certainly below patient care, which it should, which is why as a chiropractor you need help to do these things really, really well and to do them at the highest level that produces the best results. So email is one area where consistency, if you're lagging with consistency, you're going to struggle. Your most valuable practice asset is your email list. Whether that's 5,500 or 5,000, that is your most valuable asset. Utilizing that list can keep, you know, it can keep retention high, it can improve your reactivation rate, it can build referrals utilizing your email list. There is gold in that list. And consistently touching that list at least one time per week is absolutely critical. With drumroll please. Great messaging, right, goes back to the top, right, that you know that messaging reigns supreme. But man, you could have great messaging, but if nobody ever hears about it, you know, the tree falls in the woods. Did it actually fall if nobody heard it kind of thing. So consistency is absolutely critical in email. Secondarily, it's very, very important. As far as your website and social media go, social media is pretty self explanatory. You have to get out there. It's a quality and quantity game. On social media. Not everything's going to be a home run. And if you're not posting daily, you're just missing opportunity and the algorithm is going to hurt you for it. You're not going to reach very many people at the end of each month if you're only posting once a week. And you're just not going to ever build any traction. And I think if you have great messaging, you should be building traction by posting each and every day. We've seen that with the best, the stocks that have the most success. And finally on website as well. Posting blog content consistently to a website is one of the primary drivers to Google that. This is a live website, that stuff's happening here and it's going to help your SEO and search ranking. As you put out blogs, we recommend weekly. That's what we provide for our smart chiropractor members is weekly blogs. Because that's just a good standard cadence. That's not overdoing it, but that feeds the monster of Google. To help more people, it's going to help your search, it's going to help your local search, it's going to help more people click through your website, which ultimately leads to better conversions and better patient attraction. Now if we look at the third one, I want to talk about leaning into gravity. This is where I just find, you know, many docs go askew as well. So messaging reigns supreme. Consistency is critically important. But lean into gravity. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. Doc. This is the most important, important thing. And I've gone through some of this as well where it's like, you know, you start to do 10 new things and you don't really do any of them very well, right? So you know, this is a common issue. It's not a. Chiropractors aren't, you know, aren't, aren't, aren't immune to it by any stretch of the imagination. But lean into gravity. And what do I mean by that? I mean, right, listen to the people that are doing it at the highest level and do those things, you know, model after, after what's already working. So in other words, job number one, use your email list. We send 500,000 emails on behalf of our smart chiropractor members each and every month and that generates reactivations for them each and every week. We send through evidence based chiropractor about 50,000 emails a month. That's how the business grows and it's a critically important component of it. So lean into gravity. If you don't have, you might want to start a YouTube channel, but it's gonna be a long haul. And if you have zero people there right now, you have zero people. You don't know how to shoot video, you're uncomfortable, but you think you should do it, Go for it. But don't do that at the expense of things that are already working and the assets and tools you already have. Chances are you have an email list already. So you're not starting from zero. So get out there, touch that list consistently and ensure that your business is being propelled forward. Lean into gravity. And finally, I want to talk systems and processes just at a top level, really. Marketing is not activity based, it's system and process based. And I Think a lot of times as small business owners, we think of it as activity based. I do this, I'm going to do this for a month, I'm going to do this one thing and I hope that something comes back. And I'm really going to encourage you to think about your marketing a little bit differently. Marketing is part of being a business owner and having systems and processes ensure that you can lean into gravity. You have good consistency and if you top it off with good messaging, you're going to be in a great spot. But take a look and say, do I have systems and processes in place in my practice around my marketing? Do I have a weekly email that goes out automatically? Do I have a lead magnet or a piece of valuable content on my website that somebody can give me their email address? It automatically sends it to them and then they get a follow up sequence. That's a great way to leverage your websites. What we do very successfully with the smart chiropractor is lead magnets on websites to draw more people in, to generate more qualified leads, to attract more patients and to convert more of them into active care. Not through any trickery, not through any deep discount ads, but, but by back to the beginning teaching and inviting, right? That lead magnet might be seven days to get rid of low back pain, seven steps to reduce headaches. Now, if they're not getting the results, so you're delivering value, you're teaching and then in that you're inviting them to say, hey, if you'd like a thorough examination, if you're not getting the results that you'd want at home, be sure to give us a call. And that works wonders. And it works wonders. We see it time and time again, but it's automated, right? Person enters their email address. Can happen 24 7, 365. The messaging gets out there. All the emails get sent automatically via Cairo emails within smart chiropractor. So systems and processes are key. Do you have, you know, video streaming in your reception area from a patient education standpoint? Does it auto update? We do it via an Amazon Firestick. Does it auto update each month? Like that's a system and a process that you don't have to mess with. And when you have systems and processes behind your marketing, instead of it just being like, I'm going to do this one thing, I'm going to do it just such activity, you're really going to do it as a system and a process. Over time you're going to generate substantially better results because you're going to be more consistent you're going to be leaning into gravity and best practices. You're gonna have the power of others, data and knowledge helping your practice grow. You don't need to think about all this stuff. You're not the first person that's thought about it. You're not the first doc that has and you don't need to take on that and shoulder that responsibility. As a chiropractor, you should be really be focused really linearly on yes, doing a great job building community in your community and building relationships with other healthcare providers. But man, writing subject lines and emails and getting emails out the front door, that's something that really should be focused on and performed by experts in the field. So I'm going to encourage you to take a look as we get down towards the end of this year, Q4 look at your systems and processes and say do I have systems and processes? Are they very good and what could I do better? Because as you propel into next year, if you tidy up your messaging, if you improve your consistency, if you lean into gravity and you build a few systems and processes and I can assure you that next year is going to be bigger growth and you will be more successful, generate more revenue and help more people next year than this year. So hopefully that framed things. You have any questions about this whatsoever, hit me up. Jeffevidence basedchirofractor.com I'm happy to jam on this. Also, I want to say a few words about Echiro EHR before we hop off. Every EHR sells features but few have Echiro's expertise. They can help you create a better lifestyle and improve your practice health. Echiroehr.com it is built on compliance and documentation which are two sweet words to my ear in the EHR and EMR space. So EIRO ehr, check it out if you are into compliance and documentation and you should be if you are listening to this podcast. Additionally, if your office and practice is growing Cairo Matchmakers hit us up. At Cairo Matchmakers we have over, I guess two ways. We have over 150 open positions right now. So if you're a doc out there looking for a new opportunity, reach out. Reach out to us at Cairo Matchmakers we have over 150 open positions right now. Or if you are somebody looking to build and grow your team, be sure to let us know. As a clinic owner we are happy to go through our process, team assessment and ensure that you find the right person, not just any person for your practice that can make a world of difference. So I hope you Have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon.

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