March 2006

The power of internal marketing

by Laurent Goldstein

One of our team members, Ben Brecht, went through a very interesting experience that, to me, perfectly illustrates the power of internal marketing and I wanted to share it with you.

Last summer, Ben went to a sports bar in Atlanta called the ESPN Zone to watch a football game with friends. This is a popular place to gather, eat and drink, and watch sports games of any kind. There are six different areas in the bar. The main room has stadium seating with large, comfortable leather recliners and massive LCD screens spanning the entire wall and creating a panoramic effect. There are smaller LCD screens above the hostess stands, hallways and in the restrooms.

Ben had to use the restroom during a commercial break and although regular television commercials were showing on the main LCD screens, the screens in the restrooms were displaying silent, private advertisements. There, he saw an ad for a skydiving facility and experience in North Georgia. Ben had been thinking about skydiving in the past but had put it in the back of his mind. This ad induced him to call the phone number advertised, i.e., it "closed" him on the experience. A few days later, he jumped from a plane at 14,000 feet!

This is the power of internal and visual marketing: to be able to move an individual from being in a bar enjoying a beer with some friends to jumping from a plane on total impulse. Are there any lessons we can draw from this experience and how do they relate to chiropractic?

The first lesson we can draw is that people are visual learners. Stats show that 85% of the population responds first to visually displayed information. Also, we are accustomed to visual media when we are looking for information: TV screens, Internet monitors, etc. For more in‑depth information, we might pick up a book or a brochure or ask the doctor.

However, the interest or the curiosity has to be triggered first, like it happened with Ben. The silent ad awakened an interest buried somewhere in his mind and pushed him to act by calling a number to ask for more information. And this is where a parallel exists with what could happen in the chiropractic office.

A low back pain patient sitting in your reception area is watching a show on chiropractic and wellness care. This patient did not originally come into your office for wellness care but to try to get rid of a debilitating back pain. Yet, this patient, a baby boomer in his late fifties has been more and more concerned lately about aging and its effect on his body. This is in the back of his mind, but he's taken no real action to try to slow the process down. The inspiring visual messages displayed on the plasma screen create an incentive for this patient to ask the chiropractor questions on the wellness program offered in the office.

Now, the power is in the hands of the chiropractor to "close" the patient on the experience, in this case, to get him signed up for a wellness program and to get him to attend a lecture on health and wellness. When Ben called the skydiving facility, the power was equally in the hands of the skydiving instructor to "close" Ben on the experience to attend first a skydiving instruction class and then go on the plane. In both cases, a silent visual message displayed on a screen was the trigger.

Another lesson we can draw from that story is that it is much easier to get patients to act on signing up for a long‑term or a family plan, or maybe to get them to refer someone if they come to you with a question. If you can discover what they are interested in, your job as a doctor or "educator" is greatly facilitated and the concern of being perceived as someone trying to "sell" your care is gone.

Having a powerful and visual patient education system running throughout your entire office will close your patient base on the chiropractic experience. Certainly, if a message displayed on a tiny LCD screen can take someone from a sports bar to jumping from a plane at 14,000 feet, beautiful and inspiring messages displayed on a big 42‑inch plasma screen can encourage a current chiropractic patient to refer or to incorporate chiropractic as part of his or her lifestyle.

This is the power of internal marketing. Your patients are a "captive audience" waiting to be inspired to make a leap of faith and embrace the chiropractic lifestyle.

(Laurent Goldstein is president of Brican Systems Corporation. He can be reached at 800‑644‑1055.)