October 2007

Three ways to boost your internal marketing campaigns

by Dr. Eric M. Osansky

On more than one occasion I have had chiropractors tell me that they don't send out regular internal marketing campaigns because they don't work. I honestly find this hard to believe, as it really doesn't take more than one or two new patients to bring in a positive ROI.

If you have a good relationship with your patients (both past and present), then you should receive a three‑to‑five percent response when sending out an internal marketing campaign, assuming you send out a quality campaign and don't target them too frequently.

Quite frankly, even if you received just a one percent response, it still should deliver a positive return on investment.

For example, if you were to send out an internal marketing campaign to 100 of your patients, and it cost you two dollars per patient, the total investment would be $200. One quality new patient should easily pay for this.

However, if you aren't getting at least a three‑to‑vie percent response with your internal marketing campaigns, then here are three things you could do to get them to work:

1. Work on building and maintaining relationships. This is the biggest reason why many chiropractors don't receive a good response with their internal marketing campaigns. You need to do everything necessary to "build the bond," and then maintain it. The funny thing is that most DCs know exactly what they must do, but for some reason still don't do it.

Just a few of the things you can and should be doing to build the relationship with your patients:

 ***  Give each patient a welcome gift after the report of findings.

 ***  Send a welcome letter to each patient after his or her first visit.

 ***  Call every patient the night of his or her first adjustment.

 ***  Send a stick letter sequence to your patients, especially the first few weeks of care.

 ***  Send a monthly patient newsletter.

 ***  Have at least two patient appreciation events each year.

Doing these six things alone will help to build and maintain the relationship with your patients, which will not only help to improve the response of your internal marketing campaigns, but overall will improve compliance.

So, what you need to do is go down this list and ask yourself how many of these things you're doing in your practice. Doing three or four of them is better than doing none, but there is no good reason why you aren't doing all six of them.

2. Offer praise and recognition to your patients for referring. This is something else that most chiropractors know they should be doing. And while many do send a thank you card for referring, you have to go above and beyond this to turn your patients into referral "warriors."

First of all, the thank you card you send should be a nice one, and it should have a handwritten message inside of it. And if a patient should send you multiple referrals, don't write the same message.

You should also strongly consider giving each patient who refers to you a phone call the day the person he or she referred to you schedules an appointment. This will really impress the referring patient.

Of course, you also want to do some of the basics for patients who refer, such as post their name on your referral board, include them in your patient newsletter where you thank all of your referring patients, etc. And once again, have a couple of patient appreciation events for them.

In fact, for your referral warriors you should have a separate patient appreciation dinner. You would only invite those patients who over the past year have given you at least one referral.

If patients know that they will get a lot of praise and recognition, then this by itself will improve the response of any internal marketing campaigns you send out.

3. Don't send internal marketing campaigns too frequently. As a rule, you can never mail your patients too often. But when it comes to marketing for referrals, you don't want to target them too often.

So, go ahead and send a stick sequence, a monthly newsletter, a postcard when you go on vacation, invitations to patient appreciation events, notices about contests, etc. But I wouldn't send them a monthly internal marketing campaign.

On the other hand, you shouldn't be afraid to target your patients with an internal marketing campaign on a quarterly basis.

Naturally, with these three things I have mentioned it does take time to produce consistent results. If you currently have a poor relationship with your patients, then it will take at least a few months to improve it.

And if you haven't given much praise or recognition to your referring patients in the past, then it will be an even greater challenge to get your internal marketing to work well.

But it can be done, so make it a goal to begin working on the relationship, and go out of your way to offer praise and recognition for referring. In a matter of months, you'll see a noticeable increase in response when sending out an internal marketing campaign.

(Dr. Eric M. Osansky, a Life University graduate, is the author of "Instrument Adjusting Riches, a book that shows chiropractors how to use any type of adjusting instrument to attract new patients and grow their practice. For more information, visit his website ‑‑  www.InstrumentAdjustingSuccess.com  ‑‑ and subscribe to his FREE six‑part e‑mail mini‑course on how to promote any type of adjusting instrument.)