I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years in an effort to build my practice. Who hasn’t?!?
I’ve said the wrong things… I’ve done the wrong things… I’ve even made the same mistakes over and over again.
But in my work with acupuncturists all across the world, I think there is one mistake that’s made more than any other. Sadly, making this mistake can create a huge amount of anxiety in your practice.
As you might imagine, this mistake has to do with marketing. In particular, when marketing happens and when it does not.
Some acupuncturists seem to have the understanding that marketing is something you do when you need or want patients. While that’s technically correct, taking action based on that understanding is going to create huge challenges for you in your practice.
The reason is actually quite simple…
You need “marketing” to make “selling” obsolete.
You don’t really have to sell your services when patients call to book your next available appointment. Why? Because the patient has taken action.
So the question becomes, how do you generate more calls from patients asking to schedule your next available appointment?
You really have two options....
The first option is to simply sit, wait and hope the phone will ring. This “hope marketing” has little to no impact on the growth of your practice and is not an acceptable way to grow.
The second option is far more powerful and will empower growth in your practice more consistently. I am a big advocate of systems for facilitating practice growth.
Systems don’t need to be complicated. In fact, systems help streamline your clinic and overtime can be honed to help you free up more time and lighten your workload.
When you introduce systems into your practice you will begin supporting your marketing efforts and further your patient’s front-of-mind awareness, which in turn makes “selling” obsolete. Systems enabled you to spend more time doing what you love, treating and healing your patients.
Creating systems within your practice will enable you to have a real-time understanding of how to process patients through your clinic's protocols. Your practice should have systems in place to manage...
- How you attract new prospective patients
- How you convert prospects to paying patients
- How you process first-time patients
- How you educate your patients
- How you request referrals from existing patients
- How you reactivate patients who have fallen out-of-care
- How you become valuable to your past, present and future patients
- How you assume the role of health advisor in your patient’s lives
Here are a few valuable, done-for-you marketing tools to help you market and grow your practice through systems, protocols and patient education.
Marketing without "selling" is all about assuming the role of being the go-to health advisor in your patient's life. There’s no more valuable position to be in than that.
See you next time,
Jeffrey Grossman, EAMP
“Become the go-to health advisor in your patient's life”
