How To Strategically Market in Today's Economy

Posted on February 03, 2014 by Dr Paul S Inselman, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

How to Strategically Market in Today’s Economy
By Paul S. Inselman, DC

It’s crazy. The government loans us hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to Chiropractic school. Then our Chiropractic schools teach us how to palpate an atlas, adjust an SI joint and pass our boards. Then selective banks will loan us more money to open and or buy a practice. The problem is nobody ever teaches chiropractors how to market or how to run a business. Chiropractors are either left to their own devices, while their loans accrue interest; their stress levels rise, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to practice; or they change careers. What is a chiropractor to do?
The focus of this article is to teach the reader the basics of how to market in today’s economy and to help you put the fun and profitability back into practice.
Over the last few years chiropractors have had a terrible economic ride. From 2008-2012 the average practice dropped 28%. In 2013, the average practice grew about 21% recouping some of those losses. While that’s good news, the true economic effect on your wallet due to higher food and gas prices is still a substantial decrease in lifestyle. Now is the time to learn the necessary marketing and business skills that will allow you to increase your standard of living and deliver terrific patient care in a stress-free environment.
Let’s take a moment and determine how YOU spend money. You are probably no different than 99% of the population when it comes to making a purchase. According to the AIDA-model, created in 1898 by E. St. Elmo Lewis, he mapped a theoretical customer journey from the moment a brand or product attracted consumer attention to the point of action or purchase. AIDA is an acronym which stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. Can you imagine that people’s buying habits were investigated as early as 1898?
According to Wikipedia, this early model has been evolved by marketing consultants and academics to cater for the modern customer and is now referred to in marketing as, the purchase or buying funnel.
The generally accepted stages of the buying funnel of today are: Awareness, Interest, Learn, Shop, and Buy.

It is important to note that 33% of people that enter your buying funnel will buy from you, just not today. This is a very important point because your marketing efforts are going to be dependent upon that fact.
For example, let’s say that you want to buy a new car, TV, house or any other good or service. The first step is you have awareness in a particular brand. That awareness creates an interest whereby you want to learn more about the product. It is at this point in the buying funnel that you might do research online or in the library to learn more about the good or service that you are interested in buying. Next, you will want to comparison shop to ensure that you are getting good value for your expenditure. Finally, when all of the steps are completed, you are ready to buy. Typically it will take several days, months or even years when making big purchases for you to finally get to the buy point of the funnel.
It is important to note that the buying funnel changes based on the economy. In good economic times where there is plenty of cash, the line between the shop and buy sections of the funnel move upward making the shop section very small and the buy section very large. In poor economic times the lines are reversed causing the shop section of the funnel to become exceedingly large, while the buy section becomes miniscule. The buying funnel of today due to a poor economy is exactly that, the shop section is huge while the buy section is very tiny.
The beauty of marketing is any chiropractor who knows and understands the buying funnel will be able to successfully market their practice in any economy. Let’s take a look how the buying funnel becomes imperative when marketing your practice and where the majority of chiropractors make their mistakes.
Let’s use any standard chiropractic marketing strategy: health care class, screening, print ad etc. It doesn’t matter for the sake of this exercise what strategy is deployed. For the sake of this example, we will use a screening.
Saturday morning comes and the excited chiropractor packs up the car with all of his brochures, tables, signs, balloons, and appointment books. He grabs a quick Latte and picks up his assistant. It is a beautiful day and they discuss how excited they are to serve the community. They are also excited about the prospect of 8000 people who are supposed to walk the aisles of the fair. They start joking what if all 8000 people came in on Monday, what would we do?
They diligently and carefully set up their booth. No detail is left undone. They walk the booth to see the flow. 30 minutes before “show time”. The excitement is palpable. They quickly do one more dry run, the gates open and throngs of people start to meander in. A few people look at the booth, the chiropractor and assistant smile, start to talk, but the people keep walking. “Don’t worry”, the doctor reassures the assistant,” it is very early, people will come.” As soon as those words are uttered, it is like magic two people come to the booth.
The prospects have now entered the AWARENESS PHASE of the chiropractors buying funnel. During this time the prospects glance at the booth and are deciding if they want to enter the INTEREST PHASE of the funnel. They say” good morning” to the doctor and his assistant and the doctor starts to ask them questions. The prospects engage in answering the questions and they have decided to accept the screening process. The prospects have now entered the LEARN PHASE of the chiropractors buying funnel. After the screening procedure is performed, the chiropractor goes over a mini-report of findings and explains to the potential patient what was found. If positive finds were found, the chiropractor extends an incentive to the patient to make an appointment and shepherds the patient to the assistant who cheerfully makes and appointment for the prospect to come to the office for a complete exam at a discounted fee.
This is where the chiropractor makes his first mistake. The chiropractor who does not understand the buying funnel believes that he has just made a sale and that the prospect entered the buy phase of the funnel. This is erroneous because in actuality the prospect just entered the SHOP PHASE of the funnel. This is where the prospect starts to Google you and do research on the screening modality that you used. This is the time that the prospect may even comparison price shop by asking friends, family or checking other offices to determine what chiropractors charge, what insurance covers etc.
Now Monday comes and the chiropractor and assistant are very excited because a number of prospects are due to come to the office today. 11:00 am is when our illustrative prospect is due to come in for his discounted complete examination and x-rays. At 11:20 am the assistant calls the prospect because he didn’t show. She gets a voice mail and leaves a pleasant message and an urging to “call us to reschedule”. At 4:00 pm the chiropractor gets a break in his schedule so he decides to call the prospect because he never returned the call. He gets the prospect on the phone who proceeds to tell the chiropractor that “he wants to think about it.” The chiropractor explains the findings again and reiterates to the prospect the amazing incentive that he is turning down. Still, the prospect says, “that he wants to think about it”. The chiropractor hangs up the phone, dejected, anxious and depressed. The chiropractor just spent $1200 of money that he really did not have to do this screening. He was anticipating a windfall of new patients that not only would give him a break-even on the $1200 spent; but, would also give him a handsome profit to boot. Unfortunately, the same rejection call was heard by all 10 of the prospects that were scheduled for that day.
The chiropractor now vows that “screenings don’t work!” People are not into Chiropractic care, and he is never doing a screening again. This is where the chiropractor makes mistake number two. The chiropractor that does not understand the buying funnel does not realize that 33% of all people that entered his buying funnel will buy from him, JUST NOT TODAY. The chiropractor that does understand the buying funnel knows that by creating strategic-based marketing campaigns that adhere to the buying funnel rules and principals, will get 33% of the people that came into his funnel to become patients over time.
By learning and understanding the buying funnel and learning how to create time-tested strategic-based marketing campaigns, the chiropractor, will successfully grow their practice in any economy.

Dr. Paul S. Inselman, President of Inselmancoaching, is an expert at teaching chiropractors how to build honest, ethical, integrity-based practices based on sound business principles. From 2008-2012 his clients practices grew an average rate of 145% while the general profession was down 28%. His 27 years of clinical experience coupled with 10 years of professional coaching has allowed him to help hundreds of chiropractors throughout the nation. He can be reached at 1-888-201-0567 or to schedule a free no obligation consultation go to https://www.timetrade.com/book/JNW2J . His website is inselmancoaching@gmail.com .