Click here to download the transcript.
Hi, folks. Jeffrey Grossman here from Acupuncture Media Works and AcuPerfect Websites. I am thrilled to be here. Thank you American Acupuncture Council for inviting me on here to conduct a program on their To The Point live training series on Facebook. I’m really glad to be here. I’m really glad to be a participant and a presenter here. We’re going to be doing some future programs, and I’m going to be talking about creative solutions to grow your practice using simple, effective, and sleaze-free strategies. I know that marketing is something that is imperative to help you grow your practice, and I also know that as an acupuncturist, you might not be that thrilled to participate in the marketing world.
But yet as an entrepreneur and as a healer, that which you, everyone who’s watching this who’s an acupuncturist, you are both of that, you will need to participate in and embark on and embrace both hats of being the entrepreneur and the healer. My goal through this program that the AAC is putting on is to provide you with some tools moving forward to help you market your practice, attract patients, reactivate your inactive patients, and to essentially grow your practice in a way that makes you feel comfortable, that allows you to reach some of the goals that you want with growing your practice, and to achieve some of the financial goals you’re looking to obtain with helping more people in your community with this beautiful medicine.
Again, thank you American Acupuncture Council for having me here and inviting me on as a presenter. Today, I want to talk about five different actions that you can implement now to prepare your practice to reopen. I also want to talk about a couple of things that you can be doing now to pivot your practice, so when this crazy time happens again, hopefully it won’t, but my feeling is that we’ll be going through waves of what we’re experiencing now with this crazy pandemic. One of the things that I want to encourage you all to do is to consider about different ways that you can pivot your practice now so when things happen in the future, you’re already there. You’re already prepared.
You already know what to do and how to keep the patients flowing and some finances coming in based upon what you’ve doing now to prepare yourself for the future. One of the things that’s really important is that it’s important to market your practice now while the competition is low. Because a lot of people right now are pulling back their marketing dollars and all of their marketing outreach because they’re scared or they’re frightened or they want to save and conserve money. But I really feel that now is not the time to be conservative in your marketing efforts. In fact, I think you should be putting a lot more energy into that right now, and I’ll talk about a couple of things that you could be doing in order to make that happen.
One of the things I also feel is really important that you could be doing right now is to educate yourself now on what you’ve been wanting to learn in the past. Whether or not you want to educate yourself on website basics or email marketing basics or specific acupressure points or tapping techniques or things of that nature, those are some important things that you could be incorporating in your life right now during this time that we have to reset and refocus because we’re forced to stay in doors, to really tap into those things that you’ve been needing to do in your practice. Five actions that you can implement now to prepare your practice to reopen. One of the first things that I really encourage you guys to do would be to maintain your digital awareness in order to stay on top of mind awareness.
The biggest thing I want to encourage you to do right now, which many of you may have been putting off and many of you may have already been doing this already, is to evaluate your website. Now, why evaluate your website? Well, good question, because your website is the calling card that everyone is going to be looking at and tapping into whenever they hear about you. Any future referral or any future word of mouth or any type of marketing that you’re going to be doing in the future, everyone is going to be going to your website. It’s going to be important for you to take this time to use it as wisely as you can. One of the things that I suggest you do is to make whatever improvements need to happen to your website now. Here are a couple of things I want to encourage you to do.
Explore your homepage, okay? What happens when people visit your website? What is the first message that comes across to them about what you do and what you have to offer for them? Is it easy to navigate? Do you have a message that comes across to them when they hit your website? Do they know that you’re a specialist in sports medicine or a specialist in fertility or that you’re amazing in helping support immune health or that you’re really good for stress and anxiety relief? Many of you might not be specializing right now, but I encourage all of my students in my practice management class and all of the practitioners that I’m mentoring to figure out something that they can specialize in.
The reason is is because every acupuncturist is trained to be a general practitioner, which is great. We can help so many different conditions. This being a specialist means that you are able to focus your mind, your money and your communication processes and your messages on specific niches. That’s one thing I would really encourage you to do. Also, make sure that your blog posts are current and up to date. Maybe you could take some time to write a couple of blog posts now about immune health and about staying calm and about how to be productive, what points are good for immunity, what points are good for keeping you stress-free, and what points are really good for helping you stay motivated and productive. Okay?
Also, you want to check to make sure that your website has multiple calls to action. If you’ve seen any past webinars or trainings that I’ve done, you’ve heard me talk about calls to action. These are specific calls that are on your website that make people take action. Maybe you people visit your website and they might not schedule with you right away, but maybe they’ll give you their email address in exchange for a free eBook on immune health, or maybe they will click to download a low cost complementary evaluation or exam that you may be offering. On your website, you need to have multiple calls to action, little buttons that say, “Click here for this. Click here to schedule for this. Click here to download this.”
If your website doesn’t have that, I encourage you to take that into consideration. One of the first things I really want you to do is to audit your digital awareness and evaluate your website. If any of you are interested in getting a free website evaluation, feel free to put some comments in the box below the videos here and I will reach out to you. I’ll have some team members reach out to you to provide you with a free website evaluation because that’s something that we do that’s near and dear to our hearts. Okay? The next thing that I think is really important for you guys to do is to tap into some technologies now that you can learn how to use and learn how to work with your patients that you could use now and also into the future.
Because, like I said, I don’t think that this is a one and done kind of thing. I think this is the kind of thing that’s going to be coming back to us. Telehealth, that is the big buzzword these days. Doxy.me is one of the easiest platforms that you could be using in your practice. It’s really easy to set up. There’s no downloads that need to take place. Clients, they just click and they access your telehealth portal. Exploring technology is important. I think one of them would be making sure that you’re familiar with telehealth, and the other one is to do videos.
I think doing something like this where you could actually put on a camera or use your phone and sit there and educate about immune health or educate about tapping specific points for calming anxiety or stress or improving insomnia or helping to support the immune system. You have so many tools at which to educate and teach on. Don’t hold back, okay? Maybe you’re scared about getting in front of a camera or maybe you’re scared about what you should be saying. But the thing is, I feel like this whole crisis that’s been happening now, people are becoming less judgmental and you don’t need to be a model and look handsome and beautiful in order to be behind the camera.
Just showing up and being real and offering really solid content and making sure that you’re there to support your community, people will get that. They’ll really resonate that with you. I encourage you all to tap into the technology of using videos for your marketing prospects and to help grow your following. YouTube is the way to do that. There are so many different ways. You could turn on your iPhone and take a couple of videos. You could have other friends and family members or other practitioners even interview about a couple of things. One of the things I would encourage you all to do is to jot down some of the points that you know that are really great for supporting immune health, right?
You could name a few off the top of your heads, and put together a short little video. It could go something like this. Hi, my name is Jeffrey Grossman, and I want to share with you about how acupuncture and acupressure can help support your immune health in these crazy times. I’m really committed to helping people in our community to stay well and to stay healthy. Many of you might not be aware of the fact that acupuncture is really great for supporting immune health. What I want to do is I want to walk you through three acupressure points and how to use those points to stimulate immune health. That’s it. Really super simple, right? That’s one video I would definitely encourage you to do.
Also, those of you that work with herbs, what herbs are in people’s kitchen right now that can help with lung health or coughs or immune health or raising the chi in any way? I am sure you can think of some. Do a video on these kinds of things, okay? Those of you that are frightened about doing any types of video, but you want to do them, again, drop a comment below here and I’ll reach out to you because I’m committed to helping practitioners find success during this time and to overcome some of the fears that are keeping you back because this is the time to not be stagnant, right?
This is the time to tonefy and to move forward, to move your cheese so you can get out there, so when this whole thing is over and it’s going to come to an end and it looks like there’s a silver lining on the clouds right now, for many of us in the different states that we’re at. Things are going to eventually get back to normal for the most part, although there’s going to be things that aren’t going to be as normal as they are right now. I’m encouraging you to tap into these things that might make you feel uncomfortable. Because when you hit up against that wall of discomfort, you know you reached your limit, but moving beyond that is where you need to go. It’s not that hard to do. Okay?
You need support, you need some mentoring, you need some guidance, and maybe even just a short little script or some ideas on how to do that. That’s what we’re here to do and offer you. All right? Technology is really important to tap into, telehealth, putting up some videos, and also email marketing. It is the lowest hanging fruit that you have right now in your practice. Most of you that are listening to this have some semblance of an email list for your patient. Use it. All right? Tap into this knowledge. Again, if you do a video on immune health, you could use that same content to put on your website, to put on your social media pages, and to also put as an email to your patients. Because what else are you doing?
What else are they doing right now? If you’re providing solid content with them that is encouraging and engaging and inspiring, they’ll eat it up. They’ll really enjoy that. Sending emails out to your patients now is really important to stay in top of mind awareness so they don’t forget about you. Because if you’re not doing it, somebody else might be and somebody else is going to be getting in front of them. When this whole thing blows over, they might not come back to you because somebody else kind of captured their attention. Don’t lose their top of mind awareness of you. Okay? You want those people back. All right? The other thing I want to talk about, one of the other actions that you can be taking right now is to tap into your goldmine. Okay?
Now, your goldmine are the people that already know you, like you, and trust you. Those are the patients that you already have in your practice. Now, I want to encourage each and every one of you when I’m done with this video is to write a list of all of your A patients. Your A patients are those patients that you love. Whenever you saw them on your schedule, your energy raised up. You’re like, “Oh my God, I want to clone my practice with every single one of that kind of patient,” right? Those are your A patients, the ones that raise your chi. Now, your C patients, the ones when you see them on your schedule you’re like, oh my god, how am I going to do this? Okay, I can muster up that energy. It’s the end of the day. Okay, I can do this. I can do this, right?
Maybe some of you are giggling right now because you can resonate with that. Make a list of your A patients and call them. Simple conversation to have. Here it is. Hi there, Jeffrey. I am just checking in with you. I miss seeing you here at the clinic, and I just want to see how you and your family are doing during this crazy time. I also want to let you know that there are a couple of new offerings that I’ve been tapping into here at the clinic. We are now offering telehealth, and I’m hosting a class on four points to support immune health. I also want to share with you on certain specific herbs that are really helpful that you probably have in your kitchen that can help support your immunity. That’s the conversation. Just call up your A patients and just check in with them.
In my group mentoring class that I run each month, people are doing that, and the practitioners are surprised that they’re getting such a great feedback from their patients. They’re like, oh my God, thank you so much for reaching out to me. How many other doctors have reached out to you during this time? I mean, I imagine probably none. Okay? For your patients to hear from you when you’re just, “Hey, I’m just checking in and seeing how you and your family are doing. I want to let you know about some really cool offerings that we’re having here at the clinic,” that’s cool. That goes a long way. Make a list of your A patients, reach out to them with a phone call, and then with a follow-up email, simple conversation.
Really that’s all we need to have with them. The other thing I want to talk about would be consider diversifying your offers. Okay? Now, what do I mean by that? By diversifying your offers, what else can you think about that you can offer now and in future times when we might have to close our practices because of this craziness that you can offer? Can you offer herbal consult? Can you learn about EFT tapping techniques? Can you learn about specific acupressure points that you could teach more deeply and more widely? Can you learn about like breathing techniques to stimulate the chi or qigong? Okay?
What kind of off things can you offer now and in the future that you can potentially charge for, that you could teach online classes for when and if we get to this place again where you’re seeing your patients through the internet? Okay? A couple of things that you might want to consider too is offering more retail. When this whole thing is over, one of the things that you could be selling still would be herbs that get drop shipped to your patients and retail like supplements and other types of things from like Emerson Ecologics that you could drop ship to your patients. That’s a great way for you to generate a little bit of income now and to still be in top of mind awareness of your patients.
I want you to ask yourself what kinds of changes can you make today that will manifest for you now and also into the future? Because I think this is going to happen and I want you to be prepared. I don’t want you to get stuck and like become a deer in the headlights at some other point. Okay? I want you to be prepared now. Where can you pivot your practice now in order to come out of this positively in the way? Don’t get stuck. Don’t stop marketing. Don’t stop the communication process now. Stay in top of mind awareness however you can in order for your patients to remember you and to be reminded of all the good things that you have to offer them. Don’t assume that everything’s going to go back to normal because they might not. Okay?
Determine what you can do to survive and thrive during the now and also how you’ll come out of this in a powerful way and into the future. Thank you so much again for the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me on the first training that I’m working with you guys on. Thank you everyone for watching me here. You can reach me at jeffrey@acupuncturemediaworks.com or in the comments below here or even through our websites at acupuncturemediaworks.com or acuperfectwebsites.com. Feel free to reach out to me there. Make sure you join us next week for the next To The Point by the AAC. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Stay strong, stay connected, stay focused, and do not stagnate. Okay?
Do what you can now in order to manifest your future, so when this whole thing ends, you come out of this smelling like roses. Be strong. Stay healthy. Talk soon. See you next time. Bye, bye.
Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/c/Acupuncturecouncil ) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/acupuncturecouncil/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-acupuncture-council-information-network/) Periscope (https://www.pscp.tv/TopAcupuncture). Twitter (https://twitter.com/TopAcupuncture) If you have any questions about today’s show or want to know why the American Acupuncture Council is your best choice for malpractice insurance, call us at (800) 838-0383. or find out just how much you can save with AAC by visiting: https://acupuncturecouncil.com/acupuncture-malpractice-quick-quote/.