And today I want to talk with you about a few things that are going to be helped. Put patients on your treatment table. When we were in acupuncture school, many of us were not really taught, um, how we can build our business and how we can grow a practice.
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Hi there and thank you for this opportunity to share some business and marketing insights with you. Thank you. The American Acupuncture Council for inviting me back to help talk about building your practice in this day and age. And today I want to talk with you about a few things that are going to be helped. Put patients on your treatment table. When we were in acupuncture school, many of us were not really taught, um, how we can build our business and how we can grow a practice. And we seldom received the foundations of building a successful practice and how we can keep patients coming in. You can have all the know-how in the world, but if you don’t know how to consistently attract new patients and how to systematically keep your patients in care, then all the herbs, the points, the prescription, the tongue diagnosis, all that know-how, won’t be much help.
So this is the reason why I’m excited to host this web class about how to reset your practice for 2021. What’s working now to put more patients on your table. So welcome for those of you that don’t know me. My name is Jeffrey Grossman and I’m the founder and owner of Acupuncture Media Works, Accu Perfect Websites and Accu downloads. And I started my practice back in 1998 and had a lot of trials and tribulations and many struggles. And I basically had no business or any type of marketing savvy. And I had to start from scratch like many of you guys listening today. So I noticed that when I was in practice, I had a problem knowing how to market my practice and properly communicate to my patients, because all I wanted to do was to treat people and not to market to them. But the struggle that I faced took me down the path to create companies that I run today.
And it’s a longer story. And I’ll reserve that for another time. So what I want to do is to remind you that we, as acupuncturists are an incredible resource where natural healers, we know how to get people to feel balanced, to feel healthy. We know how to help people using safe and natural methods. And we change lives, right? We help, um, help w we people want our services, right? And they need our services. But a lot of times people don’t even know that we exist. Let alone know that we can treat this vast array of conditions that we can work with. And I want to help you change that. I want to help you get more people on your table. And that’s what these talks are about. They are here to help you be seen. They’re here to help you be heard and ultimately to bring more people in your practice so you can make more money and help more people.
And I want to remind you that you’re never alone. I’m here for you. And at the end of today’s talk, if you feel like you need help getting set up or becoming focused, or if you just need a little motivation to move forward, please feel free to reach out. And I will share some information with you on how to do that. So I’m here to help you give you a fresh perspective, 2020, and COVID changed how the public thinks about and looks about looks for health solutions. There are more opportunities now than ever to help more people, because you have to understand what people are looking for now and the best way to present it. And I want you to have the latest updates and research. So I created a detailed report for what is working now and any recommendations for you, how you can make it work for your practice and get more people on your treatment table.
It’s a 15 page resource, and you’ll find this information invaluable. And I’ll share that link for you at today’s training, uh, at the end of today’s training. So you can actually download that right away. So I want you to use, today’s talk. I want you to use the ebook that I’m gonna share with you as a resource to reset your practice, because just one or two of the simple changes that you pull from the top or from the ebook can make all the difference in your practice. Okay? So let’s jump right in content marketing. What is it? And why should you care? So content marketing is a proven business strategy that brings you more ideal patients without the expense of advertising, but helps you build trust and establish personal connections with patients even before they come into your practice with content marketing, you’re providing value for patients at no cost to them in exchange for their time for reading your content.
And the more time they spend with your content, the more that they will begin to know, like, and trust you. So content marketing amplifies your credibility, your 30, and the desire ability for people to choose you to be their healer. It is a marketing tool for patient engagement, retention, branding, and professional reputation building. And it gives your community an in-depth perspective of how you can help transform their lives for the better these days. The vast majority of Americans seek health information online. Plus we know often people often times find and choose practitioners online. The first place they go to is to Google you and your treatment modalities. And that means if you’re producing valuable medical content online, you’re much more likely to garner attention and authority for you and your practice and to get new patients. So since COVID the average Americans online content consumption has doubled to almost seven hours a day.
And there’s a consumer survey that found that most respondents cited, that they were looking online for personal health and health for friends and family members as their biggest concerns. And they’re looking for answers about their health, how to stay healthy, professional advice on living with a specific ailment and how you may have helped others with their particular problem. So content can take many forms, and here’s what you can offer. You can offer blogs using written articles and patient stories and videos, patient education, videos on your website and on your social media channels, email newsletters, and patient help sheets e-books and PDF reports, uh, live events and trainings on any health condition. So you need content marketing because if you’re a healer, you’re not a sales precedent and the content does the selling for you, right? So here’s a few content strategy that you can start doing today, make sure that your content is compelling enough to people want to share it, right?
So, you know, as you know, your prospects can get a second opinion or forward it to friends. Another thing to do is to post the latest industry news. People expect you to know about medical breakthroughs and how acupuncture can help with this, or how acupuncture can help with that condition. And the other thing that’s really important to do is be niche specific, okay. Have separate content for whatever problems that you deal with most and that your patients are in particular are looking out for. Okay. So I hope that makes sense. Um, and here’s a question that I received a while back from one of my coaching students, and you may have the same question as well. So the question is I’m an acupuncturist, I’m a trained healer, and I’m not a salesman. What is the best way to find new patients to get patients to commit to a full treatment plan?
And that my friends is the million dollar question, right? And there are a million answers to that, but here’s one answer use something that everyone understands and what that is just connecting with your patients through story. I think that you, um, most of you would probably agree that building trust with your patients is paramount in, uh, in with them accepting your care and staying with you for the long-term. And, and you have to build empathy. You have to build trust. You have to build likeability and one sure. Fire way to do that. If I telling stories and the stories that I’m talking about are success stories about how you help people and other patients with similar problems. And when you do this, the sales will take care of themselves. People will read and resonate with a particular patient success story and practically sell themselves on coming to see you.
Nothing is more powerful, right? Patient success stories are the most effective and least expensive ways to find new patients. And they get patients to accept treatment plans. There’s a native American proverb that goes something like this. Tell me the facts and I’ll learn, tell me the truth and I’ll believe, but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. So the number one questions that your prospects want to know is, can you help me with my problem? That’s it, it really is that simple. They don’t need a medical explanation. They’re not looking for a TCM diagnosis. They’re not looking for you to convince them that acupuncture helps. They need something simple to understand and that they can relate to. And storytelling helps people learn because stories are easy to remember. Um, so there’s an organizational psychologist. Her name is peg new Hauser, and she found that learning, um, which stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately for far longer than learning derived facts and figures and Jerome Bruner’s, who is a research psychologist also suggested that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.
So stories boost our feelings of trust, compassion, and empathy, and they connect you with your patients on a whole different level. So when we hear facts, it activates the data processing centers in our brains. But when we hear stories activates a sensory centers in our brains, so here are some things that you could do, right? So have at least one patient success story for every major element that you treat in your practice, give hard copies of those stories to patients, post them in your clinic, post them on your website and use electronic versions of those on social media, blogs, and emails. And also, the other thing that’s really important to do is have a story about why you became an acupuncturist. What was your journey to be the healer that you are today? Okay. And I have a rhetorical question for you. What is the number one way your prospects meet and judge you okay.
Online, especially through your mobile device. So my question to you is your website and content mobile ready. We’re obsessed with being connected with the world, through our mobile phones, many Americans check their mobile devices up to 96 times a day. And that’s once every 10 minutes. And that’s a 20% increase in the last few years. And here’s another disturbing fact that 66% of all Americans check their phones 160 times a day. We are obsessed. It’s really true. How many times do you check your mobile mobile device in a day? So you might be saying to yourself, Jeffrey, I get it. I check my mobile phone a lot of times, but how does this affect my acupuncture practice? Well, the number one, your website must be mobile friendly in this day and age. So given how many people own a smartphone and how often people use their phone, um, to access the internet, it’s really good for business to have a mobile responsive website.
And when we are done here today, um, um, take a look at your website on your mobile device and ask three or four friends to do the same. Ask these questions. What’s how’s it working? What happens when you scroll up and down on the homepage? Is it easy to find your contact information is easy to clip a, cook, a button and make an appointment? Can you find your social media links? Can you schedule or call with one click if I’m ready for an appointment, but what I’ll learn if I’m not ready for an appointment, but I want to learn more about your success in helping patients. Is there good content that is easy for me to find? Do you have content or proof on your blog or webpage that tells me why acupuncture is a good clinical modality. Excuse me. Can I download any digital reports, any newsletters, any patient help sheets, anything that can help me further my knowledge or experience about acupuncture?
Is there a way for people to join your mailing list? Is it easy to find reviews that you have? Is there video, okay. There’s no escaping it. We live in a digital world and both your website and your content must fit into that world. Okay. Or you may be losing patients and referrals every day. Make sense, check your site, make sure it’s 100, a hundred percent mobile ready. If you need a second opinion, feel free to request a free website evaluation. I’ll give you a link towards the end of today’s training, where you can access that free website evaluation. All right. And finally, the number one way to positively positively influence prospects to become patients is with video. I know many of you are cringing with the idea of actually producing videos, but video continues to be one of the most effective elements in a patient digital marketing strategies that we roll into 2021.
And with good reason, because as a visual species, humans find videos, more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any type of content out there. So video as a means of storytelling, marketing and content is no longer just a nice option, right? It’s a necessity. If you want to increase conversion and exposure, incorporating a video marketing strategy is the only way to go from. I understand that viewers retain 95% of a message when it’s in a video versus 10%, when they’re reading it in text and mobile consumption this year about watching videos on their phones has gone up 100% this year, over last year. And by 2022 videos are going to be more than 82% of what drives traffic to people’s websites. Okay. And if that wasn’t enough, a website is 53 times higher to be ranked on the front page of Google. If it includes a video that’s huge.
When you Google acupuncture in your state, in your zip code, you need to be on that front page. Having video will increase that by 53 times and that’s massive. Okay. So how does this affect your practice? Video is the fastest and easiest way to establish credibility and connection and a 30 and reputation healer. And you might be wondering, you know, do I have to do the videos? And the answer is no, you could have, um, you could use done for you videos. You can outsource your video. You can do audio only videos on top of a PowerPoint, um, and the types of videos that work, uh, um, you know, you also might be wondering what types of videos work best? Well, the answer is that any video is better than no video. So with good lighting using your phone is a great way to do a video.
And the great news is that most videos on Facebook today do not have a video. It’s all audio with images, right? And slides that are, that are rolling across the screen. So it’s not actually you or a person on there. It’s just images. And that’s really easy stuff to create. So using videos for your marketing can take many forms. You could use it, um, as explainer videos or Intelihealth on your website or presentations on educational events or tutorials on how to use these points for these particular conditions or cooked foods for these particular elements or customer testimonials or interviews or product or service videos, or even a live video like we’re doing today. So imagine having one to two minute videos on your social media and on your website, about a few key conditions that you deal with that you can use over and over and over again, to educate patients on the effectiveness of your services.
That’s huge. Okay. You can talk about back pain and allergies and digestive problems and stress and anxiety. These are all topics that you would use over and over again and make sure well, practice more memorable. So dope, intimidated. Your video does not have to be perfect. It just has be honest and sincere. So my hope is that you received some answers and inspiration and insight for what you needed today. And I want to encourage you. If you need to reevaluate your plans and to make actual strategies feel free to reach out to me, I would love to give you a fresh perspective. I, if you need help reach out and let’s just start with a free 15 minute mentoring and discovery call. And all you have to do is shoot me an email at Jeffrey, J E F F R E Y at acupuncture, immediate works.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
So again, J E F F R E Y at acupuncture, media works.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. You are an incredible resource. You change lives every day, day in and out, and people need you. Okay. So, um, I promise that I want to share with you, um, go download this ebook. This is resetting your practice for 2021. What’s working now to get more patients on your table. I go through a bunch of different topics that really show you everything that you could be doing now in this year to re set your practice, I have to do is go to Accu media dot U S um, slash reset, 2021. Again, Accu media dot U S slash reset 2021. And you’ll be able to access this 15 page ebook that you could use as a resource for this year and future years coming down the line, too.
And for those of you that are interested in getting the website evaluation, um, all you have to do is go visit this URL and, um, request, uh, fill it out, request an eval. So that URL for you are your evaluations, acu.pw/p E P hyphen evil. Okay, so again, a C U dot P w slash P E P hyphen evil that’s for that free evaluation, you guys are awesome. You change lives every time you put a needle in somebody you’re shifting people for the positive. This world needs, you reach out. If you need some support, I’m here for you. I got your back and thanks again for having me, uh, to share some more insights and more wisdom with the AAC on this call today. Take care, stay beautiful. Talk soon. Bye. Bye
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