Tag Archives: Jeffrey Grossman

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5 Ways To Market Your Practice In An Uncertain Economy

 

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi folks, Jeffrey Grossman here. And thank you so much for joining me and thank you AAC for inviting me back for yet another installment of how to grow your practice, marketing ideas, tips, and insights. So my name is Jeffrey Grossman. For those of you that don’t know me. I am I, the founder and creator of acupuncture, media works, ACU downloads and ACU perfect websites.

And I’ve been in this industry of helping practitioners since 2002. So we do everything from building websites to creating digital marketing assets for you to use. So today I wanted to do is I wanna talk with you about five ways to market your practice in an economy. As we all are aware, things are uncertain.

We’re not sure what’s gonna happen with different price hikes on mortgage rates and where we’re headed right now. So there’s a few ways that I want to share with you that can help embed your. Certainty in these uncertain times with the idea of what you can do to keep your practice growing, to keep patients on your schedule, to keep people, wanting to refer to you.

Okay. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna share my screen with you today. And then what I’d like to do is at the end, there’s some information that I’ll have available for you. But the first thing I wanna say is. In the month of October 24th is. Called acupuncture and herbal medicine day.

My friends that is our day as acupuncturists to out from the rooftops. That acupuncture is awesome. It’s a national event that’s been orchestrated and created by the NCC AOM many years ago. And it’s our time to share a concerted. A concerted message that acupuncture works and to get out there and let more people understand and educate them further about how awesome acupuncture is.

So at the end, I’ve got a special gift that I wanna share with you that is available for you. For you can get out there and market your practice for H American acupuncture and herbal medicine day. And these tips that I’m sharing with you can be used specifically to stimulate greater awareness during this particular event that’s coming up.

So I’m gonna do is I’m gonna go ahead and share my screen with you. Here we are five ways to market your practice in an uncertain economy. So the first thing is that tip number one is that there’s this thing called viral marketing. And the idea behind viral marketing is that you wanna get your message out to as many people as possible.

Using your patients as the carriers, right? So viruses the viruses, the people are the carriers of the virus getting that, that, that virus out there to many other people. So in a state, in a sense you want to create that kind of same viral awareness about your practice, and you’re spreading the message through your own word of mouth networks.

And. So one thing that’s important to do is try this. You’ll be able to get a good gauge on how good your patient education, your marketing tactics are. If you ask a patient, if they know anybody who can benefit from acupuncture, That’s too general of a question, right? So they may think of their uncle.

They may think of their friend. Who’s frequently sick with stomach trouble. And you’re only going to get a limited number of referrals when you narrow down the scope of what you’re focused on in, in your viral marketing request. So people have. Likeminded friends, like-minded communities, like-minded circles that they all connect with.

So if you ask your patients, if they know anybody who is like them who might be experiencing the same type of problem that they’re experiencing, it’s gonna be far easier for them to recall these other people who have similar issues, whether, whether they’re, someone who’s in a job with them on a sports team with them or whatever lifestyle that is related.

You know their condition or their lives. So the idea is with viral marketing is to find those like-minded people, and ask them if they know anybody who. Is experiencing something that they’re, that they came to see you for, that they might be interested in referring more to you. So for instance, let’s say you have a patient who came in and they want to quit smoking, and you’ve had success with that patient in helping them to kick the habit.

So in with viral marketing, what you’ll do is you’ll provide them with specific tools that are specific on what you helped, that person, that patient. Overcome or get better with, so you’ll equip them with tools on quitting smoking and different routines and things of that nature to further their own awareness around how well, they’ve pro they’ve moved through this process, but they will also be able to identify other people who.

Are smokers who want to quit as well. So the idea with viral marketing is to find those specific people, those specific vectors, if you will, who who have similar the same condition or the same issue or the same concern that they can refer someone to. Okay. So other types of marketing are a little more diffuse and spread out and we just market to everybody without anything to focus on.

So this is more. Of like a specialized approach to getting your message out. So when you identify that particular person, you might have a number of people that come in any given week that have gotten, quit smoking and they’re, you’ve helped them achieve over overcome their digestive pain or you’ve helped them with allergies or whatever it is narrow down into each of those individual.

People with their individual conditions and ask if they might know somebody else who might be suffering from or might be experiencing or who, or might wanna make a change similar to what they’ve experienced there. So that is the idea behind viral marketing and I, a few ideas are to ask your patients this question.

So this is where you get a really good clarity on whether or not you are marketing your patient education. Is doing justice, right? So many practitioners just go in, they treat, they, patients leave and that’s it. Whereas it’s important for you as a practitioner to use every moment of the time that they’re in the treatment room, in the waiting room, and even what they go home with something that can further their knowledge and education.

So you will have a really good understanding as to. You stand with your patient education. If you ask them this question, if you were at a party and someone asked you what your acupuncturists did. What would you say, or how would you explain Chi or your care or whatever? Okay. So this is a very important piece to this part of viral marketing.

Having your patients be able to clearly explain what may have happened to them on the treatment table or how you have helped them overcome quit smoking, or have you have helped them with their allergies and so on. Because the more information they can provide. It becomes more convincing to that other person that they’re referring.

All right. The other part, another idea with viral marketing is to make sure that you identify your, a patients. And I talk about this probably every time we get together here and meet on Facebook is your, a patients are the patients that you know, and you love. And they’re just amazing, right? So your, a patients, as you want to just.

Populate your entire practice with these people because you really resonate with them. And when you see them on your schedule, your energy level goes up as opposed to those patients that you see on your schedule. And you’re just like, oh man, how am I gonna, how am I gonna get through this now?

So when you identify your eight patients, start with them and start identifying what they. Condition was that brought them to you in the first place that you helped them overcome, asked them if they know other people who might be suffering from that same problem and then go through your asking of a referral.

Okay. And that’s a whole different conversation that we’ll talk about at another time. You don’t have time for that today. Another part of the viral marketing aspect ideas is to make sure you have a strong call to action. Gift certificates or little business cards with a call to action on the back of them.

Something that literally motivates a person from the outside world to literally step foot in your practice. My friends, every marketing, you do needs to have some type of a call to action that motivates them to just be like, this is really cool. I wanna try this out and I’m gonna take them up on whatever that offer is.

Okay. And the other thing is to host a referral drive and referral. Quite simply are within your clinic where you are motivating your, a patients to help you achieve a certain number of new referrals in a particular given period of time. Like a month, you have a thermostat and you’re like, Hey patients, I wanna get to.

30 new patients. This month are 25 new referrals this month. And then every time a new referral comes in, you just keep filling it up and filling it up and filling it up. And it creates this good energy around the clinic. When you have a referral drive that everyone can participate in and it, know, you have your gift certificates ready, you have a conversation that you can share with your patients and so on.

So that’s another way to do that. Okay. Tip number two is doing some lead generation and lead generation. Is doing something like a promotional event that you could do at your practice. Okay. You could do it anywhere really, but doing something at your practice. But lead generation also goes beyond doing something in the clinic itself.

And I’ll talk about that in a few minutes. So doing lead generation accomplishes a few things, it celebrates your. Hosting event inside your clinic does a few things. I’m sorry, just for clarity’s sake, it celebrates your practice. It celebrates your patients. It brings in new blood and introduces new people to your practice and what you have to offer.

It builds Goodwill because you’re hosting a particular event. Inside the clinic that your patients are excited about and it attracts family, friends, current patients, and it reactivates inactive patients cuz you have something to share with them, to bring people back into the fold. Okay. So lead generation in this respect relates to the idea that you are bringing in more leads by hosting an event.

In your practice. Also many of you might be familiar with the term lead generation for online marketing, which is using emails and using opt-in forms and using Facebook ads and things of that nature that is important. That is lead generation, and you should always be doing something that generates new leads, AKA new patients, new prospects into your practice.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here in this. We’re talking about creating an event that you could use in your practice to bring people in. Okay. Hopefully that makes sense. Few ideas. You could host an acupuncture happy hour event or AKA 2022 technique, which is something that I’ve taught about in the past.

And using two acupuncture points, getting 20 minute treatments for 20 bucks and putting people on cloud nine using. Points for that. And I have a whole specific protocol and technique for hosting the acupuncture happy hour event. And if anyone’s interested, you can feel free to reach out to me, put a comment below here and I’ll check it out and I’ll send you some information about, about those types of events.

But those have been very fruitful when I hosted them in my clinic. You can also for lead generation, you can have an open. You could have a dinner with doc with, where you invite patients in to, have food with you or where you invite patients in have food with you and you’d get takeout from a local restaurant.

You could have professional networking meetups. You could have in-house talks, movie nights, how to events, like how to boost your immune system, how to alleviate stress, how to you. Create cone GS and things of that nature, healthcare classes, online marketing and social media. Okay. So that is a whole category in and of itself.

And like I said, we’re not really gonna go into that very much, but but those are some ideas, some ways to, for you to generate leads into your practice. So in uncertain times, what do you wanna do? Best thing to do is to throw a party in your clinic, right? Host people coming in there, generate some energy.

Generate some leads by doing something like. Okay. Tip number three is to get local. So you could team up with like-minded establishments and be part of a health fair or some type of a screening event that happens. And let me tell you one of the, one of the ways that I really grew my practice was by participating in health fairs on a weekly basis.

When I was practicing downtown Seattle and health. And screenings are an amazing way to generate new leads. Okay. So what it does, it allows you to meet people in person. You get to interact with one another that they get to learn what you do. They get to ask ’em questions. They also get to learn what you can do for them.

And you can talk with them about insurance. Connecting up, there’s a lot of business. LAR you know, those of you that are in larger cities or even smaller towns have larger companies that host health fairs that you might not even know about, or maybe you do see them, and you don’t even think about being, participating in that.

So health fairs are a great way for you to generate new leads. And it also lets you get local and start meeting more people around and. The more you put yourself out there, the more you’ll bring back to you. I’m not trying to be philosophical or anything like that, but that is the truth.

The more energy you’re putting out there, the more you’re gonna be pulling back. So the more you’re doing any type of Legion or any type of event or things of that nature, that’s all gonna come back to you. One thing that I wanna share with you, that is a massive tip. If you’re doing any type of health fair event or any type of screening, or even anything that you’re doing in the world, Put out Giovanni’s book on the ugliest tongues ever.

Take his book, open it up to that, that, that color palette of this page and put the tongues out there and people will walk by and they’ll be like, Ew, gross. Why do you have a bunch of tongues there? And that my friends. Opens up the door to conversa con conversation with this new prospect and allows you to begin educating them, informing them, inspiring them and encouraging them to come in to see you great tool.

I tried so many different ways to bring people and attract attention to my booths or my tables when I was at these health fairs. And this by far was the best thing that really pulled people in. So massive tip there. If you haven’t heard me talk about that. Tip number four is to reactivate inactive patients.

So for those of you that have been in practice for anywhere over a year or two, whatever it is, you probably have more inactive patient finals than you have active patients. I remember. Back in the day. My inactive patient file was many boxes, more than my file box of active patients. And it just happens, right?

People, they come see you, they fall out of care for a number of reasons, but this is something that you should be doing on a regular basis. You should be having a regular. Patient reactivation process and protocol that’s in place systematically every quarter in your practice where you’re going through your files, you’re reaching out to the patients that are falling out of care.

Start with your a patients, when you’re doing that and then rinse and repeat, keep it going, keep it cycling. And the reason is because inactive patient are a gold mine, right? Because you’ve spent time and energy. Bringing that person in the first place, getting them to see you, getting them on the table, getting them to accept care and getting them to pay you, or, getting their insurance on board and you spend all that time and energy making that happen and building that, knowing that like that trust factor.

It’s a lot easier to work with and market to those people who already know you. They like you, they already trust you than it is to bring somebody in. Who’s never seen you before. You gotta, then you gotta start just developing that relationship. So your inactive patients are goldmine for you to tap into.

So if you’re feeling slow in your practice, I would suggest you start a patient reactivation campaign, my friends. Okay. And a couple ways to do that. You can call people. Make a list of your, a patients you haven’t seen in a while that you love and you miss right. Call ’em up. Check in with them.

You can send snail mail, you can send emails, you can do newsletters that are printed in digital, and don’t lose them in the first place. Make sure you stay on top of mind awareness. That’s Toma to. Top of mind awareness, because what you want is what you want to keep having your patients see your logo, your brand, your comments on Facebook on a regular basis.

So when they think of, when something comes up for them, they think of you. Because you’re on their top of mind. Okay. And stay on top of it. Be consistent again, like I said, keep it in a cycle on a regular basis every three months or so. Okay. And then the fifth tip is to give talks, right? People are thirsty for information, that information that can help them be happier and live a healthier life.

Especially now people want that there’s stress. There’s immune problems. There’s there’s skin conditions. There’s breathing problems that are happening. How can you get out there and share the information that can help them be happier that can help them be healthier. You can provide.

Lectures, whether they’re free or they’re paid to organizations, to schools, to colleges, to libraries, to businesses, to support groups, to healthcare facilities. There’s so many opportunities here. There’s yoga studios. There’s other clinics that are out there. There’s chiropractors, massage therapists, there’s other professionals.

There’s doctors. That you could get out there and share this information about acupuncture. So again, if you’re not as busy as you want, you wanna get busier one way to do that, if you feel comfortable, giving talks is to get out there and give talks. And for those of you that are curious about giving talks, yet you.

Don’t feel super comfortable. I would encourage you to join Toastmasters. I encourage all of my students when I was teaching the practice management class to join Toastmasters, because it gives you the confidence to succeed as a talk giver, giving presentations, and also gives you access to potential referrals.

Okay. And the other thing is to just do it. My friends, you’ve heard this quote before and just get out there and do it. You don’t want to be like, SSUS here pushing a rock up the hill, you do some marketing and then it falls back down and you gotta get out there and mark it again. You don’t want take, if you’re struggling in your.

And you just shift one thing, just do one thing that could make all the change from you pushing this, struggling, Boulder up the hill to pushing something a little lighter. Okay. So just do it. I’m referring to the fact of just getting out there and just taking one little marketing nugget, whether it’s something you got from here today, whether it’s something I talked about in the past or what, something, somebody else didn’t just do it.

just get out there and switch it up. Just one little thing can make a massive change in your practice. Okay. And then, like I said, if you wanna learn more, we put together this free marketing bundle for you for a acupuncture and herbal medicine day. It’s got a bunch of cool things in there. There’s this website right here.

ACU websites.com/. Hyphen day, and you can download this really cool bundle that has all the tools that you could use in your practice to create and stimulate a greater awareness for for upcoming October 24th. Which is acupuncture and herbal medicine day. So folks again, thank you so much for taking the time and joining me here today.

Take one little piece of nugget and inspiration and insight and put it into use today. If you need any help, if you feel like you need some accountability or some questions or concerns, reach out to me. You could reach out below here, or you could send an email to Jeffrey acupuncture, mediaworks.com.

It’s J E F R E Y. Other than that next Fri or this coming Friday is gonna be Shelly Goldstein. Who’s gonna be joining us. So keep your eye out for another great event that the AAC will be putting on. So in the meantime, stay strong, be well, take a nugget, put into the use, just do it and we’ll see you soon.

Take care. Bye bye.

 

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The Top Practice Building Questions You Asked

 

I’m going to be answering several questions that have come in over the years from practitioners who are trying to grow their practice.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi folks Jeffrey Grossman here. And thank you so much for joining me. The American Acupuncture Council, meet up here. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to join me, to learn more about business and marketing. So today is going to be a little bit off the cuff. And I’m going to be answering several questions that have come in over the years from practitioners who are trying to grow their practice.

And I’ve got a series of questions here that I’m going to go through and provide as detailed of answers that I can for those. And if there are any other questions that come up later on, feel free to reach out to me or post something below here. So my name is Jeffrey Grossman. I am the owner and founder.

Acupuncture MediaWorks, Accu Perfect Websites and Accu Downloads. And I’ve been helping acupuncturists since 2002 build their practice and educate their patients and market and do all the things that are necessary for us in order to bring in new patients and remain viable. Now, acupuncture school gave you all the amazing tools to be an excellent diagnostician pulse finder, tongue reader.

Point prescriber and guash Shaw Dewar, but it neglected to give you all the tools that you need to run a business and be the entrepreneur that you need to be as far as in order to, grow your practice because I’m sure some of you are out there looking to be successful and make money that is gives you, earns you a reasonable salary.

I’m here to provide some insight into some questions that maybe you have, or have had in the past. And also if you ever need any help at the end of this training, you can feel free to reach out to me. Send me an email at Jeffrey, J E F F R E Y. @ acupuncture. Media works.com. I’d love to chat with you and help figure out some of these concerns issues.

Questions that you yourself might have. So let me just jump right into this here. One of the questions that I get often from practitioners is why should I use social media in my practice? And how would I even get started if I choose to do that? Social media. These days is something that you really can’t avoid.

We’ve got Instagram, we’ve got Facebook, we’ve got Twitter. And I’m not saying that you need to be part of all of those. Social media portals, but you need to have an online presence. And these days when people are looking for you, they are going to the internet in order to check you out and read about you and learn about you.

So it’s important to have a social media presence. And my suggestion is that you have. A Facebook business page for your practice. It’s really important to do because most of your clients are probably on Facebook and it would be important for you to have different posts on there different just, different ways to interact different questions that you’re going to be answering for them.

Couple of things that you can be doing is creating a marketing calendar and a marketing calendar could be something really simple. Like every Monday you could do Meridian Monday, where you talk about a specific Meridian every Tuesday. Testimonial Tuesday, we use share an insight and some information for, on success of one of your patients.

Wednesdays could be wisdom, Wednesdays where you share some. Wisdom and some knowledge bombs that you’ve learned over the years that could be helpful for self care or home remedies or just some really great quotes that you’ve come across that add insight and inspiration to your patients.

Thursdays could be about technique Thursdays, where you offer a specific different technique wash up. Yeah, electric stem and then Fridays could be free for all where you would do whatever it is that you want. So that’s a really simple strategy to use and post on your Facebook pages. Now, one of the things that I’ve heard that.

Rough for a patient for practitioners is developing the content. There are several ways you can go about this one. There you can go to, you can hire that out and outsource that. You can hire writers. You could hire designers for you. And you can have people create, marketing social media graphics.

As for you. You could go to a online website called Canva and create your own portals. Or you can go to an online website called Acue downloads.com where they provide done for you content for practitioners specifically for the acupuncture industry social media graphics, research updates, clinic forums.

Everything that you need to establish an online presence. So that can really simplify what it is that you need to do and how to get it done for you when you use social media. But I really do think it is important to have that presence because. The more that you are in top of mind awareness with your patients.

The more familiar they will become a view. And therefore when something comes up with them an injury or a friend needs a referral, they will remember that you posted something on Facebook about migraines or infertility or sprained ankles or whatever it is. So curating that awareness will be helpful for you.

Develop that online following. Okay. Hopefully that helps. So another question that comes up from practitioners often is what’s the difference between a core message and an elevator pitch. Okay. So this is something that I’ve talked about on the AAC in the past is developing your core message. And it’s an incredible piece to.

Creating your practice and creating your message. So a core message is really important. The core message is it’s a positioning statement telling people why you do what you do and why they should choose you over the competition. Whereas an elevator pitch just tells people what you do. So let me talk with you a little bit about some of the core principles that create a corpsman.

Part of a core message is coming up with three aspects. What the person’s problem is in this case, your patients have a particular problem that they want solved what your particular solutions are to solve that problem and what their life will look like after you solve their problems. So for instance, acupuncture, media work.

Our court, what are the core messages that we use is that acupuncturists, the problem is an acupuncturist. I’m just speaking to you. Now, the problem is that acupuncturist don’t like marketing their practice, right? They don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to grow their business and so on. So the core, our core message reflects that and our core message would go something like this acupuncture.

Struggle with growing their practice and developing marketing tools to attract new patients here at acupuncture, MediaWorks, and Accu downloads. We provide high quality cost-effective and powerful marketing and patient education tools for the acupuncture profession so that acupuncturists can spend less.

Developing those tools and more time to helping their patients so they can ultimately reprieve the rewards and increase their profit. So that is a simple core message that we use for Acura doubt for acupuncture. Media works. Okay. Simple core message for you. As a practitioner could go something like this.

Let’s say for instance, you are working with patients who have sports injuries and they want to really do well on their next marathon. So the problem would be that many patients, many of my patients suffer from injuries and strains and sprains are due to overexertion here at Jeffrey’s acupuncture.

We provide state-of-the-art high and Telecare and telehealth and and acupuncture techniques to help alleviate pain, improve for four minutes so that our patients can go out and win their next race. And and and and be injury free, something as simple as that would be great for that particular type of conversation.

A core message is an important piece. And I feel like it’s one of those things that is often overlooked and squashed in with creating an elevator pitch, an elevator pitches. Hi, my name’s Jeffrey Grossman. I’m an acupuncturist. I help people get well and stay healthy. And my practice is over, down the street over here.

Whereas your core message really defines the problem, the solution and what their life will look like afterwards. Okay. Hopefully that’s helpful. Another question that I often get from PE from practitioners is I have people fall out of care all the time. What can I do to keep them scheduled? So my first comment on that, and my first question would be to you is what are you doing on a regular basis to stay in top of mind awareness?

So your patients won’t fall out of care. Do you have regular emails that go out? Do you have regular communications that you’re sending? Do you have. Texting policies. Do you have a social media presence is your website are updated and current and you’re are you often sending leads and patients to your website to find new information?

And when patients fall out of. What kind of particular protocols do you have in place to get them back on the books? All right. So oftentimes we spent a lot of energy getting patient, doing a marketing and doing a health fair or whatever it is that we’re doing to pull patients in. We get them in, we treat them, they stick around for three or four visits and then boom, they’re gone, they fall out of care. So the important thing first off is to do is to review. Series of a treatment plan with them. And I call that a report of findings. When a patient comes in, it’s important for you to review what you found, what’s wrong, what they can expect and how long it’s going to take with them.

And you do that when you deliver the report of findings and what this. It sets down this particular protocol and it sets down this timeline of treatments that you’ll be requesting or suggesting that they receive with you. Lot of practitioners go from treatment to treatment.

They don’t necessarily say. I want to see you once a week for the next 12 weeks, and then we’ll reevaluate, which is what you should be doing. Maybe you’re not saying 12 weeks, maybe eight weeks or six weeks or whatever it is, but it’s important for you as a practice to lay down the grounding and that foundation for them when they first, when the first visit or within the second visit of what they’re, what your expectations and what their expectations of care are, and then recommend that to them.

Okay. Patients have a clear understanding that’s going on. X amount of visits and then you’re going to come back and reevaluate then it’s, it like sets these precedent in their mind that this is what’s expected and this is what they will or won’t do. And therefore they will, most likely continue their treatment plan with you.

And then once that initial treatment, Continue to follow it up. They’ll have a regular tuneup visits, but that’s what you need to communicate to your patients in the best time to do that is between the first and the second visit using report of findings. So patients will fall out of care. It’s inevitable, but the way.

Communicate to them throughout the process from when they first become a new patient. You’ve got to always be in top of mind with them. You ought to always be sending them communications and always be sharing things with them. One of the things that I find that’s interesting with the Accu download software is that when a patient comes in off the treatment table, what do you send them home with?

Right there. So a patient comes in, they’ve got migraines. Do you send them home with something that you can literally print handout and send them for self care? When a patient comes in and they’ve got back pain, what do you send them home with to help them alleviate their back pain further? What kind of self-care tips do you provide them?

If they got suici deficiency, what are you sending them home with? Awesome that you’re doing moxa or cupping or even the, or the acupuncture, but what kind of self care, what kind of protocols are you sharing with them that they go home with and furthers their care? So when you send them home with something, it does a couple things.

One. Makes you look awesome because you’re sending them home with some really cool tools to further support their care. And they’re like, wow, this guy must really care about me. Every time I go in, I get a new piece of information that helps me get better. Helps me get well, he’s really committed to my care.

That’s one thing that it does. The other thing that it provides is it provides you with constant tools of communication that you’re already. Sending and sharing with your patients. Okay. So when you do that, it makes patients less likely to fall out of care. All right. All right. So let’s see another question that comes in that I asked for that I get frequently.

No, of course, right? How do I get new patients? Okay. Everyone wants to know that one. That’s the million dollar question. So when I work with my coaching clients, Then needing to get new patients. The first thing I asked him is what’s your core message. Okay. Then I’ll ask them what happens when I hit your website.

Is your core message on your website. When I go to your website, do I know exactly? What it is that you do within a few seconds. Do I know that you are a sports injury doctor? Do I know that you helped with infertility patients? Do I know that you help that you’re the migraine expert in the community? I need to know these things, the moment I hit your website.

Okay. And so when people hear about you, when they get a referral, For from you, the first place they go is your website. So that needs to be dialed in a way that expresses what your core message is. And that offers them strong calls to action, like schedule an appointment, download this form to come in for a a an free or low cost evaluation or whatever it is that.

Wanting to use to motivate those people to come in. It needs to be front and centered and present on your website. It shouldn’t be just schedule your appointment with me. There should be something. Prior to that gets them introduced to you. That gets them to test the waters, so to speak, to see if so they can be assured that you’re the right person for them.

And so you could rest assured that you want to actually work with them with care. All right. And so the first things to think about when you get new patients are what’s your messaging. What’s your website and then what is your followup, your nurturing that happens after patients get on board.

Okay. How do you stay in communications with them? All right. So let me just give you a couple of cool things about attracting new patients. First thing I tell all of my students, when I teach at the practice management class. Join Toastmasters. Okay. Toastmasters international, go to it, putting your zip code, Google it.

And you’ll see tons of Toastmaster organizations with where you are now. Toastmasters changed my life. It gave me the confidence to speak more efficiently. It gave me the stage at which I would present my topics about acupuncture. And it also gave me referrals. And from those referrals, I got other referrals.

All right. So Toastmasters is not only. Powerful to help me get new patients, but it’s also an incredible way for me to build my confidence as a practitioner. Step one way in getting new patients. Another way is reaching out to local MDs, NDS, chiropractors, LMPs, and, introducing yourself, getting connected with them, reaching out to them, asking them how you can refer to them.

And in turn. I was telling them how they can refer to you. And what I mean by that is when you develop this relationship, this rapport, and you reach out to them with the idea that, Hey, I’m looking to refer people to chiropractor. I want to know the best route at which how I can send people to you. I want to know what kind of chiropractic you do.

I want to know what kind of, what your success rate is with particular conditions. Do you focus on anything? Do you specialize in anything and so on? And you can do that in different different medical arenas. And then with that, you would ask them if they want to establish a referral relationship, you’d give them, tell them, what you specialize in, what your current message is and how.

Best for them to refer people to you. Do you have certificates that you can hand out? Do you have business cards with calls to action on them? Do you want them to go to a specific pages unique to that doctor in, on your website, in that respect? Okay. Also health fairs are an amazing way to get new patients on board.

I love health fairs. One of the books that I found most intriguing. And most effective for me to get a PA patients from the event into the clinic was Giovanni’s book on tongue diagnosis. I literally opened that book up to the ugliest tongue pictures, put it on this front and center on my table and people would walk over and they’d be like, Hey.

Gross look, what are those tongues doing over there? And then that would be my segue and opening into talking with them about, that tongues are a barometer of inner health. And as an acupuncturist, we take the tongues and all these other diagnostic procedures into consideration to come up with a an in-depth unique treatment plan for every individual that comes into the clinic.

No two people are treated the same and so on. That would bring the people from the health fair into my room. And then from there you need to have a strong call to action to get them from that event into the practice, what I’ve used in the past for two things, inviting them in for a stress reduction treatment where I just use 0.0 and Shen men of the ear.

And then also and then also inviting them in for a low cost evaluation. Okay. Great ways to get new patients on board. That’s about all I have for you today. So if you have any questions, any comments feel free to reach out to me again. jeffrey@acupuncturemediaworks.com or info@accudownloads.com.

Either those you can reach me at and. The world needs more healers. Like you guys are conscious, you’re aware you’ve got powerful healing abilities with this medicine changes lives. Be scared about getting out there and grow your practice. These lectures that the AAC brings you are powerful and deep.

And even if you walk away with just one little nugget from today’s lesson that potentially could change your practice. So I apologize for wearing my headphones and looking like a pilot here today, but that’s how we had to go with with the recording. So you guys stay beautiful. Stay. Awesome. And until next time remember change the world one needle, one person at a time.

You guys are awesome. Take care. Bye.

 

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3 Success Factors For Every Acupuncture Clinic

 

Are you happy with the amount of new patients you have coming in? And the other question is where are you going? Do you have a plan? Do you have a strategy? Do you have a way of knowing that if you do X, you will receive X number of new patients coming in and what are your roadblocks?

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi folks, Jeffrey Grossman here. And thank you AAC for writing you back for another installment of sharing insights and knowledge and wisdom about growing your practice and marketing. So before I go further, I want to ask you three questions and these are important questions that I asked all of my coaching clients and the questions.

Where are you currently in your practice? Are you happy with. Development. Are you happy with its growth? Are you happy with the amount of new patients you have coming in? And the other question is where are you going? Do you have a plan? Do you have a strategy? Do you have a way of knowing that if you do X, you will receive X number of new patients coming in and what are your roadblocks?

What is. Keeping you from going out there and growing your practice and marketing, or doing social media or doing health fairs and things of that nature. So those are just three questions that I would love to just put out there and have you comment below if you’d like, and just to keep in the back of your mind as we go through today’s presentation.

Right now you have expertise that the world needs right now, probably more than ever. People are suffering. They’re looking for what you have to offer, but most likely they don’t really know what you have to offer. And I’m sure you would agree that most patients understand that acupuncture is really great with pain because that’s what it’s most widely known for.

But what about everything else? Like immune support and allergies and improving sleep and increasing chances of making babies and families. Many people are looking for these solutions, but they don’t even know that you can be that go to practitioner for them to help them get what they’re looking for.

So how do you make more people aware of you and all the things that you can help with? Part of this challenge is that you need to put on your business hat and get out there and do the work of marketing your practice. And that’s what I’ve been sharing all these weeks on AAC, these tools, these tips, these different ways to grow and build your practice.

My name is Jeffrey Grossman, and I am the founder and owner of acupuncture, media works and Accu perfect websites and Accu downloads. So I’ve been in this world of marketing and business development since 2002. So quite some time. So before we get into this marketing aspect, you need to know that your practice.

That your business needs to be rooted in a solid foundation of proper messages. Business modeling service offerings, pricing fees, and systems. And when you have all of these things in place, you’ll stand out from the friendly neighborhood competition and position yourself as the go-to acupuncturist in your community.

So today we are going to talk about three critical success factors that are really important for every acupuncture clinic that creates a solid foundation to grow your. So the three critical success factors are clarity, which is who you are, what you offer and why you’re different focus, which is who you serve.

What problems do you solve and decisions, which is marketing tools and how you find prospects and how you set up systems in your practice. Okay. So the first one is clarity and clarity is all about getting really clear on you and your practice and how you stand out. And this is the biggest thing that I find when I work with my coaching clients is they’re not really clear on who they are and what makes them different, because most of acupuncture’s I’m an acupuncturist because I can treat all these different conditions under the sun and help out all these different people with all these different problems.

That’s great, but there’s, there, there needs to be more defining of the clarity of your messaging in that way. So you’ve got to ask yourself two questions in order to help clarify this message. Who are you like? So who are you as an acupuncturist? What do you do? What makes you different? Why should people choose you over the practitioner down the street?

What do you offer? What is the transformation that you can affect to happen with people that seek you out for their care by what? How would their life look differently after they see you? Then before they saw you. So what can they do now after the treatment plan and after their protocols with you, they weren’t able to do in the past and why you’re different?

What makes you different from the next practitioner down the street? Good. Cause last time I looked at there’s a lot of acupuncturists all over the country, especially in concentrated in places like New York and LA and Florida and see. And most acupuncturists are just out there saying, Hey, I’m an acupuncturist.

And I serve all these different people and all these different conditions and that’s fine. But when you get clear on who you are, right? And I’m not saying who you are with regards to my name’s Jeffrey and I’m owning these businesses, but who are you in regards to a practitioner? Meaning what is unique about.

And your offer and the transformation that only you can offer the people that seek you out. Okay. If you have any concerns on not really sure what, you feel free to reach out to me, feel free to comment on this video. And I would be more than happy to help clarify this aspect for you. Okay.

The next aspect on the three different success factors is for. Getting laser-focused on exactly who you serve and exactly the problems that only view solve. Okay. So what’s unique about you. What’s different about you that can resonate with your clients. Do you perform gentle needling techniques that, that, that are pain-free?

Do you just offer techniques that are that are, that, that are Japanese type of needles that don’t even penetrate the skin? Do you offer a special type of cupping or guash Shaw or TuiNa? That is really. Unique about you. So one of the things that I have my clients do is to make a list of all of the things that you do that.

And then we pick out the things that are really incredibly unique about you, and that helps position. You helps you stand out differently from the next practitioner down the street. Okay. And part of really understanding what this is. Finding out what resonates with your clients. Okay. And the only way to really understand what resonates with your clients is to really dive deep into exactly who you serve and exactly the type of problems that you solve.

So for instance, if somebody is coming in for infertility issues, what’s their problem, what do they want to have resolved or affected in their life that will make their life transfer? They want to be more fertile. They want to be able to hold a pregnancy to term. They want to have a family and a child.

That is going to be a different conversation than let’s say somebody who comes in big, because they’re training for the next triathlon. And they they have, they want to either just get stronger. They want to prevent injuries. That is going to be a different set of conversations and communications that you have with that.

Sports minded person versus that family, fertility minded person. So really getting clear around who exactly you’re serving in your practice. And I know a lot of practitioners are like I treat everybody. I am just a general practitioner, which is true and which is fine, but there needs to be something that makes you stand out differently than the next practitioner down the street.

Something that’s unique about you. And in order to do that, you’ve got to figure out what problems do you solve. So that goes into the what’s in it for me. So what’s in it for your patients in that respect. So your patients are coming to you because they want to have a family, right? They want to have babies.

So they want to know what’s in it for them. You’re going to provide fertility treatments to support them so they can come to term with their babies. Okay. They somebody who’s coming into you for sports support or sports medicine, they want to do have their ankles and their legs stronger. So they can perform better at their next race where they can win medals or whatever it is that they want.

So when you get clear and you get focused on who you serve and the problems that you self. You are moving closer to tapping into these critical success factors that only you offer that’s different than your competition. And then the next part of this is making decisions. And that means what types of marketing tools will you be using?

Where will you be searching to find your best prospects and your new patients, and how will you build up a following? With your offerings. Okay. So you need a deep understanding first of what your patients want, what they need, what they value. And from that, you can develop content that addresses those problems or those challenges that, keep them up at night, so to speak.

So for instance, if you are embarking upon doing social media marketing, or even email marketing for your clientele and they are looking for. Create a family, your social media strategy. We’ll be doing. It will look different. The branding will be different than somebody who is trying to win their next race.

You’re going to have different strategies, different images, different things that will, that you’ll be using for your. For your marketing plan in order to keep it moving forward. So you’ll have images of babies and families and maybe soft colors. If you’re looking for fertility patients, whereas if you’re looking for sports medicine, you’ll have people running or.

Track or I don’t know what, but there’s but there are different strategies that you need to make decisions on with your marketing tools on which, and what you should use. Okay. So you’ve got to ask yourself, when you start with your marketing, you have to make sure that it’s valuable, right?

And that your marketing ads of value. Before you money exchanges hands before people schedule their first treatment with you. It’s got to be valuable for them where they look at this and they’re like, oh, that looks interesting. I need to seek that out and check that out. Couple of things to think about is your marketing and the information that you’re providing them.

Is it leaving them better off than they were when they first saw, are you offering something that they actually want or need, are you offering and teaching and giving them actionable things to make their life better? So let’s say you are talking about fertility. We’re just going to go with the fertility in sports, because that’s where we started with.

And maybe you can talk about. Recipes and social media that enhanced fertility, maybe if you’re talking about sports, you can talk about different ways to stretch or different types of techniques to support shin splints or something like that. So different conversation, different prospect, different people that you’re working with.

Because your marketing needs to be hyper relevant to what their problem is or their pain or their concern is. And it needs to motivate your audience to take action. All right. And one of the biggest things that I noticed when I worked with my clients is that when they do any type of marketing, they miss one very important piece of that marketing, which is calls to action.

So when you do any type of marketing or when you do any talk or when you do any health fair or at any networking event, it’s really. For you to have calls to action. Now what those are different ways to motivate a prospect to literally step foot into your practice. So for instance, if you have, if you’re in the sports medicine field and you are at a a running event, Do you think would be a motivational tool or a motivational something that will motivate that person to take their first step to literally come into your practice?

Maybe you would offer them a sports acceleration assessment where you go through, certain points. So maybe Osher points and find out maybe where there are underlying balances that may be leading to potential future. Same thing with infertility. What type of call to action can you use to get families in, to.

To, to state, to step foot in your practice. So maybe you can offer like a seven point assessment on, to see how fertile people are or aren’t, maybe it’s a questionnaire that you offer them. And then at the bottom of that, you invite them into get an evaluation. Okay. So that’s the ultimate goal of any marketing that you do is to get people to take action.

Okay. So once. Got your success factors in place of clarity, focused and decisions. Where, how do you find new patients? Okay. So there’s different ways. There’s internal marketing, external marketing, online marketing. Okay. Those are the three different avenues that you should be participating in right now.

Internal marketing are using is patient education. It’s in-house of events. It’s having a reactivation, how to react to. Patient’s plan. It’s getting testimonials, it’s offering a referral jive it’s things that you do inside the clinic to motivate referrals and to motivate a deeper awareness around what you do and how you offer this medicine.

External marketing relates to content like social media videos, newsletters, blog posts, webinars, and tele-health. These are all aspects that will help you. Maintain and obtain focus on growing your practice. And then you’ve got online marketing, which is making sure that you’ve got your website dialed in correctly because all leads all in.

Goes to your website first. So if your website isn’t focused on what we talked about earlier clarity so if I go to your website and I’m not clear on what you offer. If I can not get your website, it’s not like clear that oh, Jeffrey offers sports medicine or Jeffrey offers fertility treatments that needs to change because you only have a few seconds to capture people’s attention before they before you lose them.

So you all leave. Point to your website and it’s really important. So another thing to have is, Google plus and Google, my business is to be set up, need to have emails on your website to capture leads and paid ads are really helps. Helpful. Okay. In conclusion without clarity and focus and decisions, your strategy is always changing your tactics.

Your tactics will become scattered. There’ll become exhausting for you and your results will become inconsistent and you’ll lose motivation and interest in the idea of marketing and growing your practices. I was there. I hosted yoga, Merde and yoga classes back in the early days of my practice. And that was the way that I would attract people to come into, to visit me.

I would offer free community Meridian, yoga classes. And the first few times I did it, there was. The first three times I did it, there was zero people in the class, but I get it. Anyway. Fourth time I had two people in the class. Third, the fifth time I had five people in the class and then the six time and moving forward, I had upwards of eight to 10 people in the class.

And from that class alone, it really helped me to grow my practice directly and through referrals. Even though it was my, it was sub par with regards to my initial thoughts on marketing. I stuck with it. I became consistent and hammered it in and did it and stop and made it happen and it became successful.

So when you get clear about these three important success factors, the marketing that you do will be 100 times better, it’d be more focused and more productive. So who are you? What are you passionate about? What are your patients passionate about? What do they want to learn? What do they want to do? How do they want their life to look differently after they come see you?

These are questions to ask yourself. Okay. So finally, as you work through your business here’s some thoughts that I want to leave you with. Then these are three very important questions to be asking yourself, how do you stand out from the noise and get attention by what makes you different?

Okay. And who are your ideal prospects at patient? And who do you want to fill your clinic with? Who are your ideal patients that you just love? You see them on your schedule. You’re like you lighten up, you brighten up and it’s beautiful as opposed to the ones that you see in your schedule. And it’s oh, I can work through this.

It was, you don’t want. Clinic with those people. You want to fill your clinic with the people that raise your energy. So who are those ideal patients and how will you get in front of your ideal patients? Like where are they? Where’s their head at? What are they looking at every day in order to in order, social media, or are they reading books or are they on Instagram or Facebook?

So I want to remind you that you are never alone, that I am here for you. If you’ve got any questions and concerns, please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach me on Facebook or you reach me at acupuncturemediaworks.com. You can reach me at acudownloads.com and I. Your time. I appreciate you spending a few moments with me here today.

And again, thank you AAC for inviting me back yet to do another installment and share some insights and information. So join us this Friday, where Lorne Brown will come on and share some more insights and business tips with you. Thank you very much. Take care.

 

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The “Perfect Formula” to Attract Quality Prospects

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to stop by and say hello and spend a few minutes with me to learn about how to grow your practice. So today we’re going to talk about an acupuncturist formula to growing your practice online. And the main thing that we’re going to be talking about is how to get found.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi folks, Jeffrey Grossman here from Acupuncture, MediaWorks, Accu Downloads, and Accu Perfect Websites. Thank you yet again for the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me here to share with you more information and insights on building your practice, bringing in new patients and all things relating to marketing and growing and building more sustainability.

For your acupuncture practice. Thank you for taking the time to stop by and say hello and spend a few minutes with me to learn about how to grow your practice. So today we’re going to talk about an acupuncturist formula to growing your practice online. And the main thing that we’re going to be talking about is how to get found.

How to be seen and how to promote your website. So for those of you that don’t know me again, my name is Jeffrey Grossman. I’ve been helping acupunctures market their practice for two decades now. And I’ve been helping thousands of practitioners over the years to tap into marketing and business skills.

I started multiple companies. I started multiple practices and I’m I’ve taught at a bunch of acupuncture schools. So I’ve got some information that I’ve learned over the years that I’m here to share with you today. First thing that’s really important when I teach my practice management class to the students is to really learn to identify who your ideal patient is.

And this is an important piece that is often overlooked in marketing, but most companies, especially larger companies really take a lot of time by identify who their ideal patient. Or customer is, and it’s important as an acupuncturist to really get clear with this. And I know your guys might be thinking, I should know why, I’m treating everybody and, I’m I’m a general practitioner and everybody is my ideal patient while that is true.

It’s also not so true because when you have a communication strategy, That is focused on a particular type of person. Then you can focus your messaging. You can focus your marketing, you can focus your, the way your website is built and all of your marketing collateral, like your brochures on what it is that you’re trying to communicate to that specific person.

So let’s say for instance, you are. You treat a lot of fertility or a lot of migraine, or even do some sports acupuncture. Now your ideal patient is going to be different across each of those different topics. You’re going to be communicating differently to somebody who is looking to start a family or become more fertile versus somebody who is looking to when their next.

So identifying your ideal patient is an important part of how you develop your communication and marketing strategies. So that allows you to identify what blog posts you put out there, or what videos you create or what kind of lead magnets that you’ll be putting out there to attract your ideal client.

And. The important things to know are who are they? What values do they have in common? What groups do they move in? Where, what clubs are they part of? What books do they read? What do they do in their spare time? Where do they go? Where do they hang out? And what, this all gives you insights into where you can reach that ideal patient of yours.

And one of the places to start. Identifying potentially what your specialty might be. And when you, once you do that, it’s identifying who those. Ideal patients that you’re currently working wish with in that specialty, like your AA patients is what I like to call them. And your eight patients are the patients that you love.

And when you see them on your schedule, your energy raises and you feel really good and really excited to, to see them and you have a good rapport and a good resonance with them. And that’s an important piece of that relationship as opposed to. See patients which when you see them on your schedule, your energy goes down a little bit and you feel a little challenged that you’re like, oh gosh, okay.

I can muster up the energy to go through this. So once you identify who your a patient is, and if you have a particular specialty, that is where you start wrapping your head around. Identifying those concepts for that and identifying your ideal patient flows into this next part of creating your core message.

Now, a couple of weeks ago, I held a an extensive weekend workshop on creating your core message, because I feel like this is a. Incredibly important piece for acupuncturists to properly communicate to their audience, to the community, to their prospects, to their patients. And also once you identify your core message, that becomes part of all of your website, all of your literature, all of your marketing tools and strategy.

When there’s three steps to identifying and getting clear on what your core message is. Okay. And your core message. The first thing is what problems do your patients experience? Okay. So what are they coming to see you for? And also what problems do they have that. Keeping them awake at night, maybe fit, physically and litter too, literally, but also emotionally.

Okay. What are what problems do your patients experience am? What can you. Offer them that is unique to you and your practice. And then the third part of this is what will their life look like afterwards? Okay. So I know this might sound a little a little simplistic, but once you identify who, what, what your core message is, it becomes part of all of your communication strategies.

So if I were to ask you right now, what problems do you solve and how do you solve them and what do your patients’ lives look like afterwards? What are they able to do that they weren’t able to do? What would you tell. What would you say? And, I’d love to know that if you’re watching this video, if you do have a core message as to what problems you help with and how your unique practice helps them overcome them and what their life looks like afterwards, please put it in the chat box.

I’d love to see that I’ll respond to some of those answers and give you some thoughts about that. So here’s a couple ideas that you might want to work. So the main problem is that too many people struggle with pain and injuries. And we provide effective treatment that always allows you to perform well in life sports and work with elbow pills, surgery, and high costs.

So the first part of that is identifying the problem, which is too many people struggle with. And injuries, right? What’s unique about your practice is that you offer effective treatment that allows people to perform well in life sports and work, and their life looks different afterwards because they can do it without pills, surgery, and high costs.

Now, this is a generic core message that any acupuncturist can use, but it’s succinct it’s to the point it is. Similar to what your elevator pitch should be and sound like. Here’s another example we offer unique and individualized evaluations and treat injuries. That’s the problem you treat injuries by with TuiNa cupping and acupuncture so that your practice members CA so that our practice members can go out when their next race and feel great.

Okay. So the problem is that people come in there with injuries and what is unique? Quote unquote, about this particular practice about this particular core message is that they offer unique and individualized evaluations using Trina cupping and acupuncture. The way that their life is going to look up afterwards is that they’re going to go out.

They’re going to feel better. They’re going to win their next race. And that is one other example of a core message. And here’s one more. So this is a core message that we help that, that we’ve developed here for acupuncture. Media works most acupuncturists don’t like marketing and have no idea how to bring in new patients.

That’s a huge problem. Don’t like marketing don’t know how to bring in new patients problem. So what we do, what is unique about our company is that we offer a wide range of business marketing and website solutions. Okay. That’s what we do. That’s what we offer. And the and the way your lives will look afterwards, meaning acupuncturist that you can connect with more.

Grow your practice and make the world better. Okay. That’s what your life will look like afterwards. So just to read it one way through most acupuncturists, don’t like marketing and have no idea how to bring in new patients. So we offer a wide range of business marketing and website solutions so they can connect with more customers, grow their practice and make the world better.

Okay. So identifying what your core message is really overcoming. What problems. As your patient experience, what are they coming to see you for? And what can you offer them that is unique to your practice? Even though there might be, you might just be an acupuncturist that does acupuncture between on cupping still.

How can you make that? See. Unique and different from the other practitioner down the street. And then what will their lives look like after they come see you? Okay. So there’s a great book out there by Donald Miller called story brand. And and it talks about identifying your core message. There’s also a really good video on YouTube.

If you were to Google, Donald Miller StoryBrand there’s like a 30 minute video on there that talks about poor messages. And I would encourage you to do that once we’re done watching today. Okay. So the next part about growing your practice is to develop a functional website. Okay. These days, Your website is the place where people go to see you, right?

That’s what, any type of marketing that you do, any type of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, video, blog, messages, communications, anytime someone gets a referral or hears about you. The first place they go to is your website. Your website is the. Of all of your marketing strategies and all of your marketing communications, because that’s where everybody goes once they hit you.

So it’s important to incorporate a few of these things that I’ll be talking about and including your core message into what what your into your website. So let me just show you these three websites here. So you’re looking at these websites here. You can notice that they are what they’re doing, right?

This website on the bottom, you can tell immediately when you hit this website, that this practitioner is helping for fertility, this website with the runners in their running shoes, you can tell. Maybe that’s about sports. Maybe that’s about getting better. Maybe that’s about, helping with sports injuries and this other website here you will, maybe that’s about helping improve your golf game, improving any type of pain or structural imbalances like that.

When we get off here, take a look at your own website and tell me when you hit your website, you within three to five seconds, can you identify, can somebody identify what it is that you do and how you help? If not, you need to absolutely get this fixed because when people hit your website, you want them to have a really clear understanding of how you can help almost immediately.

You don’t want a website like this because you hit these websites and you have no idea what’s going on. There. They look good, but there’s nothing particular about these websites that shows you that you can help with fertility or back pain or allergies or migraines or whatever that is.

Okay. So you need to have clarity. In your messaging on your website. And again, going back to creating your core message, going back to identifying your ideal patient will help you create who, the person that you’re going to be attracting because on this, over here, this website here, You can see your core message is going to be about sports and medicine and helping people who are athletes, same, different communications and who you’re going to hit over here with people who you’re trying to attract for fertility.

Okay. So it’s really important to get clear on that. And one thing too. And I’ve talked about this before. I maybe here, I’m not sure, but it’s important to make sure that you don’t use images like this. Even though we love these images as acupuncturists and, look at all that shot that’s happening with the cups.

Cool, great. Patients number one, objection is needles. And when they hit this, they see needles, they see fire, they see these really dark gross marks going on in the body. And they’re like, oh, I am not interested in that. These pictures and pictures on your website. Need to show what an outcome is, what their life can look like after they experienced your care.

Going back to these, you’ve got a baby in your arms. You’re running a race, you’re playing golf. Okay. You don’t want to have website, pictures like this. You want to have pictures of that. Happier. So that the depict, more people who are happier, more grounded so that they, when they hit their weird website, they’re not turned off or frightened about what it is that you’re offering them.

Another thing that whenever I do any website evaluations, I noticed. Is missing on most websites are calls to action. In fact, most practitioners don’t even incorporate calls to action in a lot of their marketing collateral, which is a big mistake. So on your website, you need to have something that is going to motivate people to take action.

So if they don’t schedule with you right away, if they don’t call you right away, what can you offer them? That will motivate them to click a button and schedule an evaluation with you or choose to take an, a special offer for you. Okay. So these are important pieces of helping to grow your practice online.

Other things that you should be using that are offline, that push people to online would be types of calls to action. Like we have here of offering stress reduction treatments, or evaluations and or certificates. And these are important parts of your marketing plan and your marketing strategy.

All right. The next thing to do is to make sure that you’re always staying on top of mind awareness and that you’re nurturing all of your relationships all the time with your patients. And this is important. Again, all of this stuff. Flows back to the functionality of your website. Okay. All of your marketing now goes back to this and Toma means top of mind awareness.

One of the things that I found when I was in practice was that my inactive patient file was much larger than my active patient file. And that might be the same for many of you. So by staying in Toma, you can maintain patients in care more than on your shelf in your in your inactive patients file.

So how do you do that? You can make personal calls. You can send emails, you can send personal messages, you can send out general communications online communications. You can offer some teaching opportunities. You can engage socially with clinic events and obviously to have compelling calls to action on your website to get people to take action.

Another thing that’s important is to sign up, to receive news. If people hit your website and they don’t take you up on an offer, you want to capture their email address and their name by offering them some type of booklet where they would then download, they would download the ebook lit and then they would be sent some emails on the backend that would communicate to them about what you do and give you free content and, talk about the videos about acupressure and things like that.

So you’re offering this value on the front end and of course, each of those has a call to action to get people to schedule with. Okay. So a couple of things we’re thinking about when you’re drafting emails is that you have your personal message to communicate through and to them that every email has an offer of something that you’re offering up.

Call to action. And that there’s an expiration date for your call to action. And if there, and then also that if somebody is interested, they have a way to request an appointment immediately. These are five aspects of creating, any on the anatomy of any email that goes out to your patients.

Shouldn’t have these things. Okay. Types of communications that you could be doing could be emails, newsletters, appointment confirmations. Absolutely. Discounts, promotions come in for a checkup or a tune-up or here’s a new blog that you put out and birthday emails came. So staying in communication with your patients, it’s really important.

And those are different ways of staying in Toma. Okay. Gathering your stories. That’s one other aspect. And P these are patients’ stories. This is a workshop that I did a while ago. Stories do all the hard marketing for you, and they make your prospects remember and care. And they because our brains are already wired.

Fo to remember stories because it goes back to our ancient DNA. That stories of keep, we remember stories more than we, that then if that, then we remember something that’s written. So a story when we, when people hear a story, they unconsciously. Put themselves in the place of that person. And they can imagine those benefits that were received and and and that they can incorporate that into their own lives.

That’s pretty much it for today. W just some insight and tidbits on the things that will help you be found online and it’s important. Again, core message getting that clear. Jennifer find your ideal patient and making sure that when somebody hits your website, they know exactly what it is that you do within three to five seconds when they hit your website.

One thing that you could do is ask your patients, ask your friends and your family members to look at your website and say, Hey, when you land on my website, do you know what I can do and how I can help you and why I’m even in this industry. And then also ask them, what would you be doing next? Motivate you to do next and move through this funnel, so to speak through the website.

And that would give you a lot of insight into that. So again, thank you guys so much for showing up today. I really appreciate that. Join us next. When Lorne Brown is going to be sharing some more insights from the American Acupuncture Council. Again, thank you so much. Stay beautiful. Change the world. One person, one needle at a time you guys are awesome.

Everybody needs acupuncture and go out there and make it happen. Be well, take care.

 

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9 Growth Strategies To Build A Referral Based Practice

 

 

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi there, Jeffrey Grossman here. And I’m thrilled that you took the time to join me here today. Today, I’m going to talk about nine growth strategies to build a referral based practice. So thank you again, the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me back for yet another installment on business and marketing and how to grow your practice on a Facebook live.

I’ll be talking about the K L T factor and how it’s going to be key for the longevity of your practice. And I’m going to talk about the main hub for your practice and how to maximize its usefulness. . Excuse me to help land qualified new patients into your practice. And I’m going to share nine different strategies that can help you build a referral based practice.

So my intention is to lay the groundwork for long-term growth, and I want to help you plant the seeds, not just for now, but for the long haul, not something that’s a one hit wonder. I want to really stress to you. The fact that marketing takes time, all marketing is about building relationships and planting seeds.

It’s a myth to assume that a referral will occur right away. So keep that in mind things take time. You won’t see the results overnight and. If you’re just starting, or if you have a small practice, keep in mind too, that you may not get the same results as another practitioner who has a larger practice that also gives them a larger referral base.

Okay. So I just want to say that your referral volume is proportionate to your referral network and referral based marketing is just one piece of the marketing puzzle. Because there are many aspects that make up a solid and quality marketing plan for an acupuncture practice. So I hope this makes sense.

My hope is that you walk away from this talk with just one or two actionable items, something that resonated with you that you’ll actually do. Just one simple tweak to the way you do things can make all the difference in the world. For those of you that don’t know me. My name is Jeffrey Grossman. I started my acupuncture practice in 1998.

I’m the founder and owner of Acupuncture Media Works, Accu Perfect websites. And after you downloads and like many of them. I’ve struggled in my practice. I had no idea how to grow my practice, how to do marketing, how to talk to patients, how to give the report of findings. And none of that was part of my forte.

And I didn’t have the savvy or the mindset to do that. And I noticed that there was a huge. I didn’t know how to run a business. I knew all the techniques and all the tools to help me become a successful practitioner, but I didn’t have what it takes to run a business. And as an acupuncturist, you are an entrepreneur, you are a business owner, and you’ve got to wear both hats, the hat of the healer, which hopefully you do well.

And the hat of the entrepreneur business person, CEO. These are why the AAC is bringing these talks to you. This is why I’m here to spread this information to you as well. I want you to also realize that if you don’t know this by now, You, my friends are an incredible resource, your natural healers, you know how to help people become balanced and healthy.

You’re use safe, natural drug-free methods and you’re changing lives every single day on your treatment table. People need you, they need your services and they want your help. But the thing is they might actually not know that you are available. They might not even know that you can help them with condition X, Y, or Z.

And that’s what these talks are about. That’s what I’m here to do is to help you be seen, to be heard and to ultimately bring more people into your practice so you can ultimately make more money so you can live the life that you want. So I want to remind you that your. That I’m here for you. And if at the end of today’s talk, or whenever you’re seeing this presentation that you feel like you need help getting set up or becoming focused or some accountability, or need a little bit of motivation.

Please reach out to me. There’s more opportunities now than ever to help more people, but you have to understand what they’re looking for now. And you also have to learn to understand how this integrates into marketing into your practice. Because like I said today, w use, today’s talk as a resource to help reset your practice because one or two simple things.

That you tap into can make all the difference. Okay. So I’m going to go ahead and start sharing my slides and jump into the nine growth strategies to build a referral based practice. I have a gift for you guys at the end of today’s training, I have a ebook that you can download. That’s got outlined some sample scripts and some sample calls to action.

Examples that we’re going to be talking about today. Today’s presentation is going to be relatively on the shorter side, 20 minutes or so. Yeah. If you want to dive into the details, I will give you a link to download this after today’s presentation. The reason I do that is because if I give you the link, now you’re going to take off, download the ebook, and you’ll forget that I’m even here.

And I don’t want you to do that because I value your time. And I’ve got this gift for you, and I’m going to share it with you towards the end of today’s training. First thing about referral strategy that I really want to get across to you is the fact that you need to identify your perfect patient avatar.

What the heck is the perfect patient. Avatar. Glad you asked. So this is the idea of identifying who your perfect patient is. If you haven’t done this exercise before I encourage you to do this, I do this with all of my coaching clients. And it is important because. Understand who it is that you are perfect patient is, then you can talk directly to that person, you know exactly what their problem our problem is.

And you know exactly what solutions that you have to. That can help address their particular problems. And when you identify your perfect patient, then you start identifying the patients that you really resonate with, that I call your a patients. These are the people that you love. These are the people that when you see them on your schedule, your energy raises as opposed to what certain people on your schedule.

Maybe your energy pulls you down a little bit because it’s going to be a challenging. I get that all the time. So when you identify your perfect patient avatar and what they like and what their needs are, and then you can create an ambassadors, people who can actually go out there and communicate the messages of what you do and how you can help by identifying who your patients are, which are, is one of the first steps to building a referral.

Next thing to do is to really get clear on your core message. Now I’ve been teaching practice management class for the last four years, and I’ve been in this business of helping practitioners grow their practice since 2002. One thing that I’ve come across that is really true is the fact that not many of you have a core message and it’s really important to have this.

Kind of like your elevator pitch, but it’s a little different. Okay. And if you don’t have your core message, I did a workshop on this a couple of weeks ago and I encourage you to really dive into what it means to develop your core message. First thing about that core messages is I D it comes in three parts.

You have to identify what kinds of problems your patients have. What are they coming to see you for? What are their needs? What keeps them up at night? What hurts them? What do they, what are they struggling with in their life? The next part of that is what you need solutions.

Do you offer your clinic? And then the third part is what will their life look like after they come see you? Okay. Now your core message. Should be just three sentences. Here’s the core message for acupuncture, MediaWorks, acupuncturists don’t like marketing. They’ve never been taught how to grow their practice.

They never been taught this, the tools and the skills to to develop a business and entrepreneurial mindset here at acupuncture, MediaWorks, and I could perf websites and Accu downloads. We provide online digital print. And coaching solutions for acupuncturists. So they can go out there and grow their practice, educate their patients, make greater income and change the world.

One person, one needle at a time. That is the basis of what a core message is. Now. It’s not exactly word for word. I’m just going off of my mind here, but that is what you should come up with. Something like that core messaging is important because it allows you to. Brand your practice brand, your website, brand your business cards, brand all of your marketing collateral based upon what your core message is.

Okay. The next part of the creating a referral strategy is connecting with referral sources. Okay. What are your best sources? How are you going to reach out to them and what are you going to supply them? First thing. Who is already referring to you? Are there any doctors, natural paths, chiropractors, massage therapists, dentists, eye doctors.

I don’t know. Who are you getting referrals from now? Write a list of them. And then. Figure out a way and a strategy that you can start. We reaching out to them on a regular basis and also identify the tools like booklets and conditioned specific cards and brochures and gift certificates and other collateral.

That you can share with them that they can share with their clientele. Okay. Referral strategy, number three, referral strategy. Number four is make it easy to get those referrals. Okay. So what tools can you use to make it easy? One thing that’s really important are making sure that you have gift certificates or a call to action cards that have.

Something on there that is a loss leader that motivates people to be like, wow, that sounds interesting. I feel like I need that. I’m going to reach out to Jeffrey too, to get that appointment or whatever that is. Now, what I’ve done in the past was. Was mini stress reduction treatment. So at any event I did or any talk that I did, I would offer people to come in for a mini stress reduction treatments where I would just do 0.0 Shannon, middle ear.

I called them acupuncture, happy hour events. And that was my loss leader to get people into the clinic so they could experience acupuncture, experience me. So I could talk with them, get more information about them and then let them try the treatment. And then from this. Upsell them into the next level of care, which is coming in for the comprehensive evaluation.

And then from there, move them into treatment plans. So what do you have now to make it easy to have other people refer to you? Calls to action are important. I’m going to talk about that in a minute more. Also, it’s important to show Goodwill by referring out to others first. So maybe you need to create a list of other people that you can refer to other specialists that maybe you’re not getting the right the right care.

Sorry about that. The right the right results for your patients that you expect. And maybe you can then refer them out to somebody that you know, and trust. Okay. What resources do you have? Brochures and flyers and how can you make it easy for people to give you reviews and testimonials on your website, on social media and and in the clinic.

Okay. Referral strategy, number five. How do you reduce the risk of people falling out of. Now, if you’ve been in practice for any length of time, you probably have more inactive patient folders and you have active patient folders. So first thing to do is to plant the seeds from day one. Of the, what you what they can expect from you during their care.

And one thing that’s really important to discussed is your treatment protocol, your outlines, and how you have a unique strategy that, that how you can go, you will go about getting them from point a, which is I’m in pain, I’m uncomfortable, or I don’t sleep well to a point B. They they. At night they have unlimited energy.

They can now go out there and ride their bicycle. Cause they’re not in pain anymore. What is the process, the path that you have, or that you can think of, that you can map out for your patients, maybe it’s eight treatments. What are you going to do? Visit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 treatments and so on. So there are unique and specific.

That you can do where you can set expectations from day one to plant the seeds towards health and longevity. One of those things is making sure that you answer the five questions when you deliver your porta findings again, on the ebook that I have for you, there’s more detail about the report of findings that you can access there.

And the report of findings, you asked the answer, the question is, what’s wrong with me? How long is it going to take? What can they expect? What’s it going to cost? And what kind of other, what things that they should be doing at home. Okay. So when you lay that out for a patient, then they have certain expectations.

Again, that’s important piece of the new patient process of getting another piece of that is what stage of healing do you discuss the different stages of healing with your patients? As in relief care, corrective care, maintenance care, wellness care. I imagine that you’re an acupuncturist. And you assume that you have the knowledge that there are different stages of care.

When someone comes in there and obvious pain, they want to get out of pain quickly, that’s relief care, your ultimate goal, where you plant the seeds during that visit is into. Wellness and long-term care if you’re not doing that, please reach out to me at the end of this training. And let’s get on the phone and kind of consult with how you can make that happen.

Okay. This is other sort of findings that you could should be delivering to your patients. And this is the. This is the the stages of care that you could be reviewing with your patients. The visits here are closer together because obviously in this stage of care, you want patients to get better, faster.

So you have more frequent visits as they get better, the time moves out. Okay. There’s a whole conversation around this. When I talk about the report of findings, better for another. Strategy numb referral strategy. Number six is practice and rehearse your referral dialogue. So again, this goes back to creating your core message.

And this also goes back to how. Educate your patients and patient education is what I found in acupuncture. Media works on because there were no tools that I felt comfortable using in my own practice. I created a whole line of marketing tools and educational tools that I wanted to share with my patients and hence share them with other acupuncturists.

So one thing that’s really important for you to determine where you might be lacking in your educational process, in how you educate patients is by asking them this one question. When you tell your family or friends about acupuncture care, what you tell. Or, if you were invited to a party and someone’s oh, what do you go to see your acupuncturist for?

What would you say, ask your patients that question you could do that today or tomorrow, and you’ll be surprised at what some of the answers will be. And sorry about that.

So nature of doing the live training with dogs in the house. So I apologize. Oh my goodness. Excuse me.

I always have to get one last Barkin. So try this, ask your patients what the issue is here and ask your patients to what would they say and you’ll will understand where you might be falling short with regards to your, for patient process and your education strategies?

Because every treatment, my friends. Is an opportunity for you to further educate your patients around what you do. What acupuncture is, what she is, what seasonal changes are happening. Every time a patient comes in every week, you should change your whiteboard to something that elicits a question to them that encourages them to ask you what’s going on.

Okay. So try that also, you might want to ask your patients, how would they explain what she is? When a friend asked him about care, this was really an interesting process that you would be working on in your practice to really find out where you need to fill the patient education gaps. Okay.

Referral strategy, number seven, tone of five, your practice hubs. What is it? What’s your practice hub, right? So anytime someone refers to you, or anytime you hand out a business card, anytime you do any type of marketing. Oh my goodness. Excuse me.

Anytime you do any type of marketing that. That people will be they’re going to the first place they go to is your acupuncture PR your website, right? So anytime you hand out a business card, anytime you hand out anytime someone refers to you, anytime you place them out on Facebook or.

Where are they going to go? They are going to go to your website. So that is the first impression that everybody will have of you. So every digital strategy, every marketing strategy leads back to your website and not. You need to have a website that works effectively, that communicates the bigger picture of what you have.

And when you identify what your core message is, then you, then when people hit your website, they should have an understanding of what you do immediately as they, when they hit your website. Okay. Referral strategy number eight is be consistent. Okay. So being consistent means that you’ve got your mobile ready.

You’ve got reviews. You’re answering those reviews. You’re keeping current with your website. You’re reaching out to referral networks and you also. Over-delivered you have a process in your clinic that when patient comes in from visit one all the way to visit 12, there are steps and strategies that you go through.

Okay. And then referral strategy. Number nine is make sure you have strong calls to action. Again, if you don’t know what a call to action is, or if you don’t have any of these, you need to get these going up. So on your web. What will motivate a person to raise their hand and be like, I want to come in to see you.

Do you have a download? Do you have a free report? Do you have a gift certificate that they can pull em, start, come into the clinic. Okay. When you do a talk, what will you give them that makes them raise their hand to come in, to see you at? Okay. So calls to action are really important to have in the ebook that I have for you.

You will have some examples that are. So these are some examples. There’s more of them. So types of calls to action or setting up a contact us schedule now downloaded a gift certificate. Sharon social media register for this event. Learn more call now. So these are a couple of examples. There’s more in the ebook that I have available for you.

The key is to have an organized, structured system that you consistently constantly use in order to consistently receive referrals. This is not something that you can just do one off and that, and just assume, but you’ve got to be consistent in asking you’ve got to be consistent in educating and walking people through the particular process on how they can learn more.

Through this educational process about what you do, how you can help in the different conditions you can treat. Okay. So thank you guys for joining me here is the link to the free download, where it has outlines and scripts and samples and examples of calls to action. So you can go to Accumedia.us/growth and download this ebook and it will be available for you, thank you so much for taking the time out to join me. I appreciate you being there. Join next week when the AAC will be hosting yet another live event for you, and it’s going to be great. They just do this and it’s an amazing service to the acupuncture community. Thanks again for joining me.

Talk to you guys soon.

 

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Storytelling To Attract New Patients

 

 

So today I’m going to talk about. Storytelling for your practice. And this is your introduction to storytelling, which is the science of storytelling to attract new patients who want your services now.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi folks, Jeffrey Grossman here. And thank you for joining me. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to watch this video and thank you for the American Acupuncture Council for yet again, inviting me back to share some insights and wisdom and knowledge about growing your practice and marketing and business development for acupuncturists.

So today I’m going to talk about. Storytelling for your practice. And this is your introduction to storytelling, which is the science of storytelling to attract new patients who want your services now. And I just want to make one thing. Stories are elaborated patient testimonials and testimonials are short and they don’t necessarily have the triggers and the intrigue or the emotional connection that can really pull a prospect in and communicate to them that indeed, that you are.

Able to help them. And that you’re the solution that they’re searching for. So stick with me and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. So I’m going to share my slide deck with you. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to learn about the three things that every patient thinks before they choose you and why you must consider these as part of your marketing efforts.

We’re also going to talk about the various stories. To share with every patient to build rapport and trust with every prospect and every patient coming into your practice and how to use your stories to attract qualified new patients and more word of mouth referrals. So for those of you that don’t know me, my name is Jeffrey Grossman.

I am the owner and the president of Acupuncture Media Works, Accu Perfect Websites and Accu Downloads. And I’ve taught classes for and am a regular speaker for the AAC for several years. I’ve also taught the 60 hour practice management class at the middleweight acupuncture Institute. I taught at bass year Siam and Neisser and clock.

400 plus hours of online video trainings and marketing and business trainings for other acupuncturists. So I’m in this industry and I’ve been privy to what’s been going on for this industry for a long time. So my goal, our goal, our mission at acupuncture media works is to share the latest marketing insights with you and the techniques and the protocols with you that inspired.

And educate your prospects and your patients so that you can have a fuller schedule, make more money and effect positive change in the world by helping more people. So I started practicing in 98 in height, many of the struggles that many of you have experienced or may be experiencing now. And I took a.

Of $15,000 and started coaching with a chiropractic coach. And my life changed. My practice changed, my income changed. So I want to encourage you to take some chances, make some change if you’re struggling, if you’re not as full as you are, if you’re not making the type of income that you need, something’s got to shift and take that gamble.

Take that shift in order to take those next steps so you can grow. Throughout this year. So this training is about changing your life. It’s about changing your income and just one or two ideas can transform your practice in this year. So most of us think that marketing is hard, but it’s not. And we were went to school to become a healer.

We’re not that adept at becoming a business and marketing person, the honest truth is that you have to wear those two hats that. The hat of business person, and you’re the only person who’s going to be doing your billing and your marketing and your needling, your Grosh on your cupping and your scheduling and all of that.

That’s on you. My friends, you are an entrepreneur and you are a healer. So we’ve got to own that. And we’ve got to tap into marketing and business building strategies for your practice. Oh, I want to encourage you that if you need any help, that you should evaluate your plans to create actionable strategies and feel free to reach out to me, I’ll have my email address at the end of today’s training.

And if you need help, just send me an email, says, Jeffrey, I need some help. I’d love to get together with you and I’m offering free 15 minute consults for that. Also before I go on. I know it was a little late into the Chinese new year, but we’ve got a gift for you, which are if we put together a bunch of Chinese new year, social media graphics for you, we got some newsletters, some Facebook graphics, some Instagram posts, and some blog posts that you could copy and paste and use in your practice.

And you can grab them here at this link on the video. Just go to that link at the end of today’s training and get those graphics and start putting them into your social media strategy. Okay. So one of the foundations of building a sustainable and successful acupuncture practice is to build what I call the know like and trust factor.

And this is something that we will talk about as we go on, but it’s something I want you to remember. And if you want people to know like trust and refer others to you, nothing is more important and nothing is more fundamental than telling your patient’s story. About how you have helped people just like them.

Get better telling stories, build the know like, and trust factor from the moment they’re done reading it. That’s it. If it resonates with them and triggers them to take action. And I’ll tell you about that in a second, but before I do that, I want to tell you how to do it before, but I want to tell you why stories work so well.

Okay, so let’s read this together. 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 stories are how humans have communicated for tens of thousands of years long before written language ever existed. And the key is how our brains and bodies aligned.

When we hear a story, people know for thousands of years and. Is just now proving it to be a fact that a story can do what facts and statistics can never do, which are inspire and motivate the reader. So storytelling, it’s the most ancient form of marketing. It’s about getting that message through to the listener.

And when a good story is being shared, the listener or the reader, they’re engaged, they’re involved in both their mind and their heart. Okay. So stories do all the hard marketing work for you, and they make our prospects remember and clear and care and story marketing works because our brains are already programmed for stories because it’s embedded in our DNA.

And storytelling also helps with learning because stories are easy to. When we hear a story, we unconsciously take the place of the person in the story and the benefits that they receive become the benefits we think that we’ll receive. So learning which can stem from a well-told story, it’s remembered more accurately.

And for far longer than learning, that’s derived from facts and figures. And that’s from research. That’s been done by a psychologist called peg new Hauser, and there’s another. Researcher, another published psychologist called Jerome Bruner, who suggests that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they are part of a story.

So marketing comes and goes, but your patients will remember the stories that they read and that they heard and relate to for a long time. So having several great patient stories about. A patient’s searing back pain that goes away after true treatments or curing someone’s migraines that they’ve had for over 20 years or helping a woman have a child after not being able to conceive for many years.

It’s like having an. That people were role. Remember for years on end. And the great thing is that it’s zero cost to you. People remember, and they share stories far and wide. So stories create that emotional connection between your prospects and your practice. And they have that psychological effect that adds tremendous power to your marketing.

And this can add ultimate growth to your practice. So this. Yet another reason why I really liked stories because the advertising it’s free and the memories last and last. So hopefully now that you’re seeing that stories can be powerful for your marketing and your patient education process. Okay.

So that’s a very brief look into the science of stories and there’s real documented brain science on why this works. And when we’re done, you can Google a great Ted talk by Henri Hassan. And he did a fascinating study on how people’s brains, literally sync. When they hear the same stories and they put themselves in the story of the other person’s shoes.

So before that study, they’re like, brainwaves are all mismatched and they’re not sinked up. And when they hear that same story, they start thinking up. So do you see how this can be helpful for your practice? People read a well-crafted patient story and they resonate with it. They embody it for themselves and want the same outcome as the person that they just read about.

So I hope that makes sense. So we need to talk about how you will be using them in your practice and which ones to use. But before I go there, Let’s talk about this next aspect, which is the secrets of why people buy and what they really care about. Okay. So we’ve been buying things the same way. For thousands of years, something gets our attention.

It becomes top of mind and our interest is peaked. It increases our desire as we want to learn more. And then we buy, and this is the basic buying system that we all go through. It’s hardwired, it’s ancient human nature. And as we’ve just discussed, it’s better and easier to use the science of human nature than to just simply ignore it.

So the buying process is pretty much the same, no matter what business you are. So something, your triggers, your interest in, let’s say having lunch and you read the menu, your desire increases, and then you buy same process. When you go to see a home that you might be interested in purchasing the realtor increases your desire by demonstrating and discussing why this house is great.

They stage it beautifully. So you can literally picture yourself there and put yourself in the shoes of the owner of that house. You buy it’s the same for your practice in spite of what most people think, no matter how accomplished and brilliant you are at your modality. There’s only one thing our prospects really think about and believe me.

Unfortunately not you and it’s not your credentials and it’s not your modality. So while can it be well, they want to know what’s in it for me. And what’s in it for me is made up of three things. Okay. The three things that every patient thinks about before they choose you, and these are really important to consider as part of your marketing.

And, these are the things that prospects are concerned about. It’s what’s in it for me. And it breaks down into these three different parts. W here’s what I want right now, which is I want to get out of pain. How do I get it right? Who can help them? Okay. And what’s my life going to be like, after I get help and what will they be able to do after they are free of pain that they cannot do now, they want their pain to go away.

How could it possibly get done? And if it does, what is their life going to look like? And this is what’s on people’s mind. Excuse me. And that’s the process people go through over and over again when they’re presented with a buying decision is what’s in it for me. And this is with every single industry.

Okay. So let’s talk about how we use stories in your practice and in your patient’s journey. So right now, For probably 99.9% of you, the people in your neighborhood might not know you as the master healer. What we want to do is to get people’s attention, creating interest and desire by talking about what I, or better yet what they want right now, for instance, They want to get out of that pain, neck pain or whatever their problem is.

And they want to what that is, what I want to know. Okay. Then we want to demonstrate our skills and our success, whether it’s on the tele-health call or getting somebody in your office and sharing how you’re the best choice for them or getting them for an acupuncture happy hour or a stress reduction treatment to get them to devastate.

So you can share with them how your medicine can help them. And by using. This is where they get to know and trust you and they understand how do I get this and how can I get the positive results? W w that’s what’s on their mind too, is you have to present your treatment plan, or you present success stories.

And part of what you’re going to talk about then is how their life is going to change. And w after they received the results, of seeing you. Okay. And if the results are good, they’re going to refer friends. They going to refer neighbors and expand your practice through word of mouth in your community.

Okay. So I hope you’re following me. So now I want to discuss the three basic stories that you should be using in your practice. So there’s the initial. To desire story, which gets your prospect into your office to experience you, gets them interested in you and your services. And what’s great about this is when you use the template and practice it.

A couple of times, it only takes about 10 minutes to create because it’s only about 150 to 200 words and. Since our time is short. I’m not going to show you that what, I’m not going to show you a total interest story here, but I’m going to share a link to a video that walks you through a real world.

Example of a patient story. Number two is the desire to buy. Which is a story that positions you as the healer in your neighborhood. And this helps to create trust and rapport with your prospects. So they accept your treatment plan because they want it. And not because you sold it to them because they’re, they put themselves in the shoes of the person who shared whose story that you shared with them.

And they benefited from your care and their. Synced up with what the other person’s story is, what the other person’s experience is. And the third story that you’re going to need to have is you were own apifany story. And it’s your personal health story as to why you love Chinese medicine, why you love acupuncture, your various modalities that you offer and why you chose to do what you do.

Not about the number of credentials that you have, or the number of acronyms that you have after your name. It’s about realizing that you are human too. Maybe you had your own health struggles that made you seek out acupuncture that eventually led you to be the healer that you are today, or maybe you saw a loved one received acupuncture and it opened up your eyes and you said, yeah, that’s what I want to do.

So whatever it is. You have your own story, and it’s important to share that with your patients. In fact, you’ll be sharing it with whenever you host a class or give a talk or even meet patients for the first time, your story makes you human. It makes you relatable and real, your story should be on your website as your, about you pages.

You wouldn’t believe the, about you pages that I see are the about me pages I see on people’s websites. That’s all about how great I am. How many schools I went to, how many acronyms I do, right? When you meet somebody, you want to be like, hi, my name’s Jeffrey. I went to new Orleans with acupuncture and I have all these acronyms now my name, and these are the types of modalities.

I do know you want a story that’s relatable, that people can connect with. Okay. So what they. Is your story and your appify funny story. Okay. So imagine how much easier or how much is simpler that your life will be when you have the perfect story that makes prospects want to become patients because they instinctively know and trust you and can force the results that they’ll receive.

Just like the person in the story received. Okay. So imagine having the proof that you’re a great healer for allergies or asthma or back pain or neck pain or knee pain or gut pain or surgery, pain, or headaches or stress or not sleeping or infertility or weight loss. Whatever you specialize in your practice, when someone comes in, you have to have stories specific about the key problems that you help your patients solve and your patient’s stories are your library.

It’s your proof of success and your proof that you can address the what did it for me scenario. Okay. So the great news is that crafting the perfect patient story? It’s really not that hard. All it takes is to make it, to make a great story is answering 12 simple questions and these questions you already know the answers to.

So once you create your first patient story, you’ll be able to use it for years. In your practice. So I’m going to quickly review these 12 questions with you. And I reviewed these 12 questions in this video that I’m going to be going through, that I have a link for after this, that you can watch me go through an entire patient success story for yourself.

So the first question is who is. Excuse me, who is this story about? So you’ll be describing a patient’s age. Are they single? Do they have any children? What’s the patient’s health complaint in their words, right? Nonmedical non-technical. How long do they have the problem? What caused the problem?

How does the problem affect their. They’re looking for solutions. What did they tried before? What methods? What modalities, what are the treatments? How did that person use it? What were the results? What are the patient’s biggest fears? What were the patient’s biggest questions? Did the patient have any experience with acupuncture, Chinese medicine?

If so, what were the risks? How did you demonstrate or explain your solution and how would it be helpful? Did you do your occupant or did you do a stress reduction treatment? Did you do some Dr. Tan points? Okay. What did the patients say about the demonstration or the explanation? Did they have any answers?

What were they, did you ask, did you get questions? Did you get any answers to at least one of these questions above that I have here since you had. Had this problem. How many years in your mind would it be? What would it feel like a short-term success to start with your treatment? How will your life be different when this condition is under control?

The question number 10, did they accept your complete treatment plan or was it just a few sessions? What was their treatment timing? What happened the first few weeks or the first few treatments? They have a positive experience. What milestones did they reach? And then finally, did you get a testimonial?

What was it? Did you get a referral or did you start to treat any other family? Okay. So I, you can watch, I don’t have time to show you a real world example of the patient’s story and the 12 questions in action, but you can jot down this link here and watch me re review a real world example of a patient’s story.

And you can even download an example of. At that page as well too. So go to this link here at youmedia.us/story review. And you can watch me review an entire patient story and even download a template. Okay. So now that you’ve written and produced your story in at least one format, you’ll have to decide exactly where to distribute it.

And the goal is to choose a distribution channel that will get your story in front of as many people as possible. So you could put it on your website or your blog. You could use it on social media, you could put it in emails and you can use it for a part of your advertising. If you have. And the budget to do those kinds of things.

Okay. So now, you know why stories are important and how stories work to build an emotional connection and the universal buying decision process that a person goes through, that every person goes through when making a decision. And the one thing that patients think about that you might. Appeal to and when to use your patients’ stories and their journey and how to make a great story by answering 12 simple questions.

Okay. So time to get work on your story. So you could work with some experts, you could work with some writers, you can think about the patient complaints that you solve on a regular basis and make a list and focus on. Story first, or you can consider setting a goal by getting two patients stories done a month until you have 10 or more.

Okay. So here’s the link to the download the graphics. Here’s a link to download or watch the video that I put together for you. You can take a note of these slides here and I want to say thank you for joining me here. And here’s my email. If you want to reach out to me for any questions, if you need any help, a support, if you want a free 15 minute consult, so we can discover where you might need some help, feel free to reach out to me at this email address.

So I hope you are all doing well. I hope you receive some of the answers and the inspiration and the insight that you needed today. And I want to encourage you to reevaluate your plans and make actual strategies. All right. We’re here for you. Stay beautiful. Keep changing the world. One person, one needle at a time and talk to you soon.

Thank you so much for joining me. Bye bye.