Tag Archives: Michelle Grasek

7 Networking Tips for Introvert Acupuncturists – Michelle Grasek

So before we begin, I’d like to talk really briefly about why it’s worth it to try networking as an introvert.

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. My name is Michelle Grasek. I am a practicing acupuncturist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, as well as the lead instructor for acupuncture marketing school, the online class. And today I am looking forward to sharing with you some really helpful, practical tips to make networking more.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Comfortable and effective for introverts. And before we dive in, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today. All right, let’s get into the slides. I.

So before we begin, I’d like to talk really briefly about why it’s worth it to try networking as an introvert. I have found over the years, I’ve been teaching marketing in our industry for about 11 years, and I found that. Most acupuncturists are introverts, at least the ones that come into my orbit, which is maybe not surprising because I am also an introvert.

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

So I’m speaking from personal experience as well as what I’ve been sharing with my marketing students and clients over the past more than a decade. And most introverts will say, why? I don’t want to do that. Why would you suggest networking? So first of all, if you, if you’re watching this, you’ll probably have some level of interest in trying networking, but I always tell people to think about your marketing, like an experiment, try new things.

You might be surprised about what’s a good fit for you and what’s effective in your community. And if you try something and it doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. You don’t have to do it anymore. Commit to other ways of getting visible in your community. But the reason I always recommend that introverts at least try networking is that, especially using these tips I’m going to share with you to make it more comfortable.

Networking is an incredibly effective way to build trust in your community. And really, marketing for acupuncture is about building trust. It’s about helping people understand that acupuncture can help their symptoms and trust. Trust you to put needles in them, trust in making a financial investment feel safe, sharing their personal health information with you their story, their background, et cetera.

So we need to build a lot of trust in our marketing as acupuncturists and any sort of in-person interaction builds trust very quickly. And I think we, we really can’t, we really have to acknowledge how significant a referral is from someone who knows you, right? That’s a very trust building type of marketing, a personal referral, and that’s our goal with networking, is building relationships so that people get to know us so that they feel comfortable referring people to us and also so that we are top of mind.

If they’re speaking to someone about acupuncture or maybe our specialty or something we’ve discussed, so they can say, oh wait, I know an acupuncture from my networking group. Okay. So that’s why I think it’s worth it for introverts to try networking because it really is very effective because one-on-one conversations and getting to know people in person, that’s what builds a strong referral network.

Okay, out of all of these seven tips I have saved my personal favorite for last, the one that I think can make the biggest difference in how comfortable you are with networking. But I hope that all of these are really useful for you. So let’s dive in. The first tip is to always bring a friend with you.

If you are an introvert, going to a networking meeting, there’s absolutely no reason that you should torture yourself by trying to go alone. Most of my. Introvert marketing students and clients have told me that they’ll say they’re gonna go to a networking, they’ll make the commitment and then it will approach and they’ll feel pretty nervous and bail at the last second.

So bringing a friend. It has two purposes. One is there’s accountability because if you’re meeting someone there or if you’re gonna drive together, this person is expecting you to show up, right? So it makes people much more likely to show up and go to the event. And of course, bringing a friend or an acquaintance gives you.

Kind of a fallback so that you know at any point during that networking event, there’s always someone that you can talk to that you can find or turn to. So you’re never just standing there alone awkwardly with a drink. ’cause that’s the thing people tell me they’re afraid of the most, is walking into this big space filled with strangers and a lot of people, and having to stand there by themselves until someone approaches them and introduces themself.

Or having to get up the gumption to approach a group of people who already seem like they know each other. It can feel a little cliquey. It’s really hard to just walk up to them and introduce yourself alone, right? So bringing a friend helps soften all of these things and gives you accountability and also helps you have someone to talk to in case maybe you’re having a nice discussion with someone you just met and they see someone else they know and they have to go.

You can always turn and chat with your friend. Now, I would say the one thing you wanna be careful of if you bring a friend is do not only speak to each other. That is also very common, right? So you have to make a pact, make a commitment beforehand that you are going to try to meet other people and you’re not just gonna stand in a corner and only talk to each other.

Okay. Bring an extrovert friend if you can, because obviously they are going to be a little more comfortable in the situation and probably get you introduced to more people. And lastly, when I say bring a friend, it doesn’t, it could be just like a. Personal friend most networking events, you can bring a plus one, but it could also be your receptionist or it could be a fellow business owner.

Okay? So just someone that you’re already familiar with makes a huge difference. So tip number two is a big mindset shift that matters a lot. It helps a lot. Often people tell me they don’t wanna do networking because it feels pushy and salesy and they’re just expected to hand out business cards to as many people as possible and try to get someone on their calendar.

And if they don’t schedule a new patient, they feel like it was a waste of time. So this is way too high pressure, I think. It’s much more useful to think about networking as a long-term game in which you are becoming a member of this community. If it’s the Chamber of Commerce or BNI or Toastmasters, whatever it is, your goal is to build relationships, which is building trust so that people get to know you well enough that they wanna refer people to you and that you’re top of mind.

And. I think that approaching it from this perspective takes a lot of pressure off because you get to be yourself. You’ll probably make some. Fellow business owner friends, and you can also think about how can I be a resource for other people in this community? How can I get to know them and understand like what are the things that they might need help with?

Who can I refer them to? I just had my roof done and then I hear so and so is talking about getting their roof done. I have someone who did a great job for me, and I can share that, right? So think about this as. Taking time to become part of a community where you can be a resource and other people can be a resource for you.

You can support each other and refer to each other. Okay. But it doesn’t have to be the kind of thing where you’re just throwing your business cards out at everybody who walks by and you’re trying really hard to convince people to get on your calendar. I will say, if you are speaking to someone and they seem really interested in acupuncture.

Do ask if they wanna get on your schedule and pull up your app on your phone and say, oh, I could put you in right now if you’d like. Don’t miss that opportunity. I’m just saying that, if you go to a networking meeting and you feel like I didn’t get a new patient from this event, that is normal.

That’s not really how we are thinking about the purpose of this exercise. Okay. Which also brings to mind that, relationship and trust building. Takes not only time, but repetition. So it is very important to try to go to these events regularly, right? If there’s a monthly meeting, trying to go to most of them is really helpful for building relationships.

You become a familiar face. Tip number three is I think it can be very fun. You can host your own event. Now, most introverts prefer to be in control of the environment, we’ll say. So let’s say that really big noisy meetings with a ton of strangers. Are just not your cup of tea, but you still wanna get to know some people in your community.

You could, for example, host a networking event in your office for fellow wellness providers. You could invite, I don’t know, four to 10 very specific people. You could keep it brief, maybe 45 minutes. And this works for a lot of people because you’re in control of the location. The duration, the number of people and the specific guests.

And that helps a lot of people just enjoy the event more and feel like it’s not so overwhelming. I. I also think it’s really a great idea to host this kind of event in your office because then people can see what your space is like. It’s gonna bring up questions about acupuncture for them, and it helps build trust because now they can picture themselves being comfortable in your office space, and they can easily extrapolate that to getting a treatment or referring someone to get a treatment there.

So again, ideally if you’re gonna host your own networking event, you’d want it to be repeated so that you can build relationships with these specific people that you’re inviting. I know some wellness people who do this, and it’s a book club. So they invite, like the wellness business owners, the wellness entrepreneurs in the area, and everybody reads like a wellness oriented book.

And then they discuss and then. It’s very casual. It evolves into other conversations between people. Okay. So think about how you might make this event something you’d actually enjoy going to. Most of my introvert friends and colleagues really like reading, so that could be a nice way to make this something that you actually look forward to.

Tip number four is to practice some conversation starters before you get to a networking event. And I, this is one of those tips that is actually so helpful and effective, but it’s so basic that people don’t do it. They’re like yeah, that’s not gonna help me. It will really help, especially if you’re an introvert and especially if you practice your sentences out loud.

And again, I know it sounds lame, just give it a try. I before your next event come up with a couple questions that you can ask. We’ll say just two questions to have in your back pocket that you can ask new people. Say, if you are standing next to the buffet. Or if you are maybe you’re already eating and you’re standing in a corner and there’s a group near you and you wanna get an in with them, come up with two questions that you can start a conversation with.

And these are so basic, they just need to be open-ended. So no yes or no questions and focus on the context that you share with this person. So if you are just meeting them, probably the only thing that you know that you share is the event, the location. The food, if it’s a charity fundraiser, then you’re both here for that reason.

So you share that. But you could start a conversation simply by making eye contact with someone and then just saying I see you got the shrimp. Do you recommend it? So basic, right? You can also think about, let me back up. I would have two of those types of questions, right? If it’s a charity event, your other icebreaker question could be, why do you support the Boys and Girls Club of America?

Or something like that. But practicing those questions out loud and mentally preparing to have them helps you actually say them out loud when the moment comes. ’cause I know that a lot of introverts. It’s, they have a hard time being the first person to speak, okay. Which is necessary for meeting new people at these events.

Okay, so pick two super basic icebreakers about something that you have in common with this other person, and then just go for it. Okay? The other thing is that. People love to talk about themselves. So an icebreaker question that I like to use, and this maybe isn’t an icebreaker because it’s not like the first question, but when I’ve been introduced to someone new I like to ask about their history in their career and also.

What is their favorite part of their job? So for example how did you get into real estate or what inspired you to become a chiropractor, or what’s your favorite part about being a massage therapist? People like to talk about themselves. These are open-ended questions and they help. They’re memorable questions because it’s not every day that a stranger says to you, what’s your favorite part about your job?

It really requires them to think and hopefully they like their job and they’re gonna feel enthusiastic and passionate as they’re answering you, and they are going to remember you. This is a memorable question, and again, our goal is partly to stay top of mind. We want to be memorable. Okay, so again, I know these are basic.

Give it a try. Tip number five is to try speed networking. So hear me out. I always think this is a little funny, but can actually be an enjoyable experience even if you are an introvert. It’s just like speed dating, but it’s just to meet new business owners locally. Or professionals locally. So you spend three or four minutes with someone, you exchange business cards and then a bell rings and you move to the next station.

So just like speed dating, but for professionals. And the beauty of this for introverts is that it is structured so you don’t have to walk into a big room and try to introduce yourself to strangers. You know that you’re gonna sit in this spot. And then other person’s gonna sit with you, you get to talk, the bell rings and you move on, right?

There’s no awkward standing around or introductions. And because it’s fast paced, there is no time for awkward silences. So the downside of this, of course, is if we’re trying to do relationship building, this is quick and superficial for that to happen. So what I recommend is when you are done with the event, if you met 15 people.

Pick the ones who you are really interested in getting to know, or you think you could be supportive of each other. You wanna build a relationship with them and send them an email, ask, do they wanna collaborate or could you buy them a coffee? Okay. And then that really can get the ball rolling to build that connection.

Okay? So tip number six is to ask. Anybody that you know at the event for an introduction. So people love to, be connectors and introduce us to other people that they think will genuinely enjoy. It’s like it gives them an endorphin hit to be helpful in that way. So let’s say you go with your receptionist, they’re the friend that you bring to the event and you say to them, do you know anybody here?

And they’re like actually I know one person. They’re standing over there oh, could you introduce me to them? And usually that one introduction has this ripple effect where, you’re gonna talk to that person in a group, you’re gonna meet other people, and then you’ll be carried along that wave for the rest of the meeting, whether it’s like an hour or 90 minutes.

So just one introduction can really help start that process. And let’s say that you get there and you don’t know anybody right away, but you manage to introduce yourself to one person. Even if you just met this person, you can say, Hey, thank you so much. It’s been so nice to get to know you before you, go mingle.

Would you introduce me to someone that you think would be interesting or can you just introduce me to one person? And they trust me, they’ll be happy to do this. Okay. They’re never gonna say no watch and see how their eyes light up and they’ll be like, oh yeah, I’d love to. Okay. So the last tip, and one that I find incredibly helpful is to get to know the people who are hosting the networking event.

So this is assuming that you are going to regular events. For example, the. Monthly Chamber of Commerce small business mixer event, whatever they call it. I’ll share a personal story with you. Since I’m an introvert as well. I have always felt very uncomfortable going to networking events by myself and walking in the door and just being confronted with these groups of people who know each other very well, and they’re.

Standing together, it feels very cliquey and I just stand there awkwardly with my drink. So it occurred to me that maybe it would be helpful to get to know the employees at the Chamber of Commerce. So what I started doing was when they were hosting fundraisers, I volunteered with them a couple of times and just through volunteering, I think three times.

I became such a familiar face to them and they’re, they’re so appreciative when you’re volunteering to help them at a fundraiser that whenever I go to a networking meeting now, I always am greeted by them like an old friend. And. It makes it that there’s always somebody at the networking event that I know I can speak to.

’cause there’s five employees at the Chamber of Commerce. So even if they’re not all there that day, I know at least one of them will be there running the thing. And I can approach them and I can say hello. We can have a nice chat. And I usually ask them. While we’re here, can you introduce me to someone new today?

Which they love doing ’cause that’s literally their job. But I found that getting to know them through volunteering with them was really helpful because, I walk into a Chamber of Commerce meeting now and they’re like, oh, hi, how are you? And that has really expanded with each person they’ve introduced me to.

Okay. They, and it’s I’m a regular. You know what I mean? That makes the pressure to go by myself so low because I know when I get there, there’s gonna be people who are basically my friends now. Okay, so don’t underestimate this tactic. I guarantee if you message the Chamber of Commerce and ask if you can volunteer with them a little bit, they’re going to say yes and be so grateful and always happy to see you.

Okay, so I hope this was helpful. Just keep in mind that networking is a long-term game and you are there to build trust, build relationships, make business friends, become part of a referral community that is genuinely supportive. And I think this will make the experience more enjoyable, less stressful, and overall more effective.

Okay. So as always, if you have questions, I would love to chat with you. My email is michelle@michelleGrasek.com and I really hope you’ll listen to the podcast, acupuncture Marketing School. And before I go today, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council, one more time for the opportunity to be here with you today.

Have a great day.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

Optimize Your Google Business Profile (GBP) for Better Google Rank

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek. I am the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast and a practicing acupuncturist. And today we’ll be talking about how to optimize your Google Business profile so that you rank higher in a Google search and can get more patients. And before we dive in, I’d like to take a moment to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Alright, let’s get into the slides. Okay. So today we’re going to talk about, first, how does your Google business profile actually impact your search engine optimization? And for the sake of brevity, I’m just gonna call the Google Business profile your profile from here on out, instead of saying the whole phrase.

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

We’ll talk about why it matters, and then we’ll talk about how important it’s to complete every section and make it keyword dense with the keywords that your ideal patients are looking for, the kind of people that you wanna treat more of. And then we’ll talk about some very specific steps to increase your visibility.

Basically to get Google to pay more attention to your business and your profile. So let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Many of you are familiar with this already, but a Google Business profile is essentially a free resource provided by Google where you can fill out all of the. Important, relevant information about your business to help people decide if they wanna work with you, if they feel like you’re a good fit.

And I like to think of your profile as having two main purposes. One is so that potential patients. Can learn about you, as I just said, and decide if they wanna keep researching. Are they interested? Do they wanna click through to your website? Maybe they decide they are interested and they can just click through and make an appointment from your profile without even making an appointment, or, sorry, without even going to your website first.

But that first function is. For the potential patients, it’s information for them to make a decision. And then the second function of your profile is really to let Google understand what your business is all about and what you like to treat and who you like to treat so that it knows when your business.

Is the relevant answer to a question that someone has typed into Google. So let’s think about the purpose of Google or their goal for a moment. So we’ll take a tiny tangent here. Google’s goal is to provide the best possible user experience, which means providing the most helpful and relevant and correct answer to whatever question someone types into a Google search.

And. Your Google business profile, obviously because it is owned by Google, is a direct line for Google to better understand. Who you are and who you want to treat, so that when someone types in a question, for example, acupuncture near me, or natural pain management near me natural fertility remedies, et cetera, then Google understands whether or not your business is the answer to that question.

And really what we’re doing in. Filling out your profile as completely as possible and packing it with keywords is you are helping Google help you, right? Because if your business, if you are a fertility specialist, if your business is the best answer to a question such as natural fertility remedies, you are me or acupuncture for fertility near me, then Google wants to know that it wants to help you.

It wants to rank you higher in a search because it cares. About that user experience. Do you remember? Ask Jevs, I’m really dating myself right? No one uses Ask j Eves anymore. I don’t even know if it exists because it did not provide the most helpful and relevant answers to a search query the way that Google did.

And Google does not want that to happen, right? It doesn’t want to become like Ask j. Eves. So it really actually wants to provide the best answer. So again, what we’re doing in filling out your profile as well as we possibly can is helping Google to help you find the patients who are a good fit for you.

Okay? And it’s important to remember that, I think it’s 77% of people when they’re picking a new healthcare provider, they are Googling first, they’re doing an internet search to learn what they can about different healthcare providers in the area, and they’re really looking for reviews, right?

And so the reviews are just one portion of your profile that really matters to potential patients. But. We really, we can’t underestimate how important your Google business profile is for people who are in the market for a new acupuncturist. Okay? It makes a big difference in whether or not they’re going to pick you.

And because your business profile is so integrated with Google and helps Google to understand your business in a big way, that means that your profile can really impact where you show up in an organic search, where you show up in the map pack. And I’ll exit the slides really quickly and show you what I mean when I say that.

I googled acupuncture near Cana, which is a town close to where I live. And the first thing that comes up is called this part is the map pack. Okay. So you can see there’s. A sponsored this person paid for ads, right? And then it’s the same person right here happens to have the most Google reviews.

That’s probably one of the reasons that they’re ranked at the top of the map pack, not just that they pay for advertising, but this here is really the map pack, the top three. That were chosen as the most relevant for this search query. And then you have the map. And then of course, as you scroll down, you have the organic search results in a list.

So your Google business profile can really impact where you show up on these pages. And I will click right here. And this is the Google Business profile. Okay. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, you could see all the different sections and we’ll talk about the ones that are the most important.

But really you want to fill out every section. So if you pardon me, I’ll come back to the slides here. If you take only one thing away from this talk, it’s that the more complete. Active your profile is the more likely you are to rank above your competitors. And active simply means that you are regularly adding things to your profile.

And that could be new images or videos. It could be updating your office hours to make sure they’re correct. If you change them, and it would also be adding what are called updates. Sometimes they’re called posts to your Google business profile. Basically, Google prefers accounts. They prefer profiles, they prefer websites, social media, et cetera.

When they’re creating your search engine optimization score and deciding where you rank, they prefer profiles that are updated regularly instead of. Stagnant or abandoned, right? So if you set up your Google Business profile, when you set up your business, I don’t know, five or six years ago, and you haven’t touched it since then, Google’s going to consider your business to be less active and less relevant than the people who are updating their profiles regularly because Google, again, really wants to provide the best answer to someone’s question and.

Businesses that are regularly updated simply look more relevant. Google can trust that business is active. It’s running maybe it’s busier. Basically someone’s paying attention to it, and so it is going to prefer to show that business compared to a profile that has not been updated in a long time.

Okay. So before we dive into all these tips, I would say that if you already have a Google business profile, which is probably 90% of people watching this, maybe 95 remember also that Google, any software, anything on the internet is constantly being updated. They’re always adding features and sections.

So I would really recommend using this opportunity to go back into your. Profile and scroll through every step. Let Google walk you through and see if there’s any sections that have been added that did not exist when you first set it up and fill those in completely. I would also recommend adding some new photos and making sure that you start posting updates, which we’ll talk about in a moment regularly.

But even if your profile’s all set up, just go back through and make sure it’s complete. And I have some recommendations for using keywords in different sections. So let’s get into that now. So when we talk about your profile being complete. You also want to make sure that you are incorporating keywords that your ideal patients might be searching for, because again, you are pretty much teaching Google when you are the right answer to a person’s question.

Okay? So think of it this way, if you are a fertility specialist, but your Google profile doesn’t say anything about fertility, and someone types in fertility, acupuncture near me, and you have a competitor who’s. Profile talks about how they mostly treat fertility patients. Obviously Google is going to rank that person higher in the search because it’s more relevant to the particular question at hand.

Okay. So if you know that you have a niche and you want more of a specific kind of person, you have got to talk about that person, their symptoms, their goals in your Google business profile. When I’m talking about keywords, I am talking about, what are the things that people are searching for in relation to fertility, right?

You can brainstorm what are all the questions that your ideal patient might put into Google that could potentially indicate that they’re a good fit for you and lead them to acupuncture and your website. Okay? And of course, if you’re an orthopedic specialist, you or you only treat runners, whatever it is, you would wanna think about those keywords instead.

So let’s talk about your profile briefly. Some of these things will be obvious. Again this is also for people who are just filling out their business, Google business profile. So when you are. Initially setting this up, and you can go back and change this if you’ve already set it up, as I mentioned, and some things don’t match up like they should, but you have to make sure that your business name, address, and phone, what’s called the nap or the NAP, are identical across all different platforms on the web.

So if you’ve got your Google Business profile, you’ve got your website, maybe you have a Yelp account, maybe you’re on, I don’t know, MapQuest your. Business name, address, and phone number have to be identical. An identical address. Means literally identical, right? However you write like suite one or like room 400 has to be the same on each one.

Why? Because this consistency again indicates to Google that your business is reliable and trustworthy and professional. Okay? If you’ve got a different address, for example, if you moved and you never updated those. Other platforms like Yelp, where if you changed your office hours and they’re different across every platform, it’s confusing and it doesn’t seem as the inconsistency isn’t as professional for Google.

It’s going to rank other businesses higher who have that consistency, right? Because it’s all about that user experience. It wants to feel confident it’s providing the right answer to a person’s question. Okay? So make sure that your name, address, phone, and I personally think office hours as well are identical when.

When you’re filling out your profile to all the other places where they’re found on the web, okay? And then the category you wanna choose is acupuncturist. I know this seems obvious, but some people choose wellness like a wellness center because they’re not sure. But if you are not a legit wellness center, and what you want is more acupuncture patients than choose acupuncturists.

Remember we’re teaching Google what kind of people to send us. We’re teaching Google about our business. So if you’re an acupuncturist, choose acupuncturist. Okay. And then for services or treatments, this is a great opportunity to incorporate those keywords that we were talking about earlier. You have the chance on your profile to put in each kind of service that you offer.

So I would list them out all individually. Include everything that you offer. So you could say initial treatment, follow-up treatment. You maybe you have cosmetic acupuncture. You offer cupping separately. Guha facial separately. Okay. And then for each of those, you have a description area. So really maximize that descriptive area with those keywords that your ideal patient might be searching for.

So you could say initial treatment, and then you could expand upon that. So of course you would say 90 minutes, $150 initial intake and treatment for, and think about your specialty or your niche or the things you love to treat, right? For example, for pain management, digestion, and anxiety, et cetera.

Okay? So take the opportunity to put some of those keywords in the description for your services. And then of course, in your business description, this is a space where you can. Absolutely maximize on those keywords. So you have 750 words in this space. I would max it out. That’s my recommendation. Make sure that you say your business name and your location and mention the.

Treatments or the services that you offer, but also be sure to talk about the symptoms that you treat symptoms, conditions. And you can even describe your target market if you like. Again, if you have a niche, you could say, treating marathon runners, helping them recover from injury so they can perform at their best or so that they can, run their, continue their training while they’re recovering from injury.

Feel free to describe your ideal patient in your business description, and if you have any awards or PR like media that you were featured on, all of that is social proof. I recommend putting that in the business description as well. I. Okay. The next thing of course is, and this is obvious, you definitely wanna put your website and your booking link on your Google business page.

Photos and videos are very important and I mentioned earlier I adding new ones. This is helpful again, because Google likes to see that your business is fresh. It’s relevant, it’s active. Someone’s paying attention to it, so you don’t have to, have new professional photos taken. Just take a picture of a new corner of your office that looks attractive on your phone and pop it onto your, profile. Okay. And put a caption, use keywords in the caption, ageless acupuncture treatment room where we help patients have babies, we help them improve their fertility naturally. Something like that. Okay. And you can now add videos to your profile 30 seconds or less. And remember.

Google loves rich content like photos and videos, so you definitely wanna add a video and it can be very simple. Just do an office tour where you walk from the outside of your building into your treatment or into your reception area. Show your treatment rooms, okay? You can put a little text on top of the video if you know how that just says, office tour.

Okay. I wouldn’t use audio. I don’t think people are listening to audio on these videos on your profile. You can add captions if they’re speaking but make sure you add lots of rich content like photos and videos and add new ones. I would say once a month. So the next suggestion I have is that there is a section on the Google Business profile where you can ask and answer your own questions, and I highly recommend doing this.

You can ask a question as the business owner, but it will show up as a anonymous, and then you can answer that same question and that the answer will show that you are answering as the business owner. So let me show you what this looks like.

Okay, so on this profile you see you’ve got the Google Business profile over here on the right. So if we scroll down, you’ll see this question that says section that says questions and answers, see all questions, and then there’s a button to ask a question. So what you really wanna do in this section is ask the questions that your ideal patients might be putting into Google and ask the frequently asked questions that you truly get all the time from your patients.

See, for example, can acupuncture help with IBS? Oops, that’s not what I meant to do. And then the person answered and there was a bunch of keywords in the answer. Okay. So really think about what are the questions that your ideal patients might have like that. Let me go back a minute. Think about the questions that are helpful for people to make a decision to come see you, right?

Like to help them know if you’re the right fit for them. And so that’s one category of q and a. And then the other is what are the questions that they might be putting into Google that you wanna show up for? Okay, so again, if you’re a fertility specialist, you could ask, how many treatments do I need for fertility?

And then answer the question with lots of keywords. How does it work for fertility? And answer the questions can you help with this specific thing? I’m dealing with this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Again, you’re just teaching Google about your business so it knows when you are the answer to a question that someone puts in.

The next idea that is really important is adding regular updates on your Google Business profile. And I’ll exit and show you what that means. So sometimes these updates are referred to as posts. So you can see here they are in this section. And if you scroll through, you can see previous posts. Okay.

And if you click, you can see that. You get a little bit of text, whoops, sorry. But not a ton. And then there’s a call to action button with a link that you can choose what to link it to. But these are not really blog posts and they’re not really social media posts. You could think of them as just updates or announcements.

I do think that if you are writing blog posts sharing them in the Google Business profile as an update and. With just a couple sentences saying, Hey, are you struggling with IBS? I recently wrote this article about acupuncture for IBS. Click here to read more. Or if you already know you wanna try acupuncture for the symptom, click here to make an appointment.

But the idea here is that you are including keywords. That description of the update and that you are posting updates regularly. So most experts say, Ooh, once a week. If you could do once a month, I’d be really happy with that. Twice a month is super. I think every week is if if you’re feeling super organized and motivated, but just try to be regular about it again, because Google prefers when your profile is active.

Okay. We talked about images already, and then the last thing, which I’m sure does not surprise you at all, is an emphasis on collecting reviews because this is also a way to show Google that your business is active. When you are regularly getting new reviews and think about these reviews, what people write, especially if they share about their symptoms, is going to be filled with keywords that your other patients are going to be searching for.

Okay? The way that I tell my marketing students and marketing clients to think about reviews is to make it a strategy. Have a strategy where once every four to eight weeks and put it on your calendar once every four to eight weeks you are reviewing. The people that you’ve seen in that timeframe, look for people who you’ve seen like four to eight times who are consistently happy with their results.

They like acupuncture, they like you. Basically, you’re looking for people who feel like a slam dunk to write you a five star review, and then email them your request, and I suggest emailing. You can ask them verbally, but also follow up with an email because you must send them the link that goes directly to your.

Review page on your Google business profile. Do not expect people, if you say, Hey, will you write me a review? And they’re like, yeah, I’d love to. They’ll probably won’t do it because they won’t remember. Even if they have good intentions and they have to figure it out for themselves. They have to Google your business.

They have to find your profile. Then they have to figure out, where do I leave this review? What do I click on? It’s not gonna happen. If you wanna actually. Get reviews, you have to send them the link. And so when you sign into your Google Business profile as the owner of the profile, there’s a section that says Get more reviews.

If you click on that, it will give you the short link that goes directly to the page where all they have to do is click the number of stars, type the review, and hit submit. Okay, so that’s gonna make a huge difference in the number of reviews you actually get is sharing that direct link. Okay? And I put on here consistency wins this game because I.

If you are regularly asking patients for reviews, you are over time going to accumulate way more reviews than people who are passively waiting for their patients to do it for them because they won’t do not expect your patients to do this work for you. Even the ones that are very happy, very few people are thinking to themselves.

I should write this business a review, especially if they’re not business owners. It is not top of mind. You have to be the one who asks them to write a review. Okay this is like a crash course in Google business profile and I’ve given you a bit of homework, some things to think about, but really, again, if you take nothing away from this, just remember.

Nothing away from this except this concept that the more complete and active your profile is, the higher you’ll rank in a search. Okay. So I do hope this was very helpful and you are always more than welcome to ask me questions. Feel free to send me an email. Oops.

Feel free to send me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com. I love answering your marketing questions and yeah, thank you so much for being here. I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council. One more time for the opportunity to be here with you.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

Is There Value in ChatGPT for Acupuncturists? Michelle Grasek

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek and I’m the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. And today we’ll be talking about how to use AI to generate content for your marketing so you can save time and just generally make your life easier. And before we dive into the slides, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.

All right, let’s get started.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Okay, so let’s talk about using AI for your marketing content creation. How can you use it to be much more efficient? So very quickly, what will we be talking about today? First, why use AI for this? How is it helpful? Is it really helpful? And I also want to talk about this concept of content creation and whether it still matters.

I know everyone is drowning in a sea of content. The answer is yes, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. We’ll also talk about how to use AI and what to use it for. What are the things that you can ask it to do for you? And specifically, when I’m saying AI, I’m referring to the free version of ChatGPT.

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

We’ll talk about how to create effective prompts. This is one of the most important things you can learn about ChatGPT. The better prompts you ask, the better your results will be. Hands down. And I’ll give you some examples. Why use AI for content generation? The easiest answer, the simplest answer is that it will cut down the amount of time it takes you to create content by about one fourth, okay?

It is, it will just make the process so much more efficient, and we live in a world where we are expected for marketing. To do a ton of content creation and it can be very overwhelming. It’s a bit of a hamster wheel I’m sure you’re familiar and I personally think that one of the best ways to Retain your sanity in digital marketing is to use chat GPT or other AI to help you either generate content ideas or generate the content itself and to repurpose content, which you can see is the last bullet on this list.

chat GPT can help you with repurposing. Okay, and repurposing content simply means taking something that you’ve already created or written for one platform, like a blog post, and copying and pasting it, making it some tweaks, breaking it down into parts so that you can use it on other platforms, instagram captions or email newsletters. Those are the most common ones that acupuncturists are repurposing content for and Facebook, of course, other social media. But there’s this idea that. To retain your sanity in digital marketing, you do not need to keep writing similar content over and over. You can just repurpose what you’ve already created.

That saves time to begin with. And then, asking ChatGPT to do that for you drastically cuts down on the amount of time that you need. And of course, on top of that, asking AI to write the content or help you with ideas. Cuts down on that time yet again. Okay, so really to make content creation Reasonable and manageable in the world that we live in I think both of those things are essential chat GPT and repurposing content Okay, and sometimes people ask me does content still matter as I said earlier everybody’s drowning in content There’s more articles on the internet than any one person could ever read in their lifetime.

Like why should I contribute to that? Why should I keep adding? So something I want you to think about is Google and the way that it works for a search. So Google’s purpose is to provide the best possible experience for its users. So if you type a query into Google, it wants to give you the most relevant, best answer that it thinks answers your question that you will like.

Because Google wants you to keep using it. Do you remember Ask Jeeves? Yeah, I’m dating myself, right? Ask. No one uses it. It doesn’t even exist anymore. Because other search engines were better, okay? So Google never wants to become irrelevant like that. Its goal is to provide a good user experience. So you can help Google do that by writing content for your website.

So people always ask me, is blogging is old school. It’s dead, isn’t it? So I always say no for two reasons. One, every time you publish a blog post on your website, that’s another page on your website. Google likes websites that are updated regularly because it shows to Google that this business is still active.

And it’s still relevant compared to a business. Maybe the acupuncturist down the street from you who opened their doors 10 years ago, publish their website and has not touched their website in a decade. Clearly Google is going to think that your website where you’re publishing monthly or maybe every two months publishing a blog post, it’s more active.

It’s probably going to be a more relevant, better user experience and answer the person’s question better. than a website that’s been ignored for a decade. Okay, so that’s one reason. And two is that when you are publishing content on your website, whether it’s a blog post or a more formal page on your website, you are naturally including keywords that your ideal patient would be searching for.

So if you specialize in orthopedic acupuncture for runners, for helping them you know, recover from injuries and be able to do marathons, whatever it is, you could write a series of blog posts specific to that. Like I’m a marathon runner thinking about what are the questions that this person would put into Google if they need help, if they’ve got a knee injury, right?

How long after a knee injury can I, or before I start running again? with acupuncture. Think about what are they asking and then write blog posts about those topics so that all of those keywords are on your website and you just become so relevant to Google that it brings you up towards the top of the search because you are answering those questions and you are helping the person writing the query.

You’re the answer to that query. So I’m repeating myself, I’ll move on, but that really is why blogging and content creation is relevant for you as an individual with a brick and mortar local business. Because that’s what Google wants to send your way. But it needs you to help it do that. You have to establish your relevance on your website so that Google can crawl it and understand that relevance.

Yes, blogging and content creation are still important. And just in general creating educational content for your audience. It doesn’t matter if you only have a hundred followers on Instagram, teaching them about what you do and how acupuncture can help them is always going to be relevant. And it just falls under the name of content creation.

So one question that people always ask me about AI is they’re nervous about using it. They don’t know how to use it. They don’t know what its capabilities are, how far reaching it is, these sort of things. So I always tell people to use chat GPT to your comfort level. You could ask it to do brainstorming with you or to write you an outline for a blog post or an email newsletter.

You don’t have to ask it to write the entire content piece. You could ask it to write you the whole blog post, but you don’t have to. So use it to your comfort level. And you could also think about, AI from this perspective. I find this really helpful. And an AI professional that I met last year shared this idea with me that AI is like a really eager, enthusiastic assistant.

Imagine if you had a receptionist in your office who had free time and just loved to write and kept saying, let me help you write Instagram posts. Let me help you write blog content. What? Let me write your email newsletters. You’d have to teach that person a little bit about the tone. You want them to write the concepts that are important to include or things not to say.

And you would expect them to do an enormous amount of research, right? That is what ChatGPT is doing. It’s doing an enormous amount of research to find the answers. And when you write a prompt, that is the same as you explaining to your receptionist how you want them to put this content piece together.

You’re giving them instructions so that they write something that is relevant to your business, your community, your ideal patients, your specialty, etc. Including your tone of voice and all of the details. Okay, so Try to think about chat GPT in this really positive way where it’s a smart, enthusiastic assistant that just wants to lighten your load and make your job easier.

Okay. So what can you ask ChatGPT to help you with? Honestly, the sky’s the limit. Anything that you can think of. I would say that the major things that people tend to ask for are one, brainstorming or idea generation, two, writing outlines for content, or three, writing the content itself. So you could ask ChatGPT to write you a list of maybe Two blog posts.

Basically write me a content calendar outline for this year with two topics per month. Okay, so two blog posts. It’s just an easy place to start. Or two email newsletters per month. And what would their topics be for the whole year? So before you do this, in your prompt, It’s very important that you tell ChatGPT about your business, about your target market, about your specialty, if you have one.

Basically, give it as much information as you can so that it can give you relevant results. And we’ll talk more about things to include in your prompts in a little bit. But It helps enormously the more information you can give it. It could give you an outline for a blog post. Let’s say you really wanted to write that blog post about knee injuries and recovery with acupuncture for marathon runners.

And you just have writer’s block, and you just want to get it done so that you can repurpose it into an email newsletter and send it to your list. You could ask ChatGPT to write you an outline for this blog post, okay? And then you could write it yourself, or once you have that outline you could say, okay, this is great, please don’t include this bullet point, that’s not relevant.

But please write this blog post for me and also make sure you answer the question, how many treatments do I need and why? Okay. And then it will give you the blog post. You can also, of course you can ask it to write social media captions as well. You can also take content that you already wrote, copy and paste it into chat GPT, and then ask it to repurpose that content into other formats.

So if you wrote an email newsletter, you could. put it into chat GPT and say, please repurpose this as a blog post incorporating these important keywords for my website, or please take this email newsletter and break it down into two Instagram captions. Okay. So you can ask it to do. or help you create ideas for just about anything.

You can also talk with ChatGPT. This this class is really for beginners, people who don’t have a ton of experience or maybe you’ve dipped your toe in and you didn’t get great results from ChatGPT, so we’ll talk about how to improve your prompts so you get better results. But I just want you to know, if you don’t have a lot of experience with ChatGPT, you talk to it like a person.

You ask for revisions, you can say, I like this part, but this part’s not relevant, and here’s why. And if you stay signed in, it will remember, okay, most of the things that you’re telling it. Sometimes you have to repeat, but that’s okay. For the most part, it’s going to remember important things.

If you are just dipping your toe in and you’ve never used it before, I would recommend beginning with repurposing content. So find a piece of content that you wrote that really represents your business, your ideal patient, your specialty, and copy and paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to use that as the basis for creating other kinds of content.

So if it was For example, a really great Instagram post caption that got a lot of engagement with your audience, got people asking questions, maybe you got new patients because people were asking you questions about it, and you felt like it really represented you know who you are and what you’re doing in your practice.

That’s a great place to start. So you could put it into chat GPT and say, can you please write up like repurpose this as a blog post and or as an email newsletter or based on this information, can you suggest other Instagram post topics or other topics that I could write about for my blog? So if you are new, Begin with repurposing content.

And I put that little note in the first bullet that says repurposing content can go in any direction because I often talk about starting with a blog post and then breaking that down and repurposing it into email newsletters and multiple Instagram or Facebook posts, et cetera. But you can go in the other direction.

As I just mentioned, if you have a great Instagram post or email newsletter that could become a blog post or a new page on your website. etc. So as I’ve been saying, the way that you ask ChatGPT for something is very important, and that’s called the prompt. So the more descriptive and specific you can be in your request, in your prompt, the better results you’ll need and the fewer revisions you’ll need to ask for.

Now, If you ask ChatGPT to write a whole piece of content for you, a blog post from start to finish, it’s normal to expect that you will need it, you will need it to do some revisions. And, you’ll probably still have to do some tweaks and edits, even after the revision, just to make sure it sounds like you, that it feels authentic, that you think it is really going to resonate with your ideal patients.

And that’s normal. Okay? But the better prompts you write, the less of that you will have to do. So what can you include in a prompt? Let’s go with the blog post example. That’s clearly my favorite. So you can tell first, tell chat GPT about your business, describe your ideal patient and your target market and your specialty, and then tell it.

Why you need this piece of content. What are you going to use it for? What’s its purpose? That’s important for chat GPT to know and then you can ask it to write this piece of content in a specific tone of voice for example warm, but professional or you could say friendly and warm and So let’s say you ask for professional.

Please write this blog post about XYZ in a professional tone of voice, and then you add all the other information about your business, your target market, and the purpose of the piece, and maybe it produces something that is very formal, way too professional, and you realize, oh, this is not the tone that I use on my website.

All you have to say is, actually, this is too formal in tone. Can you please write it in a more warm and friendly tone? Or you might have to use a the, excuse me, thesaurus, to figure out what are the descriptive words that you want to use until you hit on the right tone. Now, let’s say you finally land on tone that feels appropriate, right?

Like you nailed it. Write down those descriptive words that you put in your prompt so that if needed, you can ask for them again in the future. So you get a consistent tone. Okay. And you can also say to ChatGPT anything you definitely want it to include or not, okay? You can tell it how long you want something to be.

If you want an 800 word blog post, then say that. You can Take a piece of content you’ve already written. Let’s say you wrote something about acupuncture for fertility and you feel like it really represents, again, your specialty and your target market. And you can copy and paste that in there, but then give it instructions to write a different piece of content, maybe about acupuncture for PMS, and you can ask it to use that content example as a formatting.

For writing this new piece of content, okay? So that can substitute for giving it all these specific instructions about like tone of voice etc. So that it basically tries to write something like your previous piece. So you have that consistency. You can also give it specific numbers. If you have a blog post and you want Instagram to give you three, sorry if you have a blog post and you want chat GPT to give you three Instagram posts, then say so.

Okay. If you want it to give you six ideas for a subject line for an email, Ask for six. And again, don’t be afraid to ask for revisions because once chat GPT produces something for you, it will typically say, I hope this is what you’re looking for. Let me know if you need changes. And if you want changes, just say so it will do it.

instantly. And if you don’t like the changes, you can always go back and use the initial for further revisions. Okay. And lastly, I’ll say that you can use chat. You can ask chat GPT questions about itself so that you can learn how to use it better. For example, when I first started using chat GPT and I’m using the free version, so I’m not sure if this is possible in the paid version, but I had asked it, if I give you the, Web the hyperlink for a website.

Can you then read the webpage and summarize the page for me and it answered and said, no, I can’t do that from you giving me the link. But if you want to copy and paste the text on the page, then I can give you a summary. Okay? So you can basically ask chat GPT or tell it, here’s what I want, and then ask it.

What information do you need to create this for me? Okay, so you can really engage with it so that basically you’re going to learn to use it more effectively and efficiently so that it takes up less of your time and you get a better result and then you have to spend way less time on your marketing.

That’s our goal. So I really hope all of this is helpful. It’s definitely a crash course in using ChatGPT for marketing and content. I hope it inspires you just to dip your toe in if you’ve never used ChatGPT before. Try repurposing a piece of content and, if you used it in the past and got like weird or mediocre results, really practice.

your prompts and give it a lot more information and play around with it. And I think you’ll see that you get even better results. Okay. So as always, it’s a pleasure to be here with you. If you have questions about marketing, you are more than welcome to send me an email, michelle at michelleGrasek.

com. I clearly love talking about and teaching marketing. So I am more than happy to chat with you. Mhm. Mhm.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

Take a Break Content Creation: Using Instagram – Michelle Grasek

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there, my name is Michelle Grasek. I’m an acupuncturist and a marketing strategist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing And today we’ll be talking about a new way to think about using Instagram that does not require any new content creation. It is specifically using Instagram for business to business networking so that you can build real connections with other local business owners and expand your Visibility in your community.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

And before we get started today, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you. All right, let’s get into the slides. Using Instagram for business to business networking. Today we are going to briefly cover why would we do this, why use this approach, why does it work, and then two specific strategies for building these relationships with other local business owners and collaborating with them.

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

So why would we take this approach to Instagram? I don’t know about you, but most of the people I know are generally a little burnt out by content creation for social media. As you know, content creation takes time, it takes energy and creativity. And over and over again, that kind of feels like a hamster wheel.

Yes. So if you are feeling kind of worn out by content creation, this is a great strategy. And you have probably noticed in the past year or year and a half that your engagement on your account has gone down. I know that for my own business, Instagram accounts, and for my marketing clients and students, they are reporting that their likes on their posts and their reels has gone way down and so have their views, right?

They are being exposed to way fewer new accounts and even the people who follow them on Instagram are not seeing their posts that often. Okay, so big picture, if you’re experiencing this, you are not alone. It is pretty much across the board. For example, people who were previously getting 50 to 60 likes per reel or post are now kind of struggling to get 5 to 15 likes.

So again, if this is you, you are in good company, but it can be very frustrating to spend time creating content that you feel like No one gets to see, right? Is it effective? So if you need a break from all of that, then this strategy can be a really nice choice. Business to business networking on Instagram is is both a refreshing approach to using Instagram and a refreshing approach to networking.

So why is that? So first of all, it’s a nice approach to Instagram because you can either take a break from content creation or you can scale back the volume of content that you are creating. I know that some of my marketing clients are concerned about stopping content creation altogether for Instagram or any social platform because they’re worried about getting dinged by the algorithm if they don’t create content.

publish new content. So I understand that. If that’s how you feel, it’s all good. You could think about maybe using this strategy and cutting your content creation in half. So if you usually produce two reels a week on Instagram, maybe just do one and then use the time that you would have used to create that other reel for this strategy, for networking, for building connections and collaborations.

So that’s one option. And, or, forgive me. So the other reason that this is a nice approach to using Instagram is that it does leverage all of the content that you’ve created for Instagram in the past. So you’ve probably been creating Posts and Reels for years on your account and when someone lands on your account homepage, they get a really good idea of what your business is about, who you serve, you know, what your values and priorities are, how you can help them just by scrolling through all of your recent posts and reels.

Right? They can get a really good idea of what you’re all about. And so this is really helpful for business to business networking because you are going to engage with other business owners and ask them to collaborate, and they can simply pop over to your account homepage and look through the content you’ve created, and that will give them a great idea of whether you are a good fit to collaborate with them.

Do you match their own values, ideals, and goals, etc. Right? Do they think you’d be good? Partners in this endeavor, whatever it is you’re asking them for, whether it’s an acu yoga collaboration or something totally different. Okay. And this is also a really nice way to think about networking because it’s much lower pressure than traditional networking meetings.

I do find that many, many acupuncturists Of course, not all, but many are introverts, myself included, many of my marketing clients and students are introverts. And for, for the most part, people tend to not like traditional networking meetings where you go and you don’t know anyone and you sort of stand around awkwardly with a drink waiting for someone to talk to you, or you have to insert yourself into a conversation and then introduce yourself.

So, Doing this kind of networking obviously doesn’t require any of that. It simply allows you to build relationships that are genuine at your own pace. So, this is a way to connect with people, potentially in your pajamas from your home. And it’s just much more comfortable for many people, but it’s still equally effective.

And I also like to point out that this approach to networking can be very specific. You get to choose the best business owners or influencers that you’re interested in working with because you’ve, you’ve vetted them and you think a collaboration would be beneficial to both of you. And you can spend your time and energy building a connection with them on Instagram, as opposed to when you go to a traditional networking meeting, you might meet a dozen new people and it could be very varied, right?

Like maybe an insurance salesperson or a real estate agent. And. It’s not that you would never collaborate with those people, but you sort of have to sift through the people that you think would be open to a collaboration and would be a good fit if you’re doing traditional networking, whereas This type of networking is very specific and I think everyone is very busy and if you can fit Instagram networking into your schedule whenever you have a free moment and have it build into Meaningful relationships with a few people instead of superficial relationships with a dozen.

I think most people really appreciate that. So what are these strategies that I keep talking about? It’s actually very simple. Your goal is to connect with real life local business owners. Who you think have an audience who would be a good fit to become your patients. And when I say business owners, I’m also including influencers in this.

It’s sort of interchangeable in some ways. Like some local business owners, they actually have a brick and mortar business. Others are influencers. They might sell something, but really the The main point here is they have a following that you think would be a great fit to eventually become your patients.

They, their following is your target market. Okay. And your goals here are once you’ve made a connection with them to pitch them an idea to collaborate on an event together, or it doesn’t have to be an in person event, whatever ideas you have that are mutually beneficial for the both of you. Or, You can ask someone to come into your office for treatment and do a trade for the treatment and social media exposure.

Okay, so we’ll go more into these strategies, but big picture, this is our goal. And honestly, it works very well. My marketing clients and myself for my practice, we have All countless examples of relationships that we have built with small business owners locally who we never would have met or bumped into in real life, but connected through Instagram and now have these long term, very supportive, collaborative business partnerships or relationships.

Okay, so that’s, that’s what we’re going for here. So I recommend if you don’t have anyone in mind already, and you may, someone that you follow on Instagram, you might say, gosh, I’d love to work with so and so at that yoga studio. We could host this event. It would be fabulous. That’s a great place to start.

Just think about who are the business owners that you admire. Someone where you can genuinely say, I love what you’re doing in the community and I’d love to work together. I think that we have you know, a shared vision or shared goals for our communities and I’d love to work together. If you can say that for real, then you are on the right track and this is probably a good person to try to connect with.

And of course, you also want to make sure that you are choosing people who are local because you want people who can actually come to your clinic, right? So within maybe 45 minutes of your clinic, it’s not that useful to connect with influencers or business owners who are pretty far away because you like, what are the chances that someone who’s five hours away is actually going to come see you for treatment, right?

So that’s not what we’re interested in. We want these people to have followers who are local and who are in your target market. They’d be a great fit to become your patients. Okay. So just thinking about that when you’re trying to decide who are four or five people I’d like to connect with on Instagram.

to build a collaboration. And let’s talk a little bit about influencers. I think we get a bad taste in our mouth when I talk about influencers. I’m talking about nano and micro influencers. So not people with like a million followers. Nano is up to 10, 000 followers. And micro is 10, 000 If you can believe that, they’re still considered micro if they only have 100, 000 followers.

But the idea here is that smaller local accounts, as long as they have an audience who really listens to them, takes their advice, gets good engagement on their account. That’s what you’re looking for, right? And they also are people who would be a great fit to become your patients. So if someone has 6, 000 followers, that’s great, right?

They don’t, they don’t have to have 100, 000. In fact, smaller influencers are more likely to work with you because they have that local connection. And we’ll talk about this in a moment, but I recommend doing a trade for the influencers. Sharing you and your business on their account. Okay. Instead of paying them money to do that.

And again, that’s up to you, but I think that smaller influencers are more likely to accept the gift of a treatment for a trade, than instead of being paid cash, as opposed to like larger influencers are looking for quote brand deals on something much more formal and more money. Okay, so again, you’re just thinking about who would you be proud to work with, whose account would you be proud to be represented on, and who has an audience that is a good fit as your target market.

So some ideas. Who might these people be? Okay, yoga studios are a great fit. I have done some beautiful collaborations with the owner of a low waste specialty shop near me. She only sells things that are plastic free, for example, but she is really into alternative medicine. She’s very supportive of natural health approaches.

So the more you get to know people on Instagram, the Better awareness you have of who’s a great fit to work with and collaborate with, even if they’re not health care providers, right? So don’t limit yourself to just health care providers. Photographers can be fabulous. Photography tends to do really well on Instagram, and so their followers They tend to have a lot of followers and be very engaged.

Lash specialists, artists of all kinds. At my office, we have a wonderful collaboration with a collage artist and some watercolor artists. And then of course you could think about chiropractors, therapists physical therapists, nutritionists, hair salons and estheticians, makeup artists. Those are great choices.

Med spas, they tend to do very well on Instagram. They get a lot of engagement. So try to think outside the box. Again, it’s just, who would you be proud to be associated with? Like who you’d be pleased to be featured on their account and who’s got your target market. So how do you do this? This outreach thing, it’s actually very simple.

There’s two approaches you can take and both, both work well. It sort of depends on your. Maybe your personality and your comfort level with each. So the one approach is what I consider dating before proposing to someone. So I often think of marketing this way that you give your audience the opportunity to get to know you before you say, do you want to buy my stuff?

Right? So in this case, it would look like You know, you would pick a business owner that you’d love to collaborate with, you would follow their account, you would regularly check in on their account for new posts or reels or stories, and you would like all of them and try to comment. So whenever they publish a new reel, for example, you’re liking and you’re commenting.

And I would say try to Ask questions of the business owner in your comments so that you can engage with them right away and they will start noticing if you’re doing this repeatedly. So over time you’ll become pretty familiar to them as someone who enjoys their work and engages with their account and when you’re ready, when you feel comfortable basically, you can shoot them a direct message or private message and then you can more formally introduce yourself and pitch your idea for collaboration like, Hey, my name is Michelle.

I run Ageless Acupuncture in Seneca Falls. I absolutely love what you’re doing and I was wondering if you’d be interested in collaborating. I have a couple ideas. Let me know what you think. I’m so excited to hear from you. Right? So just cheerful, positive. They’re already familiar with you. By and large, people are going to say yes.

And then you can have a conversation and see what sort of collaboration might work well for you. And we’ll talk about collaboration suggestions in just a moment. There’s a million different things you can do. It’s really, the sky’s the limit. It’s up to your creativity. Creativity with this other person.

Okay. And then the other option is just to go right in to their direct messages and introduce yourself and share your pitch. And I have seen this work as well. You know, if your idea is strong enough and beneficial enough for the other business owner, they’re probably going to be interested in answer you because Because it’s interesting, right?

Because they are willing to have a conversation about it. You know, especially if you go about it in a really nice way, where you emphasize how much you, you do enjoy their account and, and the work that they’re doing in the community. And maybe give them some extra reasons why you think working together would, would go well and benefit both of your audiences if you are just diving in with that DM and they don’t know you that well.

But again, I think either of these methods can be very successful. It’s just up to you and your personal preference, how you’d like to connect with them. Regardless of how you go about this, when you are making your pitch for collaborating, make sure you focus your collaboration request on the benefit to the business and their clients or patients and the community that you mutually serve because you’re very likely to have some overlap between the people that you serve, but just angle your collaboration idea from the perspective of all the ways it would be great for them, okay?

For example, you could mention that if you did acu yoga, you would be thrilled to share the class on your, all of your social media and in your email newsletter, so that you’d be exposing them in their business to all of your audience. Naturally, they are going to do the same for you, right? But when you are approaching them, you want to emphasize this aspect of why would this be so great for your business for this reason, or this is one reason.

So really quickly, some collaboration ideas. There’s a lot here. You can take a screenshot if you’d like. Accu Yoga is very, very common. If you wanna collaborate with a yoga studio, you could. Teach a class together, maybe at the community center. You could host a class where they teach something at your office, so you’re giving them a platform to share their expertise with your audience, and they could do the same for you.

You could host a book club together, maybe wellness books, whatever it is that fits for both of your audiences. You could host a pop up event for them or vice versa. I have seen people host weekend wellness retreats because of collaborations that started on Instagram. I mean, some of these ideas make the business owners thousands of dollars because they really get creative and passionate about it and build it out into something so much bigger than they initially imagined.

You could host a fundraiser together for a charity that you mutually support. Themed wellness nights, Valentine’s Day is coming up. It’s a really good opportunity for a themed wellness night. You could do giveaways where you collaborate across both of your Instagram accounts. You could host a networking event together for other wellness people in your area.

The list goes on.

Okay, thank you so much for being here with me today. I hope that you find this Kind of invigorating. Hopefully it is a really refreshing way to look at Instagram and networking. If you have any questions about this, these strategies or marketing in general, you’re always welcome to email me michelle or michelleGrasek.

com. I hope you’ll listen to the podcast, Acupuncture Marketing School, and check out my website for free marketing resources for acupuncturists. Before I go, one last to the American Acupuncture Council. I’m very grateful to be here with all of you today. Thank you.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

Simple Email Marketing for More Acupuncture Patients – Michelle Grasek

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there, my name is Michelle Grasek and I am the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, and today I’m looking forward to talking with you all about effective email strategies to get more patients on your schedule. And before we dive into this, I’d like to take a moment to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

I absolutely love teaching marketing, so I am thrilled that I can have this opportunity to teach you for free. So let’s get into the slides. Alright I broke this talk into two segments. So the first segment is really about why email marketing is worth your time and your energy. And then the second segment is ideas for making your emails more effective so that they actually work to get new patients on your schedule.

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

So let’s start by talking about the goals of email marketing and really why does email marketing work? What are we doing that makes it effective in getting people to take an action? So the most important thing, I actually put it third on this list, is that email marketing is a reminder that allows you to stay top of mind.

So every time you send an email, you hope that people who are reading it, sit up and take notice and say to themselves, That’s right. I’ve been meaning to make an appointment with this acupuncturist, right? It’s just a reminder. And I find that’s a really nice way for people to think about it. If they have some reluctance to send emails, if they’re worried they’re going to be annoying their audience, you’re really not annoying them, but I know it’s a common concern.

Just remember that email is a simple and easy reminder that you, your business, And your practice exists. Okay. So then the second reason that email is so effective is it’s a really nice medium for teaching people about acupuncture and how it can help their specific symptoms. And it also allows you to talk a little bit about your clinic so that people get to know you and the way that you practice.

And that really leads into the third purpose of email marketing, which is to build your know trust factor. So in marketing, we. We know that people like to buy things from people they know and trust. You’re probably familiar with this concept. And the way that you write an email newsletter, the way that you teach people concepts or share information will allow people to buy things.

understand, what kind of person you are how you approach this medicine, what it might be like to work with you, and that builds trust, right? It’s building up that know trust factor. So we are going to talk about each of these in a little bit more detail. But first let’s talk about why email marketing is worth your time.

The first is that you own your list of email subscribers in a way that you can never own your social media subscribers. Now I have seen a lot of small business owners put an enormous amount of energy into social media and growing their following. And that’s why You know, there’s really nothing wrong with that, especially if you enjoy social media a lot.

I say go for it. It can be a really nice opportunity to get in front of, real life people in your community. But, I think that if you are on the fence about social media, or feel like you don’t have enough time to be consistent with it, email is a really nice alternative. And this is one reason why that’s the case.

So if you think about Instagram, for example, there have been several instances in the past couple of years where Instagram just stopped working. It went down for a day and all of the influencers on Instagram who have built their business model around selling something to their followers. They panicked because they didn’t know if or when Instagram was going to come back up.

They didn’t know what their income dip would be like based on how long Instagram was going to be out for. And at this point we know Instagram came back, obviously, right? It was only a day each time, but it’s it’s not the best business model if you’re only focusing on growing followers because you don’t have that control over these people that you are making such an effort to build with, right?

By contrast, you own your email subscriber list, and you can really control the way that your message is delivered to them. So we know that the social media algorithms change all the time, and you can spend a lot of energy creating Reels, for example, but then have only a very small portion of your followers actually ever see that content.

Whereas at least when you send an email, you know that it landed in the person’s inbox. And of course, there’s a certain small percentage that might end up in spam. That’s normal. But at least 95 percent of the emails you send are going to be they’re going to arrive at their destination. Okay. And I think that is building your email list is a good way to build stability in your marketing in a way that social media is not because social media can be unpredictable.

And again, you don’t get to control the way your message is delivered or whether you will even have followers in the future. Okay. So that’s one thing to think about. The second reason email isn’t a really good choice is that it is so low cost in the marketing world. You almost, you can’t find anything to beat it.

So for example, if you have 250 email subscribers on your list and you’re paying about 20 a month for something like MailChimp or Constant Contact that, and you send one email a month, that is 0. 08 per email, and It’s really hard to find another marketing strategy that only costs eight cents a person.

So your investment is low, right? There’s you just, you don’t have that much to lose. And another reason that email is a great choice is that it’s a very low pressure way to educate people and to get visible. So especially if you are an introvert, or if you don’t love the idea of learning to dance on TikTok, then email is a nice alternative.

I always tell my marketing clients that they get to write their email newsletters at home, in their pajamas, on their with their cats, whatever suits you, right? And especially if you already enjoy writing, email is a great medium for it’s like an opportunity to be visible in front of a lot of people while you actually get to be behind the scenes.

Okay. I hope that makes sense. And that is a much more comfortable way for a lot of people to do marketing. So I always say that if that We’re not consistent with things that we don’t like. It’s really hard to do marketing over the long term if you don’t enjoy it or it’s not a good fit for your personality.

So choose something that is a good fit. And for many people, email marketing fits their strengths. Very well. And then lastly, email is much cheaper or has a higher ROI, forgive me, than social media. So for every dollar that you spend on email marketing, the return on your investment is around 38. So that is 3, 800 percent return on your investment.

That’s outrageous. And that is partly because it’s so low cost to begin with, but also because it is very effective. at the same time compared to social media, which generally if you spend a dollar on social media, your return would be about 2. 80, which is a 20 28 percent ROI. Okay. So for all of these reasons, email is just a really good choice.

for reaching your patients, converting them and getting them on your schedule for a very low cost. So let’s switch gears then and talk about some tips and strategies for effective emails. So I have been teaching marketing in our industry for about a decade and have been doing marketing coaching for almost five years.

And I find that most acupuncturists have an email newsletter opt in. on their website, something that says, you know, sign up for our monthly email newsletter or something simple like that. But they very rarely or never send the email newsletter, right? So you’re collecting the emails, but you’re not sending them.

And remember, email is this beautiful opportunity to stay top of mind with people just to remind them they meant to make an appointment, if you’re only sending a quarterly email newsletter, for example, I find that most people send something maybe once every three or four months. If you’re sending a quarterly newsletter, that is a lot of time for people to forget about you and your practice, to forget their intention to make an appointment.

So I recommend sending emails twice a month. That is a sweet spot. Now, don’t panic. Whenever I say this, people’s response is immediately, I don’t have time to write content for one email a month. How am I going to write two emails? So we will talk about that in a moment. I have some really effective, helpful ideas for that.

But they’re also worried about annoying people by sending emails twice a month. So the reality is That twice a month is a polite volume of emails to send. It really is not too often and I find that it’s just enough for potential patients. and regular patients to remember that they meant to make an appointment, right?

You’re staying top of mind just often enough that they’re not forgetting about you completely. And I find that is a number of emails that is actually doable for people if they’re using the tips that I’ll share in just a moment, okay? And think about your favorite clothing brand. When something is on sale, they will email you multiple times a week.

Sometimes they’ll email multiple times a day. So we are not doing that. We are As I said, we are sending a polite number of emails at just twice a month, okay? So don’t worry that you are annoying people. You’re really not. People opted into your email list for a reason. They want to learn from you about Chinese medicine and how it can impact their health.

They want to hear from you. And I have a little note down at the bottom of this slide that I want to point out because this is pretty common experience. If you have not been sending emails and then you start sending, people are going to start unsubscribing. And this is totally normal. You actually want the people who are not a good fit for you to unsubscribe from your list because you don’t want to pay for them to be on your list.

So most email platforms like MailChimp will unsubscribe. It’s like a free monthly subscription until you hit a certain number of email subscribers, whether it’s 300 people or 500. If there are people who read your emails and they say, Oh, I don’t think I’m actually going to see this acupuncturist, and they unsubscribe, that’s fine.

It’s better to just let them go, to not take it personally, because it’s almost always going to happen. Every time you send an email, you’re going to get a couple unsubscribes, but you don’t want to have to pay for them to have this bloated email list filled with people who are not going to become your patients.

So just know that it’s going to happen. It’s totally normal. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong and it does not mean you’re annoying people. Okay, so let’s talk about two things that allow you to send two emails a month. Like, how can you be that efficient? And the first the first perspective is that you can send very simple email newsletters with only one message in them.

So you only need one reason to send an email in order to hit send. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But do you remember? And I don’t know I graduated about 14 years ago, so these kinds of email newsletters were very popular at that time. But it was very common for an email newsletter to have multiple different parts, like three or four different sections, and they usually had a theme like the liver in springtime, something like that.

And they were long, and they were complex, and they took a long time to put that content together. So There’s nothing wrong with that type of email newsletter. It’s very effective, but I don’t think it’s any more effective than just having one section, one message. And what I have found over the years with those long, complex email newsletters is that most people who intend to write them, they never finish writing them.

And then they never hit send. So it really is a barrier to actually doing the thing and sending the email. So when I say you only need one message, I am referring to, you could have one research article that you want to summarize briefly and share with your audience, and then have a call to action.

If the research is about acupuncture and knee pain, At the bottom of your summary of the research, you could say, as your call to action, If you are struggling with knee pain, we would love to help. Click here to schedule now. Okay, so it can be very simple and brief. And then the second concept that will really help you in putting these email newsletters together is the idea of repurposing content.

So I can almost guarantee that you have written or created a lot of content already. over the years for your practice, you do not need to keep writing that content from scratch. So if you’re not familiar with it, repurposing content is when you take something that you created for one platform, for example, Instagram, and then you copy and paste it and you make some edits so that it makes sense for another platform, which in this case would be email, an email newsletter.

And I really believe that repurposing content is the only way to maintain your sanity in digital marketing. If you are trying to create brand new content every week for eternity, it’s just too hard and you just don’t need to. It is totally acceptable to copy and paste and kind of reconfigure content you already wrote so that it makes sense for whatever platform you’re copying and pasting it to.

So people often ask me, what can I repurpose? The answer is everything. Anything you’ve created in the past can be cleverly repurposed so that you don’t have to write it from scratch again. And I recommend starting with what’s often called evergreen content on your website. It’s sometimes also called core content or pillar content.

You may have heard of that, but this is These are usually the pages of your website that people are reading or skimming when they are making the decision about whether or not to come see you for acupuncture. They’re deciding if you’re a good fit for them. So if you have a specialty, for example, then the page where you describe how acupuncture works for your specialty, like Fertility, Orthopedics, Cosmetic.

That page is going to be core content or evergreen. And it’s called evergreen because this is the kind of information that doesn’t change very much, but it is always relevant. It’s always helping people make a decision about whether you’re the right acupuncturist for them. So repurposing evergreen content is always a good choice.

It’s a nice place to start. If you’re thinking about planning your email newsletter several months in advance. I would begin with evergreen content. And your frequently asked questions section on your website, if you have that, is a type of core content. I also recommend incorporating that into your email newsletter.

Each Q& A, can be its own email. Okay? If you have written blog posts in the past, you can repurpose that content. If you have published Instagram or Facebook posts and they got a lot of good engagement, like your followers ask questions, they were curious, they were sharing a lot, then that could be really great content to repurpose for emails as well.

And you could either You could just copy and paste the caption, for example, from Instagram, or we’ll talk in a second what to do if you have a lot of video or visual content. So a couple examples of repurposing if you are the kind of blogger who writes like 3, 000 word blogs because you like to be really thorough and we know that Chinese medicine is complex.

So we like to explain everything. I’m one of those people. I’m a long form blog writer. You don’t want to copy and paste the whole blog post into an email. That’s a little too much for an email. So I recommend breaking it down into three or four sections or concepts and then send each as an email, right?

And You could send it as a series of related emails where you are teaching your audience something about acupuncture for this particular topic. So that’s one idea. I mentioned copying and pasting an Instagram caption. Of course, you could also do this with Facebook. Again, if you have social media content that people engaged with, that is a good trigger for you to know that this might also make a really good email content.

And then Let’s say that you are less comfortable writing, but you are pretty comfortable on video, or maybe you have a podcast, something like that. You can use free software online to make a transcript of the video or the podcast, and then you can use that text that you just transcribed, make some edits, and then send that as an email, okay?

Because people who often have a really library of Instagram Reels will say, I didn’t write a lot in the caption. How am I supposed to transform this content into an email? You can transcribe it for free. Okay, so that’s one idea. And then again, I really encourage you to take a look at your Frequently Asked Questions page and consider sending each of those questions and answers as an email, because that is really the information that people need to help them decide if they want to make an appointment with you.

And a really good example of this is how many treatments do I need for, and then your specialty, right? So how many treatments do I need for fertility? How many treatments do I need for cosmetic acupuncture? That is really important. Question and answer makes a really beautiful email newsletter. Okay, so just a couple of tips for writing effective emails so you can get better results for your efforts.

In any marketing, you always want to write from the perspective of your potential patient and think about questions they are subconsciously asking, which is, why should I read this? What’s in it for me? Why should I get acupuncture? What’s in it for me? Think about the benefits from their perspective.

And Angle all of your writing towards that, okay? So that’s number one. And then most email newsletters are successful when they focus on content that the audience would find useful in some way. So teaching and educating your audience is really great. Answering questions. I’ve mentioned the FAQs multiple times already, but that’s a great option.

Solving a problem. So a good example of an email that you could consider solving a problem would be, um, how to reduce abdominal bloating with Chinese medicine. That could be your subject line. And then the email talks about avoiding ice and raw foods, maybe avoiding smoothies, those kinds of things, teaching them something about Chinese medicine that they can put into action at home, get good results.

And then of course you have a call to action. If you want more help managing your digestion with acupuncture and the wisdom of Chinese medicine, click here to make an appointment. Okay. So that’s like a solving a problem that the patient has email. You could also think about what might be the doubts or the barriers that prevent people from making an appointment with me right away.

And then answer those doubts in an FAQ format. And then of course you can always share an email. If you have an announcement about your clinic, maybe you hired a massage therapist, you have a new receptionist, maybe you’re hosting an event that you want to invite people to. Maybe you’re just going on vacation and you want people to get on your calendar before you leave.

Okay, so all of those are just one single message that you are sharing that is a good enough reason to send the email. And I mentioned call to action several times, so before we end I just want to define that for you. So a call to action is when you tell people what you want them to do and how to do it.

Click here to schedule now. Schedule now is what you want them to do and click here is you telling them how to do it. You could also think of a call to action as letting people know what is the next step they need to take if they’re ready to work with you. Okay? So in email, really in all marketing, it is very important to include calls to action because that is literally the part that makes people take action, right?

It gives them the initiative. It turns a little light bulb on their head like, okay, I am ready. and I’m going to click the link. So I recommend having three repeating the same call to action in your emails three times. So have a button at the top and the bottom of your email that’s very simple that just says, ScheduleNow or call for a free consult, something like that.

And then you can also have a call to action in the text or in the body of your email. So if your email was about knee pain, for example, you could say, If you’re struggling to manage your knee pain by yourself, we are here to help. Click here to schedule now, and then you have the hyperlink. Okay? The idea with The frequent calls to action is that people do not like clicking around on the internet trying to figure things out by themselves.

They get distracted. They end up watching cat videos for 30 minutes and they forget their intention. So we just want to make it super obvious, no matter where they are in the body of the email, we want to make it quick and easy for them to find a link so they can schedule now or do whatever your call to action is.

Okay, so that’s a very important piece for making your emails effective. All right, so if you have any questions with me, you are more than welcome to send me an email. My email is michelle at michelleGrasek. com. You can send questions about your email marketing or just marketing questions in general.

And I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council one more time for the opportunity to be here with you teaching marketing. I absolutely love teaching marketing and I genuinely believe that it’s just a tool that allows us to reach more patients. So it’s always a pleasure to be here with you.

Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance

Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save

Marketing Using the Four Marketing Quadrants – Michelle Grasek

I am really looking forward to talking with you about a really simple way to evaluate your own marketing called the Four Quadrants.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there, I am Michelle Grasek, the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, and today I am really looking forward to talking with you about a really simple way to evaluate your own marketing called the Four Quadrants. And before we dive in, I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to speak with you today.

I absolutely love marketing, and I really believe that marketing is a great tool to help us. help more people. So it’s always nice to see you here, and thank you again to the AAC, and let’s go to the slides. So as I mentioned, we are going to take a bird’s eye view of your marketing through the lens of the four quadrants.

And this is a really nice, simple way to assess your marketing and make sure that it is balanced, and also hopefully give you some ideas for areas where your marketing might need a little work or where you’re doing well already. So let’s get right into it. The four marketing quadrants that I like to use when I’m working with marketing students and clients are searchability, Referrals and internal and external marketing.

And I originally learned the idea of creating a marketing map like this or having marketing quadrants from a friend of mine, another marketing strategist. Her name is Kate Matheson. She’s super. But the way that I approach it is a little bit different and I find that this works well for us as acupuncturists.

So what do each of these sections mean? So searchability is really about your digital searchability. How easy is it to find your business? How easy is it to connect with you and to make an appointment? And then referrals is pretty straightforward. I find that people need the least help with referrals.

That’s usually where most people’s patients are coming from. And of course, this can be from professional relationships or from current or past patients. And then there’s internal marketing, which is everything that you are doing to nurture and retain the patients that you have, as well as the methods that you’re taking to reactivate previous patients.

And then external marketing is really what most people think about when we talk about marketing. So these are. Action steps that you take to get visible in front of your ideal patients. And you really want to think about this as showing up where your patients spend time. And this could be in the real world or in the digital world.

From a TCM standpoint, a lot of people like to think about external marketing as yang, so it requires energy and activity and action, and you’re, you’re putting yourself out there, you’re trying to get visible, whereas your internal marketing you could think of as yin, It’s internal just yin, right?

It’s very nurturing and it helps you maintain what you have already built. So sometimes that helps people think about these concepts. And what I’m going to ask you to do today is to use this map to do a sort of casual self assessment of where you are putting your marketing energy already. where you think most of your patients are coming from and any quadrants that could maybe use some more energy and attention.

Okay? The goal is to have your efforts be balanced across all four quadrants and that way you can have patients coming in from multiple sources. Let’s take a look at each of these quadrants. The first is searchability, and what I’ve done in each quadrant is I’ve given you some items that you can mentally check off, okay?

And that will give you a, at least a broad idea of, quote, how you’re doing in each quadrant. And some of these activities are ongoing, whereas others might be something that you haven’t. Get established, it’s in place, and you’re happy with it, and it doesn’t need to be changed. For example, your website.

Maybe you have your website, it looks great you could just check it off, right? It doesn’t need to be ongoing with updates or anything like that, okay? So something to think about as we’re going through each quadrant is mentally checking off the different areas to give you an idea of what needs work and what you’re doing well with already.

So searchability, again, is digital searchability. So this really has two parts. One is assessing your brand presence, and the other is assessing how well you rank in a Google search. How high you come up towards the top of a Google search. So if you were to type your name or your business name into Google, probably what would pop up is any listings you have in local directories for your business, your website, of course, your Google business profile, your social media, and any ads that you might be running like Google ads, for example.

And so all of that gives you a snapshot of your brand and what it might look like to someone who is searching for you on Google. And you just want to do a quick assessment about whether you feel like this snapshot of your brand represents your business the way you would like it to. Okay. So that’s one piece of searchability.

And then the other piece is, if you Google acupuncture near me, how close to the top are you in that list? Okay. And I have a couple quick tips for you to improve your searchability. So let me skip forward here. So the first before we get into this, let’s talk about how Google works.

Google’s goal is to provide the most accurate and most relevant answer to any query that is typed in. So when someone asks a question, Google wants to be able to give the best possible answers in response so that people continue using Google. Do you remember Ask Jeeves? That was a long time ago.

With some of the old school search engines, you might type in a question, and the responses that came back might be a little odd. You were like, okay that’s not really what I was asking. Whereas, Google, as a search engine, wants to always be number one. And to do that, it has to always give the person who asks the question, the best possible answers that they find relevant.

And so everything you’re doing in the searchability quadrant is really about helping Google help you, okay? Providing Google with enough information that it knows when you are, your business is a really good answer to a question that’s been asked, okay? And one of the ways you can do that is by making sure all of your listings in the directories are identical.

And that means identical address. Phone, business name, website, and hours. And really the things that tend to, over time, not be identical are address and hours. Because we set up our listings, and then a couple years later we have totally different hours. Maybe we’ve moved. And they just don’t match up anymore.

And Google is actually very specific about your address. You can’t say that you’re in suite two on like yelp. com and then not say suite two in other listings. And I know this is quite nitpicky, but it is very easy to fix. Go into all of your listings, make sure your address and your hours are identical.

And this helps Google to know that your business is active and the consistency helps Google to know that you are active. Your business is a good response to a search query, okay? As opposed to someone whose information is random all across the web, it’s not going to have as much confidence.

returning that business as the answer to a query. Okay. And then the other thing you can do to help your searchability is to completely flesh out your Google business profile. And one section that people often ignore that can be very helpful is the Q& A section. So you can ask and answer questions on your Google business profile as the business owner, but it doesn’t show that you are the person asking and answering, because that would look cheesy, right?

It’s anonymous. I recommend asking and answering all the frequently asked questions that people normally ask or might be thinking of when they are deciding whether or not to come to you as their acupuncturist if they’re trying to decide between a couple people. And some of these questions are basic.

What is parking like? Do you take my insurance? Answer those questions, of course. And then if you have a specialty, make sure to ask a question relevant to the specialty. So if your specialty is working with kids with ADHD, for example, really specific, you could have a question be, do you do acupuncture for kids with ADHD?

And then you would answer it and say, yes, absolutely. I have this extra training. These are some approaches I like to take, etc. Because then if someone puts into Google Acupuncture for children with neurodivergence or ADHD, etc. Google’s going to say, I know the answer. I know the most perfect business.

That is the answer to this question. Okay. And then it’s going to bump you up to the top. Okay. So those two things are pretty simple, but it can be very helpful in terms of your searchability. So referrals, we’re not going to spend too much time here. As I mentioned, most people feel pretty comfortable and confident that most of their new patients are from referrals.

So I want you to think of think of it this way, this quadrant. Can you answer yes to these questions? So do your professional contacts and your patients know that you’re accepting new patients? Is that something you ever Talk about either verbally, is it written anywhere? Have you ever had that conversation with them?

And do you ever ask for referrals? And again, this could be verbally or it could be written somewhere. It could be posted in your office. The thing with marketing is we are often trying to insert an idea into people’s mind to give them a little light bulb moment later on. It’s easy to assume I run a business.

Of course, people know I’m accepting new patients. Maybe they don’t. Honestly, people are probably thinking their own stuff, right? Are they gonna make? tacos for dinner or spaghetti. They’re not thinking about sending you referrals, but if you make it a point to tell them that you’re accepting new patients, you’re looking for referrals, that process is going to be ongoing in their brain for when they have an opportunity to help you.

Okay? So I think it’s helpful to have a basic it’s a two or three sentence script that you can say verbally and the script is really unique to you, right? It’s so that it rolls off your tongue. So for example, if you love treating knee pain and you are You know, you have a patient who you just treated them for knee pain and maybe they’re only going to come back if something’s bothering them.

You could say it was really great working with you. I love treating knee pain patients. If you have any friends or family in the future who are experiencing the same thing, let me know. Please think of me. I would love to help them. And then give them a card. Okay, so you’re putting the idea in their head.

And then you can also make sure you have a sign in your office and put in your email signature that you’re accepting new patients. I’m sure you’ve seen some signs. They say things like, the getting a referral is like the highest honor from a current patient. Any way you want to phrase that is super, just so it’s very clear.

Okay, internal marketing. And I know I’m going fast. This is a lot of concepts in a short amount of time, but I really think it’s going to be helpful. Internal marketing, again, is everything that you are doing. To retain and nurture the patients you have and to reactivate old patients, because research shows it’s seven to eight times easier to reactivate a previous patient than to get a new patient.

So this is low hanging fruit, right? Keep the people you have and then reactivate the old ones. So one of the ways that you can think about internal marketing is to It’s creating a really great experience for your patients from the moment that they initially contact you all the way through their treatment and then being discharged.

So as a baseline, what I recommend is go through the new patient process yourself and see if anything feels clunky, if anything is duplicated, just try to streamline it. And then this sounds corny, but it’s really helpful if you haven’t done it in a long time. Sit in the places where your patient would sit, right?

Like at checkout, sit in the seat where they are usually. Sit in their spot in the treatment room, give yourself a treatment on the table, right? Just make sure everything’s comfy as a baseline and then ask yourself, How can I elevate this experience in a way that would be valuable or meaningful to my ideal patients?

Because if you think about the last time you were at a business or an event, and it felt really special, you were like, wow, this is great. What did you do? You probably took a picture. You put it on Instagram or you went home and you texted a friend and said, Hey, I went to this place today and it was so great.

I think you’d really like it. Or you’re talking to a family member and saying, I just had the, I went to this awesome place. Let me tell you about it. The point of this is when we say everything is marketing is that a really nice This kind of special experience makes people talk about your business, right?

They’re sharing it on social media. They’re talking about it in real life. They’re more likely to refer to you. Okay. So if this quadrant interests you, I recommend going that route and seeing how you can elevate the experience at your office slightly in ways that would, again, be meaningful to your ideal patients.

And then, just make sure you have a system for reactivating previous patients. This is actually, it doesn’t have to be fancy. The system is just blocking out time on your calendar every, I’ll say, 8 weeks. And then, going back and saying, Okay, are there any patients in the past 8 weeks who dropped off the calendar?

Maybe they got sick, they said they would reschedule, but they didn’t. And then reach out to them in the method that they like to be contacted. So if they always text you or call for an appointment, that’s how you reach out to them because that’s what makes them comfortable and they’re more likely to answer you that way, okay?

And you could be very direct and simply say, I noticed you haven’t been on the calendar in a while, I was wondering if you’d like to get back on the schedule. Or you could offer a little bit of value. And you could say, I recently read this article or this book. It made me think of you, or I thought you’d find it really useful.

Here’s the link. And then that can naturally start a conversation about whether they want to come back in. Okay. So just some things to think about for your internal marketing. And then this last section, unfortunately we don’t have enough time to go through all of these. I’ll highlight a couple, but.

The external marketing, again, is your young marketing. It is the effort that you make to get in front of your ideal patients. So we are thinking about where your ideal patients hang out, both in real life and the digital world. And so there’s many ways that you could get in front of them. And this might, what you choose might depend on your personality and your strengths, what you like doing.

If you’re more extroverted, then networking is a great choice. If you prefer writing, then content creation could be a great choice. So let’s run through these really quickly. Collaborations and educational workshops are wonderful because Hey! All you have to do is email other business owners locally that you would like to work with and just tell them that you’re open to collaboration.

And you don’t have to have an idea for how you might work together right away. Maybe you do, maybe you want to do an acu yoga class at the local yoga studio, right? But maybe there is like a florist or a garden center, and you want to work with them, you can just let them know I’m open for collaboration, I would love to brainstorm how we could work together, and usually people will say yes, because it’s a win, right?

They know that Whatever event you guys host together, you’re both going to be advertising it. So they are going to get in front of your audience, your email subscribers, your social media followers, and then you are going to get exposed to their audience. Okay. So again, it’s a win and I think it’s a really nice way to get in front of an interested local audience, people who might really become your patients.

Okay, and then other options include, as I mentioned, content creation. So this could be blogging, YouTube videos social media counts as content creation, of course, podcasting. Whenever you’re creating content, especially blogging, YouTube, and podcasting, think about it as a You are curating a library of content that showcases your approach to the medicine and potential patients could binge that library and in the process get a really good idea if you are a great fit to be their acupuncturist.

Okay, so that’s one way to think about it. Of course, there’s email newsletters, there’s leaving postcards or brochures at local businesses. I think Most people have the best luck leaving postcards at nonprofits and community organizations areas where people are looking for referrals, right? Like they often need some help and if they can refer someone out, then that relieves a little bit of the burden on them.

It’s it takes a village idea. So they’re usually happy to have your info at their location. And then there’s Classic networking, there’s getting interviewed on local media social media of course, and running ads all allow you to get visible wherever your potential patients spend time.

Think about all of these things and if if you are like mentally checking things off. You might have other marketing that you’re doing that falls under this category that’s not listed, but that’s okay. Just mentally add it and give it a check mark, right? Because there are dozens and dozens of creative ways that you can get visible in front of your ideal patients.

So if you are doing other things, not on this list, give yourself credit for those. Okay, so now you can think about each of the quadrants where what areas need a little more energy and attention. What are you doing well already? And remember that, if marketing ever makes you feel uncomfortable or you worry about coming across as pushy or sleazy, keep in mind that marketing is just a tool that allows you to reach more people and help them.

Okay. It’s, that’s all it is. And I always encourage my marketing students to first of all, know that you don’t have to do marketing that you don’t like. And, try different things until you hit on something you do because marketing requires consistency over time, and it’s pretty hard to do marketing.

consistently if you don’t enjoy it. So focus on what you like so that you can continue and you don’t feel burnt out and you can feel good about your marketing. Okay? So I hope you find this really helpful. Always. If you have questions, I would love to chat with you. I love talking about marketing clearly.

You can send me an email at michelle at michellegrasek. com