“I’ve been a passionate marketer for many years. Recently, I’ve turned my attentions to a market that I think needs a lot of guidance in differentiating themselves for successful practice, and that is chiropractors. I’ve been doing some work with John to get his systems up and running with marketing.
As everybody before me tonight has discussed, the systems are what enables you to grow a practice. That’s what helps take you from one level to the next.
Marketing is the number-one activity you can engage in that will take it. Regardless of what your practice is or where it is now, there’s no higher leveraged activity that you can possibly engage in.
My most important message to you tonight is to remember a concept that might be novel to you. You’re not a chiropractor. You’re actually a marketer of chiropractic services. That’s a seminal point to make that everybody in business has to get their mind around.
Understand that your business really isn’t different from any other business in a lot of ways. As Billy pointed out, it’s a practice because you’re helping patients, but it’s still a business.
Some people get confused when it comes to the difference between marketing and sales. Both marketing and sales are vitally important, but there’s a distinctive difference between the two.
I think that doctors in particular struggle with this concept because they want to help people. Of course, you are helping people, but it’s also your livelihood. From that perspective, each client is also a sale, so to speak.
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about chiropractic or any other type of small business. The concepts and goals are the same. If you’re having trouble making sales in terms of getting more patients or more of the type of patient you want, you need to see whether you have a sales problem or a marketing problem. Doing an analysis of that is pretty easy.
Which is more important, sales or marketing? That’s the $64,000 question. They both are important, but in my opinion, marketing is the more important of the two. If you have the right marketing, it will make the process of client attraction and retention infinitely easier.
If your marketing is doing the job correctly, it will deliver qualified prospects who are predisposed to doing business with you.
The next strategy to grow your practice is to define your market and your ideal customer. I’d like to go over some key points that should be part of anybody’s marketing plan. These are things you should be thinking about doing or incorporating into your business which will help you take it to the next level.
Defining your market and your ideal customer is a really important exercise to go through. If you ask most doctors who their market is, they’ll say it’s anyone who has a spine.
In any field, to have the most satisfying client or patient, you have to decide what single type of patient or market segment to go after.
Then go after it with full force.
Why not market to everybody? Just about anybody could benefit from chiropractic care, but if you go after the whole market, you will deplete your marketing resources. There is only so much time and money you can devote to marketing. If you pursue a lot of different areas, you’re not going to do more than a mediocre job of marketing to each market… ”
From Kim Canduccis’ recent interview with John
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