Catch more patients with electronic marketing by creating your own website, e-newsletters, and e-business cards

One of the benefits of technology is that it enables advertisers to reach a broad spectrum of their potential market. Unfortunately, this is also one of the drawbacks. People are bombarded with messages from television commercials, print advertising, telephone solicitations, bulk mail (both snail and electronic), and billboards (again, both traditional and electronic)—the list is endless. Many find some messages useful, but most are perceived as intrusive or a nuisance.

As a DC, you want to get your message to the public, but you don’t want it to be lost among the advertising bombardment, or worse, set aside as an annoyance. You also want to make your practice stand out from the crowd. Just as consumers have a myriad of choices for a particular product, potential patients have many practices they can choose to frequent. The challenge you face is to identify interested prospective clients and reach them in innovative and informative ways so that your practice is the one they think of when making the decision to seek chiropractic care.

Operation Patient Base
Maintaining your patient base is undoubtedly one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks in building and maintaining a practice. It takes a lot of time and effort to cultivate a list of potential clients and to maintain your patient base. Once you have gathered a viable list, you cannot afford to just stop there. If nothing is done with that list, you have lost one of your most valuable marketing resources, and if you allow the list to become “cold,” you will have to start from square one when you do implement a marketing campaign.

So what are some of the ways you can make your practice unique and keep those leads from becoming cold? Some of the most effective techniques are really quite simple and cost-effective because of recent technological advancements. There was a time when computers were a luxury item purchased by households with a large amount of disposable income, or where their use could be justified—not any more. According to the US Census Bureau’s August 2000 report, 54 million homes (51%) had one or more computers with 44 million homes (42%) having Internet access. The numbers are much more dramatic today. And the beauty the World Wide Web is that people use it as a resource. It has become the first place many turn to when they have a question or want to research a topic. This technology has become the Yellow Pages™ of the 21st century, and you can make it work for you.

Site for Sore Spines
One of the best ways to gain a presence and call attention to your practice is to create a website. While working on the computer and creating resources for your clients may seem intimidating, advances in software have made turning your ideas into reality a simple procedure. Think about what you want to present to this potential market. Start by developing answers for some of the questions you receive most often, presenting an overview of the biomechanical workings of the human body, or highlighting a case study. There are many options from which to choose.

Once you have an outline of the information you want to include on your website, you can access a template that will help you with the design. Most software programs include templates for often-used design projects such as web pages, announcements, and invitations. There is also some great information and help on website design at: www.chiro.org (click on “The Links,” scroll down to “Web Design—HTML Info–Internet Info–Shareware”).

Some important information to include on your website are your location and hours, general information on chiropractic (such as the benefits from care and how it can help specific conditions), recent articles, scheduled upcoming seminars or events you are hosting, and links to websites of interest. It is important to keep the information updated and current and to link your website wherever possible. Be sure to get on any community listings, and don’t forget about websites of organizations.

Hosting a website is well worth the effort; present and potential clients who are interested in additional information will seek out your site. With a website, you get your message out to the community with little investment. Also, remember to list your website address on any literature that you give out.

Extra! Extra!—E-News
You can also use electronic technology to your advantage by gathering one small piece of information from present and/or potential clients. Whenever you have a sign-up list or sponsor an activity that collects names of potential patients, include an area for their personal email addresses. This list will enable you to send outgoing reminders, announcements of seminars you are hosting, or important information. Remember, it is imperative that you limit outgoing email and focuse on relevant topics. You don’t want to be accused of spamming—sending quantities of unsolicited junk mail.

One of the best outgoing endeavors for you to consider is an e-newsletter. Again, there are many software programs that offer newsletter templates. There is no need to get ultra fancy. Focus on the content and use the newsletter template as your design. Decide how often you want to publish the newsletter. It can be a big undertaking, and it is better to have fewer comprehensive and well thought-out issues on an established schedule than many erratically scheduled, poor-quality issues. It is easier to add a special issue if you have information that cannot wait, than to apologize for missing a deadline.

The best aspect about using this method of newsletter development and distribution is that once the newsletter is complete, there are no extra costs for printing and mailing. You can even post a copy of your latest newsletter and archive past issues on your website.

If you do not have the time or expertise to create a website or e-newsletter, you can still use the email addresses you have obtained to communicate with your patients and/or potential patients. For a patient, you can send out email appointment reminders, intermittently send out interesting or informative article,s and include hyperlinks to interesting websites or seminar announcements.

CDs for DCs
For those of you who are truly computer literate or have the desire to investigate outside resources, you can create your own interactive CD. Depending on the sophistication of the program, consider having it made by a professional. It is an interesting marketing tool and can be used in place of a brochure. The advantage of using this technology is that disks are relatively inexpensive (especially when compared to printing), you only have to burn what you need (versus printing massive quantities in order to attain a price break), and changes or additions are relatively easy to make. Therefore, this marketing tool also does not require disposing of outdated material if you do have changes or additions. The disks hold a large amount of information and you can even include video segments to further illustrate your narrative.

There are also shaped CDs available. The shapes are extremely unique and relatively new to the market. In addition to ready-made shapes to choose from, you can invent your own. These CDs are much more limited in the amount of memory they hold, but they are certainly a unique business card and can link the viewer directly to your website for additional information.

Technology offers us resources we can use to set our practice apart from other others. Additionally, we can use this capability to disseminate information that might often be overlooked. As DCs, we use technological tools to enhance the care we give to our patients. It makes sense to use available technology to enhance the way we send our messages to the community.

Remember to keep your messages educational and informative, and use caution when distributing information on the Internet. If your message is perceived as junk mail or spam, it will defeat your purpose. The best messages are clear, concise, and interesting. Your practice will stand out, and you will keep in contact with your clients and potential customers effortlessly and at little cost by using recent technology available.

Jeffrey D. Olsen, DC, has been in private practice with his two partners/brothers since 1997 in Roanoke, Va, and has instructed as an adjunct faculty member at the College of Health Sciences in Roanoke, teaching anatomy and physiology in the Physician Assistant Department. He can be reached at olsen_jeffrey@hotmail.com.