Giving lectures is a great way to attract new patients. Have a powerful topic and a great advertising plan

To recruit and retain patients, we often focus on the biggest ad, the most impressive Web site, or advice from the latest practice-building guru. Sometimes we forget that one of the best marketing tools we have is also the simplest—our knowledge of how chiropractic benefits the human body and our ability to share this knowledge with others.

Giving lectures on chiropractic care can be one of the most effective ways to gain new patients and motivate current patients to continue seeking your care. The key to success is choosing topics that resonate. You want to make your audience think, “This information could change my life.” Very few topics appeal equally to all people, so you will need to invest time and effort to discover which topics get results.

A good lecture topic is seasonal, timely, and relevant. Your lecture on chiropractic care and golf may be great, but people will be more interested in hearing it in May than January. Similarly, topics that might have wowed an audience 20 years ago are not going to work as well today.

If you are not an experienced public speaker, it is best to get your feet wet by starting with lectures to your current patients. Select a topic that will appeal to the majority of your patients. If you mainly work with athletes, you might offer a lecture on how chiropractic care can improve athletic performance and reduce the risk of injury. If the majority of your patients are industrial workers, you could talk about proper lifting techniques or how custom-made orthotics can reduce fatigue.

If you have no idea what to talk about, then the simplest way to find out what your patients want to learn is to ask them. Put together a list of topics, and have your patients fill out a survey to find out which ones generate the most interest. You and your staff can also personally ask patients about the topics. Sometimes, your patients’ answers may surprise you. An elderly man who suffers from osteoarthritis may be interested in learning about chiropractic care for kids because of his grandchildren. A middle-aged woman with migraine headaches might come to a lecture on sports injuries because her children play basketball. You never know until you ask.

You should already have some knowledge of what your regular patients’ lives are like outside of your office. Knowing that Tom load trucks, Jenny plays volleyball, and Bob sits at a desk all day will give you an idea of the health care lectures that they would attend, but it will also help you provide them with more personalized care. If you can remember these personal tidbits, your patients will feel that you care about them as people, and they will also be more satisfied.

You can use the tools that you already have in your office to make the lecture stimulating and fun. Use your digital scanner and offer patients a free scan. Display any adjunct products that you sell, such as custom-made orthotics, nutritional supplements, or cervical-support pillows. If you’re talking about rehabilitative exercise, have one of your CAs demonstrate your rehab equipment. You want the lecture to excite and motivate your patients so they will return for future lectures and tell other people to come.

When you and your staff tell patients about an upcoming health care lecture, you should always invite them to bring their friends and family. Giving health care lectures at your office is a great way to increase your patients’ understanding of chiropractic care and generate referrals. Many people mistakenly believe that chiropractors treat only low-back pain, and your lectures can educate them about chiropractic care for health issues such as migraines, fibromyalgia, and increased wellness. This can lead your patients to seek additional care for themselves or recommend you to other people. If people leave your lecture saying, “I never knew chiropractic could be good for ankle sprains, foot problems, and wellness,” then you did your job educating them.

How Lectures Can Result in New Patients
If your primary goal is to attract new patients, then it is time to take your lectures to the general public. When you go out into the community, you will see two types of audiences. The first audience is a preset one that gets together once per week or once per month and needs a speaker. Preset audiences that might be interested in chiropractic topics include church groups, civic clubs, and weight-loss support groups. The second type of audience is there only to hear you. To attract this type of audience, you would need to rent space, set up your own public health care lecture, and advertise it everywhere.

With a preset audience, you have a guarantee that people will be in the audience, but they would be there no matter who was speaking. They are not necessarily interested in chiropractic care, and it will be more difficult to motivate them. If you have a pre-set audience, your message must be powerful enough to get them to make an appointment with you after the lecture.

When you are inviting the general public, there is no guarantee that anyone will show up. Your message must convince your audience to come to the lecture, and then it must motivate them to come to your office. You probably will not have as many people at a public health care lecture, but you will have a better response rate of appointments than with a preset audience. If you have 10 people come to your public health care lecture and six of them make appointments, that’s obviously better than a preset audience of 50 people that only results in two appointments.

If you want to attract more people to your public health care lecture, do something different. Conduct a postural analysis or use your digital scanner to screen for pedal imbalances. This will get your audience’s attention and show them that you offer a unique service that they cannot get from their regular health care provider.

Many DCs use price discounts as an incentive to get people to attend their health care lectures. My preference is to compete on value, not price. Every lecture that you do should communicate that chiropractic care is valuable and vital to good health. You want people to come to your lecture for the content and the message, not the free gift. If you have a powerful topic and a great advertising plan, you will not need to offer price discounts.

Advertising Your Lecture for Better Results
Once you have spent the time and effort to create an inspiring lecture, you also need to be willing to spend money to advertise it. Putting a flyer up on a church bulletin board is not going to get 100 people to come to your lecture, but having an ad on the radio might. Use all the local media—including newspapers, radio, and cable television—to spread the word about your lecture. You should also internally advertise your seminar at your practice, and make sure your staff knows all the relevant details, such as the topic, date, and location.

Another effective way to market the seminar is to reach out to the health care professionals who refer patients to you. Their patients may be interested in learning more about arthritis, whiplash, ergonomics, or whatever your topic is going to be. Sometimes you can also comarket with another health care professional. For instance, if you network with a massage therapist, you could offer a free half-hour massage for coming to the lecture. This allows you to market both services at the same time and still maintain the value of chiropractic care.

Giving health care lectures and seminars can help you keep your current patients informed and attract new patients. Every time you address an audience, you educate them about the value of chiropractic care. Lectures and seminars benefit your practice, but they also help your audience by teaching them how chiropractic care can lead to lasting wellness. CP

Mark N. Charrette, DC, is a 1980 summa cum laude graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. He has lectured extensively on spinal and extremity adjusting throughout the United States, Europe, the Far East, and Australia. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1976 from Illinois State University (summa cum laude), where he was an NCAA All-American in 1974.