they assure us, but their practice is different for many reasons. When we dig a little deeper, what we almost invariably find is that while they’ve tried to apply the “general idea” that we are suggesting, they missed out on the “little things” that really make it work. (Nowhere is there a better example of this than in the area of marketing to patients – both cur- rent and past. They tell us that they have tried all of this “marketing” stuff but insist that it “never works for me”!) As an example of how a strategy can be tinkered with, thus destroying its effective- ness, let’s look at the patient-reactivation strategy above. The doctor says, “I want to go through the list by hand, and try to guess which pa- tients will be most likely to respond.” This diminishes a reactivation strategy in two ways. First, it can dramatically de- crease the number of potential respon- dents. And, as importantly, when you trade an hour of your time to cherry pick a list, it wastes your valuable time. How much is that worth? (Hint: Usually a lot more than you think it is.) Alternatively, the DC may say, “You want me to get in touch with them four times over five weeks? No way! We can do the same thing getting in touch with them twice, and it’ll save money and effort.” Reactivation strategies recommend se- quenced marketing for one reason – be- cause it works. Trying to “save money” by cutting costs here, will cost you more in the long run. Then there’s “That scheduling sounds complicated. What I’ll do instead, is just mail off everything on day one, then have my staff follow up when they can.” This is another favourite tactic by many practice owners. The problem, of course, is that it completely destroys the proven ben- efits of sequenced marketing. Consider the following: the original strategy dictates that the past patient re- ceives a personal letter, then a phone call followup three days after they’ve received the letter. The “cost cutting” structure has over 200 letters go out, then phone call followup whenever. Because your support staff is busy with your practice, weeks, or sometimes months, may pass, after the initial contact, before the follow-up phone call is made. That’s no longer a sequence – that’s no longer really marketing. And that can prove more costly, for you, in the long run. The easiest way to waste your marketing dollars is to take a strategy, or campaign, that has been proven to work, and “fix” it. Of course, we’re not suggesting that you blindly follow every Pied Piper who tells you that he’ll bring back your patients and make you rich while you sleep. What we are actually suggesting is that you keep two things very clearly in mind when deciding on a strategy to use: Be very wary of the temptation to exam- ine only the up-front cost of any strategy. Instead, be sure to look at it from a return- on-investment point of view. Be aware of the purpose of each part of the strategy, when you evaluate whether changing or removing it will give you better or worse results, over the course of the strategy. In an economic climate that ensures new patients will be even more cautious, even more skeptical, and even more wary of spending money than they would oth- erwise be, it may benefit DCs to examine their practice internally, rather than focus- ing on returns from external sources. • 26 • CANAdiAN ChirOPrACTOr | JUNE 2009 www.canadianchiropractor.ca
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor June 2009: Page 26
