• For every $1 spent, $38 is the average return on email marketing investments, according to the Direct Marketing Association.
• A Marketing Sherpa survey revealed that 91% of all U.S. adults like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.
• According to the Data and Marketing Association, email remains the highest driver of ROI.

And not to be wisenheimers, but if you’re reading this, you’ve likely found it through our email newsletter!  If you found this article directly on our website blog, you’re seeing one of the hidden benefits of having a regular email newsletter schedule—it forces you to write and add quality content to your website!  And quality content boosts your search engine optimization. 

More Benefits of Email Marketing for Your Chiropractic Practice: 

It’s cost-effective:  You write your email once and send it to your entire list.  The cost of an online email campaign service like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact ranges from free to $40 per month or more, depending on the number of emails in your list.  This is inexpensive marketing!

It’s profitable:  You’re not going to see every patient every month, so an email can keep all your patients up to date on your new products and services.  We all know that providing more services to each patient is more profitable than spending money to attract new patients.

It’s a marketing “best practice”:  A good marketing plan uses several channels, including face-to-face, your ChiroTV Network system, your website, in-office events, social media, etc.  Email marketing helps reinforce your message and reach people who may not see all your other marketing channels!

It helps fuel referrals:  Your email newsletter can remind your patients of everything you offer, so it’s easy for them to refer you to that friend or relative who mentions a new ailment.  All they have to do is forward your email!

It builds a valuable asset:  Your email is going to people who have opted in, which means they WANT to hear from you!  Your list is YOURS and you don’t have to spend money buying one (which is never recommended AND can violate the CAN-SPAM law).  Marketing gurus are fond of saying, “The money is in the list.”  There’s a reason for that!  Having a willing audience of people who want to hear from you and are most likely to buy from you is a valuable asset to nurture!

5 Steps to Stellar Emails for Your Chiropractic Office 

1. Write a click-worthy subject line:  You want your subscriber to be intrigued enough to open your email in the first place.  There are lots of interesting ways to write good subject lines.  For example, asking a question often creates a compelling subject line.  Our brains are “wired” to seek the answer to the question, a temptation difficult to overcome when all we have to do to satisfy our curiosity is…click!  Here is a resource for constructing some great subject lines!

Note: short and medium-length subject lines have higher open rates than long ones.  Also, subject lines are often shortened depending on the device or email provider, so limit them to 50 characters or fewer.

2. Attractive formatting:  You want your email to be clear and guide the reader’s eyes through till the end.  Here are some special touches that will set your newsletter apart:

• Images should be neither too big, dominating the page, nor too small.
• Paragraphs should not be crammed together.  Leave enough “white space”–it’s easier on the eyes.
• Use bulleted lists to set apart information and make reading easier.
• Different sections of the newsletter should be clearly labeled and also have enough space between them.
• Colors should match.  Your webmaster or graphic designer will give you the Hex Color Codes (codes for the internet) for your logo colors.  Double-check that the colors you’re using in your newsletter match those on your website.  You want people to know right away that this email is coming from your business.  This strengthens your brand.
• Make sure your email looks great on any device.  Email campaign services usually allow you to preview your drafts for both desktop and mobile before you send them out.

3. Relevant information:  Write on topics that are important to your ideal patient: their needs and their wants.  Learn their pain points and address them.  Show your readers you’ve taken the time to really get to know them.  This is how you attract and keep profitable patients!  If you’re stuck for topics, take a gander at your ChiroTV Network system and steal some ideas from there!  (As our regular readers know, we can’t let even ONE article go without a shameless plug!)  Remember the important 80/20 rule: 80% of your email should be about providing useful information to your readers and only 20% of it should be about selling something!

4. Call to action:  A “call to action” is marketing lingo for “what you want your readers to do next.”  Do you want them to click to read an article in your blog?  Call your office?  Place an order for a detox program?  Distinguish your call to action through color, placement and text treatment.  Readers will then quickly understand the purpose of your email.  More importantly, this will make it easier to act on it.  Don’t try to cram too many activities into one email.  One call to action is strongest, so if you really want to get your readers to take a particular action (like RSVP for an office event) you’re probably better off sending a separate email announcing the event.  However, if you format attractively (see tip #2) you can get away with multiple calls to action to appeal to different readers.

5. Offer to connect:  Make sure your physical address, office hours, phone number, website address and email address are always included.  Most email campaign templates will auto-fill that information near the bottom.  Also offer to connect through social media by providing your links for readers to click on.

Email is certainly NOT dead!  It is an easy and effective way to stay top-of-mind with prospects and patients alike!  We hope these tips help you create fantastic email campaigns for your chiropractic office. 

ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors. Our patient education system helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait. For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com

So, if all that is not enough incentive for you to consider adding video to your chiropractic practice’s marketing strategy, just consider this:  with video, you can “clone” yourself and speak to more people in an engaging, authentic fashion that is second only to in-person interaction!

To get you started in the right direction, we’ve compiled a few tips and tricks you can use to employ a powerful video marketing strategy for your chiropractic wellness center!

Types of Video for Your Chiropractic Practice
There are different types of videos that can especially benefit your practice.

• “Welcome” to the practice video: A “get to know us” overview of you, your practice staff and your services.  You can use this type of video in many ways:  on your website’s Home page, on social media, in your Google My Business profile and in your ChiroTV Network lineup.  (Yes, this is our shameless plug—but in our defense, it is SO easy to upload and showcase your own videos—we highly recommend it!)
• “Explainer” videos for specific services: It’s good for the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website to have a page for each type of service you provide, and even better to post a video to match.  This way, you can accommodate readers and non-readers alike!  Make it easy for your patients to be aware of all your services by providing multi-media sources of information.
• Patient testimonials: This is a particularly powerful type of video because people look for social proof before they make buying decisions.  And, it’s much easier (and more convincing) to let an enthusiastic patient brag on you.  (Besides, we know how modest you are!)  Make sure any patients featured in your videos sign waivers and give permission to use their testimony in your marketing.
• Doctor/staff profiles: People do business with people they like and trust.  While your CVs may instill some confidence in patient prospects, seeing and hearing you and your staff on video creates more of an instant connection.

Hiring Professionals or DIY Video Production for Your Chiropractic Office
When creating video for your chiropractic office, there are two ways you can go:  hire a professional video team or do it yourself.  There are pros and cons to each, but first, consider this:  there is “good TV” and “bad TV.”  Good TV is engaging, persuasive, professional and keeps the viewer watching.  Bad TV is distracting, poorly executed, confusing and generally loses your viewer.  Can you create a video without all the bells and whistles that people will pay attention to?  Of course.  Just remember the purpose of creating videos for your chiropractic practice is to give a good impression with prospects, patients and referrals.  You’re better off putting out as professional a video as you can afford than doing one badly “just to have one.”

Tips for Hiring a Professional Video Team
A professional video team can make you look better and more natural, especially if you’re nervous.  Usually the camera operator can see how you’re coming across and give you tips from his or her experience so that you come out looking your best!

We are almost always in favor of chiropractors focusing on what they do best and delegating the rest.  Professional video teams can be more affordable than you think.  Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Find a video team that resonates with your personality and business style. Look at examples of previous work and compare pricing.
• Ask about a two-camera shoot. This means while filming, one camera may be in front of you and another at an angle, and the vantage point is switched back and forth in the final product.  It usually isn’t much more expensive, since the crew is already there shooting, but it adds levels of professionalism to the final video.
• Consult with the video editor about the content you’d like to cover. Often the crew can capture enough B-roll (outside and inside shots of your office, candid footage of your staff, etc.) to cover more than one video.  B-roll highlights the environment of your practice, gives visual interest and showcases the services you offer.
  • Consider other uses for your videos and have the team capture footage while they’re “at it” because this will save you time and money in the long run.
  • Consider creating videos in several lengths to fit different purposes. For example, a 2-minute Welcome video for your website, 30-second clips for social media, etc.  Again, you may save on the shooting fees since all the video can be captured the same day.
• Ask your video team to refer you to voiceover professionals. Using a voiceover adds another layer of professionalism to your video.  Some things only need to be shown, and other things are heard through the voiceover.  For example, you don’t have to say, “We have a friendly staff.”  You can SHOW your team member at the front desk smiling at a patient.  This saves time and is “good TV.”  A good editor naturally knows how to blend these aspects for you.

Tips for Do-It-Yourself Videos

• Script it, don’t wing it! Decide what you want to say and craft a beginning, middle and end for your video.  You want to preplan everything you possibly can, including storyboard and script (what the video will show and say).
• There’s a lot of free teleprompter software out there that you can install on a laptop. Place a laptop right underneath your camera so that your eyes appear to be looking at the camera.  If your laptop has a remote control, you can control the teleprompter’s speed.  Otherwise, have a buddy follow along and adjust while you’re reading.  Either way, you need to rehearse so that the script flows and sounds natural.
• Professional tip: when you’re speaking to the camera, think of it as having a conversation with the camera.  This makes you speak normally, and you’ll come across more authentically.
• Remember to add some dynamics to your voice. When you rehearse, make sure you include punching up a few words.  Again, practice will help.
• Make your video “evergreen.” In other words, don’t make references to the time of year, holidays and other topics that will “date” your video.  This way, you can use your video longer.
• Think about where you would actually shoot the video. Make sure objects in the background aren’t distracting.  For example, if you’re sitting at a desk, make sure there isn’t a plant behind you on a shelf that looks like its growing out of your head.  Make sure your surroundings are neat and tidy.  Viewers focusing on the sticky notes all around your desk will not hear a word you have to say!
• Lighting and audio quality are key. Bad light and audio are highly distracting.  There are inexpensive kits you can buy on Amazon or eBay that allow you to clamp your smartphone on a tripod, complete with a “halo” or ring light and a mic.  Using equipment like this yields a better-quality DIY video than you can accomplish with just your smartphone alone.
• If you need headshots or other photography done for your website or other marketing materials, hire a photographer to come in the same day you’re shooting.
• Be sure the camera is level. It’s distracting when the camera is at an angle, like a crooked picture on a wall.
• There’s a lot of royalty-free music out there. Light, appropriate music in the background adds warmth to your video.
• It looks very professional to include some “supers” or subtitles that slide or fade in and out of the video. If you are proficient with editing software, consider adding both music and supers to your video.
• Generally speaking, you want to keep videos under two minutes.

We hope these video production tips are helpful to you!  As always, feel free to reach out to us if you need more creative ideas for integrating your ChiroTV Network tools with your overall marketing strategies!

Resources:
YouTube Statistics:  https://blog.hootsuite.com/youtube-stats-marketers/

ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors.  Our patient education system helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait.  For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com

PRACTICAL PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR YOUR MIND

Productivity hacks for the mind involve strategic thinking.  A logical framework that you can easily wrap your mind around.  New ways to think about productivity, if you will.

Divide Your Tasks Into Urgent/Important Quadrants

An internet search shows that this concept is called the Eisenhower Decision Matrix (yes, for President Eisenhower).  Draw a box on a piece of paper and divide it into four equal squares.  Like the house windows you used to draw when you were a kid.  Label it “Urgent” along the left and “Important” along the bottom.  Place all the items in your to do list in its applicable quadrant.  Here’s a guide:

• Urgent/Important: Tasks that should be done right away because they represent items like emergencies, problems, last-minute preparations or deadline-related projects.  A note on this one…you SHOULD NOT LIVE IN THIS QUADRANT…it’s too stressful!  Planning should put you most often in the next quadrant, where you should be spending most of your time.
• Not Urgent/Import: Because of the lack of urgency, these activities can be planned, and because of their importance, you should always find time for them.  This is the quadrant in which you should be living the majority of your time.  These are tasks related to planning, prevention, relationships, relaxation and exercise.
• Urgent/Not Important: These tasks could possibly be delegated.  Activities in this quadrant include some meetings, some emails/calls, requests from others and errands.
• Not Urgent/Not Important: You should try to eliminate these activities, which include things like: mindless TV watching, some emails/calls, junk mail and busy work.

Name Your Top Three

There is a story (attributed to several people) that draws an analogy between your priorities and the arrangement of rocks, pebbles and sand in a container.  Here is the story:  A speaker asked a volunteer to put a few big rocks, pebbles and sand in a fishbowl.  Trial and error showed that if you put the big rocks in first, followed by the pebbles then the sand, you can fit a lot more in the aquarium.  Same thing goes for your To Do list.  Your big rocks, the items most important to you, should be scheduled first in your scheduler or planner, to make sure they fit.  If you do too many insignificant tasks first (the pebbles and the sand) then there’s no way to fit in the important tasks (the rocks).  Selecting your Top Three tasks per day is one way to prioritize so that your schedule has “room” for your most important tasks.

Eat the Frog First

This refers to putting tasks that you really don’t want to do, but have to do, first on your list. It’s usually the important stuff that you tend to put off.  For example, if you really don’t get fired up about doing the marketing for your practice but know it must be done in order to reach your goals, put it first on your To Do list.  Sometimes, all it takes is getting started to get into a good rhythm!

Ignore Social Media

Let’s face it, we spend way too much time on social media.  It is extremely easy to get sucked in to your Facebook feed, indulge in a marathon Instagram scroll or succumb to an endless selection of Tweets.  Often, we do this during idle time when our phones are nearby or in the guise of posting to our own social media accounts for business.  Do yourself a favor and uninstall these applications from your smart phone.  Schedule specific blocks of time in your schedule for when you will update your business accounts.  Better yet, delegate social media to a team member!

Use Time Blocks

Plan out your day by assigning blocks of time for each task on your list.  Be realistic!  Put in your top three priorities first.  If you’ve divided one large project into several pieces, assign each piece a time block.  Do this time block planning either at the beginning of each day, or before the end of the workday.

Answer Emails Sparingly

Again, this is practical because we tend to get lost in email and spend way too much time crafting responses.  Email also tends to dictate our schedules to us instead of the other way around .  Many productivity experts agree that you must be strategic about your email correspondence. There are probably whole books about the art of managing email, but for our purposes here just be aware of that gigantic time sink and try a few tactics to get it under control.  Some tactics are:

• Close your email program while you’re busy doing something else.  (The “ding” or pop-ups are distracting and tempting.)
• Answer emails only a certain number of times per day. (Some gurus say just answer them once, but that might not be an option for your business.  Set some boundaries and stick to them!)
• Block out time to check email on your schedule and try not to check it first thing in the morning (this makes it more likely you’ll start your day taking care of other people’s problems instead of moving forward with your plans).

Don’t Re-Invent the Wheel

We wrote an entire article about how to repurpose your marketing content.  Creating one aspect of your marketing (like writing a description of a new service) and using it in several ways (like on your next email newsletter, website and ChiroTV Network channel) is an excellent way to boost your productivity. 

PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR YOUR BODY

These tips have to do with what your body can physically handle.  Of course, this is highly personal!

Know Your Biorhythms

People have more or different energy levels at different times of the day.  If you are an early bird and get your best ideas after your morning meditation, then maybe that is when you should do your most important and creative work.  If you tend to slow down in the afternoons and not have as much creative brain power, you may find that to be a good time to listen to a tutorial.  Everyone is different; that’s why one guru’s productivity hack may not be for everyone.  You need to experiment with what works for you!

Take Breaks

Don’t forget to schedule breaks during your day.  This is a little counterintuitive, but scheduling breaks may give you the mental and physical energy to get more done than trying to power through the entire day without one.  Again, do what’s best for you.  You can also use your breaks as little rewards for getting your important tasks done during previous work sessions.

PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR YOUR SPIRIT

Often the last things on our To Do lists involve taking care of our spirit.  This is bad for productivity!  Your productivity will be enhanced if you plan time for self-care and activities that feed your soul.

Don’t Forget to Plan for Fun, Family and Friends

If you’re a self-described workaholic, don’t worry, you’re not alone!  Even though you love what you do, you need to plan for fun on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  Nothing puts a pause on your productivity like burnout!  Use your scheduler and the time block method above to reserve time for family, friends and activities that make your heart sing, not just work-related tasks. 

Plan Time “To Do” Nothing

While our culture is largely based on the appearance of working hard, there is nothing that renews the spirit and allows inspired thoughts to come through like scheduling time to do nothing.  If you schedule it in your planner along with all your other To Dos, you will not feel guilty about it; give it a try!

Additional Resources:

Time Management Strategies from Chris Kresser

https://chriskresser.com/12-time-management-strategies-for-your-functional-medicine-practice

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors. Our patient education system helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait. For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com

In this digital age, your website often serves as your first impression to prospective patients, team members, even joint venture or networking partners. It can also support all your marketing initiatives, serve as a central location to house your marketing messages and act as a funnel for your social media campaigns. It can be an education portal for both prospects and patients alike. Your website should be your practice’s home base, if you will. Therefore, you want to ensure that it represents you and your practice accurately and well.

Since your website serves multiple purposes, creating a site you’re proud of is wise investment of your time and money. And since we’re dedicated to the success of chiropractors, we pulled together these helpful tips for building a strong website presence. Does your website pass the must-haves test?

Homepage Tips

The main purpose of your website homepage is to signal to visitors that they’re in the right place. First of all, it needs to “look” like your practice because you’ve used your logo and company colors.  It needs to “feel” like your practice because you’ve written it in your unique voice and personality.  Most importantly, you only have most visitors’ attention for a few seconds, so your homepage needs to quickly communicate the “main idea” of your practice with words and images “above the fold” (within the first screen that appears without scrolling).

Once you’ve caught their attention, your homepage should also persuade visitors to explore and read on. Easy-to-understand navigation links across the top should lead them to the information they are seeking.

A welcome video on your Homepage can also be very powerful. If you’re a customer of ChiroTV Network, a website player can be installed that features the presentation of the week on autopilot. This shows visitors from the start that your practice educates its patients.

Checklist of must-haves for your Homepage:

• Makes a good first impression, pleasing to the eye
• Design is clean and uncluttered
• Important information is “above the fold” (in the first “screen” that appears without scrolling down)
• Main navigation is easy to understand and use
• The words on the page resonate with your ideal patient
• “Call to Action” (what you want visitors to do next—like Contact Us, go to the About page, or other action) is clear and prominent

If you need a new website . . .

If you are considering a website overhaul or don’t have one yet, there are many modern, inexpensive do-it-yourself templates from which to choose. But it does take time and a bit of know-how to manipulate even the simplest of templates. If you decide to hire a professional team, look at sample work first, and get a few references! Website development is notorious for delays and undependable contractors, much like home renovations! Because your website is often the first thing people see, it’s wise to buy the most attractive and functional site you can afford.

Checklist of must-haves for your general website design:

• Branding using your logo and complementary colors, images and “tone of voice” that all reflect the personality of your practice
• Phone number near the top of every page, made “clickable” on mobile devices so visitors can instantly dial your office
• Headlines and sub headlines with larger/bolded fonts to make it easier for skimmers to find what they’re looking for
• Social media icons that link to your social media platforms
• Sign-up boxes to opt-in to your newsletter

About Page Tips

The “About” page on a website is the second-most-read page after the homepage. This is not surprising, since prospects want to know more about you and your team before they make their first appointment. 

That said, prospective patients will also want to know why you can help them. So, writing your about page can be a little tricky. It has to be about you but NOT about you. It must include what’s unique about your practice, education and experience that will specifically help patients with their problems.

Many times, it is best to have a professional writer interview you and write your bio because it is daunting to write about yourself. But you can also have team members write about each other. Go ahead, list your education, awards and links to articles you have written or interviews you have given—this gives you credibility. But plain CVs or resumes reproduced on a page are boring! Write your bio from the perspective of your prospective patient. (Now say that 5 times fast!)

Quick checklist of must-haves for your About page:

• An interesting and engaging bio for each member of your team
• A separate section for resume items like schools attended and degrees earned
• Be sure the information on this page answers the question, “What’s in it for me?” from your ideal patient’s perspective

Service Page Tips

Eventually, it’s a good idea to write a web page for each kind of service, product and program you provide. This allows you to go into detail about each, who it’s for, what to expect, etc.  This will also give you a chance to include keywords for each service (which improves your visibility online with search engines) and also appeal to the target audience for each service.  Don’t forget to include pages about new products or services when you launch them.

General must-haves for your Services content:

• Write a page for each service, product or program you offer.
• Put self-descriptive keywords in the URL of each service page, for SEO purposes—we’ll explain below.  (For example:  www.BestChiro.com/weight-loss-program)
• Always write with your ideal patient for each service in mind:  what’s important to her and why she should care!

Blog Tips

Publishing a blog communicates helpful information to your website visitors and positions you as an expert in your field. Publishing fresh content is also very good for the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website. Google and other search engines use many factors in their algorithms to decide which websites get displayed after someone searches with a few keywords. Publishing fresh content with common keywords helps make your website more relevant to searches and therefore more discoverable by search engines.

Two tips to improve the SEO of your website content:

• Start your blog article in your newsletter and continue it on your website, which increases traffic to your website and also helps with SEO. 
• Install Yoast on your website’s dashboard. Yoast is a free plug-in that provides a guide to placing keywords in strategic locations in order to improve SEO on each page of your site. Read a few articles on the Yoast blog to learn how to use the Yoast tool and improve your writing for search engine optimization. This includes learning how to use keywords most effectively.
• Use H1 tags for your main headline on each page and H2 and H3 tags on your subheadings.  If you learn about writing with keywords from the tip above, this concept will be covered!

We hope this article helps you focus on and improve your chiropractic practice’s website.  As always, feel free to reach out to us if you need more creative ideas for integrating your ChiroTV Network tools with your overall marketing strategies!

When you’re running small business, you want to use the best and most effective marketing tactics that require as little effort as possible to give you the results you want. Your use of social media falls in this category! Social media is perhaps the most easily misused marketing tool in your toolbelt, if for no other reason than making several hours per day disappear! To help you maintain your focus, in this article we give you a few mistakes to avoid and twice as many “do’s” as you engage in social media marketing for your chiropractic practice.

7 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid in Your Chiropractic Practice

DON’T…

1) Don’t join ALL the social media channels.  Generally, for a chiropractic office, Facebook is going to be your greatest social media ally. It’s especially suited to brick and mortar businesses marketing to a local clientele. In fact, according to our recent survey, more than 90% of you use Facebook most often to promote your practice.  No matter which social media channels you choose, choose only as many as you can handle well.  There’s no point in having four channels and not using any of them consistently or effectively.

2) Don’t post inconsistently. Decide on a posting schedule and stick with it. It doesn’t matter if it’s once a week or four times a week, a schedule will keep you and your social media plan on track. It will protect you from both over posting and under posting.

3) Don’t ignore comments and questions. It’s almost the equivalent of ignoring a person who’s talking directly to you. If someone comments on what you posted on social media, make sure you reply. If people go to the trouble of reading your posts and making comments, you should acknowledge them. Even if it is a simple thank you. And definitely answer any questions.  Answering questions is even better, because everyone gets to see a bit of your knowledge and how great it is to work with you.

4) Don’t forget people are involved. There are automation tools available for social media but using an automated tool will detract from the experience of interacting with your business. People are not dumb; they can tell if a robot is answering them back.

5) Don’t use jargon. When you know a lot about a subject it’s easy to slip into jargon or speech that is familiar only to those in your line of work. No matter what business you’re in, you want to focus on the benefits available to your patients. This will help you steer clear from jargon and focus on your ideal patients and their needs.

6) Don’t violate HIPAA regulations. Never use a patient’s picture or refer to a patient’s case in your posts unless you get written permission. (Even if you don’t use names or any other identifying information.) Beware of inadvertent patient “cameos” when you’re taking selfies in your waiting room or taking pictures with other patients who have given their permission.

7) Don’t engage in a war over social media. Be professional at all times! If the criticizer becomes unreasonable or combative, it’s best to give your phone number and ask the person to call your office directly.

14 Definite “Do’s” For Improving Social Media Marketing in Your Chiropractic Office

DO…

1) Create your marketing plan first. Social media should support and supplement your overall marketing plan. Since your target audience and business goals are baked into your marketing plan, it serves as a guide for the actions you take on social media.

2) Assign a team member to post and monitor your social media channels. Your posting will only be completed if you assign responsibility for it! If you’re doing it yourself, mark out time on your calendar. Respond quickly to both negative and positive feedback alike.  Some social media channels, like Facebook, actually note how long, on average, your office takes to respond. 

3) Choose the appropriate channels. As we stated, Facebook for chiropractors is a safe bet. If you want to become a thought leader and get booked for conferences, post articles on LinkedIn and make connections there. If your ideal patient spends a lot of time on Instagram, you should be there as well.

4) Collect intel from conversations and questions and look for opportunities. You never know where an idea for a new product, service or package can come from. You may get an inkling of a new trend by paying attention to frequently asked questions or requests.

5) Set goals for your social media. Since you don’t want to waste time or resources, align your social media goals with your overall practice goals and marketing plans. Which goals can social media help best with? Results are often hard to quantify, but if you and your staff routinely ask, “How did you hear of us?” you may get a general idea.  If you are technically savvy, create trackable links.  Or, decide to offer something only on your social media channel to see how many “takers” you get.

6) Be consistent with your brand. The tone, topics and imagery that you use in your posts should reflect the personality of your practice. If a team member is making posts, make sure that person understands how you want your practice to be represented.

7) Show your practice behind the scenes. Post about fun things going on in the office and snap pictures once in a while. This allows your social media followers to get a sense of the story of your practice and what it’s like to work with you.

8) Use social media to educate about health. As a chiropractor, you know that when you educate about health, you are assisting people with prevention and giving them information they probably won’t get anywhere else. Posting interesting information about health topics shows off your knowledge while helping people. Use your ChiroTV Network slides for ideas about quick posts, a best practice which also provides consistency for your marketing.

9) Use social media to grow your email list. You can offer something for free, like a health guide, on social media in exchange for signing up to receive your newsletter.

10) Test new marketing ideas. You can use social media to test headlines that work best by gauging the number of shares, comments and re-tweets.

11) Repurpose content. Whether you have created a new product or service or have written an article, you can push this content out with social media. It is a way to expose more eyeballs to the content that you have created. You’ll also reach patients and prospects that might not have visited your website or become members of your newsletter list yet. Social media is great for posting teasers about interesting articles and generating traffic to your website blog. Remember to customize your content to each social media channel.

12) Add social media buttons to your website and emails. Let people know all the channels where they can find you.  Your website and newsletters are good places to start since a simple click gets them there. Your website visitors and newsletter readers can then select their preferred channel to stay in touch with you!

13) Add social sharing buttons to your website blog. If people love your content, make it easy for them to share it with others in their network. After all, if they think it will be helpful to a friend, that could mean a new prospect for you!

14) Create a social media calendar. Once you decide how often you’re going to post on your social media channel, start generating ideas for posts. Buy or print out a yearly calendar and start mapping out events of interest in the community, holidays, the launch of your new product or service, tradeshows or conferences you plan to attend, and other office happenings. Get creative. You will never be searching for a social media topic if you plan ahead.

We hope you enjoyed these tips for social media marketing for your chiropractic practice.  What is the biggest success you’ve experienced when marketing with social media? Share your story here. 

ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors. Our patient education system helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait. For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com

Amend Your Mindset
In this country, most of us were raised under an old-fashioned work ethic that considers hard labor the only way to legitimately “earn” a living.  It’s ingrained in our culture.  A notion left over from the days of impressing your boss.  And maybe at one time it was true; working harder may have been the only way to earn more.  But times are different now and the way we make money in our service-based economy has changed.

Besides, odds are you own your practice and have no one to impress—except for maybe your financial planner at the end of the year.   And you KNOW your brain will turn to mush, your family will forget your face, and you will only experience diminishing returns the longer you slog through back-to-back hours of work-with-no-play.

So, let go of that old mindset and adopt a new one.  You don’t have to work harder, but you do have to work smarter.  While it’s wise to be skeptical about claims that seem too good to be true, there ARE ways to work smarter within the time constraints of your day.

Working smarter means knowing how to allocate your time and focus your efforts so that you earn more without having to put in as many hours.  Realistically, it will take a while to shake completely free from the old-fashioned work ethic, especially if you are a self-described workaholic!  After experiencing some success, you should get more comfortable with the concept.  So, according to any guru worth his salt, to manifest your new mindset, you’ll need to put action behind your intention.  When your intention is to work less while making more money, you want to start with the message you’re putting out there.  And that is your marketing. 

Market Smarter
If you want to work smarter, you have to start with the patients you’re attracting to your practice.  When you gear your marketing correctly, it can replace hard work in a few ways:  1) you can attract the most profitable patients to your office (more money per hour worked), 2) you can attract patients you like working with (which makes work more fun and less hard) and 3) executing your marketing becomes easier and requires less work. 

One way to market smarter is to choose a niche.  Focusing on the specific problems of your niche and the solutions you provide simplifies your marketing messages and consistently attracts more of the clients you love to serve.  Promoting your most profitable services also increases the money you earn per hour for the time you spend working.  

Another way to market smarter is to multitask your marketing.  This strategy allows you to “clone” yourself, so that you don’t have to repeat your marketing messages over and over again.  This could probably save you hours per week!  Once you’ve decided on your niche market and the services you like to focus on, you can promote your message in many places: your website, office flyers, blog articles, guest blogs, brochures and your ChiroTV Network channel, of course.  Your marketing will be more consistent and will reach more people with frequency (which usually makes it more effective).  Since you are developing your messages once and repurposing them across multiple channels, the marketing task will take less of your time.

Increase Profits
Raising prices is one way to earn more for doing the same amount of work.  Take an honest look at your pricing.  Is an increase overdue?  Most patients who value your services will not mind a 10 or 15% increase.  Nobody expects to pay the same price they were paying 10 years ago.  You can do a search online and get lots of strategies and good advice on this.  We took a quick look and found these, which don’t necessarily reference chiropractic practices, but are nonetheless transferable:

Another way to increase profits is to provide premium packaged products and services.  If you increase the sales of products and packaged services, you can increase your profit per patient as you increase the value you provide to them—everyone wins!  Usually, positioning products and services in this way requires very little additional work.  Remember to use your ChiroTV Network system to education your patients about your new products and services while they wait!

Learn the Art of Delegation
Remember to work on activities that you consider your strengths.  Work only on tasks you enjoy.  Spending time doing the things you love to do is energizing.  And we’re cheating a bit here, but it will FEEL like less work!  You may believe some tasks are just quicker to do yourself, but when you add them up it’s more time than you think.  It’s a much better use of your time to train a team member to do certain tasks or to hire a professional.  It is hard to let go, but what advice would you give your stressed and overworked patients to avoid burnout?  Exactly.

Also, remember how much your time is worth.  Working on tasks that you don’t enjoy or are not your strengths is an unprofitable use of your time.  You may be saving some money by doing your own bookkeeping, working on your website or creating educational content for your blog, but people who do this for a living can get it done much faster.  Plus, your marketing will be in better shape and you can start making money on your new ideas sooner.  Just calculate how much you earn per hour (or what you think your time is worth) and then estimate how long it will take you to do these tasks—then double that number!  (It always takes longer.)  It should be fairly obvious whether you can hire somebody for less money.  Meanwhile, you can spend that time earning more from what you do best—or taking a break!

Leaders are Readers
When most successful people are interviewed, they’re usually asked, “What are you reading?”  And they usually answer by naming a dozen newspapers, magazines and books currently littering their homes and offices.  Reading keeps your mind sharp and open to new ideas and opportunities.

While we were a bit snarky about books in the opening paragraph of this article, that does not mean we don’t think they are valuable.  Especially if you realize that one tome of advice will not answer all your questions or solve all your problems.  There are plenty of great business books bursting with ideas you can borrow and apply to your practice. 

The quintessential book about working less and earning more is probably The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss.  Will all his ideas work for your practice?  No.  But maybe one or two will.  And you owe it to your sanity to check it out and try a few.  Remember, working smarter is your new game.  Over time, thinking and acting along those lines will help you concoct your own “secret sauce” for creating the freedom and fulfillment you want—on your terms.

Finally, here’s an article from Entrepreneur about working less and earning more we thought you’d enjoy:  https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248050

If you want to know more about how ChiroTV Network makes it easy for you sell more products and services to your current client base and make your marketing easier, so you earn more and work less, email Steve or reach out to him at 888-480-1350.  If you’re already a member, remember to squeeze every advantage out of your ChiroTV Network system resource!

ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors. Our patient education system helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait. For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com

You deserve high-quality patients—the ones who love you and your practice, pay what you ask (on time) without trying to haggle with you, and refer you to other ideal patients.

You’re strategically attracting a love fest. A profitable one.

Step 1: Identify Your Ideal Patient

There are many advantages to identifying and attracting your ideal patients.  Here are just a few:

• They take less energy from you; indeed, they often energize you.
• It costs less to market to them.
• It takes less time to persuade them your practice is right for them.
• It’s easier to attract them and serve them overall.
• It provides focus for your practice development and your marketing.
• You can charge ideal patients a premium for your offerings.

It’s pretty simple to identify your ideal patient. Just brainstorm with your team about your favorite patients. Who do you love to see coming through the door? Now what do all these patients have in common? It may be the kind of services they come in for. It could be the fact they are always referring you to friends and family.

Take note of their attitudes. Do they really respect the service and knowledge you have to offer? Do they respect and value your time? Do they follow your advice so that they get great results? Now take a look at the demographics of these favorite patients. Are they all twenty-something college students? Are they mothers or fathers? Grandparents? Maybe they have the sort of hobby or job that makes them need your services. In general, you want to attract people you love to have around every day.

When you market to your ideal patient, you’re going to use messaging that addresses their concerns and what’s most important to them. When you identify your ideal patient, your messages, illustrations and the kind of marketing you use will all cater to that ideal patient’s persona. If you pick up any marketing book, there will undoubtedly be a chapter on identifying the best kind of customers for your business. One of our favorites is “The Pumpkin Plan” by Mike Michalowicz. It doesn’t matter which process you use. Just create a good picture of your perfect patient and make sure your staff participates and is aware of your marketing efforts.

Step 2: Create Services Your Ideal Patient Will Love

Once you’ve identified your ideal patient, you want to double-check you are offering services that they will love. Brainstorm with your staff on this question. Maybe they’ve heard some suggestions along the way. However, don’t try to be all things to all people. Not all suggestions are great ideas. What you are doing here is an exercise to define anything missing that you think your ideal patients would love. You might want to create and launch a new kind of package that increases the number of dollars spent per visit AND the value that you provide to each patient. Bundling gives your patients the opportunity to enjoy more services in one stop and receive more comprehensive care. Click here to read our article about launching a new product or service.

Many chiropractors develop a signature workshop for themselves. It should be on a topic of great interest to your ideal patient but also something you are passionate about. When you have developed the signature workshop you can deliver it upon request at local area businesses. See our article about joint ventures for more information on this strategy. A signature workshop can also be turned into a webinar or home study course that you can sell along with other products. This kind of product can create passive income for you. Otherwise known as “making money while you sleep.”

Step 3: Marketing to Attract Profitable Patients

Your marketing message and other content will be dictated by what’s important to your ideal patient. It’s important to know who you are speaking to, not only to attract your ideal patients, but to resist the temptation of attracting the wrong patients. Your exercise in Step #1 will help creative people like graphic artists, web designers and copywriters create marketing materials that resonate with your ideal patient. Don’t be afraid of alienating prospects who do not fit into your ideal patient picture. Non-ideal patients won’t spend as much with you or remain customers as long as ideal patients will.

We wrote a guide about several marketing dos and don’ts for our newsletter subscribers. If you are a newsletter subscriber and haven’t downloaded this guide, email Steve and ask him for a copy. If you’re not yet a newsletter subscriber, go to our homepage, sign up for our newsletter, and you’ll immediately get the guide.

Here are some of the best ways to market for profitable patients:

Ask for referrals from your current ideal patients: Your ideal patients tend to hang out with others just like them and are your best source of referrals. Remember when we asked what your ideal patients having common? If it is a certain sport or type of work, they likely hang out with many other people who play or work exactly like they do.

Ask for testimonials from your current ideal patients: Ideal patients say things in their testimonials that will resonate with strangers who happen upon them on your website. Video testimonials are even better! You can post testimonials on your website, social media and also on your ChiroTV Network channel. (Yes, this is a shameless plug and it’s not the last one.)

Promote all your services:  Your ideal patients need to know about everything you can help them with. They already love and trust you, so make it easy for them to access wellness wherever they need it in life. Their friends and family may also have different needs than they do, and they won’t know you can help unless they are informed.

When you’re aiming to build a family wellness practice for life, the needs of your ideal patients will doubtlessly change with time. Make sure you communicate with them about these needs and develop services if they make sense. Select your key and most profitable services and focus on each one of them for a time in your marketing. Make sure you feature each of them on your website, social media and of course as different segments or slides on your ChiroTV Network channel. (That’s the last shameless plug, we promise.  Although if you are already a subscriber, it’s just a friendly reminder of the power of your multitasking marketing tool!)

Check out resources about marketing to the affluent: Sometimes, your best and most profitable patients will also be the most affluent. As you know, wellness services are rarely covered by insurance and are most often offered on a cash basis. Which is one reason they’re so attractive for chiropractic practices to incorporate into their business models. It does take a certain amount of disposable income to frequent a wellness practice. There are many books written on the subject. Our favorite is Dan Kennedy’s “No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent.”

There you have it. Just our highlights for attracting profitable patients and helping you grow the family wellness center of your dreams. If you have any questions about how to set up your ChiroTV Network system to accomplish any of these suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We thought three points made in the article were especially relevant to chiropractors.  When your days are busy, you must prioritize.  We thought these three trends were good places to start!

The Marketing Funnel Model is Shifting

If you’re not familiar with the term, a marketing funnel describes the journey of a consumer from when she becomes aware of your practice through to converting to a patient.  The prospect is guided, or “funneled,” through a process to take actions that further qualify her as an ideal patient until she actually becomes one. 

Here’s an example: A woman hears about your practice through a chair massage day set up by her office.  Your resident massage therapist gives her a discount card with your website on it.  The woman visits your website and subscribes to your newsletter.  In the newsletter, she reads an article that resonates with her and decides to make an appointment.  The free chair massage, discount card, website, newsletter and article are all parts of the marketing funnel in this example.  You can see on every level of the marketing funnel, there is an action to take that pulls a prospect through.

The point of the Entrepreneur article, however, was that your marketing should be tailored to specific niches of interest.  Prospects should not just be seen as people with wallets.  According to the article, consumers “seek legitimate trust and genuine relationships.” 

Luckily, we’re talking to you, a chiropractor.  Chiropractors are especially suited to personalizing their marketing because they often offer a variety of healing products and services.  And even if you offer straight chiropractic, you’re bound to have a segment of the market that you especially like to attract to your practice.  Use your marketing to promote the specific products and services you offer to the audience that will most benefit from them and appreciate them. 

For example, based on the survey we sent in our last newsletter, many of you sell supplements.  If you do, you should talk about the pain and health issues that require them.  Blog about them, create flyers for them and devise in-house workshops for how to use them for healing.

Influencers Don’t Have to be Famous

The concept of influencer marketing has traditionally been the territory of celebrities.  Consumers were willing to try a product endorsed by someone famous, but this trend is fading.  Consumers want advice from regular people—people just like them with whom they identify.  The article calls these people “micro-influencers.” 

Who are your micro-influencers?  Do you have a fantastic stress-relieving package for young women who work 9 to 5 and are active on weekends?  Then find a patient that others like her can identify with and ask her for a testimonial and a picture!  Better yet, ask her for the testimonial on video.  Video is very powerful.  You can put it on your website and link to it from your newsletter.  Incidentally, our ChiroTV Network customers can also load either video or a custom testimonial slide into their system and set them to appear in their programmed material.

Content is More Important Than Ever

There’s an old saying in marketing: “Content is king.”  Content is anything you communicate to the market through articles, social media posts, videos, email newsletters, brochures—the list goes on.  You use content to attract prospects to your practice, educate your patients and provide something that can be easily shared between people.  The content you develop is a way to interact with the market and let it know what you’re about.

These days, authenticity is important.  Just as people are leaning towards “real” people versus celebrity endorsements, they want to open a dialog with your business to discover whether you can really help them.  Properly developed content matches your ideal patient with your practice which makes everyone happy!

How do you develop great content? 

• Know WHO you are speaking to. Define an ideal patient profile and make sure your content “speaks” to your ideal patient.
• Prioritize the products/services you want to promote.  Focusing on a few important products/services helps you write your content and also create a more relevant marketing funnel, as we described above.  If it’s hard to choose, ask yourself what your ideal patient would find most useful.
• Lean on your ChiroTV Network system.  Yes, this is a shameless plug.  Your ChiroTV Network system is FULL of content ideas that you can build upon.  And in reverse, when you develop your own content, you can easily create custom announcements and advertisements to include in your message rotation.

Developing content take a bit of work, but once you do it, you can use it in multiple ways.  This increases the ROI on your content creation efforts.  Read our article “Top 4 Ways to Educate Your Patients with Repurposed Marketing Content” here. 

We hope these top three tips help you narrow down your marketing efforts and we wish you a prosperous 2019!  As promised, here is a link to the Entrepreneur article.  https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/324043

How do you sell more to your current patients? Educate! You may think you don’t have the time, but there are ways to multiply your efforts several times over through repurposing.

Why Repurpose Your Marketing Content?
When you focus on creating the marketing messages and plans for a product or service, you can use the content you produce in multiple places. If you planned a product launch using our article as a guide, you already completed much of the work! In this digital age, it’s easy to edit for a new purpose, copy and paste. Every time you offer a new product or service, follow the steps for a launch and re-use the content!

You should also repurpose across a variety of advertising media. For example, don’t rely solely on your website to market your practice. Google, Yelp and other search engines often change their rules. You need to stay on top of these changes and maximize the advantages of online marketing. But you also need to minimize the effect of any one digital marketing tool on your business by diversifying. Additionally, your patients pay attention to different things. Not all of them will get your email newsletters. Not all of them will follow you on social media. When you vary the advertising media you use, your practice becomes more visible overall.

Whether you work with your team or a professional marketer to develop your marketing messages and content, repurposing maximizes your return on investment for these efforts. The following four areas represent different advertising media and are excellent places to repurpose your marketing content.

Elevate Your Emails
Do you have an email list? If you do, you can make it work ten times better. You don’t need a big list. Just use the list you have in the smartest way possible. This begins with the very first email. Most email services will alert your subscribers with a Welcome email right after they sign up. This is okay but go a step further. You can supercharge your Welcome email with a free educational PDF download or guide. If you create marketing content for each of the services you offer, you only have to compile them and hand them over to a graphic artist for layout. The main point to remember is to make it informative and relevant, not sales-y.

Another way to supercharge your email list is to create an autoresponder series. When you set up an autoresponder, people who sign up to your email list will get a Welcome message and every couple of days, they will get another email in the series. Again, use your product and service descriptions to provide the content for each email in the series. Make the email informative and maybe add a coupon. People who sign up to your email list will be more aware of everything you offer. Most email providers (Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc.) offer service plans with the ability to easily create and program your Welcome message and autoresponder series.

Put it on Paper
When you have your marketing concepts sketched out about each of your products and services, create printed brochures, flyers and posters. Again, this is so that you can reach places digital media does not reach. Remember that PDF guide for your Welcome email? You can print it out and have them handy for patients who express an interest in any of the services covered.

Find out if vendors will give you co-op marketing dollars for the pieces you create that feature their products. Often, you must merely include their logo to earn their support. This will help you get a return on your investment quicker. Give brochures to joint venture partners or referral partners. Use the brochures as handouts during health fairs.

Website Wizardry
Create a web page for each of the main products and services you offer through your practice. Each web page can also serve as a landing page. For example, when you mention a service in an email or elsewhere on the website, you can easily link to that specific page on your website. Interested readers will click to get more detailed information about the service and will spend more time on your website. This strategy shows your expertise in each area and improves your organic search engine rankings.

Additionally, if you’ve asked your web developer to install Google Analytics or another website traffic tracker on your site, you can see which pages are most popular. This will serve you when you are budgeting time and money for your practice. You can see how creating product and service pages is itself a repurposing strategy. You create these pages once and can use them over and over again!

Sell More with a ChiroTV Network System
Yes, this is the shameless plug for our services. Whether you’re already a member or still deciding, it is a reminder of how the ChiroTV Network system can help you sell more with little additional effort on your part. ChiroTV Network educates your current patients as they wait, at the beginning or end of their visit to your office. This is the easiest way to sell more to your current client base without having to be sales-y.

With ChiroTV Network, you can customize your content to your heart’s content! (Pun intended.) Once you create marketing materials and messages for your main products and services, you can easily create custom slides with the information! Nothing is better or more convenient for repurposing marketing. Conversely, since ChiroTV Network is already loaded with hundreds of ideas, you can even work backwards and use your system as a wellspring of marketing inspiration to repurpose in all the other areas we’ve been discussing in this article.

If you want to know more about how ChiroTV Network makes it easy for you sell more products and services to your current client base and repurpose your marketing, email Steve or reach out to him at 888-480-1350. Especially if you’re already a member, squeeze every advantage out of your ChiroTV Network system resource!

ChiroTV Network is a family-run business built exclusively by chiropractors, for chiropractors. Our product helps chiropractors seamlessly market and sell more of their services and products to patients while they wait. For a demo and a free 30-day trial, call Steve Madnick at 888-480-1350 or go to www.ChiroTVNetwork.com

That said, since health fairs often attract individuals who value natural healthcare, they can offer a great opportunity for you to connect with prospects. In this digital world, face-to-face interaction with prospects is limited. At a health fair, your ideal prospects converge upon one place, where they are all accessible to you! Like for any other marketing venture, if you have a plan for participating in health fairs and follow through afterwards (where most people fall short), your return on investment will be higher.  Exhibiting at local events can be a successful marketing strategy for your practice.

Pre-Show Preparation
First, decide whether you want to participate in an event. This can be done by asking a few questions:

Questions for Event Organizers: Are the event organizers targeting your ideal patient? Do their promotional plans seem adequate? How many attendees do they expect? Does this seem realistic? How many times have they held this event? Do they share attendee lists before/after the event for your marketing use?

Questions for Your Practice: Can participation in the health fair help accomplish your overall marketing and practice growth goals? Can you easily promote your participation through your regular marketing strategies (newsletter, ChiroTV Network system, advertising)? Do you have time to plan and prepare adequately, or should you make a note for next year?

Once you decide to participate:

Set your expectations (based on what you know) to measure the success of the show. Decide on a new patient goal or how much you want to grow your email list. Estimate how much everything will cost. Determining a few metrics ahead of time will give you a basis of comparison across events and will help you make decisions later.

Find ways to promote the health fair. This helps show your community support and brands you and your practice in the community. Helping to promote the show will enhance the event’s success and demonstrates that you are supportive of the community’s overall and lasting health. There are several ways you can promote your participation in the event.

• Create a coupon that show attendees can present at your booth in exchange for a free giveaway item. Email/mail this coupon to your lists before the show. Display them in your office. Sometimes, event organizers will provide you with a list of people who have RSVPed before the show (likely given because they anticipate freebies!) It’s OK to invite current patients to the show. They may be proud to introduce you to family and friends who are not yet patients.
• Promote a small free service, like a posture analysis, that will be conducted at your booth. Recently, we saw an IT company advertise a “free dark web scan” in a pre-event email. What a great idea! The IT company is building good will (offering a first step for data protection), growing its email database (name and email are collected on the offer page) and branding its business (with an intriguing offer)–all before the show!
• Participate in the event organizer’s promotions and games. Event organizers like to have successful and fun events, so they often create games that attendees can play on social media or during the event with extra exposure for exhibitors. Some of these are free and some are paid. It’s up to you to decide whether it makes sense to pay for additional exposure. This usually depends on how strongly the health fair aligns with attracting your ideal patients and reaching your practice goals.
• Decide on a theme for your booth. To make this decision, look at what you’re pushing as your most profitable program, service, or product. Align the theme of your booth with the goals you have for your practice and the messages you want to communicate.  Just as you would for any other marketing or advertising campaign.

Shine at the Show
First impressions are very important. There will be a lot going on at the show and you’ll only have a few seconds to attract attention. Your booth should look professional and stand out. Your team should be identifiable as a team, as in wearing the same shirt with your company logo.

Behavior is also important. Do not hide behind your table. Make eye contact with passersby and greet them. Ask them a question related to your booth theme. Invite them to partake in a free sample or demonstration. According to research, 80% of event attendees say free samples help them decide to buy. Don’t just give something away, however. Ask to add them to your email list or some other form of reciprocity. The bigger the giveaway, the more you can ask. If you would like to build your direct-mail list and need a home address, you’ll probably need to offer more than a pen.

A note: Before adding show attendees to your email lists willy-nilly, familiarize yourself with your country’s anti-spam regulations.  This is the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation) in Canada and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union.  These regulations outline certain proofs of permission required to add folks to your list and may levy fines for violating the rules.  The email provider you use (MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc.) may have summaries and guidelines that are easier to understand than the legislation itself.

Many times, event organizers set up social media hashtags for their shows. Use your social media accounts to post in real-time. Talk about the event and post pictures of your team at the booth. There are also ways to use these pictures in your marketing when you return to the office.

Lastly, talk to your peers. You can pick up on trends, learn new industry information and possibly find some joint venture partners to help you reach your goals.

Follow Up Faithfully
This is where most event exhibitors fall down but is the biggest opportunity to increase your return on investment. Just a few tips for following up:

• If you promised something to somebody, do it! Provided you’ve taken good notes, give people a call back, send them that email with the resource you mentioned, put a brochure in the mail.
• Immediately upload and “tag” emails from people who signed up to your list at the show. This is so you can keep track of who becomes a patient down the road and where they heard of you. Most email programs have a way to do this.
• Email those who attended the show and signed up for your email newsletter. Find out how they liked the event. Send them your welcome email with a free download or an autoresponder series of information about your practice. Include pictures from the event to remind them of your booth. (This is why we suggest taking pictures at your booth with your team.)
• Create an office event with the same theme as your booth. This will give people the opportunity to learn more if you piqued their interest at the show. Use the questions they asked to create your content. Send the details to your entire list.
• Record the metrics for anything that can be measured: number of appointments scheduled, increase in email list, etc. Make sure to record actual expenses once the event is over.
• Have a short meeting with your team to download the lessons you learned from the experience.
  • Compare the ending metrics with your earlier lists of estimates and goals. Did you hit your numbers?  Why or why not?
  • Find out from your team members what they thought worked and what they thought didn’t work. Did you make valuable connections from prospects and/or industry peers?
  • What were the most frequently asked questions when event attendees approached your booth? This information can be used for future informational events, articles and marketing materials.
  • Overall, decide whether you would like to do this event again and/or what you would do differently.  Maybe you’d spend the money elsewhere next year! 

There you have it!  Just a little bit of planning can help you make smart decisions about health fair participation and increase your return on investment when you do attend.

Resource: https://blog.bizzabo.com/event-marketing-statistics