With Easter coming up, it is important that you focus your efforts to make the most out of the season! Here are my 5 top tips to ensure you have a booster Easter in clinic!
1. Stick to the three pillars of a seasonal campaign.
The most important thing to make sure you have as part of every seasonal campaign is ‘the three pillars’. Here is a quick reminder of what these three pillars are:
New Patient Acquisition – Directly targeting new clients who have never previously done business with you. Typically achieved through Facebook/Instagram adverts, spinal screening or talks.
Reactivation – Targeting clients who have fallen out of care with you with
an offer to encourage them back into care.
This is typically done through a combination of email, text, direct mail and social campaigns.
Internal Referral –Targeting your current clients with an offer to bring in their family
or friends for a discounted, initial consultation. This is typically accompanied by a competition or incentive for your clients to encourage them to refer.
By including these three pillars, you hit all bases. We all know the worst number in business is one, this is never truer then when it comes to marketing. You should always strive to have multiple channels to acquire customers. This covers your back, so if one of these channels is taken away, or is under performing, you will still have fantastic campaigns and solid new patient acquisition numbers. The majority of the time,
all three channels will fire on all cylinders, and you will create some crazy momentum in your practice as old, new and referred clients come flooding through the doors!
2. Theme your lead generation and internal referral.
Social media lead generation adverts and internal referral campaigns can return many new patients again and again, so long as you manage them correctly. The best way to do this is by running them on a seasonal basis. This means you don’t have to ‘re-invent the wheel’ every campaign. You can take the exact same strategy, pushing the exact same offer and, by simply switching up the theme, make it look completely different and therefore more interesting to your audience.
Within your Facebook lead generation, switch up the copy to have an Easter twist (E.g ‘’Give your spine a new lease of life this easter’’). You can also theme your ad by changing the pictures/videos to have easter references (borders, costumes etc.) and by adding easter themed emojis into your copy (Think eggs, bunnies, and chocolate).
For your re-activation campaigns, you should have some vouchers printed in the theme of easter. These can simply be business card size and must include what the offer is, how they claim it and an expiry date. If you want to take it one step further you can pair your internal referral voucher with a small gift. My favourite example of this was when we gave everyone a willy Wonka themed chocolate bar. Within each bar was a golden ticket which acted as the internal referral voucher. Let your creativity run wild here and let me know what you come up with!
3. Do not forget your old records.
Many Chiropractic practices have been around for 5, 10 even 15+ years. If you fall into this category, the likelihood is you may have only (in relative terms) recently moved into storing your data digitally and collecting email addresses. If this is you, listen up! Those old records are INCREDIBLY VALUABLE TO YOU! For most practices, they will have 100’s if not 1000’s of old records of people who are no longer in care. Obviously, we advise you to run email campaigns to these people, but what if you only have paper records with phone numbers?
Nothing will get you a bigger return on investment this Easter then putting aside some time for yourself or your team to go through these records, calling every single person. Several of our Inner Circle members have done this recently and seen huge uptake (over 100 new patients in some cases). This phone call is super easy and won’t come across ‘salesy’. Here is the premise of the call.
‘’Hi [Name], Dr. [Name] here calling from [Practice Name]. We are just giving you a quick call to check in and see how you are doing. We just wanted to reach out to see how you are getting on with [condition if applicable]? [Answer]. We really want to help as many people with their health as possible and as part of the outreach program we are currently running within the practice, we are offering all clients the chance to come in for a [Offer, Something good! These are potentially very valuable to you, think free re-assessment plus extras] Does that sound like something you would be interested in?’’
It’s as easy as that. Call everyone and you are 100% guaranteed to gain new reactivated patients … Just do it!
4. Incentivise your staff.
Our teams are pivotal to the success of our practices.
Building a great team is hard! So, when you get those key players, you want to hold on to them. We all know how hard it is to find that perfect all-rounder. Many CA’s are great at the admin and customer service bit, but massively lack the skills, or actively disliked, ‘selling’. This is a problem, because your CA’s are your salespeople, so how can we make them better and happier to sell … through incentives!
Whenever we run a focused internal referral push, we run a competition within our 9 clinics. The CA’s at the clinic with the most internal referrals by the end of the campaign get a £200 cash bonus each. Many CA’s are paid within the region of £18k-£25k salary, so £200 extra will be greatly appreciated. You can easily set a target you would be happy with and if they hit it, they get the bonus. Don’t be ‘tight’ when it comes to these incentives, if this pushed your CA to get even one extra referral, then the incentive will pay for itself 3x over.
If you run an associate practice, don’t include your docs in these incentives. They are constantly incentivised by new patients and will prosper directly from these. Don’t think your CA’s don’t know that either, if the CA’s are working hard to pull in the new patients, it’s only fair that they see a piece of the pie! This small thought will increase productivity and help your CA’s stay happy and motivated, preventing the dreaded burn out that can so easily occur when running campaigns like this!
5. Don’t forget to market to your current clients.
When we say ‘marketing’, everyone’s minds instantly turn to external marketing, but this is only half the picture. We all have diaries full of current customers, who regularly use and like our service. So, don’t forget to market to them! These are effectively walking salespeople/testimonials and are primed and ready to endorse your services on your behalf, they just need a little push.
Internal referrals are a great way to take advantage of this good relationship. In this article, we have already touched on handing out vouchers in practice etc. But there is no reason why you shouldn’t make your internal referral campaign into a full-fledged marketing campaign.
This Easter, try sending a simple three email campaign to all your active clients, reminding them that they can refer. Include a link in these emails that they can fill out so they can even refer from the comfort of their own home. You want to make this process as easy as possible for them. Think about sending an internal referral ‘insert’ in your next newsletter or upload your database into Facebook as a custom audience and target them with a video advert of you explaining the offer to them (with a link attached to book of course!).
Even if you do everything right in clinic, many people will leave the practice, go home and completely forget about your offer, even if they were intending to take you up on it. So, showing up in their inbox, in their letter box and on their Facebook feed is the perfect way to remind them and allow them to take action.
Remember, you offer a great product, and your internal referral offer should boast incredible valuable. So, if you are not marketing to your current clients, you are doing them, your communities and yourself a disservice by not allowing yourself the chance to help as many people as possible. If you position this correctly, you will have people literally thanking you for reminding/telling them about your offer!
By taking your internal referral campaigns to the next level, you are guaranteed to see an increase in results, and will be well on your way to building a referral machine which will help massively towards growing your practice exponentially and will free you up to spend more money on your front-end marketing.
There you have it! My 5 top tips to make this Easter marketing push your best ever! If you manage to implement all 5 tips, let me know what results you see in your practice!
