"Are The Days Of The One Hit Wonder Marketing Dead?"

Then again, this probably isn't news to you. Especially if you are in the trenches every day, slugging it out against tons of other marketing...Chiropractic and other industries...fighting to get a few minutes of your prospect's attention.

As I survey my clients, their biggest self-reported challenges with marketing today is limited amounts of time to implement marketing and an over-reliance on one or two campaigns to produce enough new patients every month to sustain and more important, to grow their practice. Most of the time these one or two campaigns produce a few patients each...at best, leaving the doctor wondering where the next new patients are going to come from. Not a small dilemma.

As with every marketing problem, there is a solution though...  

John Carlton, one of America's best living copywriters says that "there is a solution for every marketing problem that you can think of". I believe it...and have seen examples of it over and over again.

So, in the spirit of solving major marketing problems, I will borrow from the mailing giant Agora, one of the best marketing strategies I've ever seen and implemented in my own business as well as my Chiropractic clients offices with outstanding results. They use the term "Multi-Channel Marketing". 

Here's how it works: Your prospective patients each respond to different methods (channels) of marketing messages. Some prefer the internet, some direct mail, some newspaper editorials, some radio, some television, etc... You get the idea.  Experts have found that people prefer one media to the next and these preferred media (usually trusted media) will trigger a buying response from them. 

You are probably already doing this with your investment portfolio...why not your marketing?

You have two choices. First, try to find out what the majority of your area's potential Chiropractic patients respond most to. Or, second (better), fire off as many marketing campaigns across as many marketing channels as your budget will allow. The results give you pretty much what "dollar cost averaging" does for your investment portfolio. 

You will ultimately get some of the channels giving you a high ROI (return on investment), while others will break even, and some will go negative.   Quickly, you can pull out the negative and even the break even and focus your future marketing on the channels that give only a positive ROI.

Here's some stats from Agora you may find interesting...

"Customers who buy from two channels are between 20-60% more valuable (responsive)...those who buy from three or more channels 60-125% more valuable." Here's what that means: The more channels you can effectively put your marketing in, the higher response rates you'll get.  If you can hit the same prospects with multiple messages, using multiple channels (or even the same message using multiple channels), they will be more likely to respond. I think you'll agree, that makes perfect sense.

Basically, the key is to reach your potential patients in the way they want to be reached and solve their health problems through your Chiropractic marketing message.

Here's some practical tips to get you started on this brilliant concept ...

1. Chose marketing that has worked for you in the past or is currently working right now.
2. Chose media channels that have worked for you in the past or is currently working right now.
3. Use only marketing that solves the biggest problems that your prospective patients have...like low back pain etc... You can't create a need in the market, you can only channel existing needs toward your solution.
4. Continually test new channels.
5. Survey your patients to see what channels and what marketing they respond to.
6. Implement as much marketing as possible within your budget. Push the limits as much as you can.
7. Make your marketing offers irresistible and make it easy for people to respond.

That's a good introductory lesson on this strategy. More to come...I promise.

If you need tools to help you really roll this out, I have them available for you in my "recommendation area". Just click on any of them to learn more. You don't necessarily need mine though. You can create your own or locate other resources as well.

Good luck. I'm excited to hear about your success with this strategy. Drop me an email with questions or comments on this topic.