5 Marketing Ideas You Haven’t Tried from AcuPro Academy
Hi everyone!
Today I’m excited to chat with Clara Cohen, acupuncturist and founder of AcuPro Academy. AcuPro Academy is an educational and practice-building resource just for acupuncturists. This is actually the second time I’ve interviewed Clara – check out her first interview here: The Yin and Yang of Marketing Your Acupuncture Practice.
Clara has a pretty amazing story – she was born in France but relocated to Canada with only $500 in her pocket 20 years ago. Since then she’s supported herself, taught herself English, got her doctorate in TCM, and built a thriving clinic from the ground up. Talk about self-motivated!
Clara is energetic and creative, and as a result AcuPro Academy is a lot of fun. One of the most popular features of AcuPro Academy are the graphics Clara creates to help acupuncturists review point functions and diagnoses. Be sure to follow her on Facebook (she has over 22,000 followers!) and Instagram to get updates on her graphics.
AcuPro Academy has three free courses:
Definitely check out the 7-Day Business Challenge! It covers three big methods to build your practice from the inside (the yin of marketing), and three big methods to build your practice from the outside (the yang of marketing).
Today Clara’s sharing five marketing tips you might not have tried yet – give them a try and let me know how it goes!
1 – Promote your blog post!
So you’ve written a great blog post. You’ve polished it, it’s educational, entertaining and shows your expertise. Now what? It’s really important that you blast it all over the internet (and not just once on your Facebook page!). Most practitioners spend so much time creating a great blog post but don’t promote it, so nobody reads it.
Put it on your Facebook page, ask your FB friends to share it (if they think it might be useful to someone they know), post it on ALL your social media. Then do it again a couple of days later. And again, because most people would have missed it the first time!
2 – Is your site mobile friendly?
I sure hope so, it’s 2018!
You know 70% of all users are on their mobile devices and not on a desktop. Recently at my clinic we posted a link on our social media to our city’s website. This is a big site and we discovered it wasn’t mobile friendly at all (the city dropped the ball on that one!). People had to find a small link at the bottom, that redirected them to a desktop site. People gave up and moved on!
Make it easy for potential patients to find you, and easy to navigate your site from their smart phones.
3 – Do you schedule your FB posts in advance?
Once a week, take some time to schedule seven posts, one for each day of the week. Be consistent and make the posts personal. If you share articles or other people’s content, write something about the article that you think will benefit your fans. Don’t just share and say nothing. Connect to your audience! When people leave comments, always reply, show you appreciate them taking the time to write on your page. (Note from Michelle: I use Hootsuite to schedule my social media posts in advance. It’s fantastic, saves time and stress, and there’s even a free version.)
Your scheduled posts could look like this:
- Monday: Inspirational Quote
- Tuesday: Promote another business in your area
- Wednesday: Healthy recipe
- Thursday: Promote your services, your event, or your latest blog post
- Friday: Share a great article on acupuncture research
- Saturday: Share something funny or ask a pertinent questions!
- Sunday: Share something personal, a patient testimonial, the hike you went on, what you cooked for dinner…
4 – Do you ask for testimonials and do you get them?
If a patient is happy with your services, you need their testimonial! Make it easy for your patients to rate you. You may ask them but everyone is so busy most of the time, they forget.
Here’s what works well: put a poster in your clinic’s bathroom, and waiting/reception area on how patients can rave about you on Google, Facebook, or Yelp, telling them if they’re on their devices why not give you a thumbs up online!
Also have a little stack of ready-made testimonial sheets on a clipboard with a pen. The sheet should ask them to sign away the right for you to publish the testimonial on your website. These two methods have worked quite well for my clinic, while the patient waits for his/hers appointment.
5 – Are you connecting with potential patients and peers who could refer to you?
Building relationships is crucial to growing a successful practice. I know you’ve already built great connections with your existing patients because you keep wowing them with your dependability, compassion and caring personality.
But how do you connect with others in order to keep your influx of new patients coming in?
Are you an extrovert? Call your local community center or local health food store, and tell them you’d love to give a FREE talk on Eastern Nutrition, for example. Talk about cold versus hot foods: and bring two recipes, a cooling one and warming one.
Are you an introvert? Connect to local peeps on social media, share their posts, comment and give positive feedback on Twitter and Facebook. Take 15 minutes daily to make sure others know who you are and what it is you can help them with.
I hope you keep taking action in order to see positive changes in the growth of your practice.
Keep rocking it using TCM & don’t forget YOU are a rock star!
~ Clara
Thank you for sharing, Clara!
Be sure to follow Clara on Facebook and Instagram, and check out her free courses!