Welcome back!

Last week I gave a free webinar in partnership with Unified Practice about how to get more patients from your Instagram marketing.

One of the most common things that people ask me about social media marketing in general, especially with Instagram, is, why don’t I get new patients from Instagram even though I’m spending time on the app? What am I doing wrong?

So today I want to share the answer that I gave the audience in the webinar last week, because I think this is a really common struggle.

People often tell me they’re putting time and energy into their social media but it doesn’t feel worth it because they never actually see any return on their investment.

I don’t want that to be you. There are over a billion people on Instagram (yes, a BILLION), which means that your potential patients are on there.

But you’ve got to use Instagram the right way to get in front of a local audience and build the know-like-trust factor so that they become your patients.

This is something I teach in-depth inside Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists. There are strategies you can use to make your time on Instagram more efficient and effective.

So let’s dive in and talk about five reasons you’re not getting acupuncture patients from Instagram!

Show Notes:

• Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists
• Acupuncture Marketing School
• Join me on Instagram @michellegrasek
• Free Acupuncture Social Media Templates

💖 Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review! Leave a review here.

🎙️ 5 Reasons You’re Not Getting More Acupuncture Patients from Instagram:

Transcript:

Hey there, welcome back. Last week I gave a free webinar in partnership with Unified Practice, all about how to get more patients from your Instagram marketing.

And one of the most common things that people ask me about social media marketing in general, especially with Instagram marketing, is, why don’t I get new patients from Instagram even though I’m spending time on the app?

So I want to share the answer that I gave the audience in the webinar last because I think this is a really common struggle. People often tell me they are putting time and energy into their social media but it doesn’t feel worth it because they never actually see any return on their investment.

So today I want to talk about five reasons your efforts on Instagram might not be converting your followers into patients. Because really that should be your ultimate goal with your social media marketing, right? There are a lot of so-called vanity metrics on social media that we tend to focus on, like the number of followers we have, how many likes and comments we’re getting on our posts, how many views our videos are getting, etc. All of that is important only in the context of getting the opportunity to educate people about acupuncture on your social media account, right?

None of that matters if people are not converting from digital followers into real life patients in your office. So let’s talk about these five things so that you can start doing to get more return for your social media efforts. And I’m going to focus on Instagram today but these five things apply across pretty much any social media platform.

I love Instagram as a marketing platform for my clinic and I actually have an online course, Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists. Instagram is my favorite place to show up online for both my clinic in my marketing business. So I’ll put the link for the course in the show notes, if you want to take a look.

And before we dive in I just want to say thank you so much to all the new students who joined me inside Acupuncture Marketing School last week. Hopefully you didn’t miss it, but there was a big sale on Acupuncture Marketing School and I offered some pretty great bonuses for anyone who enrolled last week. So thank you and if you guys are listeners, it’s very exciting to have you inside the class. If you have questions about Acupuncture Marketing School or this is the first time you’ve heard me talk about it, I will put the link in the show notes so you can take a look.

Let’s dive in with today’s topic, five reasons you are not getting new patients from Instagram.

The first reason I see that a lot of acupuncturists don’t get new patients from Instagram is that they have no big picture strategy for their Instagram marketing.

And part of this is because they are not taking Instagram seriously as a marketing avenue. They’re actually still treating Instagram like a hobby.

So if you’re only posting on Instagram when you feel inspired or you’re posting inconsistently or you really don’t have a big goal for your efforts on Instagram, then that means you are thinking about it more like a hobby then part of your overall business strategy.

The number one thing that I always start my students out with for social media marketing is to ask them to define: what is their goal for posting on social media this week? What do they want to be the outcome of their efforts on social media in the upcoming week?

Once you’ve defined a goal, then you can create posts and curate content that drives your audience towards that goal.

But if you’re just posting randomly or showing up whenever it’s convenient or when you feel inspired, it’s just not as effective. Yes, you are getting out in front of your audience, which is great, don’t get me wrong. But these are posts that lack direction.

What works best for my marketing students and my clinic is scheduling social media in advance, which as I mentioned includes defining your goal for the outcome you want for the week and creating content around that goal or that in that plan.

For example, if your goal was to get more patients on your schedule, I would first ask you to get more specific. So, what kind of patients? Let’s say you want to get more fertility patients on your schedule next week. That is your goal for everything that you’re going to be publishing on Instagram this week.

So what kind of posts might you need to share, or what kind of message would you need share, to get people to click the schedule now button? Basically creating a marketing strategy for Instagram for the upcoming week is as simple as that question – asking yourself, “What messages do I need to share that will drive people towards my goal?”

So this could be as simple as – well, let me say first that I usually recommend publishing three times a week on Instagram. This is sort of a sweet spot. It’s not too much, so that it’s overwhelming and you get burnt out, and it also keeps you in front of your audience on a very regular basis.

Let’s say that you want more fertility patients in your practice. Let’s brainstorm those three posts for the week.

You could have one post where you share a really great fertility testimonial, if this is something that’s appropriate to share in your country. I know not every country allows you to use testimonials in your marketing as an acupuncturist. Australia, I’m looking at you.

Another post could be an inspirational quote or message encouraging your audience, letting them you know to be gentle with themselves on their fertility journey. Something that you feel really confident will resonate with them. And obviously this does not have to be a quote that you came up with. It could be a quote that you share from another fertility specialist or another fertility account on Instagram. As long as you give them credit, that’s fine.

And then your last post could be answering the question, how many treatments do I need for fertility and explaining why that’s the case. Or if you wanted something different you could talk about common recommendation that you give to your fertility patients and how people might put that into practice in their life at home.

This leads me to the second reason that a lot of people don’t get patients from Instagram: They never use calls to action in their posts or stories.

So while it’s very important to have this content that is focused on the specific kind of patients that you want, these posts are not nearly as effective as they could be unless you include a call to action.

A call to action is when you tell people what you want them to do and how to do it. And the most common call to action on Instagram of course is, “Click the link in my bio to schedule now.” Or you might say, “Click the link in my bio to set up a free consult, or “Call this number to set up a free consult.”

Those are all calls to action that you could easily include after explaining something to your audience about how acupuncture works as part of their fertility journey, for example.

If you’re teaching someone in a post or on your Instagram story or in a video how many treatments they need for fertility, that content helps them understand how acupuncture fits into their fertility goals. But you have to say, typically at the end of your explanation or at the end of your post, “If you’re ready to add acupuncture to your fertility treatments or to use acupuncture to reach your fertility goals, click the link in my bio to schedule now.”

You have to tell people what you want them to do next. Otherwise, no matter how great your content is, it’s not nearly as strong of a post as it could be. In the digital world, people expect to hear calls to action because it actually makes their life easier. They know what is the next appropriate thing for them to do after learning from you and they don’t have to click around and figure it out for themselves.

The third reason that you might not be getting patients from Instagram is not repeating your marketing messages enough.

Often I’ll see acupuncturists teach something once on their Instagram account and then they never teach it again. So basically they are not repeating their marketing message and educating about their specialties often enough to get the message out in front of enough people. For people to have heard it enough times to take an action.

I talk about this all the time, but it’s a really common concept in marketing that people need to hear the same message 5 to 7 times before they’re ready to take action, right?

Every time they hear your message, that’s considered a touchpoint. And 5 to 7 touchpoints on average are needed before people are ready to make an appointment or make an investment of their time or money.

So that means that in order for your marketing to be successful you have to be repeating yourself over and over again and this includes on social media.

One thing to think about is that some of your followers are new and they’ve never heard you teach this particular information before. And then other followers may have heard you explain in the past, for example how many treatments do I need for fertility, but they actually need to hear it several times before they’re ready to make an appointment.

If you think about when you learn something new, especially if it’s asking you to sort of stretch yourself or try something new like acupuncture, you might need some time to digest the information and process whether it’s a good fit for you. And so hearing it multiple times and hearing that consistent message over and over is really helpful for most people.

So, how often are we talking? For example: if you’ve already taught on your Instagram account, “How many appointments do I need for fertility,” or whatever your specialty is, you could probably repeat that message every single week and that would be fine. That’s not too much and people aren’t going to get tired of it. You’re going to have new patients who have never heard it, and regular followers who need to hear it multiple times before they take action.

Reason number four that people don’t get patients from Instagram is simply that they’re not posting consistently enough.

I mentioned earlier that three posts a week is sort of a sweet spot for most of my students where it helps them stay in front of their audience. It helps them stay top of mind, AKA their audience doesn’t forget about them. And their audience also learns to trust that they’re going to be showing up in their feed sharing valuable, interesting information on a regular basis.

Compared to if you have this flurry of posts for a few weeks and then you get burnt out and you disappear for five or six weeks, people legitimately forget about your account. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

In addition, the algorithm is not going to make your life easy when you return. It’s going to take some time for you to build back up with regular posts before Instagram starts distributing your posts to your followers the way it was before you disappeared. I hope that makes sense.

Basically if you just pace yourself and do a couple of posts a week to stay in front of your audience, it also helps the algorithm to see that you are getting engagement and that you are showing up on the app regularly, and that is good for your account. It means that Instagram is going to continue showing your content to your followers.

And then the last reason that people aren’t able to transition their followers into patients is not letting people get to know a little bit on your Instagram account.

What I see really commonly is that people don’t share the person behind their brand. In other words, they don’t let their audience get to know them even just a tiny bit.

I always tell my marketing students that sharing about yourself or your life on social media is always to your comfort level. You do not need to do so much sharing that it feels like oversharing to you. And that’s going to be different for every person.

Part of this is a little bit of trial and error, just to see what feels good to you to share versus what does not.

So if you don’t want to share about your kids or what you ate for breakfast or you don’t want to share photos from your last vacation, that’s totally fine.

At the bare minimum you need to share photos of your face, whether these are professional head shots or selfies or pictures that are more casual that someone else has taken. And introduce yourself every two weeks to your audience.

Because then when people land on your Instagram account homepage and they scroll even just a tiny bit they’re likely to come across a post with your face. That is really helpful in making the decision about whether or not they want you as their acupuncturist. Because we’re social creatures and seeing your face and reading your introduction about who you are, that helps build trust.

It’s natural for us to have that trust-building process when we’re looking at either a photo or video of someone’s face. So obviously sharing video is going to build this trust even faster.

But my point here is simply that you have to let people in a tiny, tiny bit so that they have the opportunity to decide, “Do I want this person to be my acupuncturist, do I feel like I know this person well enough to make this decision?” As opposed to feeling like your brand is totally static and not having any idea of who the therapist is, who would they be meeting when they arrive at your office.

So I know that this is hard sometimes, sharing your face or sharing a little bit about your personal life. Again, it’s to your comfort level.

If you’re comfortable with it, you can share things like: what are your interests or hobbies outside of work.

You can even pick two or three things that you’re comfortable sharing and focus on those instead of sharing like broad information about different areas of your life. It’s totally fine to keep it narrow. That will still allow people the opportunity to build that know-like-trust factor with you.

For example, the things that I commonly like to share on my clinic account are that I’m a cat lady – my cat has her own Instagram account and I feel like that solidifies my status as a cat lady. I also share that I love hiking and being outdoors and that I love Harry Potter and basically wish I was a real life Hermione.

These are just a couple of random tidbits about me that certain people can really relate to and in some ways they find entertaining, right? Ask yourself what makes you unique that you’re willing to share to help people get to know you a tiny bit so you can build that know-like-trust factor. To help them decide, “Yes, I think I’d be comfortable with this person in treatment.”

And that brings them so much closer to becoming your real-life patients. It really moves them along that spectrum from digital follower to real-life patient in your office on your table.

I hope that these tips are really helpful for you and if you put some of them into action on your Instagram account, I would love for you to tag me @michellegrasek and let me know how it’s going and what’s working for you.

And before you go I just want to say that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I would be releasing some free social media templates. I did release those, yay! But I don’t believe that I actually announced it on the podcast.

I’ve teamed up with the Acupuncture Photography Project to create five free beautiful templates specifically for our industry. These are very easy to edit to match your brand using Canva.com, which is a free graphic design website. It’s very easy to use.

So I will drop that link into the show notes for you [or click here to access them) . And most of those templates are indeed Instagram templates so you can use them to get started posting consistently on your Instagram account.

I hope those are incredibly helpful and that they make your life easier. That’s the kind of thing I love to create for you.

Alright, thank you so much for being here with me! As always, it’s a pleasure to chat about marketing and to hang out with you. Until next time!