How to outline a marketing strategy for your acupuncture practice.

Welcome back! Follow these easy steps to outline a marketing strategy for your practice.

A marketing strategy the repeatable big picture that you can refer to whenever you need it.

If you feel lost in the social media scroll or don’t know what on earth to write about in your email newsletter, look back at your marketing strategy for instructions.

I’m walking you through the process of creating it in this episode – join me!

🎉 And two announcements before we get started:

1) We selected our scholarship winners! As of the recording of this episode, we haven’t yet heard back from one of the winners, so today I’ll be sharing two out of three.

Our winners are Tara, a 4th-year student at Daoist Traditions in Asheville, and Sophie, owner of Heal Acupuncture in East London. Congrats! Listen to the episode for a few more details on both winners.

2)  Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale this week only for $200 off! Use the code PUMPKINSPICE to save before the discount code ends on Friday.

>> Click here to view the course.

I’ve had a few questions about the program already, and there’s some confusion because both this podcast and the online course are named Acupuncture Marketing School. Are we sensing a theme here? 😆

Acupuncture Marketing School is a video-based online training that walks you through exactly how to create an effective marketing strategy for your practice.

The goal is to help you get visible in your community so that you can help more patients and build a business that you love.

By the end of the course you’ve created a marketing strategy for your unique practice, community and patients. And the lessons walk you through strong marketing foundations so you know why you’re doing each part of the strategy.

I get this next question a lot, so I also wanted to share that the training is pre-recorded and you can go through it at your own pace. It is not live.

All right! Dive into the episode here and let’s outline your marketing strategy.

Show Notes:

🎙️ Listen to Episode #22: How to Create a Marketing Strategy for Your Practice

Transcript:

Hey there, welcome back! Before we get into today’s episode, I have two big announcements. One is to share the winners of the Scholarship Competition with you, yay. We selected three winners but as of right now, I’ve only heard back from two of the three. So once I have permission to share the last person’s information, I’ll be announcing the third winner on social media. But for now, today, I’m excited to share two of our three winners.

The first is Tara Bunch, a fourth-year acupuncture student at Daoist Traditions in Asheville, North Carolina. After 29 years in the restaurant industry in Washington D.C., she decided to pursue her passion for helping others. She became a massage therapist, which revealed that she was on the right path, helping people find better health. She later enrolled in acupuncture school and has been absorbing everything she can to help her patients. Tara looks forward to supporting all her patients and she’s passionate about women’s health, particularly menopausal and peri-menopausal patients.

And the second is Sophie Robinson, an acupuncturist and remedial massage therapist who owns Heal Acupuncture, an LGBTQ+ affirmative, body-positive, and consent-led practice in Hackney, East London. They offer community acupuncture as well as private sessions, and they volunteer at nearby St. Joseph’s hospice. LGBTQ+ people face a number of barriers when accessing healthcare, and Sophie is committed to gender-inclusive care and creating a safe and welcoming space for their patients.

And the second announcement is that Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale this week only for $200 off. Probably the number one question I’ve had so far is, What exactly is Acupuncture Marketing School?

Acupuncture Marketing School is a video-based online course that walks you through exactly how to create an effective marketing strategy for your practice. The goal is to help you get visible in your community so that you can help more patients and build a business that you love and that allows you to fulfill your purpose. By the end of the course you’ve created a marketing strategy for your unique practice, community and patients. And the lessons walk you through strong marketing foundations so you know why you’re doing each part of the strategy.

This course is really the “teach a person to fish” approach. Instead of handing you a marketing template and saying, fill in the blanks, I walk you through all the important components that allows you to create great marketing and explain why we’re doing them.

And again, it’s made up of pre-recorded video lessons and downloadable worksheets, so you can go through them at your own pace. There is no live component. Of course, students are welcome to email me anytime with questions or to get feedback on their workbooks, the marketing strategy, etc. I LOVE that kind of discussion, obviously, so students are welcome to do that.

It’s worth 15 NCCAOM PDA credits and has dozens of five star reviews and testimonials from happy acupuncturists, which you can see on the landing page. And again, this week only, Monday October 18th through midnight on Friday October 22nd, you can join Acupuncture Marketing School for $200 off with the discount code PUMPKINSPICE. And yes, I am really that basic, the discount code is PUMPKINSPICE. Next year I think we’ll go with HOCUSPOCUS though, because tis the season and I just learned they’re making a sequel.  

Of course I’ll include the link in the show notes so you can take a look at everything that’s included. But a quick overview of the curriculum: There are seven core modules: foundations of marketing, marketing mindsets, target market and marketing message, branding, email marketing social media marketing and bringing it all together to build your marketing strategy.

Plus there are three bonus lessons: how to get more testimonials and Google reviews for your acupuncture practice, how to improve your search engine optimization to get more patients through organic search, as well as how to grow your email list with a lead magnet.

I would say that this course is for beginner to intermediate skill level with marketing so if you didn’t have any marketing education in acupuncture school or very little this course is a great fit. Some of the lessons are what I would call second level marketing so if you do have some experience with marketing but you are looking to really streamline everything, clarify your marketing message and get more patience with less work, which I consider an intermediate level of marketing, then this course also has quite a few lessons that would be perfect for you.

If you have questions on whether acupuncture marketing school is a good fit for you, you are more than welcome to email me. I’m happy to chat with you, michelle@michellegrasek.com. Or you can find me on Instagram @michellegrasek and feel free to shoot me a message.

All right let’s get into it and talk about how to create a marketing strategy for your acupuncture practice.

This is one of the things that we are not taught in acupuncture school even if we have a practice management or a marketing-specific course. A marketing strategy is an outline that you can follow on a repeatable basis, typically it’s a monthly basis, where all you have to do is take a look at the strategy and where you are in the month, and you’ll know what to do next.

A marketing strategy takes so much stress and pressure off of you because it gives you instructions. And it doesn’t have to complicated.

The first step is super easy – decide what length of time your marketing strategy will encompass. I mentioned a monthly marketing strategy just now because I think that’s a great place to start. It gives you a big picture view of what’s going and also allows you to dial into some details as well, with a four week plan. But you could also do a weekly repeating marketing strategy, if you prefer, or quarterly. Totally up to you.

So at the start of each month you want to define, what are my goals for my marketing for this month? This could be as simple as, “Get more patients on the schedule this month.” Other common goals are things like, “Get more people to sign up for a class that you’re teaching,” or a webinar you’re hosting. Another common goal is to grow your email subscriber list, so, to get more people to sign up for your email list.

And I want you to get specific with your goals. Instead of saying, I want more patients next month, what kind of patients? I want more fertility patients or more knee pain patients on my schedule next month. This specificity for your goals helps a lot when it comes to creating or finding content to share.

Then you have to create or share content that drives people toward that goals. So that means your next steps is to decide, what are the platforms I’m going to use to create and release content, and then how am I going to get that content visible in front of my audience?

As an example, for my office, the content that I am usually creating is Instagram posts and email newsletters or email marketing. Okay, so those are the platforms that I’m using to create the content.

And the next question is, how am I going to get that content to be visible in front of my audience? So, visibility is naturally built into both of those platforms, Instagram and email newsletters, right? That’s part of why I like them. On Instagram, of course, my audience has the opportunity to see and interact with anything that I publish. And same thing with email. When I create an email I am sending it out to my audience and inviting them to read it and interact with it – hopefully to click the schedule now button, but maybe also to hit reply with questions, or give me call at my office.

So why do I mention the difference between content creation and visibility of that content as specific parts of your marketing strategy?

Here’s a great example of why you just need to make sure you’re covering both in your strategy. A lot of times I will see acupuncturists who have a blog and they spend a lot of time writing blog posts or they have a podcast and they craft these beautiful podcast episodes, which is, of course, the content creation piece.

But then they don’t do anything to help that content actually get visible in front of their audience. Often we hit publish and do the “field of dreams” method of marketing, which is, “If you build it, they will come.”

Now, of course, a blog post exists on your website and so through organic search people could potentially find your blog posts. However. I think that most acupuncturists don’t really get enough organic traffic through to their website for that to make a huge difference and bring in a ton of patients.

Unless you have very high traffic to your website, you really need to have some alternate methods to get that blog content that you just created visible in front of your audience.

Great options for this are, of course, sharing the blog post in an email newsletter, telling your subscribers, “Hey, I wrote this blog post. Here’s a summary of what it’s about, and you can click here to read more.”

And doing the exact same thing on social media as well – creating Instagram, Facebook or Twitter posts where you let people know that you wrote this blog post and here’s how they can click through and read the whole thing.

Now. Even if you’re creating content on platforms that are naturally built for visibility, like social media or email marketing, you still want to think about, what other avenues or platforms can you use to share that content and increase its visibility even beyond the audience that you naturally have on those platforms.

And this is really where repurposing content comes in. For example, let’s say that you start by writing a series of Instagram posts and some of your audience will see those, of course, but based on the algorithm some of your audience may not see it or they might not have been online at the time that you published the posts.

So you can take those Instagram posts and repurpose them into a series of emails for your subscribers. Many of your email subscribers probably do not also follow you on Instagram.

You can also take that series of Instagram posts and put them together to create either one longform blog post. Or keep them separate as a series of shorter blog posts. This way, visitors to your website have the opportunity to see that content and learn from you.

The idea here is that you wrote this content once and you are simply copying and pasting it and then making some edits so that it makes sense for this other platform, in order to get as much visibility mileage out of the content as possible, for a lot less work.

So that’s the next part of your marketing strategy: how are you going to repurpose content for maximum visibility?

I often recommend picking just two digital platforms that you’re going to focus on so that you don’t get overwhelmed and experience burnout.

Once you become expert at quickly and efficiently producing and repurposing content for those platforms, then you can start expanding and learning other platforms.

Next you want to start thinking about the actual content that you’ll be producing in the upcoming month.

Start by thinking about seasonal content. Seasonal content is anything with an end date or content whose relevance is limited by time. This could be seasonal articles that you are writing literally based on the season, right? Such as, Chinese medicine recommendations for transitioning from fall to summer.

This could also be sales or events that you’re hosting and inviting people to those events.

When you’re putting together your marketing strategy for the upcoming month, you’re going to decide each month, what are my goals? What kinds content do I need to share to drive my audience towards those goals? And what seasonal or limited-time offer content do I need to get on the calendar first, either to help with those goals or just to make announcements?

And once that’s on there, then you can start filling in your calendar with other content that will help people take action, depending on your marketing goal for the month.

Earlier I asked you to get really specific with your goal for the month, instead of just saying I want more patients on my schedule this month, I asked you to describe specifically what kind of patients. More fertility patients, for example, or more geriatric patients.

This helps a lot because when it comes to filling in that other content, then you are going to focus on the content that helps get the attention of that particular target market and that moves them towards making an appointment or calling you for a consult.

If you decide that you want more geriatric patients for the month of November you would focus on writing and repurposing or sharing the content of others that is all about how much acupuncture can help for specific conditions that your geriatric patients might be struggling with, as well as general health and wellness information that is particular to that population and still related to how you can help people in your office.

When you think of content creation, if you feel stuck, here is an easy tip: As yourself, what are the barriers that prevent my target market from coming in for a treatment with me? And then write content that explains why they don’t have to worry about those barriers, or explains how a process works, or what to expect – whatever it is that’s holding them back. That’s a great way to get people to take action to become patients.

So let’s just review the steps here to create a big-picture marketing strategy. Decide on your timeframe. Decide on your goals for that time frame. Think about the content you need to create to move people towards your goals, and what is your plan for getting that content visible in front of your local community. When you’re putting marketing activities onto your calendar, add your seasonal content first, and then fill it in with other content that drives patients towards your specific goal for the month.

Even something as simple as this helps you to get clear on what you need to be doing in your marketing and what you don’t.

If you feel like you’re spending too much time scrolling on social media, worrying about trends or what the heck to talk about in the upcoming week, you can go back to your marketing strategy and see, what were my goals for this month, what is my plan for content creation or content sharing and how am I going to increase the visibility of the content I create?

How will I repurpose that content for maximized visibility? And specifically, what kinds of information do  I need to share to help drive people towards my goal for the month?

I do want to add that, of course, if you have no desire to focus on digital marketing, you can use this marketing strategy for in person marketing as well. For example, your content creation could be teaching about acupuncture at the local library or teaching classes at the local fitness center or Community Center.

Your visibility piece could be going to all of the available networking meetings in your town or every meeting offered by your local Chamber of Commerce.

You could even decide that this month your content creation piece is writing a brochure about your specialty and how people can make an appointment with you, and then the visibility piece is delivering that brochure to all the local businesses near your office and introducing yourself or reintroducing yourself and sharing your brochure. Or mailing your brochure to nearby businesses.

I hope you found this really helpful. As always, send me your questions!

Don’t forget that Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale this week only. The discount code PUMPKINSPICE expires this Friday, October 22nd at midnight Pacific Time. The link is in the show notes, of course.

If you have questions about whether the course is a good fit for you, please feel free to email me or shoot me a message on Instagram. My email is michelle@michellegrasek.com and my Instagram handle is @michellegrasek.

I want you to feel really good and confident about your decision to join Acupuncture Marketing School. So, any questions before signing up, please send them to me. I’m thrilled to chat with you.

And of course if you decide not to join me this week during the sale, please know that I’m always here for you. I’m not going anywhere. I have lots to share on this podcast. Trust yourself and the timing of your life to know that I’m here to work with you whenever you’re ready, and if that’s not this week, then worries.

All right, acupuncture friend. Thank you for being here with me. I appreciate you. Have a beautiful week, and I’ll talk to you soon.