Device mockup of an iPhone with Episode #42 of Acupuncture Marketing School: New Ways to Think About Marketing Your Practice.

Need a marketing refresh?

Today I want to share a few new ways of thinking about marketing to remove the pressure and negative energy that we often apply to it, as well as give you fresh new perspectives.

Sometimes shifting our viewpoint about marketing and seeing it through a new lens can make a huge difference in our enthusiasm and commitment to it. 

I find that these ideas are especially helpful if you’re in a marketing rut and need some inspiration!

Click below to listen/read:

🎙️Listen to Episode #42: New Ways of Thinking About Marketing

Show Notes:

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify

 đź’– Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review here.

Transcript:

Sometimes shifting the way we think about marketing can make a huge difference in our enthusiasm and commitment to it. Today I want to share a few alternate viewpoints about marketing to remove some of the pressure and negative energy that we often apply to it, as well as give you fresh new perspectives.

If you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you know I like to teach marketing from the perspective that marketing is simply letting the people who need you know that you exist. This perspective focuses on the idea that marketing is about sharing knowledge. Sharing information.

You’re generally letting people know A) that acupuncture can help them, and B) that your practice exists in their area. And what they do with that information is up to them.

You could also think of this perspective as expanding people’s awareness of their healthcare options, so that they have all the info they need to make the most informed choice for their unique situation.

I have Celiac’s disease and I’m so grateful for the discovery, many years ago, that acupuncture could help manage my symptoms. I think about the other people out there with Celiac’s or other chronic digestive issues who have no idea what acupuncture could add to their life. How much better and less stressful their life could be.

So whenever I’m doing marketing for my practice focused on digestion, I’m thinking of that – reaching those people so that at the very least, they know they have options. They may not be ready for acupuncture right now, but I’ve put the idea in their head, and I’ll keep showing up with my message, and eventually if they’re ready for acupuncture, they’ll think of my practice.

Even if they decide not to try it, at least you put it on their radar for consideration. That’s all you’re doing. Sharing information so people can make the best possible choices for their health and their life.

You could also think of marketing as investing. My favorite kinds of marketing are the ones that don’t cost a lot money, or sometimes anything. I prefer to use in my practice and teach the kinds of marketing that require a little more time and energy than money, because I think those tend to be the types of marketing that have staying power. That continue to benefit your business over the long term.

For example, writing blog posts, establishing a strong brand on Instagram, working on the SEO for your website, collecting reviews and testimonials, reaching out to collaborate with other business owners. All of those help give your business a really strong marketing foundation that tends to last and continues to benefit your business .

And personally, like investing, I think their benefit tends to snowball over time. But they may not give you results immediately.

By contrast, if you run a Facebook ad or other paid ad, you would hope to see some results right away, or at least within a few weeks. But their benefit is pretty short – they work while you’re running the ad, but I wouldn’t say they continue to benefit your practice after you turn them off, right?

So if you’re ever feeling like your marketing efforts are working to slowly, take a step back and evaluate if you’re doing the kind of marketing that simply takes a little longer to mature, and if so, it’s probably the case that eventually it’s benefit will pick up and much greater in the long run.

Like going to networking meetings regularly, for example, if you go to one or two, you’re new there any may not get that many patients. But if you go consistently and become a member of that community, it’s likely that in the longer term, you’ll get more and referrals from those people.

So think of marketing like investing – putting in the work, time and energy now, so that it can grow and mature and supply you with exponentially greater dividends in the long run.

You can also think of marketing like gardening, which is a similar perspective to investing. I think I’ve mentioned this before but I have a black thumb. So I really like the idea of gardening and I appreciate this angle a lot – it really appeals to me. But in a practical sense, not my strength. So if this perspective resonates with you more than investing, run with it. You plant the seeds now, tend them and water (aka, you can’t abandon them or forget about them, like I do) and then sow the rewards later on when they’ve had time to mature.

Another way of thinking about marketing is eliminating the doubts and barriers that prevent people from making an appointment. And honestly this could fit under the “sharing information” heading that we discussed earlier. But in this case you’re specifically gearing your marketing to share information that people are worried about. Answering frequently asked questions to break down the worries or reasons that people have for not making an appointment.

To do this, I always recommend making a BIG list of the all FAQs that you get about acupuncture, your office, yourself or how you practice, and write down your answers. Then use those Q and As to create social media posts, blog posts on your website, content for your email newsletters, talking points if you’re in Toastmasters, for example. Share that information anywhere you can get in front of new audiences who might have those concerns.

Another way of thinking about marketing is like yin and yang. And this analogy applies to marketing in two different ways, so we’re going to talk about both.

The first is to consider the different sides of marketing and which might be your strength. Yin marketing are types of marketing that I consider to be quieter, more internal kinds of marketing, things that involve writing, like blogging, updating your website, writing an email newsletter. Maybe hosting a podcast, because that’s one on one. But these are activities that require more internal thought processing usually before publishing them and can often be done solo.

Whereas I think of Yang types of marketing are those that are more outward in action and require more physical energy or activity. More interaction with others. This would be things like networking, attending chamber of commerce meetings, collaborating with other businesses, introducing yourself to other local business owners or other allied health professionals, etc.

In some ways you could think of them as types of marketing that suit introverts and extroverts, although we know that introversion to extroversion is a spectrum, right? So you may feel most comfortable with “yin” style marketing usually, but have one or two yang-type marketing approaches that you also enjoy.

I think thinking about marketing in this way is useful when we’re trying to decide what to focus on next. After identifying what marketing suits you best and what kind of marketing do you do most often, considering picking a new marketing approach from the opposite camp than you usually do.

See if getting visible in your community in this new way provides a jolt of energy to your marketing and your patient flow. Just think of it as an untapped avenue that could get you in front of fresh audiences, simply because it’s not usually where you spend time.

And the other way of thinking about Yin and Yang in marketing is one I learned from Clara of Acu Pro Academy many years ago, the first time I interviewed her. I’ll link that blog post in the show notes, and if you’re not already following her on Instagram, I highly recommend it. Clara is so effervescent and her enthusiasm for TCM is so contagious. I’ll link her Instagram (@acuproacademy) in the show notes as well.

The way Clara described the yin and yang of marketing is that yin marketing is anything you do to nurture, retain, and rebook current clients. How do you speak to them about wellness care, what do you say at checkout to get them to sign up for another appointment, etc. How do you get them to refer people to you? What kind of systems do you have in place. So those would fall under the “yin” or internal, inside-your-practice marketing practices that you engage in on a regular basis.

And then she considers to be “Yang” the marketing that is outward-facing. That gets you in front of new people in your community. That gets your practice visible. So that’s pretty much everything else – all the other marketing practices that we talk about on a regular basis on this podcast.

And I like to mention this perspective because I think most of us are very heavy on one vs. the other. Usually, in my experience talking to fellow acupuncturists, we have the “Yin” or internal marketing down. We’re solid there. It feels more like practice management than marketing sometimes, right? It’s a natural extension of the patient treatment.

And the Yang-type marketing is what we usually need help with, or fresh ideas for. Those marketing avenues that ask us to step out of our comfort zones and get visible.

So I’d ask you assess both sides of your marketing from this perspective as well. Are you really heavy into one or the other? Could you outward visibility use help, or your office procedures and patient discussions because streamlined or cleaned up a little?

I recently took a look at my internal or Yin marketing, because I had a little wave of new patients who came to my practice through Facebook, yay, but they hadn’t been exposed to me very much, and they weren’t that familiar with how acupuncture is cumulative.

So in their first treatment, it was the first time they had heard that acupuncture really needs to be cumulative for best results. And while they understood it, they were not ready to be on board. To commit.

Now, this is contrast to the people who follow me on Instagram and have for awhile, because I spend a lot more time on IG marketing for my practice, and talk often about how many treatments are needed, what I can help with, how acupuncture works, what they can expect, etc. Same for those on my email list. I talk about the same concepts in my email marketing pretty often.

So by the time they make an appointment, they’ve already opted-in, so to speak. They’ve decided they’re okay with, and ready to try, multiple treatments before deciding whether acupuncture is helping them.

So I took a look at my internal processes – really my onboarding process in Unified Practice, which is the EHR that I use, and realized that nowhere in my new patient paperwork was it written down that acupuncture is cumulative and that they should expect to have to come multiple times.

Usually having a verbal discussion at the first treatment is enough, if people are already familiar with the idea and with my practice. So I decided to add a page in my consent form – a brief page, just a few sentences, explaining the cumulative nature of acupuncture, how many treatments are usually recommended, etc.

And as they go through the digital paperwork they have to read it in order to get to the informed consent and HIPAA paperwork. So that has been helping already.

It’s one more touch point where people get to absorb this concept. And I absolutely consider it marketing, because it makes people more likely to sign up for more appointments. It helps solidify their commitment.

So all this to say, take a moment to evaluate your practice from both of these Yin-Yang perspectives, especially if you haven’t reviewed your internal marketing in a long time. It may simply need a refresh or perhaps you’ll realize it could be worded better for better patient retention, etc.

And the last way of thinking about marketing that I want to offer is that marketing is simply relationship building, which is ultimately rooted in trust. So at it’s core, you can think of marketing as a series of exercises in trust-building.

And we can do this in a million different ways. Showing up regularly, for whatever marketing avenue we choose, whether it’s social media, an email newsletter, networking groups, etc. Sharing our message consistently. And allowing people to get to know us.

This doesn’t mean, on social media for example, that you have to share a lot about yourself. But showing your face sometimes, introducing yourself, sharing why you got into acupuncture, why you chose your specialty, or whatever amount of info you’re comfortable sharing. But that makes you a real person, but a faceless business on Instagram.

And I know not everyone can share their face in photos for religious reasons, so sharing your face doesn’t have to be literal in that case, but more about the idea of sharing who you are as a practitioner and a person. Allowing people to get to know you enough that they feel safe and comfortable making an appointment with you.

And towards this end, I do recommend getting out in your community in real life and talking with people as much as possible. If you’re an introvert like me this idea doesn’t always sound that appealing. When I say get out in front of your community, most people immediately think of networking.

Last week I released an episode about networking for people who don’t love networking, myself included. That’s episode #41 if you want to check it out. I’ll link it in the show notes.

But this recommendation doesn’t have to be limited to networking meetings. Thank goodness. This could also mean volunteering in your community or joining groups with similar interests. Just taking the opportunity to meet people and over time it will come out in conversation that you’re an acupuncturist, and people will want to talk to you about it.

Those natural, in person conversations build trust very quickly and easily, and make people even more likely to refer others to you if they’re not ready to see you for acupuncture themselves. Because they’ve met you and had the chance to speak with you.

I hope that this episode gave you a new perspective for marketing that feels refreshing and provides new ideas and motivation for getting visible. You can think of marketing as knowledge-sharing so that people can make the most informed decisions about their healthcare, as investing or gardening, as a Yin-Yang balance, from several angles, and as relationship and trust building in your real-life community.

As always, if you have thoughts or questions, feel free to email me: michelle@michellegrasek.com. Thanks for spending time with me today, and I’ll talk to you next time!