This week on the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast, I’m sharing the details about what worked well in marketing my practice in 2024—and what I learned along the way.

As a disclaimer, remember that I LOVE marketing, so I do a LOT of it. You do not have to do all these things. But I hope at least one idea that I explored this year inspires your marketing for 2025!

Here’s a look at what I cover in today’s episode:

• How AcuYoga classes brought in new patients while getting paid to market my practice
• Lessons learned from hosting two open houses—and what made the second one much more successful
• Why email newsletters are still one of the most effective ways to connect with patients (and get them back on the schedule)
• The power of in-person networking and how I’ve made it work as an introvert.

I also share how I focused my marketing efforts to fill another practitioner’s schedule at my clinic—and the small tweaks that made a big difference.

🎧 Listen to Episode #91: What Marketing Worked to Grow My Acupuncture Practice in 2024?

💙 This episode is sponsored by clinic management software and EMR, Jane.

As an acupuncturist, your main priority is caring for your patients, not worrying about rising EMR costs. That’s why Jane has come up with the new Balance Plan, which includes the essential features you need to run your clinic, without any of the extra stuff you don’t.

With the Balance Plan, you’ll get really helpful features like 1:1 telehealth, email appointment reminders, and unlimited customer support. It’s a great fit for new or growing practitioners who are booking up to 20 appointments a month. And the best part is that Jane pays for itself with the cost of just one appointment.

Click here to check out their plans starting at $39 a month in the US. And if you’re ready to get started, don’t forget to use the code ACUSCHOOL1MO at sign-up for a 1-month grace period on your new account.

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:05):

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

(00:34):

Hi there. Welcome back. Today is a solo episode and I’ll be sharing what marketing worked well to grow my practice in 2024, and what I learned along the way. And I’m calling this part one because I think it’s also important to discuss what did not work that well and what I plan to continue or leave behind in 2025. But you know me, I love talking about marketing, so this episode became longer than I expected, so I’m going to share what marketing did not work that well and what I plan to do for 2025 in a separate episode in part two.

[JANE.APP] (01:09):

This episode is sponsored by clinic management software and EMR, Jane. As an acupuncturist, your main priority is caring for your patients, not worrying about rising EMR costs. That’s why Jane has come up with the new balance plan, which includes the essential features you need to run your clinic without any of the extra stuff you don’t. With the balance plan, you’ll get really helpful features like one-on-one telehealth, email appointment reminders, and unlimited customer support. It’s a great fit for new or growing practitioners who are booking up to 20 appointments a month. And the best part is that Jane pays for itself with the cost of just one appointment. So head over to jane.app/pricing to check out their plans starting at $39 a month in the US And if you’re ready to get started, don’t forget to use the code [ACUSCHOOL1MO] at signup for a one-month grace period on your new account. And, of course, I will put the link and the code in the show notes to make it easy for you.

[MICHELLE] (02:09):

Alright, let’s get started. What worked well in terms of marketing my practice this past year? A little background, just to give you an idea of what I’m working with at my practice, I have another acupuncturist working at my office two days a week. Her name is Melody, and my goal for my marketing at this point is to really bring in new patients for her. We use AcuHub Virtual Receptionist Services, which I have mentioned on the podcast in the past. So they are the ones answering phone calls and texts to the office. And we have two dedicated receptionists so they know that when new patients call, their primary goal is to get them scheduled with Melody. Now that’s not always possible because sometimes the patient isn’t available on the days that she’s in the office. In that case, of course, I take the new patients. We never want to send away new patients if at all possible. So if my schedule works better for a new patient, then I’ll certainly take them.

(03:07):

So that has been a really big motivator for me trying to fill Melody’s schedule, and most of my marketing is geared towards that. So I do try to mention her often in my marketing to funnel people towards her so that they’re familiar with her. I talk about her background, what she loves to treat, her specialties, et cetera, so that people get to know her, they feel comfortable with her. And one thing that has helped a lot with literally funneling people towards her is that Jane allows you to share links to your online schedule that are specific to each practitioner and each service. So if I’m talking about Melody on an Instagram story, for example, I will link directly to her new patient appointment options in Jane. That way it’s very simple, there’s no confusion. They’re much less likely to pick me for their new patient appointment. It makes it very streamlined and easy. Okay, so all of this has been important in my marketing in the past year in making it effective and helping build Melody side of the practice.

[MICHELLE] (04:17):

So let’s talk about strategies that work. These are in no particular order. First, AcuYoga classes. If you have had a marketing strategy session with me in the past year, I have probably recommended this strategy to you. And a lot of people are already doing this or a version of it. This is typically a 90-minute class, 50 minutes of yoga, and 25 or 30 minutes of what is basically community acupuncture. But everyone gets the same points. So after yoga, everyone’s laying in Shavasana on their mats, and I go around and give each person five needles. They rest for 20 minutes and then I remove them. There are specific things you can do that elevate this from a simple class that you are co-hosting with a yoga teacher into a marketing strategy, an actual marketing strategy that has steps that you don’t want to leave out if you want it to be effective for that purpose.

(05:15):

So I’m not going to get into that right now because I recently recorded an AcuYoga marketing strategy lesson for Acupuncture Marketing School. It’s available now inside the course. So if you’re already a student, you can log in and watch it. And I am debating offering this class separately as a standalone class that people can purchase where I walk you through all of the details, how I go about setting these things up, all of the marketing pieces that are important to get you new patients from these events. And the main reason that I like AcuYoga classes for marketing is that you get the opportunity to be featured in front of a brand-new audience as the yoga studio that you’re working with advertises the class. And at the start of the class, you get to introduce yourself and spark their curiosity about your specialty and what you do. And hopefully you have the opportunity to connect with people afterwards.

(06:09):

You’re also giving them a chance to see how comfortable and safe acupuncture is. And because this is in person, all of this is a very warm touchpoint. So it builds trust very rapidly. And lastly, this is marketing that you get paid for. Typically, people split the profit with the yoga teacher and sometimes also the yoga studio, but you are getting paid for your time. Tell me what other marketing strategy also pays you. So even on the off chance that you don’t get any new patients from this approach, at least you got paid for your time. So I did quite a few AcuYoga classes in the past year in a variety of different studios in an effort to be introduced to as many new local audiences as possible and I definitely saw new patients come in from this.

[MICHELLE] (07:04):

The next thing that worked well was hosting two open houses, one in April, which was to celebrate five years in business at our current location, and one in December, which was promoting a gift card special and a cosmetic acupuncture demonstration. Now these were two extremely different events and I learned a lot from the first one that made the second one much more profitable and lower stress, thank goodness. So as my business coach, Ildi Arlette always says, any event that you host is just a dress rehearsal for the next one. And that takes a lot of pressure off to do it perfectly the first time, which, of course, we know is not really possible anyway. It gives you the space to learn from the experience and course correct. And if you’re a regular listener on this podcast, you know that is exactly the marketing mindset that I encourage people to have, experiment, try something new, see how it goes, collect data, and then course correct for next time. And that is why Ildi is my business coach because we share that mindset and we both find it really important and effective.

(08:16):

So let’s compare these two events. The first open house I hosted in conjunction with two local Chambers of Commerce. They worked together with me to invite people and set the event up. And it was a monthly meeting for one of the chambers of commerce, and it was hosted in my office space. We decided to do a ribbon cutting because I had never done that at my office before, to try to get a little extra press and create buzz. So we had 55 people attend, which was amazing. It’s more turnout than I imagined. And let me tell you, as an introvert, I was quite overwhelmed by that volume of people in my office space. It is a small office, the reception area is petite. Four people in the reception area can feel crowded.

(09:12):

So we were flowing out into the main hallway of the building during this event. It was basically like a giant party. I spent quite a bit of money on food and advertising, and a local winery came and did a free wine tasting. And that was also arranged by one of the Chambers of Commerce. So this was a really great event in that it was very well attended. It had a party atmosphere afterwards, you know, people from the Chambers of Commerce let me know they really enjoyed themselves. They loved exploring the office building that I’m in and seeing my space. And I did get a press release in the local newspaper with photos of the ribbon cutting, both the digital version of the newspaper and the print version, which really surprised me. And that press release was arranged by the Chamber of Commerce. So let me just say that if you are a member of your local Chamber of Commerce, ask them for help with these kinds of things. They have a lot of connections. I mean, they’re connected with probably almost all of the small businesses in the area, so they’re very likely to help you and they can make this process much easier for you.

[MICHELLE] (10:27):

And the downside was, as I mentioned, I was overwhelmed by how many people wanted to speak with me at this event. And a lot of people had great questions about acupuncture. You know what this means, when someone wants to ask you something about acupuncture, they’re also going to tell you part of their life story. They’re going to tell you about their symptoms in detail. It doesn’t matter if they’re in public or not. You know, can acupuncture help with this and this? So there was a line of people waiting to speak to me at one point. Yikes, and here is the kicker, some people wanted to make an appointment right away, but I really felt like I could not step away from all these conversations and people waiting to bring the person to the front desk to the computer, basically, to get them set up as a new patient. I mean, that takes a minute. You have to collect their personal info, you got to put it in Jane, and then you have to debate with them like, oh, Tuesday morning? No. Wednesday at 11? No. So I just encouraged people to go online and schedule right away. And obviously, most people that I spoke to did not end up doing that. I know I lost people from not getting them on the schedule ASAP, and this was a mistake in my part.

(11:48):

So after the event, I realized I need some structure or to ask for help with this sort of thing. And Ildi also emphasized this, to assign someone the job of making new patient appointments so that whether it’s me or Melody who is swamped by people asking us questions, we could just direct them to the front desk and not have to leave the people who are waiting for us. So at the end of the day, eventually we got four new patients that we could track back from this huge event. And it wasn’t nearly as many as I had hoped, but I was pleased that some people did go online and schedule. So what I did differently for the December open house was I gave it a lot more structure. I asked my mom and melody if I was not available to do this, to check people out if they wanted to purchase retail or to set them up as new patients, make them an appointment and then obviously I would do the same for Melody if she’s caught up talking to someone and she wanted to just point someone towards the front desk.

(13:04):

And I really emphasized the reason for community members and people to come to this event was to see cosmetic acupuncture so people could witness it and see it’s not scary. It is comfortable and here is what the lovely gua sha face massage looks like towards the end. And I also emphasized that people should bring a friend who’s always been curious about acupuncture. And that really worked. We had patients who brought a friend or a family member who had questions. And we had people come who were super curious about cosmetic acupuncture. And they wanted to see what it was like. They just wanted to know if it was as scary as they imagined, basically. And once they saw how relaxed and comfy the volunteer patient was, they were all like, wow, okay, this was nothing like what I imagined. It is not like Botox and I can definitely do this. This looks like a nice treatment.

[MICHELLE] (14:07):

So having the live cosmetic demonstration was a huge motivator for people to come to the office. And I didn’t do a ton of advertising for this event outside my own patients. I did do a little like a Facebook ad and some postcard marketing, which I will talk about in the next episode. But do you remember how I interviewed Ildi in a previous episode? I will link to her episode in the show notes. She mentioned that from her 20 plus years of experience working with all kinds of clinic owners, she was willing to bet that in 2025, 80% of our income as practitioners would come from current patients, 80%. So her recommendation was to double down on keeping those people as current patients, on serving them well, on following up with them, on getting them to schedule their maintenance treatments to commit to maintenance. So I focused heavily on converting my current patients who had not yet tried cosmetic acupuncture into cosmetic patients with this event.

(15:18):

So what was the outcome of this event? We had 15 people attend the December open house. I ended up doing two cosmetic demonstrations, people wouldn’t have to wait around, at 5:30 and 6:30 PM and we got two new patients on the calendar right away. Plus we reactivated a patient we hadn’t seen in a while who came in with questions about cosmetic. So that was super. And we did something else that was a big motivator for people to come into this event. We offered an extra 10% on gift certificates purchased at the event. Now I say this all the time, but I really understand if you are not into this thing, because it is a type of discount, right, I’m giving them an extra $10 for every $100 they spend, so if they purchase $100 gift certificate, they got $110 on their account. And this was actually incredibly motivating for people to buy gift certificates. We sold $1,500 in gift certificates that night.

(16:21):

Again, you may recall from Ildi’s episode that, this was one of her ideas, she recommended this specifically when, and I asked her in the episode, why would I let my current patients, my regulars, who I know are going to come back and pay full price, purchase a gift certificate, and basically give them a discount? And her response really hit me. She asked, “What guarantee do you have that they’ll continue to be your patients?” Because we all know what happens, they have an emergency, they drop off the calendar, they have really good intentions of coming back. And some people, you never see them again. But if they buy a gift certificate to use over the next few months or over the coming year, then they are committed. You know that you have them for that timeframe. And that extra 10% is what motivates them to make that commitment. Without the extra 10%, why would they bother buying a gift certificate?

(17:21):

So long story short, the December event was much more structured. We got everyone on the schedule who wanted to make an appointment. We sold quite a bit of retail. We got new patients and we secured $1,500 in gift certificates for only having 15 people attend and doing much less advertising and preparation. I didn’t buy nearly as much food for this one. I would absolutely call this a success. Also, because there were fewer people, I did not feel overwhelmed. I had time to speak with everyone and it felt like a much more manageable and pleasant event to me, which I really appreciated. So it just felt like a win.

[MICHELLE] (18:07):

The next marketing strategy that worked well, that has always worked well is email newsletters, semi-regular email newsletters. And I’m not saying you have to send them exactly every two weeks with no deviation, just try to send an email newsletter one to two times a month when you think of it, when you feel inspired, when you have something to share. So I ended up sending quite a few emails to my list this past year, 28 emails. And I want to break it down for you. First of all, these were usually content that I repurposed from somewhere else, like a post that I wrote for Instagram or from my blog. And 13 of these emails were educational, things like, did you know acupuncture can help with painful period? Did you know acupuncture can help with carpal tunnel? And seven of these emails were invitations to events, AcuYoga, facial gua sha classes, open houses, et cetera. Eight were what I would call informational sharing, for example, that our office was featured in the media or asking people to vote for us in local business competitions or sharing holiday office hours, et cetera. And seven were related to sales.

(19:26):

And again, I know not everybody is into offering a sale, but I love experimenting with sales for our cosmetic acupuncture services only. I do not put our general acupuncture appointments on sale. And so if I’m offering a discount on cosmetic acupuncture, I will always send one to three emails announcing the sale, answering frequently asked questions and emphasizing the benefits and then reminding people that the sale is ending. And when you send emails, they do work, people read them. I find that I always get people who pop onto the schedule after I send an email. It’s just a reminder that they meant to make an appointment. Their symptom may be totally unrelated to what I talk about in the email, but they just needed that reminder. And they also forward them to their friends and family if you ask. Just say PS, do you know anyone who is struggling to manage their knee pain carpal tunnel?, whatever you talked about in the email. “Please forward this email to them. We would love to help them.” And you can check your email analytics to see if people are actually doing that.

(20:37):

The next thing that worked well was in-person networking, including volunteering. Now I know, if you’re an introvert like me, you probably hate the idea of networking. I have talked about this on the podcast a few times before, so bear with me if you have heard my strategy already. I really used to dread networking. I would make all sorts of excuses for why I could not go to the meetings. But I live in a small town of about 7,000 people and I realized that what I really needed to make strides in my practice was to develop in-person relationships with people in order to build trust and generate more conversations about acupuncture.

(21:27):

Personal trust is everything. I am a bit of a hermit. If I don’t have to go out, I usually don’t. But I recognize that it was necessary. So I made it my mission in the past, really in the past two years, but I got very regular about it in this past year to get out there in the community so that these natural conversations about my work, AKA, my practice would come up and then I would have those opportunities to answer people’s questions about acupuncture, et cetera. But as I said, previously I really hated networking. I just was not very good at it. I have such a hard time walking into a room full of strangers and joining a group sort of apropos of nothing and introducing myself. It feels like I’m interrupting their conversation, who is this person, even though that is what we’re all there for.

[MICHELLE] (22:22):

But you know, I just, in addition to being introvert, I’m a bit shy. So I thought, what can I do? I really need help with this. So I asked the local Chamber of Commerce if they ever needed volunteers. And they said yes. They host several really big fundraisers like per year and they always need help preparing for those events and they need volunteers at the actual event to help carry them out. So I started volunteering with them at some of these events and something really beautiful happened. Basically, I made friends, what a concept. So after volunteering just a few times, my fellow volunteers and the chamber employees, they started recognizing me at the chamber networking events. They were happy to see me. They would invite me to sit with them and they would introduce me to new people. And this has only continued and expanded as I keep volunteering with them and going to the chamber meetings.

(23:21):

So now when I go to their networking events, I know there will always be at least one person that I already know. So I do not have to walk in and just stand by myself until someone speaks to me. And that has made a huge difference because I no longer dread going to those meetings. I know I’m going to show up. I get to have nice conversations with people I enjoy. I’ll probably meet a few new people just naturally in the course of those conversations. It won’t be forced and awkward. So I’ve made a lot of wonderful connections through those events and I do get new patients from them pretty regularly.

[MICHELLE] (23:59):

What is next? Google Ads. I did Google Ads for about eight months. And while I’ll say they at least paid for themselves every month, I broke even. And part of me wonders if this should be in the did not work category because I wanted them to perform even better. But if you have ever played around with ads before, you know this, ads can be complex. And well, there were times when Google offered free consults with an ad expert and that was extremely helpful in making the ads more effective. So if you are running Google Ads and you see that option, definitely take it. But ads have to be sort of continuously checked on. They have to be attended to. They are not set it and forget it like they used to be a decade ago. So because I was just breaking even and I didn’t really feel like I had the time to keep adjusting them and meeting with the Google Ads consultant, I eventually decided to turn them off.

(25:06):

And I will say that I considered breaking even to be a win ultimately because we were getting new patients in the practice and I could tell they were coming from the ads. They had good experiences, they wrote us reviews and they referred people to us. So while it wasn’t directly increasing my income, because we were just breaking even with the ads, it was certainly expanding our reach in the community and helping us connect with more people.

[MICHELLE] (25:37):

And then the next one is of course, referrals from patients and healthcare providers and wellness people in general. We’re a big source of new patients. The professionals who tend to refer to our office are mostly chiropractors, massage therapists, and occasionally a local physical therapist. And I will say that one of the biggest sources of new patients this past year, of course, was simple Google search. I really work pretty hard to continually improve my website’s SEO and I’m always working on my Google Business profile, both of which contribute of course to patients being able to find us in a Google search, which leads me into another category of marketing.

(26:24):

On top of these big things that I just mentioned, things I’m doing that are ongoing and or harder to calculate a direct outcome from. So the first of these would be blogging, which of course is for search engine optimization. And I would do one to two blog posts a month. That’s pretty much what I did this past year. And again, a lot of this was repurposed content, maybe from email newsletters or from Instagram posts. I also consistently asked happy patients for Google reviews. They put it on my calendar once a month. I would go back and review and see who is relatively new, who’s been coming for six or seven visits and is super happy and send them a review request, an individual request. I also did pretty regular updates or posts on my Google Business profile to keep it fresh. I did one or two a month. It was not quite twice a month, okay, but more frequent than blogging for sure.

(27:26):

I was sort of regular on Instagram. I published about one post a week, and I updated the website regularly with announcements, with changes to our total review count. So for example, if we hit a milestone, like we hit 85 reviews this year, I would go onto my website and update all of the places where it said we’re honored to have 75 reviews and I would change it to 85. So remember that Google prefers websites that are updated occasionally compared to those that remain static because it indicates the website is more relevant and this means that it, they’re more likely to have a good user experience. Okay? And blogging also counts as updating your website.

[MICHELLE] (28:21):

Okay, this is a lot, this is a lot of marketing. First thing to remember here, I love marketing and I think about it all the time. I have time set aside every week to market my practice, and I enjoy that time. I like brainstorming. How can I get my practice in front of new community members so that they can hopefully have a really great experience with us? And this year I really pushed it with my marketing doing more than ever because I felt committed to making sure Melody had as many patients as possible. Having someone work with me is probably the thing I am the most proud of in my business up to this point. Everything else that I have done or built for my clinic pales in comparison for me personally. You know, why? I just take enormous pride in providing work for a member of our profession and so much pride in helping someone who’s talented and passionate like Melody get to do what she loves and is really good at. I’m so humbled by that experience and I love showing up for that. I love building and growing something that is not just for me. And I know that perspective’s not for everyone. Not everybody wants to take on an associate, but for me, especially this year, I found it deeply motivating to really dig in with my marketing and try lots of new things.

(29:51):

Okay, that is everything we’re covering for today. Come back next week to learn what marketing didn’t work so well this past year. What took too much energy, what I wouldn’t do again, and what I plan to continue in 2025. As always, thanks so much for being here. I’ll talk to you next week.

[MICHELLE] (30:18):

Before you go, I’ve got something free and super valuable for you. My NCCAOM PDA class email marketing for acupuncturists. In less than an hour, I’ll teach you how to create quick effective email newsletters that transform your subscribers into real life patients. You’ll learn what to talk about, where to get content from, how to keep it simple, and why email marketing is one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to grow your practice. Yes, it is free and it comes with one NCCAOM PDA credit ready to book more patients with less stress. The link is in the show notes to sign up now.