Today we’re talking a relatively unpopular opinion that I hold about continuing education and why you don’t need another acupuncture technique class. Ooh, controversy. I have a good reason, I promise. We’ll dig into my thought process behind that and what it has to do with marketing.

I’ll also share our scholarship winners and touch base on the results we’ve had so far from the postcard marketing campaign I talked about two episodes ago.

PLUS – Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale for $200 off this week!

If you’ve been waiting, now is the time to jump in and join me.

This is my marketing course for beginners. 🙌 So if you feel like you didn’t get enough marketing education in acupuncture school, or any at all, this is for you.

It’s also for you if you feel overwhelmed by marketing and have no idea where to start, or if you’ve tried some marketing in the past but not had any results.

Inside Acupuncture Marketing School, I walk you through the process of understanding the rules of marketing and how to apply them to creating a real marketing strategy for your practice, from start to finish.

The discount code SHOULD be applied already on the checkout page, but in case there’s a tech glitch, you can use the code PATIENTBOOST to get $200 off.

And if you enroll this week, you also get access to the Patient Boost Bonus for FREE. This bonus training walks you through my exact strategy, my emails, etc. that helped me increased revenue by 33% last year from July to August.

>> Click here to enroll before the discount expires on May 23!

🎙️ Listen to Episode #40: Why Taking Another Acupuncture Skills Class Won’t Help Grow Your Business

Show Notes:

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

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Transcript:

Hi, welcome back! Excited to be here with you today, as always. Today we’re talking a relatively unpopular opinion that I hold about continuing education and why you don’t need another acupuncture technique class. Ooh, controversy. I have a good reason, I promise.

I’d also like to share our scholarship winners, YAY, I’ll touch base on the results we’ve had so far from the postcard marketing campaign I talked about two episodes ago, and Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale this week so I’ll talk about that briefly as well.  

Let’s start with our scholarship winners from last week. Both of them won free enrollment in Acupuncture Marketing School. Thank you again, so much, to everyone who entered. We received applications from acupuncturists and acupuncture students in seven different countries: England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Spain, Portugal, and the US. It’s always a pleasure to meet everyone who applies. And I say this every year but it’s such a humbling and uplifting experience to listen to your videos and read your words, because I’m reminded that no matter where we are in the world, as acupuncturists we really have a lot in common. We’re all striving for many of the same things:

  • To serve our patients better
  • To build businesses that not only sustain us financially but also bring us meaning, connection and joy
  • To share this incredible medicine with as many people as possible and change lives

It’s so nice to be reminded of that, and I’m so proud to be a member of this profession with you, wherever you are in the world.

All right, our winners!

Our acupuncturist winner is Joleen Fuller. She practices at an integrative mental health practice, Awakened Heart, in Portland, Oregon. Prior to becoming an acupuncturist, Joleen spent many years working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence and she translates these skills into her acupuncture practice. Her passion is supporting the mental and physical health of trauma survivors.

You can connect with Joleen on her website, awakenedheartpdx.com, and Instagram @golden.acupuncture. I’ll include links in the show notes.

And our acupuncture student winner is Leisha, who is in her final year of acupuncture school in Toronto, Canada. After graduation she plans to relocate to Penticton, British Columbia. Leisha has a background in yoga and mindfulness and plans to focus on psychoemotionial, spiritual and energetic issues in her practice.

My favorite quote from her application is, “I’ve seen the power of this medicine and I know the impact it can have on helping people heal holistically. And when people are healed, it reverberates into everyone around them.” Couldn’t agree more!

Connect with Leisha on her website, leishacorrea.com, and Instagram @leisha.correa​. Again, I’ll put those in show notes for you.

Please show them some love and follow them on Instagram so we can continue to support each other.

Congratulations again to our winners! I hope Acupuncture Marketing School helps them reach even more people with acupuncture.

A super quick update on the marketing postcards. In episode 38 I talked about this new marketing strategy I’m trying, which is patient reactivation postcards, and I promised to get back to you with results. So it’s only been not quite two weeks since we mailed them and they’re working already. I want to give them a little more time because I think people get mail and intend to do something with it and hang onto it for a bit. But so far, going really well. We sent out 40 postcards and have had appointments on the schedule as a direct result.

You may recall the total cost of the postcards and stamps was $36.50. So with 3 appointments, that’s $230, so they have more than paid for themselves. So, more updates in two weeks in the next episode. If they continue to do well, I’ll put these postcard templates up so you can purchase it and edit it in Canva to match your office. So stay tuned.

And as I mentioned, Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale this week. YAY. If you’ve been waiting, now is the time to jump in and join me. This is my marketing course for beginners. If you feel like you didn’t get enough marketing education in acupuncture school, or any at all, this is for you. It’s also for you if you feel overwhelmed by marketing and have no idea where to start, or if you’ve tried some marketing in the past but not had any results. I walk you through the process of understanding the rules of marketing and how to apply them to creating a real marketing strategy for your practice. From beginning to end.

This course is worth 15 NCCAOM PDA credits. It’s all pre-recorded videos and downloadable workbooks and checklists. So you go through at your own pace. And as I said, it’s on sale for $200 off this week. The discount code is already applied on the checkout page, so its’ super easy. The sale ends at 11:59 pm Pacific Time on Monday, May 23rd.

Usually this class is $697, and it’s on sale for $497. PLUS this week, anyone who enrolls in Acupuncture Marketing School also gets FREE enrollment in my new mini-training, the Patient Boost Bonus.

If you’ve been following the podcast for awhile, you’ll remember last summer how I shared an episode all about how I launched a marketing campaign in July that made August my highest revenue month ever at my practice. From July to August it increased my patient numbers by 25% and my revenue by 33%. So in the Patient Boost Bonus, I share the exact emails and social media, plus the exact strategy I used in that campaign. And I plan to repeat this exact campaign again this summer in my practice. So in the Patient Boost Bonus I walk you through my thought process behind how I structured this campaign, what I plan to do to make it even better this summer, and how to apply it to your own practice, because I know that everyone’s practice is different. But I think you’re really going to love this mini training. It’s only available to those who sign up for Acu Marketing School this week, and then you have lifetime access so you can repeat this process whenever your practice needs a boost. As I mentioned, I plan to do it once a year.

So again, the link for Acupuncture Marketing School and to learn more about exactly what’s included in the Patient Boost Bonus is in the show notes. The discount code should already be applied at checkout so you can save $200. If for some reason it’s not already applied, like a technical glitch, the code is PATIENTBOOST. If you have questions, email me for sure – michelle@michellegrasek.com

Okay, let’s talk about continued education for acupuncturists.

Recently I was talking to a marketing client who felt a lack of confidence in her marketing. We dug in a little and what it came down to is, she doesn’t feel prepared to get visible in her community, because she feels like, at the core, she’s not a strong enough practitioner yet. Now, this is not true. She absolutely is.

And we were talking about niching down earlier and she said that before was prepared to do marketing, to get her name out in her community, she just wanted to take one more class, to help her specialize in an area where she already has an intense interest. And because this loves this style of acupuncture, she’s already familiar with it and more well versed than the average acu.

And when I recommend niching down to enhance the results of your marketing, I mean leaning into the kind of patients you want to see or the symptoms you want to treat, in your marketing. I mean talking about it often in your marketing, teaching about it in your marketing, all the time. I do NOT mean, taking class after class until you arrive at this imaginary endpoint where you feel expert enough to get visible in your community. Woof. I know, right. I know.

Stay with me here. It’s a little tough love. I know a lot of acupuncturists do this. They feel like if they just learn one more thing, if they just master one more skill, they’ll have the confidence to start marketing. That, or their clinical skills will be so strong that the referrals will just keep pouring in.

If you want more patients in your practice RIGHT NOW, stop taking every new TCM course and chasing after every new technique. Learning a new acupuncture skill will not help you get visible.

Right now, you do not need to take another technique or theory class. You have everything you need to be successful. You have all the knowledge you need to help SO many people.

What you need is a strategy for visibility. That’s it.

Now, I would NEVER say stop learning. That would be crazy. Impossible in this profession. It’s why so many of us get into it in the first place, right? Because it’s fascinating and this medicine requires lifelong learning. I think of pulse diagnosis, for example, and I know I’ll be learning til the day I die, right.

If your goal – and this is so important – if your goal is to get more patients in your door, what you need is a clear-cut strategy for visibility, not more acupuncture education.

In my experience, people think that taking another skills class will either, A) give them the confidence to market themselves better, and more consistently, or B) make them get such amazing results that the referrals start flooding in.

The problem is that most people are hoping that this visibility after learning a new technical skill will occur naturally, without any effort on their part. They’re hoping the increase in patients will be organic.

This is the field of dreams method, right. “If you build it they will come.” No. if that was true you wouldn’t need whatever the class is teaching you. You already put out a shingle, right? And that wasn’t enough.

And don’t get me wrong. Obviously being good at your job results in referrals over time. But here’s the kicker: it works slowwwwwwwly.

That is what I refer to as passive marketing. If you have all the time in the world, then fine, that’s one way to do it. If you’re looking for rapid growth and expansion of your practice, then you want to engage in active marketing that gets you and your message out in front of your community regularly. You want to use a strategy for that.

And so that’s why I recommend not worrying about taking another class to enhance your clinical skills if what you want is more patients in your door. Focus your energy on your visibility strategy. Once you’re getting results from your marketing, shift your focus back to clinical skills if you want to keep learning more and more. But set your business up for success first, so that you have that foundation, before pouring money into clinical skills class after clinical skills class.

Okay, I hope this has been helpful. Just a something for you to chew on this week. You already know enough to help so many people in your community. You’re ready to market right now.

All right and don’t forget that Acupuncture Marketing School is on sale for $200 off this week. If you’re ready for a plan for visibility in your practice, I’m here to help.

My goal for Acupuncture Marketing School is to help you create a marketing strategy that brings you more patients, helps you skip the marketing headaches, and allows you to scale and build the practice of your dreams.

Inside Acupuncture Marketing School, you’ll find easy to follow tutorials for finally getting clarity on your target market, ideal patient, and marketing message – these are essential those components for strong marketing and establishing a professional brand in your community.

I’ll be honest, this is a big course, because it’s comprehensive. Acupuncture Marketing School is a HOLISTIC view of marketing which makes it so effective. Just like acupuncture, right? It’s important to create marketing that is cohesive as a whole, that is crafted around your unique goals, practice and patients, instead of just taking a stab at smaller symptomatic areas of your marketing.

And don’t forget if you enroll this week, you also get access to the Patient Boost Bonus. My exact strategy, my emails, etc. that helped me increased revenue by 33% last year from July to August.

The link is in the show notes to take a look at Acupuncture Marketing School and the Patient Boost Bonus.

Have a great week! Go out there are do something wonderful in your community. I believe in you. Your patients need you. Talk to you next time.