Episode #25: The Year in Review: Marketing Mistakes at My Practice in 2021

This week I’m sharing the marketing mistakes I made for my practice in 2021!

These are all the marketing strategies I tried that just did NOT work out. All the flops.

And perhaps not surprisingly, I’m really looking forward to talking about all of this with you.

One of my goals is to help you become an even better, more confident marketer, and I think sharing my mistakes can be really helpful, so that you don’t have to waste your time, energy or money in the same ways I did.

In other words, I’m happy to make mistakes and mess things up, so you don’t have to.

🎉 A quick reminder that the Acu Biz Planathon is this Sunday, December 5th, at 11:00 am Eastern Time. Join me!

In this goal-setting and business-planning live workshop, we’ll be reviewing your 2021 – what worked well, what didn’t, what were your big and small successes.

Then you’ll be setting your BIG goals for 2022 and walking through a 90-day planning workbook to outline your next steps to achieve those goals.

When you walk away from this event you’ll have your first steps lined up, and lots of fresh new motivation, to pursue all the amazing things that you want for your work and your life in 2022.

I’d love for you to join me. It’s a 90-minute workshop and it’s $47. There are going to be some giveaways, YAY.

If you can’t attend live, no problem. There will be a replay available for 30 days for anyone who registers.

>> Click here to register for the Acu Biz Planathon on Dec. 5th.

And – if you’re a student and you want to join us, feel free to email me michelle@michellegrasek.com for a half off discount code.

All right, so let’s dive in and talk about the marketing avenues I tried this year that just did not go well!

🎙️ Listen to Episode #25: Year in Review: Marketing Mistakes at My Acupuncture Practice in 2021

Show Notes:

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

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

Transcript:

Hello, welcome! This week I’m sharing the marketing mistakes I made for my practice in 2021. These are all the marketing strategies I tried that just did NOT work out. All the flops.

And perhaps not surprisingly, I’m really looking forward to talking about all of this with you. One of my goals is always to help you become an even better, more confident marketer, and I think sharing my mistakes can be really helpful, so that you don’t have to waste your time, energy or money in the same ways I did. In other words, I’m happy to make mistakes and mess things up, so you don’t have to.

Now, two episodes ago (Episode 23), I talked about my marketing strategy for November and December this year, which is to post every single day on Instagram. And I have some very specific goals for that, including selling some special skincare products and gift sets that I purchased wholesale just for the holiday season. You can listen to the whole episode here.

So I am not going to talk about that campaign today, about whether that’s working or not, because obviously I’m in the middle of it. I’m still posting every single day on Instagram for the rest of the year. Instead, in January 2022, the first podcast of the new year will take a look back and review how this big marketing campaign went for November and December. Of course we’ll talk about what I would do differently, what went well, etc.

So that means today we’re really talking about marketing that didn’t go well in 2021, up until November. Just to clarify.

And before we get to it, I want to remind you that the Acu Biz Planathon is this coming Sunday, December 5th, at 11:00 am Eastern Time. In this goal-setting and business-planning live workshop, we’ll be reviewing your 2021 – what worked well, what didn’t, what were your big and small successes. Then you’ll be setting your BIG goals for 2022 and walking through a 90-day planning workbook to outline your next steps to achieve those goals.

So when you walk away from this event you’ll have your first steps lined up, and lots of fresh new motivation to pursue all the amazing things that you want for your work and your life in 2022. So I’d love for you to join me. It’s a 90-minute workshop, it’s $47. There are going to be some giveaways, yay.

If you can’t attend live, that’s no problem. There will be a replay available for 30 days for anyone who registers.

The link is in the show notes to save your seat.

And – if you’re a student and you want to join us, feel free to email me michelle@michellegrasek.com for a half off discount code.

All right, so let’s dive in and talk about the marketing avenues I tried this year that just did not go well.

Postcard marketing. You guys, I think I’ve talked about this before. I am just obsessed with postcard marketing, but it never goes well! I never get the results I want, and yet, that doesn’t stop me from trying. I love the idea of postcards, I love the graphic design element that goes into it, and the potential for getting my business in front of local people. I just really want them to work. But I never seem to get it quite right.

Now, the beauty of postcard marketing is that you can get in front of new audiences in your community who may not have heard of your practice because. If you work with a mailing company, you can purhcase a list of people’s names and addresses in a certain geographic area. This is of course, public information. But if you go through a postcard company, it’s like sending out a mass mailing. For example, whenever you get a flyer from the local pizza company in your mailbox, that’s what they’re doing. Working with a company to send that same flyer to every person in a certain radius. Okay, so this is same.

I tried doing postcard marketing earlier in the year to announce that I was open again for cosmetic acupuncture, and of course right after that we kind of had a little COVID surge in this area and people were a little bit freaked out. It was probably right around Easter like right around the holiday time. And I don’t think I got a single response from those postcards. So of course, part of this was timing, right?

Maybe if I had waited, the response would have been better.

I think if I’d waited until the weather was a little bit warmer, I probably would have had a better result. In this area, in the summer, people could spend more time outside and overall our COVID numbers were low, locally. So in the summer people had a little bit more freedom and they felt safer to go out and take their masks off for services like cosmetic acupuncture.

Then again, everything has been so up and down, so unpredictable with COVID in the last year and a half, that I felt like, if I keep waiting until an ideal time, I’ll be waiting forever. So I just decided to send them. And of course the timing was a huge factor.

On top of that was a bigger problem, a bigger mistake that I made. Postcard mailings need to be repeated to be effective. What am I always saying on this podcast? I’m like a broken record and yet even I don’t always take my own advice. Marketing needs to be repeated to be effective.

That is true with most marketing, including postcards. Think about it: I was sending postcards to cold prospects, people who’ve never heard of me or cosmetic acupuncture before. And I’m just landing in their mailbox saying, “Come get needles in your face for cosmetic acupuncture.”

If I really wanted my postcard marketing to be successful, I would have needed to do at least three rounds of postcards to the same radius of people. There’s a really great postcard marketing company with a wonderful marketing blog called Postcard Mania. If you want to dig deep into the nuance of postcard marketing, a little light bedtime reading, I recommend their blog.

The blog talks about how, not only are multiple mailings typically required for maximum effectiveness, but there’s a specific order in which you send out postcards with different topics.

The first mailing is a more gentle, introduction to you and your business, because it’s a cold audience. They’ve never met you. After that you might send out something with a little bit more detail and a coupon code for a specific service, explaining the service. They talk about how you want to include a testimonial that’s relevant to the specific service, etc.

And then after that, you would want to send out another mailing on a specific topic. So it’s gradual. It’s not like just meeting someone and asking them to marry you. Which is what I did.

I tried to go all in and essentially sent out the second postcard, which basically said, hey, this is who I am, here’s cosmetic acupuncture, here’s a discount with an expiration date, here’s a testimonial, make an appointment.

But I think I really didn’t warm my audience up enough. And the costs for postcard mailings can add up, depending on the number of postcards you’re sending. You have to pay for the postcard printing, you often have to pay for the list of contact info for the people that you want to mail to, and then you have to pay for postcard stamps. If you do all of this together and you send your postcards through a mailing company, you can often get the stamps at a reduced cost. But still all of that adds up and then you’re supposed to do it at least three times, if not regularly to stay top of mind.

First you’re introducing yourself and letting people get to know you, then you’re making them an offer, and then you’re trying to stay top of mind. So postcard marketing is a lot like marketing for social media right? Or anything else. And I just I think I came on too strong with my cold prospects at the really bad time of year and it just didn’t work out. So I got no cosmetic acupuncture patients from that effort. Goodbye, money.

Of course, you know this won’t stop me from postcard marketing in the future. I am just determined to get it right. I love the graphic design and figuring out the challenge of getting a marketing message, a coupon, a testimonial and any other important information on to this tiny little piece of paper.

Of course you can definitely have a mailing company do this for you, or your local printing and mailing place would design these postcards for you. I just love doing it. So I’m sure I will try at least one more time, the whole 3-mailing shebang, at some point in 2022. And of course I will give you guys feedback on how that went.

But postcard marketing in 2021. Definitely a bust for me.

The second marketing approach that I took that didn’t work out like I planned is the reason I joined my local Chambers of Commerce. Now, don’t get me wrong. I want to emphasize up front that ultimately, joining both Chambers of Commerce turned out to be worth it and paid for itself. BUT the reason I paid money to join these groups was so that I could attend networking meetings and get to know other business owners in the area. Because honestly, I don’t know about you, but running a business has been a little lonely in the last year and a half. So I felt the need for some community, and even though I hate networking meetings, I decided I needed to make myself go, at least until I felt like the community had a better awareness of my business.

BUT. I responded yes to almost every networking event invitation from both Chambers – and then no-showed at all of them. Guys, I’m the worst! I didn’t go to a single one. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for awhile, you know that I hate networking meetings. I do not know how to mingle. I’m pretty intensely uncomfortable at the thought of mingling. So I bailed, every time. And so, for that reason, I’m considering that part of my joining the Chambers a fail.

HOWEVER, thank goodness, both Chambers offer other ways, digital ways, to get visible in front of other business owners, and I took advantage of that. Both offer email blasts and social media posts for a nominal fee, that go out to go other Chamber members. And because I did that for a promotion in August, I easily got enough new cosmetic patients to more than cover the cost of the memberships. So I’m still glad I joined.

Networking meetings in 2022, you know, I still really want to say that I’ll go because I know they can be so effective. Meeting people and talking to them in person is a very warm touchpoint, right? And the warmer the touchpoints, the faster you build trust, and the fewer overall marketing touchpoints you need before someone makes an appointment. So networking meetings can really speed up the growth of your practice, I know that. That’s why I always tell myself I’ll go.

If I do sign up for any networking in 2022, the one thing I’ll do differently is bring a friend. I don’t know why I abandoned this concept in 2021, because it’s the number one rule that I always teach my marketing students and one on one clients. If you don’t love networking meetings and you feel reluctant, know that you never have go by yourself! Recruit a friend!

That should be the first thing you do when you reply yes to a networking meeting invite. Ask yourself, Who do I have to bring with me for accountability? Typically, at most Chamber events, you can always bring a guest for free. They don’t have to be a Chamber member. So invite another small business member friend.

So networking meetings were really a flop, but overall, joining the Chambers of Commerce did pay for itself because it allowed me to get visible in my community in new ways.

Okay, number three. Another marketing strategy that I thought would work really well was the idea of advertising to my email list and my social media followers that I only had two or three spots left for new cosmetic acupuncture patients. Basically I was looking for new patients who were ready to do the full series of 10 treatments. If you’re not familiar cosmetic acupuncture, it’s typically twice a week for five or six weeks. Of course, that’s quite a time and financial commitment. For me, it can be hard to add several new cosmetic acupuncture patients to my schedule at once. It’s like where do I put them so everybody has a time that works for them. It gets tricky.

Ideally, I had planned to give seven or eight weeks lead-up before Thanksgiving, and send a series of emails to my list. In the emails, I would them how the cosmetic acupuncture protocol works and explaining that once the holidays hit, it is kind of hard to fit new cosmetic patients into my schedule, because I have time off and patients are often taking their own time off. And they have events that they’re going to. Everyone just gets busy with the holidays. Between Thanksgiving in New Year’s, I very rarely book new cosmetic patients because it’s just too hard to fit people in twice a week for five weeks.

So my plan was, eight weeks before Thanksgiving, I was going to send out a series of three emails telling people, if you want to get on my schedule for a full series of cosmetic treatments before the end of the year, before the holidays, now is the time to do it. And I only have space for two new people.

We know that in marketing, things are typically a lot more effective when you have some sort of scarcity. That could be a discount that’s expiring or it could be a limited number of seats. Or if you have a product you could emphasize that once it sells out, that’s it. Any kind of limitation like this is typically really effective in getting people to take action. So I really thought this was going to light a fire under people’s butts to get on the schedule. And what did I get? Crickets. Here’s why.

I waited way too long and only ended up sending one email. Honestly, I just lost track of time and I dropped the ball on this one. All of a sudden it was five weeks before Thanksgiving and I realized I needed to send this email. And that’s really too late, right? I sent this email saying, “I only have two spots left open for people who want to do the full series of cosmetic acupuncture.”

But I sent it pretty much the week that they would have needed to get their first two treatments. So for anyone who was reading that email closely and calculating, they probably would have realized like oh shoot, I would need to call her and start this in the next couple of days if I actually want to be done by Thanksgiving.

So that was a huge faux pas on my part. I think I also only talked about it once on my Instagram account, and then realized, it’s too late now to repeat this message. But this message really needed to be repeated several times, because it is a big investment for patients, in terms of both finances and time. And people deserve a little leadup time to think it over and decide, is it an investment that they want to make? Can they make time for it? This is something that I’m really disappointed I dropped the ball on, because I absolutely think that it had the potential to be super effective.

It is something that I will definitely try again, and do it right this time, in 2022. For example, I’m taking a time off in July of 2022. I’m not sure if it will be one week or two weeks, but basically I’m going to use that as a deadline for this marketing campaign. I’ll send three emails reminding people that I have two seats open for people who want to sign up before I take time off for a couple of weeks.

Because the thing with cosmetic acupuncture is you really can’t stop and take a two week break in the middle of the 10 treatment series. In order to do that, I’d have to start talking about it and sending those emails in the beginning of May or even earlier, to give people plenty of time to make the decision if they want sign up for the five week series. So that is already on my marketing calendar, writing those emails in early April, and scheduling them to go out on in early May.

Okay, number four. I also dropped the ball with this one, maybe not quite to the same degree as the last one. But I was equally surprised that this did not work. This was sending a birthday month email with a discount code for $10 off of treatment.

I use the HER Unified Practice, which connects to the email service, constant contact, and it’s a HIPAA compliant connection, so of course no private health information is shared when you are moving people from your unified practice EHR into the email account. But Unified Practice has all these marketing features for email, which are amazing. You can select all of your patients who, for example, have birthdays in February. So that’s what I did. And I made a specific group inside Constant Contact and moved those patients into that group.

Then I sent out an email to everyone who had birthdays in February saying, Hi Janet. It’s your birthday month. Something about having a vibrant and healthy birthday and how acupuncture can help them feel great during their birthday month, and then offering them $10 off any service. A coupon.

Also, I can’t believe I did that, because I never offer any discount on general acupuncture treatments. If I’m going to offer any kind of discount on services, which is rare, I only do that for cosmetic acupuncture treatments or the Acupuncture Glow Facial. So I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but went for it and offered a blanket discount for $10 one treatment of any kind, during their birthday month.

And I thought like wow, I’m might have regulars who are using this when they would normally come and pay me full price. I guess if they do I’ll consider it a patient appreciation kind of thing. Instead what happened was, no response at all. Nobody took advantage of that coupon. And I didn’t try it again with later months, so I had no chance to gather more data or get feedback, so that I make it actually effective.

Usually if something doesn’t work, I’ll tweak it and then say, okay, it wasn’t this. Then tweak it again and say okay, it wasn’t that. Until I get to a point where it’s working or I can say, okay, I totally understand why it’s not working.

But instead I was just so disheartened that nobody took advantage of the coupon that I was said to myself, I’m not going to make the effort to keep recreating this email. Which was not a good choice. I should have done my usual trial and error, tweaking approach. Plus, I had already written the email, so I had a template! It would have been easy.

I’m not sure if I’ll try this approach again in 2022. I might but with a different offer. Here’s what I would do next time. I’d only offer it as $10 off of a cosmetic acupuncture treatment. So I would make it more specific, which generally tends to be more effective anyway. The more specific our marketing is, the more we get people to take action because they’re interested in that particular thing.

And I would send out a reminder email. How did I not do this to begin with? So if you send out a birthday email for everyone who was born in December at the beginning of the month, you should really send them at least one reminder, for example, halfway through December. The reminder email can be almost identical, saying, Hello, I just want to make sure you saw this special offer for your birthday.

You could even send a third reminder one week before the end of their birthday month. Just saying, that would not be too much. You’re giving them something. And that expiring coupon is what makes people take action, even if they forgot all about it. They might see it one more time and say, “Wow, this coupon expires in six days. I better take advantage while it’s still my birthday month.”

So as I said, I’m not sure if I would do this quite the same way again. I’d always rather do marketing that doesn’t involve discounting my services when possible. I just don’t want that to be something that people get used to. And I know that a lot of people take insurance and can’t really discount things anyway.

In that case, you could offer a bonus or some sort of addition for people during their birthday month. It could be something small and inexpensive from your retail space. Or you could offer an add-on to treatment, like extra cupping or something. Whatever you’re comfortable with, that your patients would also see as valuable. And then just make sure that you send at least one reminders.

All right, these are the major marketing strategies I tried in 2021 that just did not go as planned. Reminding you that even people who get paid to do marketing for a living make mistakes, drop the ball, and realize in hindsight that something could have been done much better. As always, I encourage you to embrace marketing as a grand experiment. Don’t be afraid to try and fail. Failure supplies data so that you can create something more effective next time.

And next episode, the last episode of 2021, join me to hear about the marketing that did work really well this year, strategies I plan on reusing, how I might tweak them, etc.

Before I sign off, don’t forget to register if you’d like to join me for the Acu Biz Planathon on Sunday, December 5th. The link is in the show notes. It’s going to a be a fun event with lots of good energy. Wear your pjs, get your cup of tea and your colored pens, I can’t wait. Students – if you would like to attend the Acu Biz PLanathon, I’d love for you to come and set your goals for the upcoming year as well! Send me a message and I’ll send you a half price coupon.

And of course if you can’t attend live on Sunday, December 5th, he replay will be available for 30 days for anyone who registers. As always, feel free to send me your questions. I can’t wait to talk to you next episode!