Once you have an effective marketing message, or unique selling proposition, (USP) you must integrate that USP into any and every media that leaves your hands, or the hands of your employees. It is how you get the message about what you do out into the real world where patients and prospective patients see what makes you different.

This is very simple and straightforward, but essential to properly branding your practice.

With People

The first place you must integrate your USP is with all of the people in your practice. You, your employees, and anyone who represents what you do must understand what your practice’s USP is, and be able to project it to patients and prospective patients.

Your receptionist must be able to demonstrate your USP when they answer the phone. As an example, let’s use the USP I used in my practice. The phone rings, and the receptionist says: “Thank you for calling Hambrick Chiropractic, where we’re providing relief without any popping twisting turning or cracking.”

Now I know that sounds corny, and we never answered the phone that way, but you get the idea.

The important point is to make sure that all of your employees knows exactly why you’re in practice, and why a prospect should choose to do business with you versus any and all other chiropractors in your area.

With Literature

If your practice has promotional literature, such as brochures, information packets, etc. then you must have your USP prominently displayed and exposed on all of it. Of course, it must look natural, and not forced, and if your USP doesn’t naturally fit into your current literature, then you should revamp it. Websites would also fall into this category. And if you don’t have any literature… why not? If no one else in your industry is producing literature, then that’s all the more reason why you should.

With Business Cards

How many business cards have you been given in your life? Now how many of those have you kept? Now how many of those have you referenced more than once?

Business cards are a necessary evil. Everyone expects you to have one, and expects you to give them one, and those that have them love to pass them around like confetti hoping that one lands in the right hands and translates into business for them.

The truth is, your card is probably never going to be used, and if it is, it will probably only be used once and then filed away and forgotten about. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Business cards could potentially be valuable real estate for your marketing message. Your USP should be the first thing that stands out on your business card. That’s what is going to make people remember your card, there-by remembering you, and file it way for whenever they have use for whatever specific need your practice meets.

On a side note, your business cards should be used as a direct response device that collects leads for you by offering free information, or sending people to a website that will catch their information so you can then market directly to them.

That in my opinion is the most valuable use of a business card, but that’s for another time.

With Ads

Every ad that your clinic produces should prominently display your USP. It should be the focus of your ad. It should be the reason the ad exists… to spread the reason why people should do business with your company vs. any and all other options available to them.

A huge mistake that most practices make is creating an ad where there practice name and phone number is the headline. This is known as “institutional advertising” and is a notorious waste of advertising dollars. Institutional advertising never catches anyone’s eye unless they already know all about the company.

You must use expensive ad space to broadcast your USP. This is especially true for YellowPage ads. An ad is merely a printed form of a sales rep, and a sales rep would never call on someone and merely just say the business name and phone number in a loud voice without actually selling the prospect on becoming a client/customer/patient.

With Business Paperwork

This includes letter head, business forms, invoices, work-orders, even notepads that are used to write notes that might go home with your upper cervical patients. Waste no space, if there is some sort of paperwork that will leave your office, then find a way to integrate your USP into that paperwork. It doesn’t need to look awkward, but can easily and organically be integrated into the most business-like of papers.

On Hold Message

If you have an on-hold service that just plays music, then you are wasting valuable advertising space that could be explaining to everyone on hold why they should be doing business with you. This is very easy and cheap to do if you already have this system in place. You can have your USP professionally recorded, or record it in your own voice.

With Web Site

Your web site is merely another medium of communication with your patients and prospective patients, and your web site must convey your USP. Any emails as well should also have your USP integrated into them in some fashion.

There’s no point in having a compelling marketing message that differentiates you from all of the other practitioners in your area, if you aren’t broadcasting that message and making it clear and obvious why you’re different. Integrating your USP is a step that can not be skipped.

Tweet This Post

At least the law states that PTs may not perform chiropractic adjustments, but is this another step towards phasing out any association between chiropractors and MDs?

The PT organizations also alluded to “…concerns raised of injury resulting from manipulation of the upper cervical spine. By contrast, within the physical therapy profession studies have been published on effective methods for addressing neck pain by manipulating the thoracic spine, where less risk exists.”

Sounds like they are doing all they can to alienate us and cow towing to the MDs.

Objective efficacy studies, like the one conducted by Dr. Kirk Eriksen, are more necessary now than ever before.

Tweet This Post

But just being an upper cervical doctor is NOT a USP.  You can’t tell someone, “I’m an upper
cervical doctor, that’s what makes me different,” and expect them to know what you’re talking
about.

You have to speak your patient’s language, and express what you do in a way that they’ll un-
derstand.

You have to clearly state your distinctives in language that your patient can then turn around
and state to others.

Your first step is to sit down with a sheet of paper and state all the distinctives about your
practice.

• How are you different from other chiropractors in your area?
• What are the distinctive needs your practice meets?
• Are there any demographic distinctives?
• Are there any patient services that are distinct? (Being an upper cervical clinic is a big one)
• Are there any cost distinctives?
• Are there any staff distinctives?
• What is your track record?
• Are there any visionary distinctives?

The next step in the development of your USP is to ask your existing patients why they choose
to do business with you rather than all of your competition.

• Are they satisfied with their care?
• Is there anything they would like to see you adjust, or change?
• What caused them to choose you?
• Have they been to other chiropractors in the area, if yes, why?
• Is there a crucial or obvious need that is overlooked and not being taken care of?
• What would they say is unique about you, or that separates you from the other chiropractors
• in the area?

It’s also important to ask your employees what they think your USP is.  You may be surprised
to find out that their ideas are nowhere close to your ideas.

Tweet This Post

Full Spine, Gonstead, Activator, Nucca, Atlas Orthogonal,…

On and on the list goes, but for all of the differences that make these practices unique, there is one undeniable truth about these and all practices:

A practice, is a business, & fundamentally, all business is the same.

All business is merely an exchange of goods or services for an agreed upon medium of equiva-
lent value.

Whether your a chiropractor, a plumber or a fast food franchise owner, people do business with you for the same reason they do business with any and all other businesses.  Those reasons do vary, be they cost, product, service, convenience, but fundamentally, all business is the same.

In fact, the biggest mistake that any practice makes, is assuming that it’s different from any
other business.

This one mistake causes all practices that make it (the mistake), to ignore means and methods for improving their performance simply because no one else in their industry is doing it.

Practice owners look to see how everyone else in the chiropractic industry does things, and then proceed to model what they do based on what they see, and all they succeed in doing is making themselves look like a commodity.

This leads to marketing incest, and eventually the practice gets lost in the heap created by all the other practices all doing what everyone else is doing.

Just pick up any Yellow Pages, go to the section on chiropractors, and see what I mean.  How many ads in that section are saying anything different from any other ad there?

But there is a much better way to run your practice.

There is a way to set yourself apart from the pack, become the lead dog and leave all of your competitors staring at your backside as you run away with all of their business.

And this essentially boils down to a more effective marketing plan accomplished applying as little as 7 principles to your upper cervical practice, and not requiring you to spend any more money on advertising, but simply leveraging existing assets that you may have never thought of.

The 7 principles are:

1. Developing an easily understood statement that makes you distinctive from other chiropractors (also known as an upper cervical Unique Selling Proposition (U.S.P.)).
2. Integrating your upper cervical U.S.P. into every piece of media that leaves your practice (including what your CA says on the phone).
3. Collecting present & past patients into a database.
4. Communicating your upper cervical USP to current and past patients.
5. Developing a practice newsletter.
6. Collecting letters of endorsement and testimonials.
7. Properly communicating with prospective patients.

Not only will we go over these principles, you’ll see how to apply them to your practice.

Tweet This Post