Your USP should be written in about 90 words or less.  It is the basis for all of your marketing.

It is the message that you are trying to convey to the masses, which is why it is the first step in this process.

A good USP helps you get more prospective patients; causes you to convert more prospective patients; causes your patients to do more business with you, and refer more of their family and friends to you.

To re-iterate, an effective USP, properly communicated to your patients and prospective patients, will cause an:

1. Increase in prospects
2. Increase in conversions of prospects to patients
3. Increase in the amount of business your current patients do with you.

These are the only 3 ways any practice grows.

Some U.S.P. Examples

Dominos Pizza: “Fresh hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less… or it’s free.”

Federal Express: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there over night.”

From my chiropractic practice: “Providing relief without any popping, twisting, turning or cracking.”

Notice how with Dominos they don’t say they have the best pizza, or even good pizza, and
they don’t just say they will have your pizza to you ASAP.

Notice how FedEx doesn’t say they’ll get it to you faster than anyone else.

Notice how the chiropractic example doesn’t guarantee results, or say anything about being gentle, or good for the whole family.

The common denominator in all of these examples is specificity.

Be specific with your USP.

Rosser Reeves, who coined the phrase Unique Selling Proposition, said that an effective USP must do the following:

1. The proposition must say to the prospective customer (patient): “Buy the product (service), and you will get this specific result.”
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not offer.  It must
   be unique.
3. The proposition must be so strong that it moves the masses.

Two things I might add is that an effective USP must also attract those who are a perfect fit for your practice, and repel those who are not a good fit for what you do.

For instance, (and this is very important if you’re an upper cervical doctor) there are those who are chiropractic patients simply because they love the crack and pop and release they feel when they receive a traditional adjustment.  The USP above would repel that brand of patient.  This is a good thing because it eliminates the possibility of that person being dissatisfied with an upper cervical adjustment.

Eliminating dissatisfaction from your patient base ensures that they’ll return to do more business with you, and will stimulate more referrals of their family and friends.

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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.

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If you don’t know why you’re in practice, then your patients certainly don’t know, and if they
don’t know, then they are just going to go with their cheapest option.

Advertising that you’re the cheapest is not really a good idea because someone can always go
lower, no matter how low you go.

A Unique Selling Proposition is essential for an upper cervical practice so that it knows exactly
why people should do business with them.

A Unique Selling Proposition, or U.S.P. is a statement, in 90 words or less, that answers the
question: “Why should I do business with you versus any and every other option available to
me… including doing nothing.”

It is your “elevator speech.”  If you’re ever in an elevator, and someone asks you what you do,
it’s the speech you give them.

When you can answer this question in a succinct manner, then you have your practice’s U.S.P.

This is vitally important and is the foundation for all of your communication efforts with your
patients.

If you can’t succinctly state why you’re different, and why your patients should choose you as
their doctor, then you won’t be able to tell your patients succinctly why you’re different and
why they should choose you as their doctor.

If you can’t tell your patients, then they won’t be able to tell anyone else why you’re different,
and why other people they’re trying to refer should choose you as their doctor.

Don’t discount this step.  This seems simple and straightforward, and it is.  A USP is a very
simple thing, but simplicity of object does not mean that it is easy to develop.

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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.

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