Unless you’re living in a self-imposed bubble, you’re aware that we are living in unchartered waters, at least as most of us our concerned. We’ve got inflation running at a clip of over 8.5% and now we are in a recession. As if that wasn’t enough, we are also in a bear stock market, so your investments in the market are losing value. What’s worse, your patients and prospective patients are also seeing and living this economic downturn. It has ramifications for you and your practice. Don’t ignore it, because if you do it’ll lead to a large problem. The great news is you can use this as a catalyst for growth.
None of us have ever tried to build a great practice with all three of these negative economic forces in play all at once. We haven’t seen inflation like this since the 70’s, and none of us were practicing back then. However, lessons were learned.
If this inflation and recession topic isn’t causing you a bit of concern or stress, it’s time to rethink what’s going on, because as people stop spending their discretionary cash, it will start to impact your practice. That’s just common sense. To stick your head in the sand and pretend you can overcome this with the force of your personality is hubris at best. In this video, I’ll discuss some of the coming challenges that most certainly you’ll be faced with as the recession and inflation begin affecting your practice. There are solutions and strategies for every challenge.
Diving in, please know that in times of economic hardship, there is always present a great deal of laser focused opportunity, but you must know where to look, properly identify the opportunity and take immediate and decisive action so that you can grow your practice while the rest of the profession loses traction and slips.
So the question is, “why will many chiropractic practices lose ground and shrink during this recession and inflation?” Great question. That always occurs, and it happens primarily because the majority of people, chiropractors included, tend to do things very similarly to the rest of the pack. In other words, most DC’s are getting nervous about the economy. That’s natural and it’s a good catalyst for growth if you can make the hard decisions to begin to do things differently, now, before the recession and inflation deepen.
At Tony Robbins says, ‘if you’re not growing, you’re dying.’ And it’s time to grow, perhaps like you’ve never grown before. To do so requires you to move in the opposite direction of your peers. While most everyone else begins to take a wait and see attitude, you could easily adopt an attitude of ‘I’ll turn this economy into a huge growth opportunity for my practice!’
One of the very first action steps for you to consider in order to grow during a recession mixed with inflation, is to create and implement the most aggressive marketing strategy you’ve ever contemplated. Where not talking about unprofessional ads and cheesy TikTok videos. We are talking about creating a much larger presence in your community through your marketing efforts.
A robust marketing strategy and presence is necessary simply because people are going to be more critical of where and how much money they spend on many things, healthcare included. As a result, when someone is searching for the right chiropractor for their needs, you need to show up strong, to be easily found in an online search. And when found, you must stand out from the rest so that you become the obvious expert in your community and therefore you are the solution to their current needs. This takes time to create, time and repetition.
Some of the tactics will certainly be social media posts, promoted posts and ads, along with an even stronger presence of videos on the various social platforms. In fact, move heavier into short 30 second videos and do so now. But social media is not the end all be all to marketing. It’s just one subset of marketing strategy. High quality Google ads are every bit if not more important than your social media marketing. This should be part of a broader SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, strategy. And let’s not forget about SEO, or search engine optimization.
Your mission must be to end up in the top 3 positions of a Google search for chiropractors in your community. It’s critical, hypercritical. Most people don’t go down any further than 3 positions in search order. In fact, I just this morning read an article that stated 95% of all online searches are chosen from the top 3 positions in an organic search ranking. 95%! This means your website must be 100% optimized for the very best in SEO. If it’s not, get recommendations for experts that can either optimize your current site or build you a new one tailor made to get you to or near the top ranking positions. Building your own website in between patients is not recommended.
We’ll explore more about making social media platforms work best for you. In the meantime, let’s not forget about direct mail. Yes, direct mail. With the right message to market match, direct mail can be extremely productive for creating even more new patients. Rather than just create a few pieces and test them, get some professional help so your money isn’t wasted. We’ll dive deeper into this subject in the future as well. For now, please know that it can work very well for your practice when done correctly.
As we go through these strategies at a high level, you may be feeling overwhelmed. I get it. Back in the day we could get by just fine with only 2 types of marketing. It’s a different world today and it takes a much more intensive approach if you really want to grow. There are some practices that due to a host of factors, routinely attract a ton of new patients, but those are more the exception, and they’re usually the result of a highly charismatic doctor. Not all of us are so blessed. So, for us mere mortals, marketing is key.
With all this talk about marketing, at the end of the day you still need to prove to each and every new patient why you are the right place for them to invest their hard earned dollars. If they don’t know for sure that you and your team are the place for them to be, they’ll simply vote with their feet and not return to your office. So, you not only need strong marketing, you need strong clinical skills, skills that are even better than your nearby colleagues, because your patient outcomes have to be the very best. If they’re not, they’ll vote with their feet and not complete your care program.
Plus, your office needs to be highly efficient and respectful of your patients’ time. This means your operational systems have to be the very best.
By now you’re getting the feeling that to grow in the midst of high inflation and a deep recession, it’s going to take a lot of things working really well. You’re correct in that assumption. The good news is it’s quite doable if you are up to the task.
Look around you. Who are the 5 people you spend the most amount of time with? You will be as successful as your inner circle. If they’re not where you want to be this time next year, it’s time to search for new members to your inner circle. Maybe you start with adding just one, but do it carefully with the attention to detail and a screening process that you’re certain will lead to ends you desire.
If you found this blog interesting and helpful, grab our free report for chiropractors at hsfranchising.com. It’ll show you how to scale your state of the art practice. It’s the game plan we followed to make 2021 our very best year of growth we’ve ever experienced. We blew away our projections. You can do the same thing. If you want what others have, do what they do and you’ll get what they get.
Again, head over to hsfranchising.com and check our videos/blogs. You’ll love them.