The underlying principles in Never Market Again all center around relationships and education. That’s what makes possible “marketing without marketing”.

I just found THE best summary I’ve ever read of the kind of marketing for acupuncture that I teach. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t write it myself:

When communication is poorly and selfishly executed, it’s called “marketing” - but when done well it’s called “relationship”.

- Brent Hodgson

You can and should do almost ANYTHING if it’s good communication. That can only help your patients and strengthen their relationship with you.

How have you seen this in your own clinic? Isn’t it great when it happens?

Dan Clements over at AlternativeHealthPractice.com writes great material on practice building for acupuncturists and other alternative medical practitioners. It’s so good it’s actually very annoying - how am I supposed to pick what to tell you about to help promote your practice? So I’ve been putting off mentioning AlternativeHealthPractice.com until now.

Finally figured out how to make it easy for you to find what’s valuable for you. Check out Dan’s articles on: [Read more →]

I’m in talks with the Chicago Department of Public Health, as well as a few other agencies about setting up community acupuncture clinics. (The clinics will not be offered through the CDPH itself, but with affiliated agencies.) These will be mobile clinics, with different locations during the week.

I’m looking for an acupuncturists with:

• Great “bedside” matter. Must be able to put people at their ease.
• Knowledge of Dr. Tan’s Balance Method or Miram Lee’s methods. (If you’re not familiar, we may be able to work something out.)
• Own transportation. Ideally you would be able to transport 4-5 zero-gravity chairs (high tech lounge chairs that look almost like lawn chairs).
• Locations in the Chicago area, and the western suburbs (Naperville/Oakbrook).
• Ability to give talks is preferable.

Must be a self-starter and good communicator.

The position will be part time (two days a week) to start, and can be arranged to fit your schedule. Send your CV to Burton if you have his email, or use the contact form.

I’ve done a lot of research looking up acupuncture studies. If you want to do the same, I suggest taking a memory stick to a teaching hospital and visiting their library. You’ll be able to get articles galore. Also Google Scholar is awesome but incomplete unless used in the library. Usually you can get abstracts and complete articles for about 30% of all articles. (Go ahead and check it out. Scholar at the library is unbelievable.)

Anyway, there are always some studies that show acupuncture doesn’t work. Or show that it works only a few percentage points better than placebo - but not enough to be statistically significant.

These studies all have one thing in common. I wanted to share this with you, because if you didn’t already know this, you should. We need answers for the skeptics.

What “acupuncture doesn’t work” studies almost all have in common is they use a pre-determined point selection, The same points are used no matter what. Essentially it’s like “medical acupuncture” - acupuncture without a proper TCM or OM diagnosis. The only thing they use is a Western medicine based diagnosis - a diagnosis usually based on symptoms and not a root cause.

For example, Fibromyalgia has at least four different TCM diagnoses. Choosing points for just one of these diagnoses, or choosing points between four different diagnoses is just plain negligent, and proves nothing.

To me, this is like prescribing aspirin for headaches by default. Suppose migraine, cluster, tension, premenstrual causes, spinal headaches were all treated the same as brain tumors, sinus infections and aneurysms? Aspirin might work for some things, but not others.

Another common claim is that acupuncture results aren’t lasting. These studies usually have six to 10 treatments, then stop. When the researchers check back 6 months later, the results often didn’t persist.

Of course not - there was no check if the underlying imbalance was ever resolved. This is like a patient taking an antibiotic just until they feel better. The underlying infection is still there and will come back.

Hope this helps you deal with skeptics. What do you tell people when they say acupuncture doesn’t work?

Some people are worried about the recession. The established definition of a recession is a contraction in the GDP (gross domestic product) for at least 6 months. Basically, it means less money is exchanging hands - people change their spending habits. They still spend, but not as often. This means less value is being created by commerce. Also, most businesses cut back on their marketing.

As far as I’m concerned, the acupuncture profession is already in a several decade-long “recession” of sorts. It’s up to us to get out of it. [Read more →]

The Community Acupuncture Network (CAN) model is a VERY interesting business model for acupuncture clinics. It is based on a group treatment room. Usually there are a bunch of reclining chairs in a single room. The payment is sliding scale, so patients pay as much as they’re able – usually $15 to $40, but sometimes more. To make up for the lower fees, CAN practitioners treat more people per hour. This is the basics – there’s more to it than that. CAN started with Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, Oregon.

CAN seems to get good word-of-mouth marketing naturally - exactly what I like best.

CAN practitioners call “regular” acupuncture given individually “boutique acupuncture”, “private room acupuncture” and other names. (We’ll just call it “private room acupuncture.”)

One thing a lot of practitioners have said (both in public and privately to me) is that CAN style pricing will cut into the market for acupuncture and force people out of business. One practitioner told me privately, “The model of Walmart seems very similar to Community acupuncture. High volume, low prices, and eventually you will force out the mom and pop shop that has to charge higher rates to survive.”

That’s just not true. [Read more →]

On Tuesday I wrote about the Sanborn Maxim. It states that:

“Those who are willing to pay the least will demand the most.”

Some of the many comments about it made me think a lot of people read this as: [Read more →]

To all my friends and family,

During this sad time for China, my heart goes out to those that have been affected by this tragedy. If you are interested in helping in any sort of way, a local Dr. has setup a local Colorado-based organization that is involved in the effort to ship much needed medical supplies to Chengdu. [Read more →]

Lately I’ve been asked by a lot of people to take a look at their website and see why it’s not getting more acupuncture patients. Here’s some common problems I’m seeing (make sure you don’t have them too.): [Read more →]

There was a lot of discussion when I first wrote about offering a free first visit as a marketing tactic to get new acupuncture patients. Many readers gave good feedback.

I do agree that if you’re not careful, a free first visit can cheapen the perceived value of your services. Frankly, people who don’t value your services are an absolute a pain in the rear. You may have some yourself. That’s why I want to introduce you to the Sanborn Maxim. [Read more →]

I asked “What Stops You?” from marketing your acupuncture and oriental medicine clinic, and have been following up on the initial comments. Here are the previous articles in the series that we’re finishing today:

1. What Stops You? (with 17 comments)
2. What Stops You? Part 2 (on confidence)
3. Time Management (What Stops You? part 3)

Two hangups seem to stop many practitioners from actually doing any marketing.

First, [Read more →]

There were 17 total comments on “What Stops You?”, where I asked what stops you from marketing acupuncture. My favorite comment was from Therese:

It’s not that any one thing stops me - it’s the multitude of choices that has this staccato effect on my actions. Oh - my website must be perfect, but all these choices (including the name!). But - wait, what about my brochure? Should I do a general one, or something on a sub-specialty? No, I’ll work on writing articles for local papers, but which one to hone in on? Aaaah! Ok, I’ll do this mailing for the facial acupuncture . No, I’ll get names of doctors! No, the infertility clinics. How about some Pain management / sports centers. Wait, I never finished my website …. the brochure …. the docs .. the massage therapists ….

Where to put the focus? And underneath, I feel like this panicky chipmunk running around in every direction!

So true. If you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing. I have three comments that may help: [Read more →]

Wow, thanks for all the comments on “What Stops You?” (from marketing your acupuncture clinic) – 14 of them. I tallied them up and here’s what everyone said:

• Confidence was an issue for 7 people
• Time management – 4
• Marketing Know-How – 4
• Humility – 2
• Money – 1

First of all – let’s forget about “money”. The poster must be new here. If you’ve read my book, you’ll see that I definitely don’t advocate spending a lot of money on advertising. Advertising and marketing should be an investment anyway. This means it doesn’t cost money – [Read more →]

(This was originally scheduled to be posted much later this month. But because of the feedback on “What Stops You” I’ve decided to share this today. Read the second reason below, and you’ll understand why.)

I recently received an email from a practitioner in Ireland, asking me to check out his website. He’s using Adwords to get traffic to his site, but is getting very few results (I cover Adwords in “The Faucet”, but he hadn’t bought the book yet.). As far as I could see, there were two main reasons why:

1. His Adword ad was about himself. It basically put his name and contact information in the ad. Patients are never interested in you as a practitioner, they’re interested in what you can do for THEM. So I suggested a change in the ad. Instead of the first line being his name, I told him to try Considering Acupuncture? with a few more lines.

The second reason is more important…. [Read more →]