Acufinder let me know they’ll be sending me gift certificates for Acufinder.com subscriptions next week. In case you didn’t know, Acufinder is a huge online directory of practitioners. You can sign up for a free listing, but the paid listings get more attention. Acufinder’s home page states they get 6,000,000 hits monthly. That’s hits, not visitors. I’m not sure how many visitors that translates into, but even if it’s 1/10th of the number of hits, that’s not shabby. 600,000 visitors is a lot.

Acufinder subscriptions go for $179, and they’re sending me three of them. That’s pretty convenient because I’m having three contests/drawings.

First is the Doers’ Contest. Only those that do something to attract more patients can win.

Second is what I’ll call the Tried and True Contest. Sometimes people send me emails with things they’ve tried that worked for them. Here’s an example from Matthew Colavecchia:

I have a new marketing idea for direct cold calls that I have been using to great success. I go to the local grocery store, and buy a couple dozen organic apples with the stems on. I take my hole punch, make a hole in my business card, fit it over the stem, and cut a short piece of sisal cord and tie a small knot to keep the card from falling off.

I do a bit of research first, and figure out how many employees are at a given business, and simply turn up on the doorstep with an apple for everyone! Usually, they let me go around and hand deliver each apple, which allows me to talk directly about what I do and how I can help each individual.

Efficient marketing. Tough to beat!

The emails I’ve sent sharing these have received a lot of interest. So let’s have more. Submit what worked for you. If you’d like a little assistance writing it up, I’d be happy to help out. The results will be compiled into an ebook that I’ll give as a bonus to those who have a copy of Never Market Again.

As for the Acufinder prizes, you may wonder if acufinder works. I asked them to donate a prize because yes, I do believe they’re a good investment. I’ve been offering a free online quiz, and one of the quiz questions asks about sources of patients. Acufinder is one of the answers. It does get patients for many of the people who took the Quiz.

Calculating the value of attracting just one new patient is covered in the book. The $175 value in the example given is ridiculously conservative, as it assumes 3 patient visits only. By coincidence, Acufinder’s one year subscription is almost exactly that - $179 (their $229 for a 2 year subscription is a much even better deal in my opinion).

For Acufinder to be worth it, they only have to bring in one new patient for you to break even. Every patient after that is essentially free.

I would be surprised if you didn’t get at least one new patient from Acufinder, unless you live in a sparsely populated area. Even then it may be worth it. Based on conservative calculations, it only takes two new patients to put you ahead of the game. One new patient from them every other month would give you an $875 return on your $179 investment.

As with anything you invest in, you need to track your results to see what’s working. In the book, I explain how to do this, just by asking “How did you hear about us?” Tracking is IMPORTANT. You need to know what’s working so you can do more of it. Or stop if if it’s not working. It’s too simple and too informative NOT to track.

Almost forgot to mention, they’re sending me 5 things from acuwear.com. No idea which ones, but I like what I see. I’m tempted to take one for myself because I don’t have any cool yin-yang symbols or shirts to use as conversation pieces. But that would be stealing, so I’m going to award all five to someone.

Will you be a winner?

Prizes so far:

• Andy Rosenfarb’s Fundamentals of Practice Management Course.
• Kevin Doherty’s Build Your Dream Practice.
• A high quality website from yours truly with one year of hosting.
• Three Acufinder.com listings
• Five Acuwear.com surprises… Not sure what they are yet.

More to come.  The book comes out tomorrow.