Casey Truffo wrote “Be A Wealthy Therapist”, which is mainly for psychological therapists. However, there’s wisdom in that book that will also benefit acupuncturists and other alternative medical practitioners. I just scanned the table of contents and jumped right to:

Chapter 14

Collect: But She Couldn’t Afford My Fee

It starts out with this:

Wisdom Nugget
Never, ever set a fee that will make you resent the client later
if you find they have money for other ‘luxuries’.

I can’t tell you how many people have mentioned being ambivalent about discounting their services.  We even had a big hullaboo awhile back because I don’t believe in devaluing your services.  This one chapter helps put fees into perspective.

I don’t have time to read the rest of the book.  I was out with friends until 2am last night, and need a nap before going out for New Years really soon.  But I wanted to let you know how to get a free copy of Be A Wealthy Therapist.  Enjoy!

(Don’t forget, you can STILL enter my contest for renaming my book.  Please do so today!  I’m extending the deadline because I’ll be out of town until this weekend.  I’ll choose the winning entries next Monday night - Jan 5th.  )

Keywords are what lead to your website.

(This continues the series on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - how to have your website found by ranking high in the search engines.)

Keywords and search terms are basically the same thing.  When someone looks for acupuncture in google, they’ll enter a search term.

The most reliable search term to bring in patients is your location + acupuncture.  For example, if you’re in Atlanta, someone would probably search for one of

acupuncture in atlanta

atlanta acupuncture

acupuncturist atlanta

They may also search for other towns local to Atlanta, such as Rockdale or West End.

In order for your site to be found, you’re going to need to be indexed for those search terms.  If you’re like many acupuncturists, you probably have your location on just your main page and your contact page.   You really want to have your location on ALL pages.

However, it’s more complicated than that. [Read more →]

It’s not good enough to have a website - people must be able to FIND you online. Otherwise your site is wasted.

The main way your site is found is through search engines. Getting to the top of the search engine results is called “Search Engine Optimization”, or SEO. It’s not unusual for a website owner to spend a lot of money on SEO. Often they’ll pay more than they paid for their original site! It’s that important. [Read more →]

Just make this mistake: [Read more →]

I had an interesting experience today.  Called a guy about a car, and asked him questions about it.  I told him point-blank “If there’s anything wrong with the car, please let me know now before I drive out there.”  He told me there weren’t any problems.

He lied.

Now that I think of it, everything he said about the car was a lie. [Read more →]

Seth Godin is a brilliant marketer, and inspired much of what’s behind Never Market Again. In fact, I credit him in the book:

Speaking of ideas, I realized lately much of this book is inspired by the writings of Seth Godin. Especially his book, Unleashing the Ideavirus. I doubt I would have uncovered this system without having read it.

Unleashing the Ideavirus itself is an ideavirus – it’s the most downloaded book in history. You can get it free here. Seth is an interesting, jargon-free writer. He writes about marketing in a way that appeals to students of human nature.

Thank you, Seth – you’ve done more than you’ll ever know.

Today Seth posted a small mention on his blog about acupuncture.  [Read more →]

This will be different - I’m going to tell you about my competitors.  And I recommend all of them.

Why would I do this?!?

Several reasons: [Read more →]

If you have a website, does it get more patients for you?  Do you have any thoughts about how well yours works for you?

I ask because I realized something over the weekend. Most practitioners tell me they get at least two patients a month from their website.  At the same time, it takes just 1-2 patients a year to pay for the site!

That’s why I really, really don’t think a website is optional for any serious practicing acupuncturist. [Read more →]

In my experience, websites ALWAYS pay for themselves.  (Unless you manage to overpay for them)

That’s why having a website is a must for any practicing acupuncturist.  It’s great marketing that works for you 24 hours a day - even when you’re sleeping, eating, or on vacation.  Problem for most acupuncturists is setting up a site is anything but straightforward.  There’s always at least one of three roadblocks:  money, time, and organization.

We’ve created a system that overcomes these roadblocks.  Our website service doesn’t cost much, doesn’t take much time, and all the pages/content are organized for you.  See Acupuncture Clinic Websites for details.

So here’s the deal.  Sign up and get:

• [Read more →]

By a quality problem, I mean a good problem to have.  Frank Caruso (located in Avon, Ohio) wrote to me:

My schedule has been full now this entire year. I used to start a week with a 10 patient waiting list for both new and return patients, now I have gotten that list down to maybe 1 patient.  I still have not found another acupuncturist just yet. I haven’t really been pursuing it.

This is after adding a third treatment room. He previously tried getting in touch with Acupuncture Today (twice), but they never got back to him!

By the way, Frank doesn’t just have good marketing - he also believes strongly in the law of attraction.

I’ve talked to other acupuncturists who added an associate acupuncturist to their staff.  In every case, they wished hired someone sooner.   If you’re thinking about hiring someone, you could be giving someone worthy a job, make more money, and help even more patients.

So I have a question - where should someone advertise to hire a new practitioner?  I know of PCOM’s job postings, and Acupuncture Today’s e-classifieds and regular classifieds, but where else?

If you hired/are hiring acupuncturists, where would you look?  What was your experience?

If you’re looking for an acupuncture job, where do you look?

Thanks!

Send Out Cards is a great way to stay in touch with acupuncture patients. It helps with relationship marketing and serves as a reminder that you’re there for them. However, Send Out Cards has a requirement that videos not be available to the general public.  That’s why I have to password protect the video.

The password for the previous video is the last name of the developer of the “Balance” method of point selection.  If you don’t know the name, you can contact me through the form below.

A couple months ago, I had lunch with Frank G., a local acupuncturist.  After lunch we visited his clinic, where he walked me through his intake procedures. (I don’t want to give away his secrets if a patient googles him, so I’m withholding his last name.)

Frank has a fantastic intake procedure that builds his credibility.  He uses charts to locate pain and discuss how acupuncture can treat it.  He also shows patients how pain in one area is connected to other parts of the body.

While I was there, he had a call from a prospective patient. I caught him telling the patient something like, “Why don’t you come in, and we’ll discuss your problem.  Then I’ll let you know if I can help you.”

These two sentences alone did a lot:

• He convinced them to come in without hard selling.
• His attitude implied he wouldn’t do any hard selling.
• He established a basis of trust - he’ll tell them the truth, even if it’s that acupuncture isn’t for them.
• He avoided the “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome.  (Chiropractors in particular tend to try fixing everything, even if chiropractic isn’t the right approach.
• He established himself as an authority in their minds.  The authority principle is one of the six Cialdini principles - mental shortcuts to persuasion.  (I discuss the Cialdini principles in an appendix of Never Market Again.

This is just a small part of his intake procedure.  Believe it or not, your intake procedures ARE part of marketing acupuncture.  As I mentioned in Never Market Again, intake should be like a slippery slope.  Once someone starts on the path to becoming your patient, it should be easy and effortless to end up in your clinic for treatment.

Note that although Frank wasn’t definitive whether acupuncture would help, he was definitive that he would be able to find out.  That’s the authority principle in action.

How do you use your intake procedures as part of your marketing?  (If you don’t, you might want to start.)

I’ve been violating my own rules lately and neglecting my marketing!  It started out because I was too busy to write… then because I wasn’t motivated (what does one more week matter?)… then to see what would happen.

It reminds me of a story about William Wrigley, of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum fame.  He told a reporter, “Advertising is pretty much like running a train. You’ve got to keep on shovelling coal into the engine. Once you stop stoking, the fire goes out. The train will run on its own momentum for a while, but it will gradually slow down and come to a dead stop.”

I’m seeing that now - my book sales have slowed to under half of the usual. It’s been interesting seeing my train slow down.

I should know better, because I’ve seen this happen to a lot of acupuncturists. They’ll get busy, and have so many patients, they’ll neglect the basics of keeping in touch, or start asking for referrals less often, or “forget” to do other things - no matter how easy they are. Then when there’s not enough acupuncture patients, they have to scramble and start marketing more.

A lot of practitioners complain of fluctuating numbers of acupuncture patients, but this boom/bust cycle caused by their own marketing action/inaction can make the variations even worse. Do this, and your patient visits will go up and down like a rollercoaster.

The best way around this is to make it pretty much a no brainer.

Are you making this mistake? Or have you done it in the past? What can you do to prevent it?

Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Awareness Day is October 24th. See: http://www.aomday.org/. It’s a great day to have an open house. Open houses are great for reactivating old patients, and having existing patients bring people in to meet you.

If you have ideas, comments, suggestions, experiences to share, please fill in the comment form below.

Thanks!