There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

A lot of people are afraid of being pushy or otherwise offending people when trying to get new patients. In fact, I’d say that more than half of acupuncturists worry about this, based on responses to the online Quiz I created. Fact is, it’s possible to assert yourself without being pushy. If [...]

[Read more →]

A lot of people worry about the cost of marketing their acupuncture clinic. It’s the single most common question I get: “What’s the most cost-effective way of marketing?”
Fact is, marketing is free when it’s done right. It pays for itself - otherwise why in the world would you do it? Your website [...]

[Read more →]

On April 24th, I decided to improve my own marketing. Here’s what I did:

[Read more →]

Someone emailed me:
“People who are in the holistic health business should be as aggressive as pharmaceutical companies when it comes to marketing their services.”
They aren’t kidding. The most profitable businesses in the world (as determined by profit margin) are drug companies. What’s worse is they’re devastatingly effective at what they do. The [...]

[Read more →]

You’ve heard of acufinder, and they cost something like $179 a year or $219 for two years (if I remember correctly. They may be well worth it, because each new patient is worth at least $150 (probably closer to twice that). So just one new patient pays for the ad. Every patient [...]

[Read more →]

Referrals work great for lawyers, real estate agents, mechanics, even Mary Kay consultants. There’s a lot of referral systems out there. A LOT. Here’s a partial list of some good resources:

[Read more →]

(I’ve been doing password protected posts on Fridays, but today I’m going to do something different. I’ll password protect this next week to keep this exclusive for my readers.)
I’ve been reading Bob Burg’s “Endless Referrals.” Most of it is about getting people to do you a favor by referring. This isn’t my [...]

[Read more →]

You can spend hundreds of dollars having a nice logo created for you, but it won’t help your marketing much. A logo is mainly for mass market brands that can afford to “get their name out there” over and over again.
That doesn’t sound like you or me, does it?
I’ve also seen really [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[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 [...]

[Read more →]