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?

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

Thanks!

A useful way to think about marketing acupuncture is to think of it as making people aware they have a choice.

If they know someone that you might help, they can choose to help both of you by making the introduction.

If they ever have a health problem you can help them with, they can choose to see you for it, or not.

You’re not pushing them. You aren’t making them uncomfortable. You’re giving them an option that they can choose to take … or not. If they don’t know about their options, they’ll probably go to a doctor for drug-based treatment, or simply not be healed at all.

If you have this underlying attitude that you’re informing them about something they might not know about, or might not have considered, then you’re not pushy. It’s when they don’t have a real choice that it’s pushy.

I’m going to take my own advice here. If you know other acupuncturists that might benefit from better marketing, I hope you’ll let them know about me. You’ll be doing both of us a favor. And indirectly you’ll be helping yourself, because the more widely accepted AOM is, the more people will choose acupuncture over the alternatives.

If you do send an email, they may be interested in one of these links:

• Take a free online acupuncture marketing quiz to find out what’s missing from your marketing.
• Two free chapters on getting more patients.
• The main site: Acupuncture Clinic Marketing.

Problem is, a lot of us have been on the receiving end of a pushy salesman’s script. I’ll never forget buying my current car - I wasn’t ready to sign the contract that day, so the saleman brought in his manager. The manager tried his best to get me to buy immediately. He pounded me, rapid-fire, with question after question designed to get me to buy the car immediately. I wouldn’t, and I found his approach funny because I knew what he was doing.

(My attitude: “I’m not ready, you can’t make me, and I think it’s funny you would even try.” But I can see how people would get mad.)

I was actually inspired to get into helping acupuncturists with their marketing after seeing the materials of a prominent acupuncture/chiropractic marketing system. They recommend using the SAME tactics as a car salesman. A bunch of questions and a script to counter every objection. Most practitioners I know who were in that program quit. As one said, “It’s not coming from the heart.”

This is the kind of thing that turns us off to ANY kind of self-promotion. We don’t want to be anything like the sleazeballs. But that just makes us hide what we have to offer.

C.J. Hayden wrote a good article about this, and gave me permission to share it with you.

In the 15-plus years that I’ve been teaching entrepreneurs about sales and marketing, the most significant barrier to success named by my clients and students is that they simply don’t like to market and sell.

The roots of this dislike are varied. Sometimes what gets in the way is fear of rejection, or self-doubt of one’s abilities. Other times it’s lack of knowledge or inexperience; most of us don’t like to do things when we feel we can’t do them well. But a theme that rears its ugly head over and over again is this: a belief that sales and marketing is dishonest, manipulative, and sleazy.

You might expect me to argue that these negative portrayals of marketing are not true. But in reality, they often are. Most of us experience on a daily basis, inauthentic marketing, manipulative selling, and attempts at persuasion that rub us the wrong way. When we note our distaste for these tactics, consciously or unconsciously, we allow them to color our attitude about marketing in general, and our own marketing in particular.

Of course we don’t want others to think of us as untruthful, manipulative, or pushy. So once we characterize sales and marketing as deserving of those adjectives, a natural outgrowth is that we begin to avoid doing it.

I’m not suggesting that you, the person reading this article, are a sleazy marketer. In fact, I suspect it’s much more likely that you aren’t. But it just may be that you need to convince yourself of that truth in order to raise your comfort level about sales and marketing. To that end, I offer the following guidelines.

You are NOT a sleazy marketer, if:

~ You only promise what you know you can deliver. You don’t make unrealistic promises and overblown claims, because you know they backfire in the long run. Even when exaggerations like these convince customers to buy, when their purchase doesn’t live up to the hype, they feel misled and dissatisfied. Unhappy customers don’t make repeat purchases or refer others.

~ You always represent your abilities and experience accurately. You’re not afraid to let customers know how good you are at what you do, but you don’t feel the need to fabricate a background that doesn’t exist. Instead, you play up your strengths, tell stories about past successes, and rely on positive references.

~ You explain why you are good rather than why the competition is bad. You know that running down the competition only makes you look jealous or defensive. Your competitors are also your colleagues, and can often become some of your best referral sources. You don’t hesitate to stress your unique competitive advantages and emphasize the benefits of your products and services, but you do so without disparaging others.

~ You never trick people into taking or returning your calls. You wouldn’t think of asking someone’s receptionist to put through your call by giving misleading information. Nor do you leave voice mail messages implying that your call is for a purpose other than the real one. The most productive sales conversations are always with people who are open to having them.

~ You ask for permission to follow up or to add prospects to your list. When you ask a prospect “may I call you again next quarter?” you are both agreeing that a follow-up conversation is worth having. You’ll feel more confident making future contacts when you know they are welcome. You also know that subscribing people to your email list without permission only annoys them, so you always ask first.

~ You stop selling when it’s clear the customer doesn’t need what you’re offering. In a sales conversation, of course you respond to objections with counterpoints, but you do so respectfully, and never push customers past their own comfort zone. When prospects make it clear that they don’t have a current need for your products and services and don’t wish to continue hearing about them, you thank them for their time and move on.

Post this list by your computer and your telephone. Read it over before writing marketing copy or making sales calls. Do whatever it takes to reassure yourself that your own sales and marketing is honest, ethical, and authentic. Once you are confident that any hint of the sleaze factor has been eliminated from your marketing, it’s my bet that you will want to engage in sales and marketing more enthusiastically, with more pride, and more often.

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 should be free. Your brochures should pay for themselves. Your yellow page ad (if you have one) shouldn’t cost you anything.

There’s just two problems. They’re only potential problems if you handle them right.

First, too many people don’t know what’s being paid back. They invest money, but need to make sure their investment is paying off. If you’re not asking the magic question (First page of chapter 8 in Never Market Again), or otherwise tracking how your marketing is working, you may be wasting money. Without tracking, you just don’t have any way of knowing. You must track the results of any marketing you do.

The second potential problem is there may be some upfront costs, even though they should be all paid back later. For example, it can cost $300-$500 or more for a website, plus charges for changing it. Yellow page ads require a huge commitment, just to find out if they’re working. A lot of acupuncturists just don’t have the cash needed to make that upfront investment.

So here are the cheap and cost effective ways to get more patients. They will pay for themselves, so they’re essentially free:

If you really want to be lazy (in a smart way), you don’t have to worry about these two potential problems. Word-of-Mouth marketing simply is the best and cheapest way to market. I cover it extensively in Never Market Again.

Of course, sometimes that’s not fast enough, so some paid methods work well. That’s covered in “The Faucet”, a companion book to Never Market Again. Note that only SOME paid methods work well. Do NOT use newspaper advertising - I’ve never heard of any newspaper ad that came CLOSE to paying for itself.

Also, if you’re just starting out, I highly recommend the book Build Your Dream Practice by Kevin Doherty. Kevin’s book has good methods for start-up acupuncturists. If you don’t yet have a patient base, you don’t have patients to get referrals from. Kevin’s book will tell you low-cost methods for building your patient base.

Last, if you don’t have a website, you pretty much need one. The Yellow Pages can pay for themselves, but they can cost hundreds a month. Starting in 2007, more people used the web to find local businesses than the yellow pages. So if the Yellow Pages are good - websites are much better.

I’ve set up a service that provides the best websites available ANYWHERE. It’s cheap too - you can earn the cost of your website in just half an hour. Even if you’re not interested in the service, there’s a free report which will show you things about websites you won’t find out elsewhere.

I wrote over two month’s worth of articles, and queued them to be published on Tuesdays and Fridays like clockwork. I’ve since reduced this to just Tuesdays. Even what you’re reading now was written over a month ago - I’m actually on vacation in Colorado right now. We went to the Denver Children’s Museum today.

Also, I set up some automatic follow-up messages for people who bought my marketing manual, Never Market Again. My goal is to make sure people who bought it actually use it. By the time you read this, there will be at least 10 followup messages to help people implement the book. They’ll be sent out automatically, and I won’t have to think about it.

So what does this have to do with you?

Ideally you won’t have to think about your marketing. It should be automatic, or nearly so. That way:

1. You only have to be organized once in a while.
2. You only have to be smart once in awhile.
3. You only have to make an effort to follow through once in awhile.

The rest of the time, you don’t have to think about it. Focus on treating patients instead. What can you do to automate your marketing? Here’s a few ideas:

1. Put an automatic followup system on your website. You basically set this up once, but people who visit your site experience it as an ongoing education/personal email sequence just for them. This is covered in “The Faucet”, a bonus manual included with Never Market Again.
2. Buy cards, have a few pre-written templates, and have the envelopes stamped and ready to go. When the situation calls for it, just address and mail a card to a patient. (Or if you want something even more automatic, I explain my online card system here. You log in online and send a real greeting card, or even a sequence of followup cards. You never even need to go to the post office or put the mail out.)
3. Put together your “Welcome Package” and have it ready to go for new patients. This makes their relationship with you seem “real” before they ever set foot in your clinic. (Explained further in Never Market Again.)

That’s just three ideas, but you can come up with your own. Marketing is most effective when you don’t have to think about it. Seriously.

Plus, it’s works great even when you’re on vacation. Especially when you’re on vacation.

“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 PLoS Medical Journal is one of the only medical journals that doesn’t accept ad money from drug companies. Most continuing education for doctors is sponsored by the drug companies!!!

This means they don’t learn about new therapies. Or nutrition, exercise and better living helps patients. Especially not about acupuncture and OM. They just learn about drugs, drugs and more drugs.

Want to know how the drug companies market? Following The Script is an article explaining how pharmaceutical reps are taught to manipulate doctors. I have it on good authority that the methods used are communist Chinese for brainwashing - and according to my friend Jim Van Wyck, they’re the best in the world at this. (Of course, they’d call it persuasion.)

The drug companies know EXACTLY how many prescriptions each doctor wrote for each drug. They can (and do) even give docs a hard time for prescribing their competitor’s drugs. As one doc told me:

Yeah, I think the whole drug rep business is pretty disgusting and corrupt - especially when I see people everyday that cannot afford the medications they offer. I never trust anything they say. The drug companies contract with pharmacies and they know exactly how many prescriptions I write each of their product and any competitors each month. It is very creepy and honestly, I cannot believe it is legal. But big money can buy a lot.

Don’t you owe it to market yourself? You’ll never be as organized and efficient as the big pharma companies. But you can be far more effective than them. Simply educate your patients so they can make better choices.

And please, pass the above PLoS article on to doctors. Also, if you’d like to learn more about just how bad drugs are, look at Over Dose and Bitter Pills and related books on Amazon.com. At least one of these will be in your library.

Over Dose is particularly good, it will make most doctors better at their job, whether they are skeptical about drugs or not. I’m sending a copy to my own doctor when I get back from vacation.

What is the largest possible context for the practice of Chinese medicine in the 21st century? How will Chinese medicine help humanity to face the challenges that confront us today? Chinese medicine has remained relevant for 4,000 years because it has continually evolved to help humanity rise to meet the challenges that confronted us throughout history.

Kevin and Lonny will discussthe challenges that are unique to our modern world, how to address them from a clinical perspective, and how as a practitioner you can heighten your own consciousness to create a deeper context for treatment.

You can sign up here.

• Duct Tape Marketing - Referrals for Life
• “Endless Referrals” by Bob Burg
• “Get More Referrals Now” by Bill Cates
• 93 Referral Systems by Jay Abraham
• “The Referral of a Lifetime” by Tom Templeton

I’ve read or seen every one of them, except the one by Jay Abraham.

There’s just two issues with all of them when it comes to acupuncture:
First, ALL of them assume people know they need you. When someone needs a real estate agent - they know it. An accountant or mechanic? They’ll know it.

When they need an acupuncturist - they probably don’t know it.

That’s why patient education is SO important when it comes to marketing. Educated patients are able to convince people they need to see you. Uneducated patients… they’re enthusiastic, they may love you - but they’re simply not as effective. They may not even realize what conditions they can refer people to you for.

Second, most of the focus on these systems is what I call “Do Me A Favor” referrals. You’re asking someone to do you a favor by referring others to you. The systems usually have some way to offset the pressure you’re putting on someone to refer, but it’s still there.

What I recommend most, and cover extensively in Never Market Again, is “Do Them A Favor” referrals. That’s where you’re asking a patient to do their friend a favor by referring “them” to you. This is a huge difference, and it’s often overlooked.

There’s nothing wrong with “Do Me A Favor”-type referrals, when the situation is appropriate for it. If you do networking or go to business groups like BNI, it’s actually expected that you’ll ask for referrals. That’s the point of the meetings. Don’t be shy!

“Do Them A Favor” referrals are less pushy and usually more appropriate in more situations. Just keep this in mind if you’re reading any books or websites like the above.

I especially like Bob Burg’s “Endless Referrals”. As Karoline G., L.Ac. told me, Never Market Again is great for in-office referrals, Bob is great for out-of-office referrals. She also said:

His take on it strikes me as Nice Guy Habits 101 Plus Social Skills as a long term way of keeping yourself in other people’s thoughts.

That’s my kind of marketing. Being pleasant and helpful without selling. There’s obviously a lot more opportunity to get in-office referrals, but if you’re in a networking situation, I recommend his book.

The subjects thought the guessers would get half the songs right. The actual number was 2% - only one in 50!

Another story is given of engineers who design very precise and expensive equipment for computer chip manufacturing. The technicians who assemble the plans had to interpret them and make them reality. A researcher found that if the technicians didn’t understand the plans, the engineers would make them more elaborate, thinking this would help technicians to understand what was needed.

It just made the problem worse.

As explained in the book:

The engineers were behaving like American tourists who visit foreign countries and try to make themselves understood by speaking english more slowly and loudly. They were suffering from Curse of Knowledge. They had lost the ability to look at a technical drawing from the perspective of a non-expert.

What does this have to do with you?

If you converse with patients using words like chi, meridians, even heat or damp, you’re speaking jargon. Even when a patient is somewhat educated and conversant in Oriental medical terminology, it’s always helpful to put it in layman’s terms.

The solution to the engineers/technician problem turned out to be a common language. And the common language wasn’t the plans, which only the engineers truly understood. It was the actual machinery - which both understood.

Talking using big words and terminology just alienates people. For something like Western medicine that most people aren’t skeptical about, it doesn’t drive away patients. But for something like Acupuncture, skepticism + jargon = lost patients.

Be sure to talk in terms patients can relate to. Even if they understand what you’re saying, will they relate to it?