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?