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 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.