Your Best Marketing Is a Handshake

I’ll admit my experience with social media advertising is slimmer than my experience with newspaper ads.

Remember those things — newspapers?

But advertising is still part of the game.

As B.J. Palmer said: “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”

Advertise, by all means.

But remember: a practice is a network of relationships, created and sustained through communication and service.

Relationships. Communication. That’s the foundation your practice is built on.

A book first published in 1994 is still bedrock for all marketing: The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret by Ivan Misner. It’s all about building referral relationships.

Misner also founded BNI (Business Network International), a referral networking group. Successful chiropractic doctors still attend, by the way.

Misner says we’re all cave dwellers! We wake up in our cave house. We drive our cave car to our cave office. Then we go home and stare into the cave glow of a screen.

And that was before AI.

Now the cave talks back to us. Texts are written by software. Videos are generated. Reviews are suspect. Your patients are starting to wonder: is this really Dr. Smith, or a chatbot?

A real relationship with a real human is probably more valuable now than ever.

In a world full of fakes, you are the real thing.

AI can’t shake a hand. It can’t swap stories about Friday night’s high school game.

That’s why word of mouth still works. It’s simple, and it’s human. And people trust a real person more than any ad.

This week’s tip: Once a week, leave the cave.

Put one hour on your calendar every week to meet someone in person. Some places to start:

• The manager of the local gym or YMCA
• An auto body shop owner, for personal injury referrals
• A youth coach, yoga or dance studio, or running club
• A BNI chapter or Chamber of Commerce meeting

Then bring the community to you. Host a Thanksgiving patient appreciation day and invite everyone to bring a friend.

One hour a week adds up to fifty-two new relationships a year. Each of those people knows dozens more.

With Facebook, you rent attention. But you own your relationships, and they keep paying off for years.

Your schedule this week has room for one hour to go out and meet someone new.

Book it today. And…

Stay Goal Driven,

Ed and all of us at PM&A