Tag Archives: special promotions

November and December Marketing — and Your Higher Purpose

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Petty Michel Associates Practice Promotions

November and December are special times for patient marketing, whether you are promoting to prospective patients, active, or inactive patients.

Usually, we have found that internal marketing is better during this time of year as you don’t need to compete with commercial businesses as they slug it out in an advertising frenzy. You can prepare now and schedule your external promotions and community services for January and February. Of course, if you see an excellent opportunity for external marketing now, take it. But the primary focus should be internal for these two months.

November and December are “cozy” months. In North America — we have Thanksgiving. This is a time we give thanks for all our blessings and gifts and family and friends. It is a time when people feel grateful. Christmas is also a time of good cheer and giving, as is Hanukkah and other holidays.

And, for some of you, it is also the season of the yearly hunt — when you bring home the ring tail pheasants, the turkeys, and “da ‘tirty point buck.” (Wisconsin-ese for “the 30-point buck.”)

Your promotions should align with the spirit of the season to be most effective. Donation drives are often held. There are many churches and associations in your town that need help as they prepare to assist the less fortunate.

“Toys for Tots”, “Food for Families”, or “Coats for Kids”, are many popular promotions by local media stations. I don’t doubt that they are helpful, but I do sometimes question their sincerity.

Of course, you want more customers, that is the nature of business. But you must lead with your mission statement first.

Any promotions should stem from your higher purposes.

The Higher Purpose Company
In The High Purpose Company, (Arena, 2007) Christina Arena reports on her team’s study of 75 companies’ efforts at Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

She shows how corporations, by doing good, by providing better conditions for employees, more sustainable sourcing of raw materials, and contributing to beneficial causes in their communities, generate more income.

“The central findings of my research can be distilled in the following way: superficiality fails whereas authenticity prevails. Companies that falsely approach corporate responsibility as a form of marketing, public relations, or even philanthropy don’t produce the most meaningful results. In fact, they often waste their money and create additional liabilities. Conversely, companies that truly approach the practice of corporate responsibility as a fully integrated business strategy, wisely investing in profitable solutions to meet unmet social and environmental needs and problems find their performance greatly enhanced.”

According to the Harvard Business Review, business spent more than $15 billion in 2016 on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. (Davidson, July 7, 2016) And according to, Linda Novick O’Keefe, founder of Common Threads, “that number is rising as businesses see signs that investments in CSR improve company performance, talent recruitment and retention. (O’Keefe, 2016) “Giving in Numbers”, a study published by the CECP that analyzes giving and corporate societal engagement trends, revealed companies that increased giving by at least 10 percent between 2013 and 2015 actually experienced upticks in revenue and pre-tax profit, while all other companies saw a decrease in both.”

Your “WHY?”
Marketing must be honest, and it has to tell why you are doing the marketing. As Simon Sinek reminds us:

“Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief – WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.” (Sinek, 2009)

I recommend finding charities or causes in your community that your patients care about. That you care about. Then, go talk to the head of the charity yourself – get involved – personally. Emotionally.

One office paid their staff for one hour for every two hours they went out of the office and worked on a community project.

And it doesn’t have to be charities. A Kid’s Day with “Saturday with Santa” can be a ball. One office holds a patient appreciation party with their patients each December with a Christmas Elvis impersonator singing Christmas carols. The one I attended was packed, and a little wild. But everyone talks about it for the rest of the year.

Your patients, and your neighbors, want what you want – a better and healthier community. Communicate that in all your promotions and you’ll get better results, and have more fun.

And, many thanks for you do from all of us at PM&A!

Ed

A list of sample promotions on our web site – see reference below.

References

Arena, C. (2007). The High Purpose Company. Harper Collins.

Davidson, R. H. (July 7, 2016). CEO Materialism and Corporate Social Responsibility.        Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. Retrieved from https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/07/07/ceo-materialism-and-corporate-social-responsibility/

O’Keefe, L. N. (2016, Decembr 15). CSR Grows in 2016 as Companies Embrace                Employees’ Values. Huffington Post – The Blog. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-novick-okeefe/csr-grows-in-2016-as-comp_b_13657368.html

Sample Promotions. Chiropractic Practice Marketing Ideas For 2016. Retrieved from   www.pmaworks.com: http://pmaworks.com/observations/2016/09/20/chiropractic-practice-marketing-ideas-for-fall-2016/

Sinek, S. (2009, September). Simon Sinek How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Retrieved    from TED Ideas Worth Spreading:  https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

Chiropractic Marketing Ideas for Fall Promotions

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Here are a few ideas for promoting your chiropractic services during the end of the year.  There are many more, of course, but these can get you and your team thinking of what you might like to do over the next several months. (For a PDF version of this article.  REVISED AND UPDATED- 9/2014)

Schedule the special promotions first – the big events. Get these on a large Marketing Calendar and plan them out. Promote them before the event.  Ideally, you should promote the event four weeks before it occurs, but people often forget and make spur of the moment decisions. Therefore, promoting even a week before the event has worked.

You can find customizable posters and detailed information on how to do many of these projects on your chiropractic Marketing Manager System Toolkit and on your PM&A Member’s site. Depending on the level of your program, we can also put together simple posters to help promote your particular project.

Then, look at the more basic marketing procedures, those that are recurring. These should be on a list which you review every few months.

You can also sprinkle in some minor but fun promotions, such as having a Crazee Dayz.

General Marketing

  •  Recurring Procedures. The most important marketing procedures are your usual, recurring procedures that you do on a daily and weekly basis. Many of these are already embedded in your routine procedures.  These should be on a list that your review every three months.
  • Calendar. Make sure you have a large calendar to post all of your scheduled upcoming promotions.
  • Assignment. Assign a staff member to be in charge of each promotion. Each team member has a marketing responsibility.
  • Communication. In the end, marketing is all about communication. Therefore, promote your events with your newsletters (electronic and hard copy), fliers, Facebook, Internet updates, bulletin boards, web site and most of all,  through friendly one on one personal communication in the office.
  • Motivation.  All procedures work to some degree, depending on how well they are organized and on the intention behind them. If you and your team are not motivated to make these procedures work, they won’t.  Keep your purpose strong and your energy high.

Crazee Dayz
Select a day and make it special for your patients. Only one day a week is necessary otherwise it’s not special.  It can be once per month or every week. Serve extra treats.  You can have the staff dress out of uniform coordinated to the day.  These can add some extra fun to the office and help with retention and long term referrals.

  • Muffin Mondays – Serve up a selection of health bran, banana, blueberry, etc muffins
    Two for Tuesday – Bring a friend for a complimentary spinal exam and offer the patient a free adjustment.  “Two Fer Tuesday.”
    Whacky Wednesdays – gag gifts for patients,  “adjust-a-mints”, etc. (http://www.bannermints.com/)
    Thirsty Thursdays  — Organic apple juice served in plastic wine glasses with a sliced green apple on the rim. NA margaritas.
    Fruity Fridays  – Bowl of local fruit.

OCTOBER
October is National Spinal Health Month (Now called National Chiropractic Health Month) This can give a you a reason to do many different promotions.  (Read about it at the American Chiropractic Association web site here.)

  • A banner in your office for patients to bring in family members for a free “Check-up.”
  • Reactivation Month – send postcards to all inactive patients who have not been in for at least one year or more for free spinal checkup.

Chiropractic Opportunity Week  (“The doctor is having a COW.”) (patient referrals and advertising new patients)

  • Free consultation, exam, and x-ray if needed.cow

 Hair Dresser/Beauty Salons/Spas (new patients and business referrals)

  • Offer a workshop on “How to Stay Fit While You Clip.”
  • Free massages (and screenings) for customers
  • Set up a customer appreciation program with the business owner and provide the massage and or food and screenings

 Local Health Fairs (new patients and business referrals)

  • Contact all the locations you have held events in the past year and schedule events for the New Year.
  • Contact local businesses for health fairs in the New Year and get them scheduled
  • ghost

 Kids and Halloween Party (patient retention and referrals)

With Casper as inspiration, a kid’s Halloween party with a friendly ghost theme has the right mix of tricks and treats. Invite the young ghouls to come dressed up, but you can also have them make ghastly masks as part of the fun. Other ideas include spooky decorations, scary snacks and a friendly ghost hunt.   Free spinal and scoliosis checks for all guests.

 

 NOVEMBERturkey

Thanksgiving Turkey Drawing Poster(patient referrals)

  • Refer a friend and enter the drawing for a free turkey
  • Special for Organic Turkeys – announce in your newsletter
  • Make arrangements now with your local supplier

Donation Drives (patient referrals, advertising new patients)

Holiday time always brings an increased demand for helping those less fortunate.  Within your office set up a collection area for any of the following programs and promote it in your newsletter.

  • Coats for Kids
  • Food for Families
  • Toys for Tots
  • Blood Drive

$25 in exchange for first day services.

  • Also, you can support drives at local church or gyms. E.G. “Free first day services for every donation a member of YMCA makes to the homeless fund.”

Deer Widows Week (patient referrals)

During hunting season or first week of December  offer  complimentary massage for  your patients who refer in a new patient.

 Girl’s Night Out  (screenings)

Christmas shopping/gift exchange

Enlist the help of massage therapist, local spas and direct marketing consultants, Tupperware distributors, etc. Everyone has to bring at least 3 guests. Buy presents from each other rather than at the mall.  In November or first week of December.gifts

Or

  Movie & Margarita (bring a guest for a movie screening and a spinal screening)

Sample movies: The Love Letter, Steel Magnolias, Little Women. Fried Green Tomatoes When Harry Met Sally, anything with Brad Pitt.

 

DECEMBER

Holiday Coupons – Gifts Certificates(patient referrals)

  • Good for Massage, consultation, exam, x-ray
  • Denominations: Free, $25, $25 or food donation to charity.

poinsettiaPoinsettia Give Away (patient retention)

Give away free poinsettias, one per family.  Include in the cards a gift certificate for family members or friends.  (see Member’s site for gift card)

 Saturday with Santa(patient referrals)

  • santa lapSet up Santa in your reception room corner
  • Treats for the kids
  • Pictures with Santa
  • Free spinal check with Doc

Appreciation to External Referral Sources.  

Deliver a fruit basket or other present personally during December with a card of thanks and mention how you are looking forward to another year working together.  This would go to any location where you had an external community services type of event, such as a screening or workshop.  Include: “Looking forward to working with you next year.”

Chiropractic Special Promotions

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  • What is a Special Promotion?
  • How often do you use them?
  • Why do you use them?
  • Are there times that you shouldn’t use them?
  • What is the key to their success?
  • Plus- 14 Questions for each promotion.
  • Plus- 24 examples of special promotions.

What Is a Special Promotion?

A special promotion is a promotion that is not a regular part of your standard patient marketing procedures.  Every clinic should have routine and recurring procedures that serve to promote its services.  This would include different forms of patient education, recommendations to patients to bring in family members for a check-up, the manner in which the phone is answered, newsletters, etc.

On occasion, however, you may want to celebrate a special event, like the anniversary of our clinic, or hold a party for all of your patients for the holidays, or take part in a community wide donation program with your patients.  This is called a special promotion.  They can be targeted to your entire patient base, or just a section of it. For example, you could set aside a special day for just for kids or an after hours “Girls Night Out.”.

How Often Are Special Promotions Used?
Because these promotions can be directed at select groups of patients and non patients, you could have as many as one or two per month.  However, they do take up staff time to prepare properly and to execute each promotion effectively. Therefore, a special promotion every 2 to four months is usually adequate.

Why use Special Promotions?
There are a number of reasons to do special promotions.  First, of course, they can generate new patients.  But there are other reasons as well.  For example, handing out carnations to mothers on the week before Mother’s Day is done just for the goodwill– because it is a nice thing to do.  Another reason is that it can add fun for the staff by providing them with an activity outside of their usual patient services and admin duties.

Another benefit of special promotions is that it draws attention to your office. Patients and non-patients see that there are extra exciting activities occurring with your office in addition to the great service you provide.  It helps create marketing “buzz,” or conversations about your office.

When Not to Use Special Promotions
If you or your staff are already stressed with extra work, major in-office changes, or have repeatedly done new patient promotions recently, do not schedule a special promotion soon.  You need to build up your routine and recurring internal and external promotional procedures for a while in order to “grow” more new patients.  A special promotion is like a special harvesting… you can’t pick apples off a tree more than once in a season.

Special promotions can act like an artificial boost.  Often, the real energy has been built up in the office or in the community and a special promotion just “releases” it.

You may have seen other doctors trying to run a special promotion in the newspaper over and over, usually for something free.  It may have worked once, and may work again, but probably not right away.  Continuous “specials” poorly targeted and improperly timed will grind your other promotions down to a halt.

Preparation Is The Key
Plan ahead.  At least 70%, of the work of a special promotion is in preparation.  Avoid “too little too late”, a common mistake with  many promotions.

Plan several special promotions for the next six months.  You can always cancel them later if you have too many. You can tie them into seasons, holidays, special events, or anything that might be of particular interest to your community, to your patients, and … to you and your staff.  They should be kept fun and creative.  Everyone should be involved.  The event should be discussed at staff meetings, and different projects delegated to different staff, even the doctors.

Different promotions can be delegated to different team members.  You can give each person the option of creating their own event.  In one office the Billing and Collections Coordinator took on the month of August and organized a  “Flea Market” on a weekend in the clinic’s parking lot.  Patients rented booths and a food vendor set up a shop, and health screenings were provided by the office. It was a resounding success.

Lastly, someone should act as the Special Promotion/Event Coordinator to help keep things organized.

14 Questions to Ask for Each Special Promotion

  1. Why are we doing this event and how does it align with our mission
  2. Who exactly is the special promotion for?
  3. Is the event just internal to the office, or just external, or both?
  4. Is the event designed to directly generate new patients, just generate good will, or both?
  5. What does the target market get out of it?  Why would they want to participate?  What is in it for them?
  6. What are we going to get out of the event?  How will it benefit our clinic?
  7. When are we going to have it?
  8. What is the duration of the event?
  9. What is our budget?
  10. How are we going to promote it?
  11. What needs to be done?
    1. Before the event
    2. During the event
    3. After the event.
  12. Are all of the duties listed above delegated to individual staff?
  13. Who is the coordinator for the event?
  14. Do they have time scheduled to prepare for the event?

Examples of Special Promotions
(I-Internal, E-External)

  1. Senior’s Day (I&E)
  2. Valentine’s Day (I)
  3. National Correct Posture Month (May) (I&E)
  4. Mother’s Day (I)
  5. Father’s Day (I)
  6. Kid’s Day (I&E)
  7. Back to School Day for Kids (I&E)
  8. Patient Appreciation Day (I)
  9. Community Appreciation Day (E)
  10. Open House (I&E)
  11. Grand Opening (E)
  12. Anniversary (I&E)
  13. Spinal Health Care Month (I&E)
  14. Food Drive (I&E)
  15. Toy Drive (I&E)
  16. Other donation drives, such as YMCA (I&E)
  17. Christmas gifts, coupons and health certificates (I&E)
  18. General referral coupons for friends and family members of patients
  19. Teacher’s Appreciation Day (I&E)
  20. Care to Share (Internal)
  21. Doctors with a Heart
  22. Girls Night Out (Internal/External)
  23. Cinco de Mayo Party
  24. Fireman Appreciation Week
  25. Blame Someone Else Day

Example of One Doctor’s Successful Promotion

For more articles on practice development for your chiropractic office.

To learn about our Marketing Manager System.

Organic Health Week

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Special Promotion:  Earth Day and Organic Health Care Week

Earth Day is celebrated this year on Tuesday, April 22.   As general awareness increases about the harmful affects of toxins on our body, as well as on our planet, chiropractic continues to rise as the shining star in the world of true health care solutions.

Earth Day is a great opportunity for you to promote the benefits of your chiropractic services.

You can set aside one week as a “Buddy Week” and encourage your patients to bring in family and friends for a discounted check-up and introductory service.  The discounted fee that they pay you for the introductory services can be used as a donation to a local park fund, or earth related charity.

You can place posters in your office and at key locations around  town, such as coffee shops, hair salons, etc.  A simple press release or notice can also be placed on your web site, newsletter, patient statements, newspaper and community calendar.

You can also order some buttons for you staff to wear. 300 of them cost about $120 and you can use them next year as well.  For a sample button provider, go here (www.affordablebuttons.com)

Here are some sample buttons:

This is an excellent time to take pride in your profession.  Chiropractic:  always organic, healthy, and ahead of its time.

Sample Posters