Searching the internet for chiropractic marketing tips and strategies is a prescription for feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.
The frustrations involved in trying to market a chiropractic business are well documented elsewhere on this site.
When it comes to searching for hints on how best to market chiropractic to medical doctors and attorneys, however, the advice available is actually refreshingly helpful.
This is because such a search query is more tightly focused. When you use a search term like "marketing chiropractic to medical doctors" or "chiropractic marketing to attorneys" you've moved further down the track towards establishing a plan.
When it comes to trying to market your practice to other healthcare providers and/or attorneys, whether you realize it or not, you’ve actually chosen a marketing direction - and that's a productive step.
Choosing a marketing direction helps you stay focused on a defined goal, making it easier to measure results: in this case, you either get referrals to your chiropractic practice from other medical providers and/or personal injury lawyers, or you don’t.
Inter-professional marketing can yield very lucrative results.
With respect to the personal injury market, there is no lack of work.
From a professional standpoint, working with patients with chronic injuries - especially accident victims - on a regular basis can be very rewarding.
However, as it goes with most chiropractic marketing strategies, you weren’t exactly handed a step-by-step blueprint on how to successfully pull off marketing to PI attorneys and healthcare providers during chiropractor school.
For those willing to take on the challenge of marketing their chiropractic services directly to professionals like medical doctors, Chiro.org has some encouragement:
Chiropractic marketing to medical physicians has traditionally focused on campaigns dedicated to letters of introduction. These campaigns have had consistently lackluster results for most chiropractors. It’s understandable that some doctors of chiropractic feel certain trepidation when considering personally approaching a medical physician, but they shouldn’t. Surveys illustrate that medical physicians want to learn more about chiropractic care and that they prefer personalized presentations focused on scientific literature.
Meeting with other professionals provides a great opportunity to establish relationships and educate them on what exactly chiropractic is and what it can do.
Objections and questions about the services you provide can be addressed right then and there.
After every such meeting, it's best to keep copious notes in order to be ready for any curve balls that are thrown your way in future meet-ups!
However, even though I am not a chiropractor, I understand that at many of these meetings you are fighting an uphill battle.
Not only do you have to deal with the competition of other chiropractors vying for the same lucrative business opportunities, you also carry a handicap that no amount of follow-ups will counteract.
That's because established attorneys and MDs already have a stable of other professionals they use for formal referrals.
In order to earn one of those chiropractic referrals from a doctor or attorney, you're going to have all your ducks in a row.
Because what it always comes down to is, everyone wants to know what’s in it for them.
They must believe that it’s in their best interest to refer their clients and patients to you.
So how are you going to help them make the decision that you, not their current go-to provider, are the best chiropractic professional to send referrals from their practice?
There’s a lot of good advice available on the internet on how to sell yourself to other professionals.
I’m not going to get into all that because I am certainly not an expert on kindling referral relationships.
There's a whole area of academic study in the realm of interdisciplinary communication in healthcare.
I don't pretend to be well-read on its concepts.
But what I can expound on is a rarely considered aspect of marketing to other professionals.
Because it's and area where I do have expertise.
NEGLECTING DIGITAL MARKETING CAN THWART LUCRATIVE MD AND ATTORNEY REFERRALS
Medical doctors and attorneys aren’t dummies.
Lawyers especially understand the value of obtaining intelligence about people and businesses that intersect with their work.
They take notes on everything!
So, let's just say you managed to have a very productive lunch (you paid, of course) with an MD or lawyer. Do you think they'd decide to, right then and there, send some of their clients to you?
Chances are they said they'd go away and consider things.
How do you think they'd go about finalizing a decision? Is it reasonable to suggest that they'd try to learn a bit more about you and your practice?
Maybe from some (seemingly) unbiased sources?
They’d probably do that the same way any other person would do.
After all,
of people learn more about a business online than anywhere else!
Primary care physicians, orthopedic surgeons, OB-GYNs, high-powered personal injury attorneys, soccer moms. What do they all do in common?
They’re all people, right?
(Urge to inject lawyer joke... subsiding…)
So, when people want to find more information about someone or something, they start by “googling” it.
Consider this:
This is what you get when you “google” epione media.
Our brand takes up everything you see 'above the fold' on that results page (and you better believe we’re constantly working to keep it that way).
What might not be immediately apparent to you is that those links associated to our brand are “branded properties.”
They aren’t directory sites that just list our basic tombstone information alongside all our competitors.
And they aren’t Yelp or other kinds of review sites that hold your reputation for ransom.
We control the messaging.
When you read the content on those properties, you’re reading OUR content.
Some people may call that good 'social proof.'
We call it brand establishment.
We have leveraged the authority of other large internet brands in order to establish our identity and solidify our brand’s uniqueness.
You can do the same thing. Take a couple of hours finding high authority websites that allow you to brand a page and produce your own unique content. It’s not hard to do.
In fact, the tactic is pretty basic and has been ‘a thing’ in digital marketing circles for eons.
Where the magic happens is when you know how to interlink these properties with your practice’s website so that you can create your own high-powered syndication network!
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But, I digress.
Let’s back it up a bit. Back to where that attorney you met with is actually taking the time to learn more about you and your practice, all the while considering how his personal injury practice might benefit...
Maybe he just landed a client who has suffered injuries as a result of a motor vehicle accident and he's contemplating using this a test case for a new referral.
While you may think somewhere, out there, there is a clever marketing technique or strategy that can be used to persuade doctors and lawyers to send referrals your way, I sorry, but I have to burst your bubble.
Because, more often than not, it comes down to a Google search.
If that attorney searches for your name, or the name of your clinic, what are they going to find?
Are they going to find that fancy (expensive) chiropractic website of yours?
Is your name and honorific easily distinguished from all the others that sound similar?
Is your practice’s website even “number 1” for a search for its name?
Is it on the first page for "chiropractor your town"?
Can they actually find directions to your chiropractic office?
It’s pretty unsettling to not know for certain, isn’t it?
Your credibility, your professional standing among your peers (competitors), your authority - can be boosted or hindered by a search engine results page that took a measly 0.45 seconds to load.
How could any self-respecting professional consider referring to another professional who, for all intents and purposes, looks like a run-of-the-mill representation of their industry?
Remember, everyone wants to know what’s in it for them.
Let’s say I was a top personal injury lawyer in a large urban center.
If you approached me to petition for referrals, I’d be thinking about how it would reflect on me and my brand if I referred a client to you.
I'd think, what if I had to call this chiropractor as a witness in a personal injury case?
Would she be organized and presentable to the court?
Would she have what it takes to convince the court that she is trustworthy and knows what she’s talking about?
How is she going to make ME look?
While all these things would be going through my mind, ultimately the biggest hurdle for you would be convincing me that you are a 'big deal' in your industry.
Will you be able to persuade me that you are a big deal?
Because I'm not going to entertain the idea of referring my clients to a less-than-significant member of another professional body.
If I could hand my personal injury client a business card and say, “go to this guy, he’s great, does lots of work for the <insert_local_pro_sports_team_name>,” I wouldn’t care that there wasn’t much about him on the internet because that kind of authority is golden.
Every member of a jury would eat that up.
But that’s not you. Remember, you approached ME and tried to convince ME to trust you enough to send my clients your way.
And It’s my reputation on the line, not yours.
So, until you have a signed (baseball/basketball/hockey puck) sitting on your desk from the player whose career you saved, you’re going to have to establish authority in some other way.
And the next best way to do that is to digitally dominate your industry.
DIGITAL MARKETING CHIROPRACTIC TO MEDICAL DOCTORS AND ATTORNEYS.
Establish your brand using our chiropractic digital marketing strategies and the Internet powers-that-be will consider your brand as an authority in your field.
If your brand and messaging is everywhere every time someone ‘googles’ a service you provide, how can that not build trust?
And if a professional happens to look for a chiropractor they can refer clients to, you can be the one they find.
Use your digital platforms to market directly to these professionals. Craft your messaging so that your brand is synonymous with supporting other professionals with all things chiropractic.
When the time comes for an MD or attorney to do background checks after meeting you, your message will be there waiting - already broadcasted out onto the internet.
It’s a one-two punch.
And most (all) of your competitors aren’t doing it.
What an opportunity for you!
Trust builds authority, authority leads to domination.
Contact epione media today to start building your chiropractic brand!
Original post here: marketing chiropractic to medical doctors and personal injury attorneys – don’t fail before you begin
