helping you connect with your clients

Welcome to The Healthcare Marketing Connection! How much time do you really spend teaching your clients about their ongoing wellness? Do you spend most of your time with them discussing the pain they are experiencing and not their overall health? Do they understand a word you're saying? Do you know? This week's feature article talks all about this topic and more.

Monday was my birthday. I'm 25, again. I'm lucky to be 25 for 14 years now! People are starting to mistake Shelby, my 14 year-old, with me. She thought it was fun at first, but now finds it extremely annoying and embarrassing when parents walk up to her and start talking, thinking she's me. I tell her she's lucky her mom is so hip and cool -- she tells me cool people don't say "hip" anymore and I'm old. I assure her it's better she gets mistaken for me than her dad and to be grateful! There are worse things in life, unfortunately not much when you are 14.

Finally, I want to share something with you that's changed my life. My friend acupuncturist Kevin Doherty created a mediation CD for beginners. I tried to meditate for years and couldn't do it. I'd get a couple days in here and there, but could never get the discipline together to sit still for more than 10 minutes. I have a few meditation CD's I've picked up here and there, but none of them helped me know what to do with my thinking. Kevin shared his meditation CD with me a year or so ago and by listening to it I have been able to incorporate meditation into my life. I can't tell you how much I recommend it. Kevin gave me a few copies, if you'd like one to try for yourself you can order here and I will ship them out to you. Try it for yourself first, and you may find some of your clients are experiencing the same thing and you can resell them in your practice and help them out too.

To your success!

Kelly

The secret to long-lasting client relationships

Working in the healthcare industry is different than working in any other industry. In healthcare, you will usually work with people who are experiencing a pain - whether physical or mental. In addition to stopping that pain you know there are a lot of other ways you can help people.

You know that you can help people live a healthier and happier life. There's so much more to life and living pain free. That is a minimum achievement. You can teach them not only how to live pain free, but how to have more energy. You can teach them how to live a life filled with health and wellness.

In your healthcare business you see the same things over and over again. If you stop, or even just lessen your client's pain a little bit, they stop coming to see you. Frustrating as it is, you don't know how to stop this cycle.

There is something that you CAN do to help these people.

Teach them.

What's that? You already know this? You've been teaching them everything you know since day one!

Well...

That may be part of your problem.

Let me show you a scenario I see all the time.

Sally, a patient at your chiropractic practice, started coming to see you about three months ago. She was having unbearable migraines and had been experiencing neck pain since her car accident earlier in the year. Right away you saw what the problem was and began treating her. Right away you lessened her pain.

She loves you!

The first few weeks she came to her appointments you had handouts and packets with all sorts of information about subluxations and Cervicogenic Headaches. You explained to her how the convergence of afferents from the trigeminal nucleus, pons and the upper three or four cervical spinal nerves provides for various patterns of referred pain. You explained to her that this implies an anatomical and physiological connection between the nerves of the cervical spine and the mechanisms of headache.

Sally is such a polite and friendly client (one of your favorites) that she doesn't really have any questions for you, but she is really glad you are stopping the pain. It may seem obvious in my exaggerated example here, but the truth is that Sally doesn't understand a thing you're saying. She's too polite to say anything to you. She didn't want to look stupid and admit she couldn't understand the handouts you gave her.

Obviously you've been giving them to your other patients and they understood them.

Sally's been coming for a while and you've become friendly. You've covered all the basics of her health and how chiropractic care benefits people. And you don't want to bore Sally by being repetitive. Now when Sally visits you are comfortable around each other and share stories about your kids and upcoming holiday plans.

But there are several problems here. Sally didn't understand what you said the first time and was too shy to ask questions. She's much more comfortable now talking about her family and other small talk. However, what is also clear is that for you to keep Sally as a client, you need to educate her about what's wrong and how to fix it. To keep her as a client once you've stopped "her pain" you need to teach her how ongoing chiropractic care can help her in a million ways. YOUR job is to do this in a way SHE understands.

The key to doing this successfully is to teach Sally in small amounts. Small chunks at a time. While you've spent many, many years learning all this technical stuff, she has not.

Teach your clients one concept at a time, teach them every time they come in, and teach them using as many of their senses as you can.

For example, you can tell Sally things about her headaches and how your spinal adjustments are helping her, but you also want her to have something written down that she can read and learn from later.

You also want to make sure you are talking to and writing to Sally in layman's terms. The daily newspaper writes to a fourth grade reading level. And so should you. Don't make copies of articles from your industry journals and leave them out for your patients to read. They can't and don't want to understand them. Your role, as their healthcare educator, is to translate.

Look at some of the ways you educate your clients. Are there any you can improve upon? (Hint: Our New Media Marketing Package can help with this exact situation)

(c) 2008, A Marketing Connection

Want to use this article in your ezine or web site? No problem! Just let me know at info@AMarketingConnection.com. I'll send you a short bio to include at the end of the article.

Announcing A Marketing Connection's New Media Marketing Package

Are you tired of struggling to attract your ideal patients? Are you spending money on ineffective healthcare marketing avenues such as large yellow page advertising, valuepac ads, shopping carts, and more?

FACT: The first place 80% of the population goes to find health related information is the Internet.

Do YOU have a strong presence on the internet? Are you neglecting proven client-attraction avenues such as having a powerful presence on the internet, connecting with prospects through blogging, being featured more prominently in the community?

The internet is where high-paying patients are.

Let me ask you a few personal questions...

Are clients finding you on the Internet?
Do you have a blog? If so, do you post regularly?
Are you considered THE health expert in your local community?
Do you have a high patient retention rate?
Are you found right away on popular search engines such as Google?
Are you struggling to make ends meet or not attracting your ideal client?

The New Media Package at A Marketing Connection will help you:

1. Increase your presence on search engines, allowing people to find you right away (without doing Pay Per Click or spending $6,000 a month)
2. Provide educational materials for your patients, prospects and the community
3. Position your practitioners and your practice as experts on health
4. Increase patient retention
5. Educate your patients, prospects and the community on health issues
6. Gets your name and what you do in the community and on the internet in more and different places than they are now

We do this by:

1. Creating custom wellness articles
2. Posting wellness articles on your web site and distributing them across the internet
3. Blogging on a consistent basis and pinging blog directories
4. Writing and distributing press releases (locally and nationally)
5. Creating hand-outs, flyers or newsletters for your practice
6. Optimizing your website for search engine optimization with our special SEO test

Call Kelly today to learn more about how we can help you attract your ideal patients right now!

303-460-0285

Call today and receive 10% off your initial set-up fee.

This week Kelly recommends www.freeconferencecall.com. Need to hold a meeting on the phone? A telelcass? This conferencing service is free to use and has the ability to record your call for free as well.

If you have any other great resources you'd like me to share with everyone, let me know and I'll check it out. Kelly@AMarketingConnection.com

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To learn more about healthcare copywriting and marketing, visit my Web site at www.AMarketingConnection.com/article_archives.shtml. There are tons of fr ee articles on a variety of helpful topics.