Old School Marketing: Connecting With Today’s Patient Mindset

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Need to get a grip on how to promote your chiropractic practice in todays market and evolving health system?

Check out Dr. Tabors three part series on maximizing spinal screenings in your community, promoting chiropractic, and growing your chiropractic practice.

Why are so few chiropractors providing free community spinal screenings these days? Now more than ever, people are taking a more holistic view in managing their health and are, in fact, more receptive to the message of chiropractic. Yet chiropractors seem stuck in the mindset that spinal screenings are a dreary, desperate method to rope in new clients to grow their practice. This leaves a tremendous opportunity for chiropractors willing to learn how to utilize the spinal screening as a powerful marketing tool to connect with potential patients and turn those warmed up leads into loyal clients.

First lets talk about the motivation behind spinal screenings; then we can talk tactics to provide dynamic screenings that will give you more marketing value than any other advertising investment you make over the next year.

I personally view a spinal screening as the opportunity to demonstrate my passion and knowledge about chiropractic and reach out to those seeking answers related to their health concerns. I never approach someone with the goal of trying to convince them they need my services. That is to say, my end game is not to argue why they need chiropractic, but to be accessible to those who need and want my help—who might not find me otherwise.

As chiropractors, we must check ourselves on our motives; what is the true “why” behind what we do. Why did we get into this field to begin with?

One of the reasons I am so passionate about educating individuals comes from my own personal life. My mother passed away at the young age of 47. As I look back now, I only wish that a chiropractor in our community would have checked her spine. Maybe then she would have had a chance to experience chiropractic.

When I graduated from chiropractic school, I went back to all the hospitals where she had been treated and gathered up more than $100,000 of her imaging. I spent hours combing through every x-ray, MRI, and CT scan, but there was not one single image of my moms spine. Rather there were images of practically every other part of her body—all the parts that hurt or exhibited some symptom. I’m not upset with medicine.  In fact, that’s when I realized, it’s not the medical doctor’s job to look to the spine for cause of disease, it’s the chiropractor’s job.

As a chiropractor, I challenge you to not only check people’s spines, but to educate people that the health of their spine is directly related to the overall health of their body. That is our job. In fact, I would argue it is our absolute duty to speak this message in our communities.

My challenge to us as chiropractors is first, overhaul our mindset when it comes to spinal screenings; to view screenings as a venue to make ourselves accessible to individuals in our community. Didnt we get into this profession because we believe in the life-saving message of chiropractic? And use chiropractic to help people who are suffering or even dying, because they havent yet discovered what we already know?

In a typical healthcare interaction at a medical office, they have their allotted time to discuss their concern and capture the doctors marching orders. But here is a doctor out in the community interacting with me in a more informal environment about my health. This type of interaction is meaningful to a potential patient.

And yes, this interaction ultimately impacts our bottom line. In fact, this new mindset can blow our practice wide open if we take intentional steps to create a powerful spinal screening and follow up process.

Look for my next article where we discuss steps to position your practice at key events, and capture the most effective spinal screenings opportunities in your community.

Founder of The Screener Spinal Screener Kit, Dr. Tabor has helped 1,000s of chiropractors rethink their attitude toward spinal screenings and the role screenings can play in educating the community about chiropractic and how this philosophy can lead to dynamic growth in their client base.