Qualified new patients? When it comes to your Upper Cervical Practice there are two types of new patients: qualified and unqualified.
A qualified new patient has the following characteristics:
If someone has a problem you can help them with, is motivated to get help, lives in your local area, and has the ability to pay for care then this is a qualified new patient. This is who you want to attract into your practice consistently.
An unqualified new patient lacks one of these characteristics. They may live in your local area but they have no motivation to improve their health. They may have a problem that you can help them with such as an upper cervical subluxation but they have no ability to pay for care. If any of these characteristics are not in place then the new patient will not be solid.
A qualified new patient is more likely to stay, pay, and refer others. This is what you want.
So how can you consistently attract qualified new patients?
You want to focus on internal, external, and digital marketing approaches that are designed to attract three types of patients:
Let’s talk about how to consistently attract qualified new patients.
Table of Contents
Patient referrals are the lifeblood of the upper cervical practice. Without your current patients referring their friends and family, you cannot have an effective upper cervical practice.
Some new patient referrals will happen organically. A patient will get tremendous results and tell their friends and family and their friends and family will come in to see you.
But the majority need some encouragement. Whether it is an internal marketing campaign, a certificate of health offer, or a quarterly contest. You want to give patients tools to refer their friends and family.
You also want to do everything possible to improve your referral conversion. There are many patients who will tell their friends and family about you but they never come into the office. Many times this is because of your online presence. In today’s digital world someone is going to Google you before coming in to see you. If they see bad reviews they are less likely to come in to see you. If they see no reviews they are less likely to come in to see you.
Providing ample social proof including reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook and other places is important along capturing patient stories in video testimonials.
Another terrific way to attract qualified new patients into your practice is through professional referrals. Professional referrals are when another health practitioner refers their patient to you. When a patient is referred into your office by a health practitioner they trust that trust is passed on to you.
There are two main ways to increase your professional referrals:
To develop relationships with individual health practitioners you must go out and visit their offices, experience their care, and offer to have them experience your care.
This is really about developing friendships with other people in your community who have a heart to bring hope and healing the sick and suffering people like you do. When you develop a synergy with other practitioners and respect each other’s work it can be a tremendous way to develop a network of trust with multiple positive outcomes.
Another way to build professional referral relationships is by having a monthly or quarterly study group also known as a provider night. We have done two tremendous podcasts on this subject. One with Dr. Giancarlo Licata about how he has built an extremely effective study group in his community with other health practitioners. And a second podcast with Dr. Mychal Beebe and Dr. Tyler Evans about how they have developed a quarterly provider night that has also been extremely effective for building their practice.
The last way to consistently attract qualified new patients into your practice is by pre-educating them before they ever set foot into your practice.
The best way to do this is through a comprehensive digital marketing campaign to position you as the go-to-doc in your community. Utilizing video testimonials, Doctor videos, Facebook ads for chiropractic marketing, search engine optimization, and other techniques are effective ways to create upper cervical awareness in your community about your unique upper cervical approach.
Once you make someone with a chronic health condition aware of upper cervical you need to have a gradual education process that will take them from someone who has no idea about upper cervical to someone who is ready to come into the practice and is convinced that this is the solution to their problem. We have spent over six years working with hundreds of doctors to develop strategies to do create this type of effective educational system for the upper cervical practice.
When done effectively a pre-educated patient can be as qualified and sometimes even more qualified than a referral patient. If you would like to learn more about building a system to pre-educate new patients in your community give us a call at 877-252-1230 for an initial five-minute practice health screening.
Focusing your marketing on attracting qualified new patients who will stay, pay, and refer is an excellent way to build an outstanding upper cervical practice.
