by Honora Wolfe

As a new practitioner, you face several marketing problems. Below is a discussion of the first one of them that I can think of. I've come up with several solutions [or partial solutions] and the beginning of a marketing plan to help you navigate this problem. (I'll discuss a couple of other marketing problems and possible solutions in future blogs.) What are your thoughts and what have you done that worked for you in terms of this specific problem? If you let me know, I'll share your ideas and brilliance with the BluePoppy Blog constituency! Anyway, I suggest you take out some paper and actually scribble down all your ideas. I find this more useful than writing into a computer for some reason. I like to use a piece of paper and write everything that comes into my head without editing myself or saying things like "that will never work" helps spark more ideas than I even knew I had in my head. So feel free to take my ideas and run with them.

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PROBLEM:
"I am starting a brand new clinic and I have a very small marketing budget. Where should I spend my small amount of available money?"

So here are the things that come to my mind first.
1. What types of marketing cost next to nothing?
2. What expenditures are absolutely mandatory?
3. Where do I want to absolute splurge with what little funds I have?

1. The things that cost next to nothing are what turns out to be the most important and effective marketing you can do: speaking, writing, and volunteering.
Speaking can be formal or informal. Informal speaking means attending every gathering, party, networking opportunity that you can find and actually mingling with as many people as possible. It may mean talking with the person behind you in line at the grocery. Formal speaking means finding any and every group in town that schedules speakers and get on the schedule; it means teaching classes through your local life-long learning dept. or community college or having your clinic sponsor free lectures or actual classes for a fee.
Writing means getting a regular column in a local newsletter(s) or papers. Go to the local recreation center and pick up every free publication on the rack. Find out what it would take to become a regular contributor. All you want in return is the ability to put your contact information at the end of each article they accept. Perhaps even more important today, writing means blogging. In order to start blogging, I suggest going to Bing.com or Google.com and type in the name of whatever conditions you prefer to treat + blogs (hay fever blogs, fibromyalgia blogs, migraine blogs, pediatric blogs, blogs for Moms, low back pain blogs, skincare blogs). This list is endless. Once you find a few of these, join the conversation. Don't "advertise" yourself, just be a resource. Tell people what Chinese medicine or acupuncture can do for this problem, refer people to research articles, add links to interesting relevant information from various websites including your own website if you have one. Offer to answer any questions about acupuncture that readers may have. Do this every day, or every other day. Even though the readership may be all over the Western world, you never know where your next customer comes from. If you blog regularly, RSS feed your posts to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter page. And, by the way, if you are writing regularly, make sure you HAVE a Facebook and Twitter page to link your postings to...and find as many friends as you can on these social media forums.
Volunteering, I believe, should be more selective than speaking and writing. Consider what opportunities are available in your community. In many towns there is a volunteer clearinghouse where interested persons can see many possible volunteer jobs, whether they are ongoing or short term, how many people would be involved, etc. I suggest that if you are going to volunteer as part of your marketing strategy, choose to work with the largest group possible. The idea here is that if you are enough of a "mensch" to participate in your community in a positive way, you are someone that your co-volunteers will want to do business with and have as a part of their healthcare team. However, this has to be something you genuinely feel good about doing or it will be disingenuous and your involvement will not last. Still, it is both a good thing to do for your community do something good for yourself at the same time.

2. The expenditures that I believe are mandatory are business cards with a clearly visible phone number and email address and one or more simple brochures about your clinic and what you can treat. Maybe I'll do a blog about what makes a good brochure design in a later blogpost. The other thing that I believe you need and which will cost you more time than money is a large notebook binder (2-3 inch spine size) with alphabetical tabs in which you put as much research as you can find on the internet about Chinese medicine and acupuncture and how it treats every condition under the sun. Put this research in the notebook alphabetically by condition. This will cost you a couple of reams of 3-hole-punched paper to print out, but this resource should be the main reading material in your waiting area. On top of this binder is a large note that states, "If you would like to take any of this research to a friend or colleague, ask the front desk staff to make a copy for you." Then, if you have formatted the research to fit onto your clinic letterhead, you have automatic promotional pieces going out the door with your patients. If you don't have letterhead, get a stamp with your clinic contact information (name, phone, email) and stamp each piece before it leaves the office. This lends credibility to our profession, can be used to send to your patients' other healthcare providers, and costs very little. Your patients get to learn about all the other conditions in addition to their own that our medicine can treat!

To start with you could download all the Blue Poppy research at our TCMInfoline, but there are other resources on the internet that can provide additional articles.

The last indispensible thing are a couple of items that you need to write. One is an "offer to speak to your organization" letter. Another is a short Power Point or at least notes for a 10-15 minute presentation to all those organizations and groups that decide they are interested in hearing your presentation. These don't cost you anything except creativity and time. In our book, Points for Profit, Marilyn Allen and I have created several letters to organizations and publications that are included on the website that goes with the book. These are at least a place to start.

3. Where to splurge? Anything that makes your clinic more welcoming, more beautiful, more functional, and offers more effective care, that's the place to spend money.

Okay that's enough for one blog. I will tackle the next common marketing problem in my next blog. Between now and then, don't just sit in your office when there are no patients! Go speak, write, blog, volunteer, and otherwise find a way to speak with as many potential patients as you can find!