EPISODE 368: Modernizing Your Chiropractic Practice

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry.

Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Modern Chiropractic Mastery. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie, and today bringing you a solo episode on all things, modernizing your practice and, you know, when modernizing your practice, yes, you, you can renovate the office, uh, get new equipment. And, you know, go from paper to electronical medical records and things like that.

But you also need to really modernize your, your, your marketing and just your overall experience for patients. And I think it boils down to a few things. And this was a topic that I spoke on at Parker Vegas this year. I spoke on it at the Florida Chiropractic Association last summer, which was the first time I really spoke to it because.

Frankly, um, I've been reached out to by certain organizations and there is a concern in the communities of some of the docs have been doing this for a while where they feel like they're just a little bit behind on [00:01:00] competing in the marketplace in this new age, right? 2024. And there's a lot of digital experiences for patients.

There's a lot of marketing that can be done. That's a little bit more modern. Yeah. And I think a lot of times as chiropractors, we think of the antiquated chiropractic practices that, uh, 1980s worn out, look, you know, um, shag carpeting and brown wooded, laminated walls and terrible equipment and stuff like that.

But that's, that's probably still around. Uh, but the reality of it is now is, you know, As an antiquated practice could just be something that hasn't been really, uh, updated from 2015 or 2012, right from a, from a front stage and backstage perspective, which I'll break down here in a second, which is a strategic coach concept.

So we're going to really put aside the aesthetics of a practice for right now. That is important to modernize, you know, like I renovated my practice a couple of [00:02:00] years ago to modernize, look inside. But what we're talking about. Now is more of communicating with your community, communicating with your patients and communicating with your team.

And what we're finding is, uh, some practices are doing a great job of this and are able to really compete well in the marketplace. And there's other practices that, uh, frankly are not, and they're just amazing technologies out there now. And there's amazing strategies to, to modernize those three aspects of your practice.

And, and that's what I've been. Chatting a lot about with some DCs. And I remember when I first spoke on it in Orlando, I had a lot of, had a lot of, um, seasoned veterans in there and I had a lot of younger, uh, DCs in there. And afterwards, a lot of the seasoned veterans came up to me asking me certain questions.

And I was realizing like, um, you know, there's a lot of chiropractors out there that. are not up to speed on this information. And so [00:03:00] it's definitely apropos and it's something that, uh, we realize a lot of chiropractors, uh, need. And so when we are talking about our, you know, communicating with your community, uh, yeah, it's going to be a lot of marketing type of stuff, right?

So we can kind of label it as that communicating with your patients. That's going to be a big part of the patient experience. And then communicating with your team is just going to be really good efficiency within the team. And that's going to have a lot of importance as well. Okay. Um, and when we break down these three aspects, we're going to look at it from really the front stage.

Backstage model, uh, that was developed by strategic coach. And I've learned from them with this, and I'm just going to read a little blurb from strategic coach on what the front stage backstage is. So you get that understanding quote, you can gain enormous clarity about your business by looking at it from the perspective of the front stage backstage model.

This draws a parallel [00:04:00] between the theater and. And the experience you create for your clients in your business. As we watch a live performance, we are captivated by the performances, the lighting, the sound and the atmosphere. You want your business like the theater to create a positive, memorable, and unique experience in which your customers and prospects see the show.

The magic of the front stage without seeing the backstage logistics, everything you do on your front stage creates value for your clients and everything backstage has a direct link to your front stage. The backstage is about creating better and better support systems based on your unique abilities.

That expand the impact of the front stage. Everything that occurs backstage is determined, measured, and judged by how well it contributes to the results achieved on the front stage, right? So you, the front stage is what your patients in your community is going to see, and the backstage is what is going to help make that happen.

And they most likely will not. [00:05:00] Typically one of things they say in strategic coach when the backstage is going awry is they'll say, is your backstage is showing, and it's just saying that, you know, the only time the backstage is typically seen by the community or patients or your customers is when there's a big problem and when it's, it's pretty obvious, right?

And, uh, so that's, that's the front stage backstage and a chiropractic practice really needs to consider that and how to improve that when communicating with your community, communicating with your patients and communicating with your team. And it's going to be a huge aspect of your business. And there's going to be a really.

direct ROI on this, right? It's going to increase revenue. It's going to increase profitability. You're going to be a lot more efficient. You're going to have long term cost savings. You're going to improve your talent acquisition. Frankly, you know, like associate chiropractors and team members, they're not going [00:06:00] to necessarily want to work for an antiquated practice.

And if they do take the job and it gets very frustrating because things are so antiquated and there's no, Systems and it's just, just very clunky. Um, they're not going to stick around. So you're, you know, your talent acquisition and retention is going to be huge with this. It's going to enhance your, your office culture, your team culture, and the practice.

Um, you know, whether you're looking to sell your practice in three years or 10 years, you want to build this thing to sell and having it modernized is going to be a big part of that. And then ultimately it's going to optimize the patient experience. And when you optimize the patient experience, you're going to get better patient adherence to their treatment plans and frankly, more referrals to your practice.

So there is, there's quite an ROI to modernizing your practice. You really got to, uh, Understand that and consider that when you are thinking about investing in modernizing a practice, because, you know, it's, there's going to be an [00:07:00] investment, right? If you, if you have an antiquated practice and you know, it's going to run a spectrum, right?

There's gonna be some people that need to do a ton of work and there's some people just need to have someone. Take a look under the hood and see a couple of key components that are missing and go from there. Right. But it's important to understand what is, what is out there. And so let's first just kind of touch on communicating with your community or, or marketing, right?

That's going to be, you know, we, we do a lot with content marketing. We love getting practices, um, to, to improve their content marketing for sure. Uh, but one of the things that we truly believe in within that realm of content marketing is the hub and spoke model. Uh, so we really work with clinics to make sure that their hub and spoke model is um, All built out and running efficiently and looks modern and is good.

And the hub is going to be your website. And the spokes are going to be things like Google and YouTube and Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik TOK, email, right? Those are all going to be the spokes and a lot of clinics that we work with. You know, the [00:08:00] website might be from 2015, which frankly, that's 9 years ago.

And if that's the case, it's probably outdated in many ways, not just in the look and design, but probably in the functionality and the, uh, user experience or the potential patient. Right? And so we really want to start with that website. And, and optimize, you know, evaluate that and optimize that. And then check out all of the platforms there and making sure that it just, the branding looks good.

And, you know, you'd be surprised. Like a lot of times nowadays, if a 30 year old is, is, is referred to your practice. One of the first things they're doing is looking at your social media. Like is, do you even have Instagram or Facebook? Or if you do, is there anything being posted on there? Or is it just a ghost town?

Uh, you'd be surprised at how many, Potential patients now direct message people through Instagram and Facebook. So there's just, you know, having social media presence. You do not have to be an influencer. And that's something, that's something that we really try to get clear with our clients is that it's not about being an influencer.

It's about [00:09:00] having a comprehensive approach that gives you like a total web presence, you know, community outreach plan, really staying in touch with people. Touch and communicating with your current patient base and the hub and spoke model is one of the things that is vital, um, to your, you know, front stage and your backstage of communicating with your community.

And so that's something that we, we really target. Then we, then we dive into, you know, channels and frequency, like how often should you be posting videos and, uh, Google business posts now, what about Facebook and Google ads? There's a whole bunch of things out there that we, you know, you want to make sure you understand.

As it pertains to, um, communicating with your, uh, community. So that's kind of step one of modernizing your practice is really modernizing your marketing, uh, within reason, you know, that's congruent with you and compatible. We don't, you know, you don't want to have to be something that you're not. And that's not what good marketing is.

Everybody, any chiropractor can do good [00:10:00] marketing. Um, and again, you do not have to be an influencer to have. Great marketing. Okay. Um, we, we like to really dive into different types of content in the content marketing world that you can get out there. And so having a plan for that is a big part of it, um, as well.

And so there's a lot of steps to modernizing the marketing aspect or the communication with your community. And. The hub and spoke is really the, the blueprint, and then just filling in the gaps that you have into there and getting that assessed and done is, is vital. Okay. Um, you know, there's, there's also the backstage of marketing.

We have the CSA digital dashboard. That we have all our clients using and it's got an event planner on there. It's got marketing planners. It's got a community outreach, like networking tool. It's got a referral directory. And we found that a lot of people either don't do a lot of community outreach because they don't know what's going on.

What to do. Um, or we have some [00:11:00] people doing it, but they don't know how to organize and cultivate it well. So it's like they're meeting people, but it's not really coming to fruition. And this is a, like this tool that we have is a big backstage component to the front stage of community outreach. And so we really try to get our clinics to.

Um, have a backstage organizational plan and tracking for your networking and community outreach that are all credibility enhancing and, and obviously not, um, credibility to attracting like we've always been, I shouldn't say always, but been concerned about in a profession for a while. And so having a backstage component to your community outreach and that communicating with your community.

community is really, really important. So make sure you understand that. Um, and there's a lot more to that, but just want to give you kind of a 30, 000 foot overview for today's podcast. Uh, step two or aspect two is what we talked about. Communicating with your patients. Uh, I always, uh, love this analogy that Dan Kennedy, [00:12:00] the.

old school marketing guy came up with, but it's, you want to put a fence around your cattle and the cattle being your patient base, current and past, and the fence being educational content. So that they, they see your information constantly. And that they, um, ultimately stay top of mind, you stay top of mind for them and they come in more often, more reactivations, and they frankly refer more people to you as well.

And, and so we, we really dive into a lot of marketing that is, um, specific to the patient, but then there's a lot of other cool things out there now. That's communicating with your patients. And this is more in kind of the customer service aspect versus the marketing, right? Like, do you have online scheduling?

Are you using two way text messaging? Are you using certain things like that? And what we've, um, put together is really a patient communication technology map. And we try to get to make sure that our clinics have that. And a lot of it starts with your EHR. [00:13:00] So, uh, we'd like to have a lot of compatibility with the, with the EHR.

And if there's not. then there's workarounds for sure. But, um, some of the, you know, the technology map would be online scheduling, text, email reminders, two way texting capabilities. Can you direct email patient through the EHR for certain things you need to do? That's not like your MailChimp mass emails, uh, Google review reminders.

Does your clinic have an app? It's a, does an app make sense for you? Um, there's cool things out there like Bonjoro, which you can send a cool video after the patient's visit, welcoming to the clinic, right? There's just a lot of patient communication that's going to serve their experience when they're in your practice.

And when they're not, people are looking for that now. Like the, so many patients are, are, uh, frankly, Google searching you, finding Uh, is your front stage look great on that? And then they go to your website and they want to be able to schedule online and they do [00:14:00] schedule online. And that's a big part of what we're trying to build out for our clinics is that technology map for, for communication.

Right. Um, and then lastly is communicating with your team, right? There's a, a whole strategy around communicating with your team, because if you don't communicate with your team, that's going to be a bad backstage aspect and it's going to be really hard. For your front stage to function appropriately, if there's lack of communication with the team.

And so a lot of times we see, you know, poor patient experience or poor communication with the patients or poor communication with the community. And it stems from poor communication from your team. And so we really try to get that locked into strategic, uh, meetings and trainings and you just utilizing certain tools.

Obviously there's like Slack messaging. There's communication through EHR systems. Sometimes we talk a lot about the patient adherence communication triangle where the doctor has to communicate really good with the [00:15:00] patient and what the expectations are from there. But then the doctor has to really communicate well with the front desk on those, on the treatment planning and the expectations.

And then the front desk has to be trained to communicate with the patient really well. Unfortunately we see with a lot of clinics, one of the sides of that triangle is broken and it's, and it causes a problem. And so we've got to make sure that all three are functioning at a high level there, uh, so that you can really obviously, uh, do well with that.

Okay. And that's, that's really sums up for the most part, uh, what we're trying to do to modernize clinics. Again, we're putting aside the, uh, painting on the walls and those. rips in your tables, that stuff's you got to do that too. So if you're having, if you've got problems there, really do that as well.

But there's also a lot of things you can do to modernize your practice. And, um, what's exciting is we do have a little audit you can take. It's like a, a self practice [00:16:00] modernizing audit. And I will have that in the show notes for you to check out. And, uh, and then you can do that. But what's really exciting too, is we're actually offering this as a standalone service.

You know, we do a lot of coaching and marketing for chiropractors. We have a lot of clinics working with us. Uh, a lot of our clinics, um, are very modernized, but I know there are some chiropractors out there listening right now, or maybe, you know, a colleague that could listen to this episode and benefit that could utilize our specific service where we We do a very detailed audit of your practice, as far as what we talked about just today.

And then we develop a really strategic game plan for you, um, timelines and costs and expectations and, and then what we could handle for you. Uh, what might need to be a third party, right? For instance, if your website is from 2015 and you need a whole complete new website, uh, we have resources for you that would, you could, we [00:17:00] could refer to, to get that done, but we just help guide you on maybe the things that you don't know right now.

And then we work with someone from your team to help make it a reality. And sometimes it can take a few months, usually at least six months. Uh, but sometimes it could take a little bit longer depending where you're at, but it's an investment and a process that is. Well worth it. It's going to turn your practice, um, around in a lot of ways.

It's going to make you, you're a desirable place to come as a patient. And as a, as a, as a, you know, employee, you're going to get better talent acquisition and get better revenue, better profits. We already went over the ROI. There's just a huge benefit of modernizing your practice. And I think a lot of you may not know what you don't know about it.

And that's what we're here to help you to do and guide you on the right direction. So if you're interested in that, check out our website. Modern chiropractic marketing. com. There are submission forms on there easily defined. You can do that and we can reach out to you with information and set up a consultation call to see if it is a right fit.

So I hope [00:18:00] you are intrigued by how you can modernize it. You might just need to tweak a few things, but I do think there's a lot of chiropractors. I do think there's a lot of chiropractors out there that need to tweak quite a few things. And we are here to help you out with that.