How could Osteopathy help these guys?
During my coaching I tend to find a few similar business mistakes being made by Osteopaths. Luckily they’re easy to fix, so let’s take a look at 3 of them:
1. Using a personal Facebook page for business
Of all the business mistakes this is probably the most common! Whatever you may think of Facebook it is THE NO 1 online way of spreading the word about your Osteopathic Practice. Better than that it is FREE! What’s not to love? However, time and again I see a personal page being used thus: John Jones Osteopath.
And he’s looking for ‘friends’ not ‘Likes’ – and that’s how you can tell. So if Facebook see that a personal page is being used as a business page, they will simply shut it down! And I’ve seen this happen too. Then all John’s contacts are lost!
The fix?
Go to your personal home page and on the left hand list you will see ‘PAGES’. Just click on ‘Create Page’ and you’re off! You can use your website pics on there but best of all is a proper header made on something like www.canva.com – but beware you can lose serious amounts of your life on there! And I would always recommend a nice close up picture of you too. Always remember that Facebook is ‘social’ and people buy people!
2. Out of all the business mistakes I see, the greatest is not keeping in touch!
So you’ve gone to all the effort to attract new patients. Your current patients have gone to the trouble of recommending you. Maybe an expensive advert actually brought in a new patient or two! You happily treat them back to health and off they go.
But do you keep in touch with them? Regularly? Consistently? Ever??
The fix?
Nurture your patients! Ask them to Like your Facebook page as they leave. Make sure you have their permission to add their email address to your list. If your CRM doesn’t have the capability of creating and sending out newsletters then I highly recommend MadMimi or Mailchimp. The former is FREE for up to 100 emails and then there are monthly plans to choose from.
The key is to keep in touch regularly not sporadically. They need to know that your monthly newsletter appears on time every time. What information do they need? What questions are you asked time and again? Write about those, keep it light and with not too much human biology! Give them useful tips and answers to common problems.
Most of all remind them to come along for a maintenance treatment or ‘Winter Tune Up’! And whichever newsletter system you use, ensure that it has an unsubscribe option for those who no longer wish to receive your communications. It is now worldwide practice in order to prevent the irritation of spamming. And if they do unsubscribe please do not take it personally!
3. Not getting out into the community!
I know I do bang on about this a lot BUT how will people become your patients if they have no idea what you do?
It says ‘Osteopath’ in a window around the corner from me. I’ve lived here at least 25 years. Never seen him. Have no idea what he looks like. Who is he? I haven’t got a clue.
When I gave the students at BCOM a free marketing lecture recently, I joked with them about Naturopathy which of course they study alongside Osteopathy. I told them that I don’t have any clear idea about what that is! They looked a little puzzled because they have ‘the curse of knowledge’. They have forgotten what it’s like not to understand what the therapy is about.
Because I’m not really sure what a Naturopath can help with, I am NEVER going to decide to see one even if it was the best answer to my problem. The penny finally dropped in the students’ minds – and hopefully yours too!
With more competition joining you at every summer graduation and with more kinds of therapies being readily available, what can you do to remain fully booked and thriving?
The fix?
Putting in some serious leg work, that’s what! I always look at where my Clients are located, what particular strengths they have and who their Perfect Patients are and then I get rather bossy! Because getting out into the community is the BEST way of getting yourself and your incredible skills in front of your target audience.
If you do nothing else to market your business today, I implore you to find relevant groups in the community and enquire about having a chat with their members to inform them about how Osteopathy can benefit them.
I think you’d be surprised at the oohs and aahs in the Mum and Toddler group, the Women’s Institute meeting or the running club’s practice session…
