When tumbleweed not patients blow through your diary!

Does your diary have more tumbleweed than patients?

You’re not very busy.  New patients and bookings are down. Next week’s diary has tumbleweed blowing through it.

What can you do?

Ummm quickly write blogs?  Post all over social media every five minutes?  Do the headless chicken dance?

But do you oscillate between posting all over social media and then – PHEW! – you get busy for a few days and stop again?

Or on a dead quiet afternoon, do you write a lovely long and intricate article about musculoskeletal issues peppered with medical references and credited to all your sources?

Do you go and stuff a load of leaflets through doors even though they cost a bomb and didn’t work last time?

Or ‘luckily’ the local paper calls and offers you a heavily discounted advert (still costing a fortune) which you haven’t planned for or budgeted for?  You haven’t even got any decent images or copy for it but you panic buy it anyway and regret it minutes later?  Adverts have never really worked for you either, have they?

Is your waiting room STILL devoid of patients?

But then you remember you have got more bills to pay!  Are you seriously worried now?

So do you then write another long blog about the difference between Osteopaths and Chiropractors and post that on Facebook?

Whoa my lovely Osteo Superhero!

Can you identify what’s going wrong here?

Even online, desperation has a nasty whiff about it!

Sudden ‘panic posting’ or unplanned advert investment isn’t going to bring results or patients and will leave you feeling demoralised.

Here’s 3 simple principles which will keep that rocky bookings boat afloat and steady:

1. Ensure that your online marketing is consistent and persistent.  That means no erratic posting every few minutes for two days, followed by two months of silence! Those Clients of mine who implement sound online marketing see a corresponding steady upturn in new patients and repeat bookings.  If you are not marketing online you are seriously missing a (FREE) trick! When we want something or are looking for solutions to our problems we search on Google or other search engines.  We self-select far more often than we ask for a recommendation.  Think about it.
2. Whilst blogging might fill  you with horror, it is merely a tool for educating and informing prospective patients. That’s your biggest hurdle after all. Prospective patients don’t yet know that you can help them. Your blogs will tell them WHY you can help. BUT – keep them short, sharp and informative. Explaining complex medical issues, defining differences between you and other therapists won’t interest your potential patients either. (Sorry but it’s irrelevant to them and they are mostly too busy to care.) Metaphorically sit your Perfect Patient (the one you are trying to attract) on a chair in front of you and give them solutions.  Patients who are in pain don’t want a dissertation on it; they want solutions – it’s that simple!
3. Be your very best and brightest self when you are marketing your services. Be enthusiastic in your words because PEOPLE BUY PEOPLE! They are not buying Osteopathy. They are buying YOU: your passion for health, your skillful hands and your expert knowledge.  So all your marketing needs to reflect who you are and what you stand for.

Your job this week is to ensure that you are taking these three easy steps towards a busy diary.  I have built a highly successful international business from following these principles. Think about it this way. If I fail to get my message out to struggling Osteopaths about how I can help them, then it follows that I am doing them a serious disservice.

Crack on now and decide what is YOUR vital message to YOUR potential new patients who don’t yet know of your marvelous existence!