THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

Often the chiropractor, business owner, or marketer complain that social media, email, direct mail, and other marketing efforts don’t work. Typically, they are assuming that Facebook or Instagram is marketing. They think they can run Facebook ads and generate 20 qualified leads doing that alone. It’s a lack of understanding of how effective marketing should be developed.

Too many chiropractors focus on only the Vehicle. You can't get anywhere without Fuel or knowing where you are going (GPS). Modern technology has allowed us to get our content and message out, but there is also a significant amount of noise. Social media is a crowded space. That is why it is vital to optimize each of the distribution channels consistently with a clear message.

Here are the steps in the process to create exponential growth and a thriving practice.

Step 1: Clinical Excellence (never-ending pursuit).

Step 2: Proper Positioning/Niche in your community.

Step 3: Develop a Clearly Defined Audience.

Step 4: Have a Clearly Defined Message that is congruent with your Clearly Defined Audience.

Step 5: Consistently create valuable and compelling content that tells a story

Step 6: Optimize each of the distribution channels you choose to use to get your content out to your community.

This 6-Step process is the essence of the MCM Roadmap and develops the necessary components of Know, Like, and Trust.

So many chiropractors run random ads and boost occasional posts with no strategy behind them. Unfortunately for them, their marketing efforts start at Step 6, and they may not even be optimizing the channel either.

The goal of this section is to demonstrate how you can optimize commonly used channels for distributing your content. What is amazing is that when you follow the Roadmap steps, you achieve a level of credibility in the eyes of your audience, and your marketing becomes invisible. Your audience won’t even really feel like they are being marketing too.

Let’s take Greg Rose (Titleist Performance Institute), Gray Cook (Functional Movement Systems), and Brett Winchester (Motion Palpation Institute). They have achieved Steps 1-5 at such a high level that they have transcended their respective professions and have crossed over into other healthcare professions. When they do use and optimize Step 6, they have exponential results.

I am not asking you to be them. I’m asking you to apply these same principles to achieve this in your community. That is when you will have exponential growth in practice and achieve the 4 Freedoms discussed in chapter 3.

Some chiropractors do obtain effective marketing results for their practice without following steps 1-5. To do so, they spend more money on marketing, they make outrageous claims, sometimes cross ethical standards, and often don’t achieve sustainable results. You are a doctor; let’s uphold a level of professionalism and do great marketing too. Let’s do this the right way and achieve repeatable and sustainable results. The Vehicle section will show you how to do this for your practice.

In the upcoming chapters on content distribution, I will tread lightly on the details of some of these platforms because they are changing all the time, and I want this book to be as useful in 2030 as it is in 2020.