Acupuncture Marketing
Marketing your acupuncture practice in a recession
Marketing your acupuncture practice in a recession doesn’t have to be a struggle. With the right knowledge you can use the internet to tap into a huge source of people who are still actively searching for your services.
While high street sales have fallen dramatically over the last 6 months, internet sales have continued to rise over the same period. More and more people are now using the internet to search for all kinds of products and services, including acupuncture.
A few years ago I learned about marketing my acupuncture practice using the internet. Within 2 months my practice doubled. This allowed me to go full time and make a very comfortable living. Half of my new clients now find me on the internet and I am consistently fully booked.
Despite all the financial doom and gloom my acupuncture practice has continued to thrive. This is a direct result of the internet marketing strategies I have put in place. Having set up my internet marketing campaign 3 years ago I now do almost nothing to maintain it yet new clients keep coming to me via my website, on a weekly basis. This allows me to get on with doing what I love – helping people get better.
I have since helped many other acupuncturists do the same for their own practice. The same acupuncture marketing strategies work no matter where you are based or how large or small your practice is.
Some common acupuncture marketing mistakes:
1) Thinking that just having a website is enough – If you aren’t listed at the top of the search engines nobody will find your website.
2) Not grabbing your website visitors attention – People “surf” the internet, looking for something that grabs their attention. Research has shown that if they don’t find what they are looking for in the first few seconds, they will move on to the next website.
3) Focusing on features instead of benefits – The focus of your website copy should be to communicate the benefits of coming to you for acupuncture. You should not make the features of your acupuncture clinic the main focus. Think about it, if you’re buying a stereo, you don’t want to know about the gold plated wires, you want to know how great the music is going to sound. Believe it or not, the same goes for acupuncture. People want to know how you are going to help them feel better. They don’t want to know about the history or theory of acupuncture. Some description of these features needs to be there, but this should not be your main focus.
How to do it properly:
There are several key steps that you must take if you want to consistently flood your acupuncture practice with new patients:
1) Find the phrases people are already typing into Google to search for your services. You can do this using the Google keyword tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2) Create a professional looking website you can easily edit. You can do this very cheaply using tools like WordPress.
3) Write compelling copy for your website, that turns visitor into customer.
4) Increase your response by offering a free consultation.
5) Get listed for the phrases you identified in step 1 – The trick is to identify the phrases that get enough searches, but where there is less competition. You can then easily get a top ranking on Google.