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Acupuncture Websites – What Your Graphic Designer Won’t Tell You.

By Frank Prieto 8 Comments

If I had to single out the biggest marketing mistake many acupuncturists make, it would have to be failing to view their website as a lead generation tool. It’s not uncommon to read in a forum about a newly graduated practitioner who writes something like this; “I printed 1,000 business cards, distributed them all out and only got one new patient.” They’ll voice their frustration about how difficult it is to build a practice from scratch. Yes, starting an acupuncture practice does require energy, commitment, persistence, and some money or at least good credit. This alone is stressful enough. When you add the apprehension most acupuncturists have about marketing, you have a recipe for uncertainty and confusion about what marketing strategy to implement.

If I were writing this 15 years ago I’d probably be showing you how to put together a Yellow Page ad that beats the competition. I would also be telling you to put 80% of your advertising dollars into the Yellow Pages and spread out the other 20% among other media. But times have changed in a big way.

Today I would tell you to invest 90% of your ad dollars on the internet and just 10% elsewhere. If you do it right, you will never have to worry about marketing again. Having a good online presence (search engine optimization) and incorporating strategic marketing into your acupuncture website is how you build a lead generation system that runs on auto-pilot.

Yes it takes some effort. You either have to learn how to do it, or hire an expert. And when I say hire an expert I’m not talking about hiring a graphic designer. Graphic and web designers are trained to make websites pretty, but pretty website don’t sell. Medical doctors are trained to prescribe drugs instead of addressing the underlying cause of the problem. It’s not their fault. That’s how they are trained. If you want to get off prescription drugs you don’t go to a different medical doctor because he/she has the same training. It’s no different with graphic designers.

Please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to get across. I don’t have anything against graphic designers. I use graphic designers for logos and for brochure layouts and so forth. But I don’t let them get all creative on me using artsy-fartsy graphics and fonts that deviate from communicating a compelling message.

Have you seen the amount of websites today that use light grey text for the content? Let me ask you something… Have you ever read a book or a newspaper printed in light grey text? So why on God’s earth do graphic designers create web pages with light grey text? Because it’s pretty and “cool.” It’s not their fault. Creating “prettiness” is what they were trained to do. Forget that you might lose half your visitors because they have a hard time reading your message. What’s important to the graphic designer is that it looks pretty.

My dear practitioner, an ugly website with compelling content to strategically position you as the obvious choice, will outperform a pretty website with fluff and puffery any day of the week. Your website is not supposed to be an extension of you. It is a marketing tool to generate qualified leads and convert those leads into new patients. There’s a right way and wrong way to accomplish this. I’m not suggesting you design an ugly website. What I am saying is that your acupuncture website should be used as a strategic marketing tool to separate yourself from the pack and position you as the trusted expert in your town. This is how you take your practice to the next level in less time you ever thought possible.

Frank Prieto

Frank Prieto is a marketing strategist helping acupuncturists generate highly qualified leads from the internet and converting more of them into new patients.

www.acumarketing.com
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Filed Under: Acupuncture Websites Tagged With: Acupuncture Websites, graphic designers

Acupuncture Websites – CONVERSION is King

By Frank Prieto 3 Comments

Dear Practitioner,

Did you know there’s a simple formula for getting quantifiable results from your online marketing efforts? The formula is TRAFFIC + CONVERSION = PROFIT. You must have traffic (visitors) coming to your web site in order to convert (sell) a percentage of them into booking an appointment with you. This is how you get a return on your advertising investment and build your practice.

You want to get a clear understanding of what a marketing strategy is and why it’s so important to your business. Strategy– which is in essence your marketing MESSAGE— plays an important role in your acupuncture website CONVERSION.

You see, you could buy all the traffic you want, but if you cannot convert the traffic from prospective patients (prospects) to paying patients (clients,) you won’t get a return on your advertising investment. In fact, it’ll cost you money. This happens quite often and is the reason why many practitioners and small business owners reach the erroneous conclusion that advertising doesn’t work. However, if you have a strategy in place before investing in advertising, you’ll be way ahead of the pack and on your way to PROFIT. That’s how you beat your competition and eat their lunch. Oops, sorry. It’s my competitive nature that creeps out sometimes. I forget I’m talking to warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely acupuncturists.

OK, we know there are three important factors we must have in place (and in sync) if our acupuncture marketing efforts are to pay off. Those are, the right MEDIUM, the right MARKET and the right MESSAGE. Once you’ve built your marketing stool properly you’re ready to turn on the traffic and start testing your model. If you think about it, Internet traffic is no different than store front traffic at a retail store in the local mall. For example, let’s say 5,000 people pass by a store front on a daily basis. On the Internet this would be called impressions. The number of impressions is the number of times your ad or listing is put in front of a prospective patient searching for an acupuncturist in your area. Going back to the store example, if of the 5,000 passing shoppers 2% walk in the store, this means 100 people showed some interest in what the store had to offer. These 100 people are actual prospects (or leads.) On the Internet this would be a 2% CTR (click through rate) because your ad or listing was presented to 5,000 searchers and 100 of them “clicked through” to your web site hence the 2% CTR. The difference between your web site and the retail store is that the 100 people who clicked through to your web site are not prospects quite yet, they’re just visitors. If they enter their contact information to download your free report or e-book, or if they download your coupon for a free consultation or pick up the phone and call you, then they “convert” to prospects. Any of these three actions by visitors can be classified as a conversion. A conversion is any action you want your web site visitors to take.

You too can learn how to build an acupuncture marketing system that runs on auto-pilot. I teach this to the members of my insider’s club.

Going back to the retail store example, if of the 100 people who walked in the retail store 10 make a purchase, the merchant’s conversion ratio is 10%. Is this good? Well, I don’t know. It depends on many factors. If the store sells high ticket items I would say that’s good. On the other hand if their average sale is small, I would say that’s not good because they’re probably not recovering enough revenue to cover their cost of doing business at the mall. Now stick with me here for a minute because I’m going to show you how a small increase in conversion can dramatically impact your bottom line.

5% is a BIG Deal

Let’s say that in the stores example the owner is breaking even at a conversion ratio of 10%. Remember, she’s only selling 10 out of 100 people who come in the store which translates into a 10% conversion ratio. So the owner wants to increase her conversion ratio and start making a profit. What should she do? Well, if she’s like most small business owners, she’ll want to increase store traffic. But if she’s thinking strategically, she’ll want to improve her conversion ratio first, because if she’s able to sell 15 people out of 100 instead of 10, she will have increased her conversion ratio to 15%. You might think 5% is not that significant, but that 5% increase in conversion represents an increase in profit of 50%. If she can figure a way to sell 20 out of 100 visitors she would be doubling her profits. Do you see why improving your CONVERSION is critical to your profit? If you’re converting 2 out of 5 patients and you make strategic changes in your marketing and you are able to convert 3 out of 5 patients, you just gave yourself a 50% pay raise. If you’re converting 5 out of 5, congratulations! You’re ready to turn up the traffic and make a killing. Of course 5 out 5 is not realistic in the real world. That’s a 100% conversion ratio. Let me put it this way— it is possible to convert 5 out of 5 which is 100% if you happen to do this on a particular day, but it’s impossible to convert
100 out of 100.

So what’s the take away? Don’t spend a single dime on advertising until you have an acupuncture marketing strategy in place.

Frank Prieto

Frank Prieto is a marketing strategist helping acupuncturists generate highly qualified leads from the internet and converting more of them into new patients.

www.acumarketing.com
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Filed Under: Acupuncture Websites Tagged With: acupuncture sites, acupuncture web site, Acupuncture Websites, online marketing, promote your acupuncture website

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