The Power of Digital Marketing in Your Acupuncture Practice
Let’s talk “Digital Marketing”… especially how it applies to us as Acupuncturists.
First off, I need to say this and I want you to let it sink in…
Digital Marketing is the most important piece of your marketing strategy. It takes commitment, time, consistency and investment.
You’ve probably heard me tell the story of how I started out struggling — struggling to get patients in the door, struggling to get patients to commit to treatment, and even worse, struggling to make ends meet, after spending thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars trying to grow my practice.
10 years in and I started becoming disillusioned.
It felt like I made a terrible decision to become an Acupuncturist. But seeing that I had hit rock bottom, the only choice I had was to go up.
I started investing in myself and my practice, studied with the right people, and finally learned how to run a highly successful practice that now generates tens of thousands of dollars in sales each month. Today, I control my time, my finances, and overall, my life.
One of the best investments I made was hiring a digital marketing firm to handle what I was woefully incapable of handling — Marketing. I made an insightful video about this too, and you can check it out HERE
Look… I think most of us get out of school with this attitude and impression that we're going to change the world — we're going to bring this fabulous medicine to the masses; patients are going to get better and they’ll spread the word and our practices will be bursting at the seams with word of mouth patients knocking down our doors.
Then, we pay someone for a cheap website or maybe make one ourselves. Everyone has one, I guess I have to have one as well, but it doesn't matter. Patients are going to come walking to my practice… right?
Then reality sets in…
You sit in your practice, looking at the phone that is not ringing. You're not seeing patients, but you're open, so you have to be there.
You putter around. Maybe you study a little bit, look up CEUs. Hey, maybe if I learn this, people will come in. All the while worrying about paying the bills.
Maybe you realize that you should be doing something about digital marketing. All these experts talk about how to fill your practice with Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
I know, I tried all the strategies, posting 3-4 times a day, and even paying for ads on different platforms. It felt like yelling into the void.
Nothing happened.
I saw all these ads for services that handle SEO and digital advertising. I also heard horror stories from practitioners who paid people only to have them disappear, or paid people and absolutely nothing happened. Fortunately for me, I stumbled across a digital marketing firm and hired them.
Three months later, I got my first calls from people saying they found me on Google. That had never happened before, so I knew what they were doing was working. And since then, I haven't looked back.
Truth is, the digital marketing game is hard even for those in the business. So you gotta ask yourself….
What chance do you have of doing this by yourself and getting it right?
Without trial & errors that will consume your time and drink up your money?
You need to concentrate on what you do well, which is Acupuncture. Then, hire professionals for the other aspects, because there are a lot of downsides to doing it yourself. I explained them in today’s training episode RIGHT HERE
Don’t get me wrong, there are some things you can do yourself.
For instance, if you're doing a website on a budget, at least make sure it's on a platform like WordPress that is scalable and has plugins available so that the site can grow with you.
Another thing you can do is create great, engaging content.
Blogs, short videos all help get the message out about your expertise to potential patients. You can look up keywords for acupuncture and make sure your content includes them so people can find you.
A great trick for this type of thing is to get your content on multiple platforms. This way, one piece of content can get leverage on several platforms at one time. A video done on Facebook can be then uploaded to YouTube and X (Twitter), to reach different audiences.
There are also apps like HootSuite that will allow you to manage all of your social media accounts from one dashboard. These can be real time savers and makes getting your content out way easier.
So what’s the real message here?
Digital marketing takes time and consistency.
If you put an ad on Facebook, you can't expect your phones to start ringing off the hook. You have to stick with it, be consistent, and over time it'll start to gain traction.
I teach more of these Acupuncture marketing & success strategies in my Acupuncture Business Mastery Program. Right now, you can get free access to a special video training series inside the program.
So if you want to learn what it takes to grow your practice profitably year after year, go HERE
See you around,
Steven Hoffman, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
