COMMON CHANNELS, TRIED, TESTED AND TRUE

Let’s have a look now at some of the Common Marketing Channels that have been around for a while. We say these are “tried, tested and true” because they have a long successful track record with businesses. Of course, we will modify how we use them based upon who our customer is and the fact that we are doing much more of our information gathering online.

Branding

Branding is when we create a name, symbol, or design that differentiates us from our competitors. Our brand is an expression of the value of the product or service that we are offering.

A brand will help encourage a potential customer to buy from us, and it directly supports whatever marketing activities are in play, but the brand does not explicitly say “buy me.” Instead, it says “This is what I am. This is why I exist. If you agree, if you like me, you can buy me, support me, and recommend me to your friends.”

A brand can start with a name, logo and tagline and this will be something that you incorporate in all of your communications. You will have your logo on flyers, letters, e-mails, website and even invoices. This creates a consistent feel and helps to elevate how customers feel and experience your practice.

To create a brand, you need to consider:

• What is your company's mission (purpose)?
• What are the benefits and features of your products or services?
• What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?

Remember, a Brand is not just a logo. It is the overall expression of who we are and what we represent. A brand includes every single touch-point your customers have with your company. Let’s look at some very successful brands:

Your brand is a combination of all of the elements that make your practice unique. This could be everything from your specialty (if you have one), to your chiropractic philosophy, to your practice goals. For example, if you specialize in sports chiropractic, who helps elite athletes rehabilitate after injuries, your brand will be very different from a chiropractor working with geriatric patients to help them remain in the community for as long as possible.

Print Material

Print materials can take the form of flyers, brochures, postcards and business cards. As a minimum, you will need to have business and appointment cards.

Business cards have become inexpensive to print, and many print shops have a graphics person on staff that can help you put the card together. Your card should contain:

1. Name and contact information (phone and e-mail)
2. Logo and tagline (if you have one)
3. Website address
4. Colour (make sure you don’t overdo it with too many colors on the card as it may look unprofessional)
5. Legible font (do not use too many fonts choose one style)
6. White Space
7. Simple
8. Memorable
9. Conveys your brand

Many options exist at printing houses in order to get business cards printed. The problem with printing your own cards is that it does not look as professional and can leave others with a poor impression of your business

Flyers or postcards can be an effective approach to get known in your immediate local community. Local businesses will leave flyers at libraries, community centres and other businesses that they have developed alliances with. In addition, you can arrange to have Canada Post or a 3rd party service deliver your materials in an area, say within 2 kilometers of your practise. Postcards look better than flyers and can be seen as trendy and an effective way to get in touch with potential clients. On the other hand, brochures are expensive, less effective and information can change so it is much more advantageous to go with postcards. You can design postcards every four months with a new message if you want to attract more business or keep your UVP simple and compelling and get it out there.

The materials that you develop follow the same ideas as a business card in that the message needs to be clear, easy to read, attractive and with white space.

Here is an example of a Homeopath who had his flyer in the local library:

What do you think?

It is informative but there is a lot of reading to do, not much white space. The reader would need to be motivated to get through it. There would be an opportunity to highlight the practitioner’s Unique Value Proposition and to more clearly communicate the benefits to a customer of having a treatment with this practitioner.

If you are computer savvy, you can create your own flyer on MS Word and then take it to your local print shop. Alternatively, you can go to a site like vista print
http://www.vistaprint.ca/?couponAutoload=1&GP=05%2f17%2f2017+02%3a29%3a45&GPS=4398776438&GNF=1 use one of their templates and get the flyers printed by them and shipped to you. Your best option would be the latter and would achieve better results.

You can also be creative when reaching out to your specific customer segment. Let’s say you are targeting families with young children. You can post messages on social media but for the print message you could get postcards made up with the following message:

http://sharpercards.com/shop/product_details/12258/Link-To-Health-Postcard

This link is to the site that creates postcards for chiropractors:

http://sharpercards.com/cont_health_main

Advertising

In the world of traditional advertising, we have TV, radio and newspaper. When it comes to placing this kind of advertising, we need to consider who is this media’s audience and how does it match with your customer segment.

Typically, for a Chiropractic practice, we would likely consider a newspaper ad in a local community paper. This is because we are more likely to attract customers from within our community. If we advertise in say, the Toronto Star, then we reach a large area and many of those readers would not consider traveling to our practice. So, we would be paying extra for readers that are not our target customer and thus not making effective use of our advertising dollar.

Please check with your regulatory body if you have any questions about an advertisement.

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Let’s look at a few ads from the Beach Metro News community newspaper in East Toronto:

Select which is the LEAST effective ad?

1. Gore
   
2. Melanie Norman Accounting
   
3. Manulife Securities

   CORRECT - The Gore and Melanie ad are graphically appealing and have an implied UVP in their ad.
   This makes their ads more likely to attract customers.
   The Manulife ad is not as attractive to read. The value and benefits are not clear; i.e.
   why should I work with this financial advisor?
   In addition, did you pick up on the spelling mistake?

   
   

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In terms of a chiropractic example of advertising, some business owners are making use of signs to advertise their message.

For more guidance on advertising in the chiropractic industry please refer to the following links:

http://www.cco.on.ca/site_documents/S-016.pdf

http://www.cco.on.ca/site_documents/P-004.pdf

http://www.cco.on.ca/site_documents/P-016.pdf

http://www.cco.on.ca/site_documents/public_display_statement_-_June_5_2015.pdf

http://www.cco.on.ca/site_documents/G-016.pdf

Media – Public Relations (PR)

PR is all about getting some free publicity. Would your local paper be interested in writing an article about you? What would be the angle and why would their readership be interested?

An article written by you or about you is considered more credible and has more impact than your advertisement. So how can you get this kind of publicity?

Might you be able to write an article for a community newspaper that would be of interest to their readership? Typically, if you write an article of interest, for instance, the top 10 ways to maintain a healthy posture, then you would get more interest from small local papers and from those that read the local papers.

Here is an excerpt of an article written by a chiropractor about adjusting your feet:

You can also have articles written about you if there is an angle or story that would be of interest to the paper’s readership. Here is an example of an article written about a chiropractic doctor who introduced the treatment of animals in her practice.

Check out https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/274887 for some tips on how you can go about getting media coverage.

Sponsorship

Businesses sponsor events in exchange for recognition and exposure. It does not have to be costly.

For example, for a couple hundred dollars you could purchase t-shirts with the name of your practise for a local children’s soccer team. At every game, those watching see the name of your practice.

Some other examples of sponsorship:

• Contribute a prize for silent auction fundraiser at local school. You would have to comply with all regulations within the industry but could offer something like a mini acupuncture session.
• Sponsor a community charity event
• Sponsor community events i.e. real estate groups who sponsor installing lights on trees for Christmas.

Ad Mail

There are many businesses that use ad mail as a way to get exposure. We are indeed inundated with flyers in our mail box, so it is fair to question how many people would actually look at our flyer.

Yet we know that local grocery stores send ad mail regularly and Starbucks has done localized ad mail campaigns to promote store locations.

Addressed mail (i.e. Direct mail) campaigns typically result in a 1 – 3% response rate. One might expect Ad Mail response rates to be somewhat less than that. Although this may sound low, if you distribute 1,000 flyers and get 10 enquires and appointments, then the campaign would more than pay for itself.

There are exceptions. In 2014, Pizza Pizza did a 4.1 million piece unaddressed coupon drop featuring their chicken wings. They got a 37% response rate. Clearly, this is not what typically happens, but exceptions do occur.

Again, please check with your regulatory body if you have any questions about an advertisement. Ad mail and email marketing has been a source of many complaints and discipline decisions.

Alliances/Referrals

All businesses love to get referrals; either from previous customers or other businesses.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a steady stream of referrals in your practice?

You get customer referrals by giving them the best possible service. You will want to develop your referral network.

There used to be a time when it was almost impossible to get a referral from an M.D. but that has begun to change. More doctors are open to speaking with and referring chiropractors.

Check out the following sites for tips on how to cultivate and maintain a doctor referral network:

www.chiropractic.ca/wp-content/uploads/.../Tips-for-communicating-with-MDs.pdf

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/chiropractic-patient-referrals-medical-doctors-74425.html