Educating Your Community About Chiropractic
You would probably agree with me that most people do not know what chiropractic is. They do not know what conditions we can help and they don’t know how chiropractic works. If they think they do, they probably have it wrong. I think you would also agree with me that they are not going to learn what we do by watching drug commercials on TV, and they are not going to learn about it from their family medical doctor. The only way people are going to learn is by reaching out to the community and contacting them.
There are many ways you can do this. You can do print advertising, radio advertising and certainly online advertising works as well. However, one of the things I have found in 23 years in practice is that many people do not want to pick there chiropractor from any ordinary advertisement. They want to actually have an interaction with you as the doctor and get to know you a little bit or they want to come in as a referral through someone who has already known you for a bit of time. Community outreach is one of the best ways of going directly to potential customers.
Meeting your community where they are
There are many ways you can implement community outreach. Number one is networking. Go outside the office personally and go to social service organizations like the Chamber of Commerce. Number two is spinal screenings, which has proven to be very successful for generating new patients. Number three, the one that I love doing the most and have had the most success with, is doing public speaking health talks. You can do a public health talk for forty-five minutes to an hour for only five to ten people and could potentially get four to six new patients out of it.
The real value that comes from these public health talks is the ability to make a real personal connection with potential patients. You can also teach them the truth about chiropractors. A lot of people are very afraid of public speaking. I assure you, once you start doing more and more often it becomes a lot of fun.
Speaking to your community about chiropractic
So, if you want to do presentations as a part of you community outreach, you are probably asking “how do you do them?” First of all, it is really important to have a wonderful introduction during your talk. You want to share something about yourself and your background. Explain to them how you became a chiropractor in the first place. They start to have a personal connection with you right at the beginning. I always know when I am speaking with a group if I have done a good job with the introduction, instead of them looking around, talking to their friends or taking notes, their attention is directly at me because they are interested, engaged, and they want to know what comes next.
Chiropractic Talk Topics
The next area that a lot of chiropractors get hung up about is “what should I talk about?” To be quite honest with you, the middle part of your talk is not that important! It is information that you are there to convey, but it is not the critical reason why people will come into your office and under chiropractor care. With that being said, there are some pointers I can give you that are effective topics to deliver. Managing stress naturally is a go-to of mine, as it applies everywhere. Whether you are talking to a business, a group of mothers, or nursing assistants, bottom line is everyone has stress.
Another great topic is the concept of “how to protect your back while…” This phrase can be injected into many different things – how to protect your back at home, how to protect your back while fishing, how to protect your back while sleeping. I very strongly suggest that you weave chiropractic into whatever you are talking about. The fact is, the benefits of chiropractic are universal to everyone. The key here is to have the information accurate and to have your citations prepared so that the audience knows how you verified this information.
Bringing Your Community in to your Chiropractic Practice
Finally, the last part of the public talk is the most crucial part of the entire speech. When I first got into practice, I was asked by a local company to come and do a talk for one hundred and twenty employees on how to protect your back while working. These folks were pouring concrete all day long – it is hard work. I went and did the presentation as they asked. They were very pleased and asked me to come back the following year.
So I went back to the company and made the same presentation to the same people and they loved it, so they asked me to come back and do it a third time. The problem was, despite them loving my presentation, I gained zero new patients from the first two talks I did. Why? Because I never closed the talk. The third time around I closed the talk, and at that time I left with sixty new patients that signed up, half the people in the room.
So, make sure that you have an effective closing and make an invitation to come in and see you. If you can do these things effectively, you are going to have a lot fun educating your community and changing the mindset in your community. I have started two practices using these methods basically from scratch, and have had a ton of fun doing it. I hope these ideas have been helpful to you, and I also want to encourage you to tell your story and speak the truth about chiropractic. There are a ton of people out there in your community who do not know the answer to their problems is chiropractic. They may never know unless you go out their and tell them.
