- In March of this year, a California legislative task force on peripheral neuropathy was established and reported that over 20 million Americans suffer this disease

- It Is Anticipated That by 2010 Sales of Neuropathic Pain Drugs Will Double To US$5.5 Billion.

- Almost 1 million neuropathy related keyword were performed on Google last month in the U.S.

What do these numbers tell you about helping neuropathy patients?

Find out on Tuesday 1:00PM EST, 12:00 CST, when I’ll be holding a power-packed webinar on this very hot niche. (A webinar allows you to watch and listen to the seminar online from the comfort of your office or home computer.)

Register here:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/337389785

For the first 20 minutes of the webinar I’ll be sharing proven strategies for getting more neuropathy patients in to your practice. All year there’s been one question I’m asked most often, it’s…

“When are you going to write more neuropathy ads? These are doing great!”

I’ve also received quite a bit of feedback on the ads and can tell you what specific headlines and strategies are working right now, in the month of November to bring in neuropathy patients.

I’ve also asked Dr. John Hayes to join us on the webinar, and spend about 20 minutes showing us exactly what he does to help get his neuropathy patients well. Dr. Hayes, in conjunction with Dr David Phillips, have developed a tested and replicable treatment system for patients with peripheral neuropathy.

I think you’ll be surprised at how easy his protocol is to implement in your practic. And rest assured, it does NOT advocate outrageously expensive equipment, or cold laser therapy!

Here’s just a few of the conditions Dr. Hayes has used his system for…

-Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy
-Post ChemoTherapy Neuropathy
-Diabetic Lumbopelvic Plexopathy and incontinence
-Failed Lumbar Back Surgery
-Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
-Multiple HNPs with bilateral Radiculopathies
-Idiopathic Polyneuropathy
-Chronic, intractable Myofascial Pain

Make sure you’re on this exciting webinar where we will visually show you how to market to and successfully help neuropathy patients.

Register here:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/337389785

Yours for a more successful practice,
Michael Beck, D.C.

P.S. Just like spinal decompression was all the rage 5 years ago, the neuropathy niche is only going to get bigger and bigger. Don’t be the last chiropractor in your town who taps into this market of patients.

No doubt there are neuropathy patients in your town right now looking for help. They’re tired of being pumped full of drugs to stop the pain. They want a natural solution.

The only question is how are you going to reach them and what treatment protocol will you be using.

Find out on this webinar:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/337389785

In the first section of the book, Dan lists 10 rules to follow on marketing in your business. What he said in rule #9 can be directly applied to your chiropractic marketing. Here’s what he said…

Rule #9: Results Rule, Period.

Results are what matters when it comes to measuring the success of your marketing.

While there are certain caveats to this rule (which I discuss below), let’s look at what this really means for your practice.

“Results rule, period” means it doesn’t matter what your friends, colleagues, family, front desk CA, or even your spouse thinks about your advertising. When it comes down to it your own feelings about a certain marketing piece aren’t the determining factor of it’s success.

It doesn’t matter what your newspaper representative thinks about your chiropractic ads either. You would be surprised at how many times an ad rep wants to make changes to my ads.  They’ll tell my customer “I can make that ad look much better. Let me have our art department put a better picture in there. And I think you should cut this out and we’ll put you a pretty coupon right there.”

Then I get an email from the doctor asking me if he should let them do this. I tell him “Sure, if THEY GIVE YOU THE AD PLACEMENT FOR FREE! Otherwise, tell them it’s your money and you’ll spend it on the type of marketing you want.”

I once had a front desk CA proof read an ad I was about to run in the small community newspaper. She told me “the ad wasn’t going to do well, because she wouldn’t respond to it herself.” Then I asked if she had a herniated disc like the patients the ad was geared towards. Of course her answer was no. But she still insisted the ad likely wouldn’t do well. I then told her that we could run her rewrite of the ad, if she wanted to pay for it out of her next paycheck. That ended the discussion. (This ad brought in 13 new decompression patients for an ROI of 2062%.)

So who’s vote does count?

The only vote that counts is your patient’s vote, since they are the ones giving you the money. You then total the income from their case fees, and see if it’s more than you paid to run the ad. This is your ROI and it is the determining factor if the ad was successful or not.

So what’s more important when measuring ad results, the number of new patients you get from an ad or the actual ROI?

Well, if you ask most chiropractors, they would tell you it’s the number of new patients. But the ROI is much more telling. The biggest reason is because the ROI figures in the quality of the patient, how long they stay, and how much they spend.

For example, you could get 81 new patients in for a free exam and have only 4 of them actually ever give you money. Or you could have 15 sciatica patients pay $47 for an exam, 13 of which accept a care plan, spend $2000 each and get an ROI of 2500%. Which one would you rather have?

Figuring the ROI will also factor in the “caveat” I mentioned above to Dan’s rule. Here’s what I mean…

If you are measuring purely the number of new patients you got in, you could change the above rule to “Number of New Patients Rule, Period.” But this is not true, as it doesn’t account for the unethical, hyped up, immoral, and in some cases illegal advertising that goes on.

After all, if all that matters is getting the most new patients you can get from an ad, why not “promise a cure” and tell them the first visit is free? Hey, if you’re just measuring new patients, you did great, you got 101 new people in the door! Do whatever it takes, right?

But let’s look at your ROI. After 99 of them waste your time and never pay you a dime, 1 files a lawsuit against you for unethical advertising, and the state board fines you and yanks your license to practice, I’d say your ROI is about a negative 1 million percent.

With that said, I think we should modify Dan’s rule to make it a bit more speficic. “Return on investment rules, period.”

Do you agree or disagree? Post your comments below.

This means newspaper ads will no longer work for you, right?

Not from what I’ve been hearing. Chiropractic newspaper ads are still working well. In fact, certain conditions like neuropathy, herniated discs, sciatica, and numbness seem to be pulling better than they ever have before.

Could this be due to the population aging? More toxins being in our food and environment? I’m not sure what the cause is, but I can tell you that focusing your marketing on very specific health problems is working better than ever.

In fact, neuropathy is so big I’ll be holding a webinar in a few weeks to show you how to market to these patients. And I’ll have a guest doctor joining us to teach how he’s getting neuropathy patients well.

So back to newspaper ads, do they work?

Well here’s two doctors that recently sent me their success stories with the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads…

“Wow!  My practice is recovering and so is our cashflow. “

I have been blessed with a large and successful practice… but after 14 years something started to happen… Maybe it was the economy or maybe it was my focus.  Life does get busy.

Bottom line: My practice had dropped by 20 to 30% from September of 2008 to July of 2009.  It was pretty ugly.  In August of 2009 I discovered Dr. Beck’s Chiropractic Ad’s and I took a chance.

Wow!  My first Neuropathy Ad brought in 12 new patients… about $5,000 and only cost $700 to run.  My practice is recovering and so is our cashflow.  Not only are the Ads great, I have started using his family and friends gift certificates and his home health reccomendations booklet.  It’s great stuff.

-Julian Chipley, DC

“If I had his program 10 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this,
I`d be fishing off my tropical island someplace!“

Years ago I had a practice which treated 150 patients daily for close to ten years. I eventually went to the DC/MD model when my body wore out and my marketing efforts declined since I was unique in our community rearding  interdisciplinary practice. Spiraling overhead eventually led me to return to solo practice, but the marketing that was successful in the past no longer produced consistant results, and ROI was low.

I liked everything I heard and read pertaining to Dr Beck`s program. I related to hid experiences, and the sraightfroward approach resonated with me.Unfortunately alot of the marketing and consulting services available in our profession today use antiquated approaches that simply don`t work like they once did. Long winded scripting, 2-3 day reports, and high cost either out of pocket or with hefty percentages of practice increase are the norm. We all know that  getting qualified new patients in our doors remains THE most important aspect of a successful practice. The initial ad I ran was neuropathy. I`d written ads myself on the condition in the past and experienced modest success from them.

With Dr Beck`s ad I had 21 NPs and many of them have since referred other patients to us. The ROI thus far exceeds 20-1, and the tab is still running. The difference in my opinion is his copywriting skill. I`m actually a pretty good writer, but there`s a science to ad copy that I admittedly know nothing about. If I had his program 10 years ago, you wouldn`t be reading this, I`d be fishing off my tropical island someplace!

- Dr Ren Halverson

Don’t wait until everything slows down during the holidays. Pick up your ads now and get started next week with more new patients.

http://www.UltimateChiropracticAds.com

Before I explain, let’s first define what these words mean.

Social marketing: marketing and advertising that reaches potential consumers via social networking website, such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Social networking: a social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

As you can see, these two terms are closely related. And often times they are used interchangeably within internet marketing circles.

Let’s look at the major components of a good social networking plan that can bring in new patients…

Press Releases
Press releases can be submitted online (for free) to many of the press release sites. This will get picked up and listed on the major search engines news, like Google News and Yahoo News.

Video
Most people have high speed internet and love to watch videos on Youtube. By submitting short 2-5 minute videos educating prospective patients on your services, you’re going to increase your web traffic and potential new patients.

Blog
A blog is what you are reading now. It’s basically a website that makes it easy for regular updates to be posted. Search engines love blogs, and will rank them higher than static pages on the same topic because blogs are new content. And Google especially likes fresh content.

Articles
Submitting articles to free article directories are a great way to generate traffic to your site. Other blogs and websites will pick up your article and spread it around on their sites, increasing the number of links you get back from it, creating a “viral” effect.

Social Bookmarking
This is where you save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. By bookmarking your own blog posts and adding friends, others will see what you like and click the links back to your site. Example sites are Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc.

SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is when your website or blog has been optimized for certain keywords, thereby increasing your ranking on Google and other search engines. (Having a blog alone will automatically increase your SEO.)

Social Media
Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook are the major sites here. The average person on these websites are females around age 35-40 — the perfect chiropractic patient! You can also interact with people who are talking about their health problems.

So, back to my original question, do these sites actually work to bring in new patients?

Yes, when used together, they definitely work. But, you have to do them often enough and with a purpose. Here’s what I mean…

If you think you can just post a couple of things about you had for dinner last night, like everyone else does on Facebook or Twitter, and expect to get new patients, it’s never going to work.

You must use specific marketing phrases and techniques on these sites to bring more traffic to your website. The more people who come to your site, the more new patients that will call and schedule.

Two chiropractors, Dr. Len Schwartz and Dr. Matt Loop, just released a social networking and marketing video at their Automated Social Networking 3.0 site that shows you the exact layout of what you need to do

Their free video is simple, easy to understand, and provides you with a proven and tested Social Media Marketing formula for achieving online or offline success!

Check it out here:

www.InternetForChiros.com

I found that they explained the complex issues of social marketing very well, especially on the second page. There you’ll see a 30 minute video where they draw everything out on a whiteboard.

Don’t assume they know…because they don’t unless you’ve made it a regular practice to teach them each and every way you can help them, their friends, and their family.

On Tuesday, October 27 at 1:00PM CST, I’m holding a power packed 50 minute LIVE Teleseminar entitled “How to Generate More Referrals, Boost New Patients, and Increase Retention with Chiropractic Newsletters”. On this call I’ll share unique and proven strategies for getting more referrals and increase retention from your patient newsletter. Watch new referrals flood in month after month with these simple newsletter secrets.

Register here:

http://www.thechiropracticnewsletter.com

Here’s just a few of the valuable, proven nuggets of wisdom you’ll hear on this breakthrough call are…

-Finally discover how to really get more new patients with a professional print newsletter. (Some doctors have been told to only use black and white with no graphics. Find out the truth!)

-Why email newsletters only go so far and how to use email and print newsletters together. (This is where quite a few chiropractors are ‘missing the boat’.)

-3 unique strategies to make sure you’re getting referrals from your monthly mailings to patients.

-The single most important strategy to get your newsletters read. Most chiropractors are wasting their money sending out material that ends up in the trash.

-The most common mistake chiropractors make with patient mailings. Correct this and you’ll see patient retention improve drastically.

In addition, we’ll be asking direct questions to one of the top chiropractic newsletter companies in the U.S. That’s right, you’ll get a chance to ask your question during a 20 minute Q&A session, but you must be one of the first 96 to get on the call.

This event will likely FILL UP fast because the teleconference line only allows for 96 callers. A replay will be available for a short time, but only to those that register. Register immediately by registering here…

http://www.thechiropracticnewsletter.com

It’s much less expensive to market to your current patients then it is to go out and acquire new patients. Not only should you be marketing for new patients, but compounding on top of that with referral based marketing.

Newsletters easily make this happen. Make sure you’re on the call to learn how…

http://www.thechiropracticnewsletter.com

But we agreed you need more than just a website.

This is why my online marketing team and I have put together a system you can get started with now, without using Adwords.

http://www.chiropatientsonline.com/website.htm

Here’s what you’ll get…

-A chiropractic specific website with well written copy that brings in new patients. This includes a homepage done right, condition specific landing pages for fibromyalgia, neuropathy, decompression, & more. Plus…

-A Wordpress Blog on Website with ten 500+ Word Articles, optimized with the right keywords and wordpress plugins.

-Link building campaign to get links pointing back to your site, increasing your authority on Google.

-Monthly management of your website and email list.

-3-Step Autoresponder sequence to all leads who visit your site and leave name and email.

- 1-2 new blog articles posted on your site each month, to keep you website ranked high on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Grab your area here…

http://www.chiropatientsonline.com/website.htm

Remember, this requires no time on your part and is a completely done for you system. There are no long term contracts required. If you aren’t getting what you want, you can cancel at any time.

You’ll get everything completely set up for you, by an actual chiropractor who’s Google Certified (which means I’ve spent quite a bit of money with Google Adwords and passed their exam).

The Internet is only going to get bigger. More and more chiropractors will be using this type of marketing, making it harder and more costly to get started – more competition with keywords, , higher bidding on Adwords, more difficulty getting local Google rankings, etc.

And the longer you wait to get started, the longer it will be before you see results. The flip side is also true: The quicker you get started, the quicker you’ll see results.

Get started with your automated marketing system now by simply clicking the button below.

http://www.chiropatientsonline.com/website.htm

So I hired a consultant, who I felt certain would be able to use his years of experience to direct me on the right path.

Then my grand opening came. We ran a full page, long-copy newspaper ad. We did a huge telemarketing campaign to the area. And it worked, bringing in over 50 new patients the first month and $22,000 in cash collected!

Who can complain about that?

Actually it really messed me up.  So bad it would take 2 years to recover. Let me explain…

You see, I thought since this was my first month, every month after this would only get better. After all, if this wasn’t the case, surely I would have heard about it in school, or my $1000 per month consultant would tell me. Time to go get a $700 a month car payment. Time to start looking at new houses. (Do you see where this story is headed?)

Since my first month was so good, I’ll just lay off marketing the next month. Guess what happened?

Yep, only collected $10,000 and had a handful of new patients. But I thought “No problem, it’s December, everyone knows chiropractors are ‘cursed’ in December. Next month will be better. I won’t do any more more marketing and I’ll just wait and see what happens.”

I waited. And I waited. Five months later, we were stilling only seeing about 10 new patients per month and collecting between $10-15k.

So I did some proven marketing again. I bet you can guess what happened next.

We had an awesome month! So I thought, “I’m so busy seeing new patients and getting them well, I don’t really need to market much next month. After all, school is letting out and everyone knows new patients avoid a chiropractor during the summer.”

The next month dropped again. “We’ll of course, it’s summer time”, I thought. “I’ll just wait and see what happens next month.”

I’ll spare you the long sad story, and tell you this pattern continued for the next 2 years. It was a vicious  downward spiral. One good month, then ‘wait and see’ whats going to happen, then 3 bad months. Rinse and repeat.

Every quarter, I had less and less money to spend on marketing, since I was relying on 1 month to cover 3 months of expenses.

Why didn’t I learn my lesson, you ask?

There are many reasons, but the biggest one was that having one good month always made me think everything was okay. All I had to do was keep holding on and things would get better.

And while it’s true you must “hold on” during rough times in life, holding on doesn’t mean you just sit around doing nothing. You “hold on” to your faith, your family, and your sanity. But you don’t hold on to the business stuff that’s not working, namely a messed up marketing plan. I was simply holding on, praying for Someone else to do the work of bringing in the new patients.

I did eventually learn my lesson and turn things around.

Wait-and-see chiropractic marketing does not work. And the sad part is, if you do this too often, you’ll get into a spiral that’s very difficult to get out of.

Don’t wait and see what’s going to happen next month. Don’t count on spinal screenings to build your practice.  Don’t sit around thinking patients are just going to walk in the door.

Instead, use proven marketing systems. Run a chiropractic newspaper ad next month. Implement a new referral strategy with your patients. Set up an automatic online marketing system.

You don’t have to do it all in one month. But for your practice’s sake, do something!

Sometimes it’s prudent to wait and see. But when it comes to solid proven marketing, you’re always better off doing it now instead of later.

Now if it was still 1999, and you were the first to get a website up in your town, then you could expect to get new patients from it over the next few years.

But by 2004-2005, just about everyone had a website in your area. This brought up a new problem, since there was now quite a bit more competition online.

So what happened?

Overpriced SEO services happened. Web designers came to you and offered to “search engine optimize” your site for around 2,000 dollars or more! For this amount, they would go in and “tweak  your code”, essentially stuffing keywords and meta tags on your site, somewhat optimizing it so you would come up high on Google and Yahoo’s free listings. (Turns out it’s not so “Free” if you have to pay someone $2,000 to do it!)

This worked for a short while, until search engines like Google figured this out and developed a program to detect all the fake “stuffing” that was going on. (Believe it or not, there are still SEO companies out there today spending 10 minutes doing this and charging chiros a ton of money.)

So now it’s 2009. What’s changed? Well, quite a lot has changed on the internet. Many industries have implemented new technologies and moved on into the whole Web 2.0 phase. Even many small businesses have realized they can get new customers online at a less expensive cost, thereby cutting ineffective offline marketing.

But where are most chiropractors?

Still stuck in 1999, simply thinking a website alone will work? Or in 2004, thinking if they have a website all they need is some quick optimization to help it out a little?

If you’ve been thinking these things too, it’s really not your fault. No one has really stood up and said…

“No, it doesn’t work like that anymore!”

Instead, website companies just update their graphics and make their site look prettier, knowing they can sell you on looks instead of effectiveness.

But no matter how good you dress it up, a website is not enough (unless you practice in a very small town and you’re the only chiropractor there.)

Let’s look at the offline world. You have a sign on your door or on the front of your building, correct? This sign is important, because it tells people where your office is and if they are driving by they know how to find you. But does this sign magically go out and tell people to come into your office? Does it go 5 miles down the road and find qualified new patients?

Of course not! You have to do other types of marketing first to get people over to your office and come in as a new patient.

Your sign is part of your offline marketing system, but it does not make up 100% of it (unless you are in a really small town). Well the same goes for your website. Your website is not going to go out there and grab qualified prospects for you. Sure, a few people may pass by your site and come in as a new patient, like a walk in would when driving by your office. But do you just want to live off of walk-in traffic?

Look, here’s how internet marketing works. You must have 3 steps running all the time.

#1. Source of qualified traffic. (Pay per click, articles, organic listings, blog, incoming links, press releases, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Some of these work better than others.)

#2. Conversion of that traffic to scheduled new patients. (This is where your website comes in. But just ‘any ole website’ won’t do. You have to have good copy and layout to make it work.)

#3. Automatic follow-up with the traffic that doesn’t call and schedule. (Here you use email autoresponders to do the work for you.)

If all you have is a website, you only have  #2 covered above. And judging by most chiropractic websites out there, they struggle with even doing #2 right.

I know, we are chiropractors. We’re not trained to know all the ins and outs of internet marketing. Nor do we have time to keep up with all this “new fangled” stuff. That is why sometimes I hear the following statement…

“Dr. Beck, I don’t understand all that internet marketing stuff out there.
But I get that you need a website. Can’t I just get by with that for now?”

My answer: sure, you can “get by”, but don’t be upset when you don’t get many new patients from your website.

And not understanding how internet marketing works is no excuse not to learn it or pay someone else to do it for you. Most patients don’t understand chiropractic when they first come in to see you. But it doesn’t take them long to appreciate the benefits of your care.

The same goes for all the components of internet marketing. You don’t have to understand it all the mechanics of it to reap the benefits of having tons of new patients come in to your office from it.

We know people are searching everyday in your area for a chiropractor, or solutions to problems that you can help (they are because we can see that with Google’s keyword tool), then why aren’t they finding your website and causing the phone to ring off the hook?

Do patients find your website when someone types in “fibromyalgia treatment” on Google? What about “neuropathy”? Sciatica?

I can make that happen with ChiroPatients Online. There are still a few spots left for October, as long as your area has not been taken already.

You’ve likely hired out your internet marketing to someone who doesn’t understand both chiropractic and online traffic. It may have even cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design, but it can fail at doing the most important thing – getting qualified new patients into your office!

Click here to find out how to really get new patients on the internet…

Here’s why chiropractor’s are struggling to get new patients online…

Mistake #1. Not enough qualified traffic to their website.

In the early days of the internet, all you needed was a static brochure type website. This worked well because there were so few chiropractic websites online. Your competition was slim.

But today you can no longer use technology designed in 1998 to run your internet marketing plan.

You can’t just put up a static website and hope someone finds it. You must use the latest online advertising and marketing to drive traffic to your site. Qualified traffic that is hungry for a solution to their problem.

Mistake #2. They lack a conversion process to get the prospect to call and schedule an appointment.

What are potential patients supposed to do when they arrive at a website where there’s no clear purpose?

It’s crazy to think potential patients will just browse around and somehow stumble upon the action you want them to take. I see this all the time.

Most chiropractors and web designers have not taken the time to map out any kind of a process for conversions on their website. It just confuses people and they use the back button or get lost poking around without taking any kind of action.

The first thing internet searchers are looking for is not an education about chiropractic history, where you went to school, or what technique you practice. They want to know how chiropractic can help – specifically how you can help them with their problem.

How to Get New Patients from the Internet on Autopilot

You’re about to discover how any chiropractor can turn the Internet into their number one new patient generation tool…in terms anyone can understand…without a lot of technical mumbo jumbo.

The biggest mistake you can make with your practice is to simply hand off the most important piece of your marketing without at least knowing the basics…including how to get qualified local visitors to your website and convert them to paying new patients.

Find out more:
www.ChiroPatientsOnline.com

You’re About to Discover:

-Finally see how to dominate PPC Search Marketing and bring in more qualified new patients.

-The 7 most common mistakes chiropractors make with pay-per-click advertising. Correct these and drive tons of qualified patients to your website.

- Apply a proven, scientific system to generate limitless traffic to your website.

- The single most important strategy to get you at the top of Google, MSN and Yahoo’s Search listings! (I used this one to get ahead of websites that had been around for over 10 years.)

- How to use email marketing to build powerful rapport with new patients before they’ve even met you – and why having a follow up campaign is vital to getting new patients to call and schedule.

www.ChiroPatientsOnline.com

It’s not a matter of “if” you will get into internet marketing, it’s simply a matter of “when”.

More and more chiropractors are using these advanced internet marketing strategies, making it harder and more costly to get started. There’s only going to be more competition online, which makes it harder to get local SEO rankings and more competitive with pay-per-click advertising.

And the longer you wait to get started, the longer it will be before you see results. The flip side is also true: The quicker you get started, the quicker you’ll see results. Start getting more new patients on autopilot now and get ahead of your competition.

Click here to watch a free video on chiropractic internet marketing…

In my last post, we covered the first 2 mistakes chiropractors make when running their newspaper ads. Today, let’s look at the final 3 mistakes…

Mistake #3. Changing the Picture.

When it comes to a successful chiropractic ad, the picture really is ‘worth a thousand words.’ By using a well placed photo and a caption, much can be said in a very small space. When I write an ad, each photo is selected carefully to portray a certain meaning to the reader. Usually this is a photo that depicts the lifestyle or activity the patient wants to accomplish when they are well.

Also where the picture is placed can make a big difference. A picture placed awkwardly can make the ad seem out of place to the reader, causing him to quickly identify it as an advertisement and skip over reading it. This is why the large Ultimate Chiropractic Ads each have a photo and caption specifically placed in the ad. In some cases that is to the right of the headline. In other ads it’s embedded in the body copy text.

The point here is this: by making changes to the picture in the ad, you could be making a big mistake and hurt your results.

Mistake #4. Taking Out Sections to Make the Ad Smaller

To save some money I’ve seen doctors squish an ad down into a tiny space in the newspaper. Part of what makes an ad work is that it gets noticed. Yet, by taking an ad that was meant to be smaller than a 1/4 page ad and making into a 1/8 (or even 1/16) page ad, you’ve ruined it. It would have been better if you’d saved your money for a bit and ran it as a larger ad size.

Another mistake is thinking that by removing the picture from the ads, you can save a bit on ad space. The biggest reason this is a bad idea is because the caption on a photo is the second read thing in the ad, after the headline. Each of my ads has a photo and caption for this purpose. I want the reader to feel an irresistible urge to read the ad after seeing the headline and photo.

Mistake #5. Writing in Your Own Copy

Unless you have special training in advertising and copywriting, it’s a bad idea to write your own copy into the ad. Even if it’s a small paragraph, this can ruin the flow of the ad and cause it to fail. You’d be better off changing any number of variables — including running a different ad, changing the size of the ad, trying a different paper, running inserts instead of space ads, and more — before trying to write in your own parts.

This was a common mistake made with older ads that have been around in chiropractic. We were told to “write in our own chiropractic story” in to the ad. The problem was that “our own story” made up the first 40%-50% of the ad. And this was the first part the prospect began reading! This meant that if you weren’t trained in copywriting, the success of the ad was almost completely dependent on how well you wrote. Not on the skill of the consultant who wrote the rest of the ad.

It’s better to use ads that require only minimal changes in your contact information (name, number, and address)