Blog, Chirosecure Live Event April 3, 2021

3 Keys to Attracting New Kids Post Pandemic

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What’s up? I get to stand this time for this show. Welcome to Look to the Children. I should put the on here, Look to the Children. I should also put, uh, ChiroSecure. Okay. I’m Dr. Erik Kowalke. This is Look to the Children. Thanks for being here. Uh, thanks to ChiroSecure Dr. Stu Hoffman for all he does for the chiropractic profession. Uh, every month there’s so many shows. There’s so much content going out there to chiropractors to help you guys see more people, help more people. Uh, my role here is to do just that specifically for kids and families. That’s what we’re passionate about. I have an office in grand Rapids, Michigan, higher health chiropractic, uh, and we love seeing families and kids. And we just set a record week last week, um, been in practice almost 10 years and we just have so much fun doing it.

We see 40, 35, 40% pediatrics in our clinic, mostly families, lifetime care. Uh, it’s a ton of fun. So we also broke a record in number of new patients last month, too. And this was in, uh, March of 2021. So I put post pandemic. If you know anything about Michigan, I guess we’re not really posts, but, uh, we’re, we’re just going to keep going with post pandemic. We’re moving on. Uh, what can we do to engage? So the, the environment has, has changed around us. We started scared technology company about five years ago, seeing the need to, to make it more convenient for moms and parents. Um, and just people that come into the office, it’s gotta be more convenient. We felt like we were kind of stuck in the old way. We were printing off calendars. We were handing them, you know, tri-fold brochure, still.

Nobody was reading those. Uh, we were doing events and we were handing them paper flyers, and they would end up in the, in the trash cans. So we needed new ways to communicate with people, which is what we started the technology company skid. Um, and it’s just evolved into our ability to connect to people at a whole new level. And it’s it for such a time as this, with this pandemic scenario around us, people want things faster. They want it to be more convenient. They want it to be easy. Um, and their attention span is so short. So long texts and, and long processes that take a long time are, are viewed as bad. And they create a bad experience and bad experiences, decreased value and decrease value causes your practice to not grow. And so that’s really what I want to talk about today. Um, the three main things we’ve really done to impact more people and make a difference. Um, at the beginning of this year in 2021, and the first one is making it easy,

Make easy,

Break this down into, um, new patients, practice members, where do they come from? Are they coming from Google? Are they coming from Facebook? Are they coming from referrals? How do you make it as easy as possible? What do they got to do? Put yourself in the scenario of that person, if they’re, if they’re running off of Facebook and then they click on a link to whatever you’re doing, whatever ad you’re doing on Facebook, do they go to a schedule page or are they requesting information? I can tell you we’ve done so much split testing in our practice to get reviews because Ken does reviews. So when we did all the split testing on that and then scheduling people online, one more click that they have to do can make a 40, 50% decrease in how many people follow through to the app. So the goal of somebody clicking on a Facebook ad is for them to actually get on your schedule.

Well, every click you need, you add. And every step to the process that you add, and every step you add, more information decreases significantly. The number of people actually getting on your schedule. So it needs to be easy. So you need to use a scheduling system that syncs with your EHR system, if possible, knows your schedule. So instead of them just requesting an appointment time, and then you’re reaching back out to them, confirming the appointment time, and then them reaching back out to you, confirm the appointment time, and then you’re reaching back out to them, sending them information. If it syncs with your schedule, it knows when you can see new patients, it knows what your actual schedule is right now, Johnny sitting on the toilet at home and he sees your ad, his back’s killing them. And he clicks yes. Schedule. Now your schedule should pop up right there. Where, where are the appointments available for new patients? They still select Monday at 10:00 AM, fill out their information. That information should auto-populate into online paperwork for them. So when they get to that point of filling out paperwork, they don’t have to go do a twice and refill out the information they already filled out. And then as soon as they click, yes, you need to respond instantly to them with a followup message, which is number two. So number two

Respond instantly.

So before we get off number one, making it easy, I was just talking about Facebook. So what are the other ways internal referrals? So people call your office usually, or they’ll schedule through your website. So if they schedule through your website, same differences, Facebook, it’s got to look at you. It’s got to be easy, connect one, click schedule. It done goes on your schedule. In our office. They scheduled through our website, it into our EHR system. We use platinum system schedules on our system. They’re in there real time. Uh, if they’re referrals and they’re calling now, you gotta do the same. You gotta make it easy. It’s gotta be super easy today or tomorrow. It was when we try to get people in today or tomorrow. And, um, the person on the phone, we train a lot on this. They have to be smiling. They have to be engaging.

They have to make sure the person knows, you know, our current protocols and what’s happening in the office. They have to feel very comfortable if you can get their insurance card and as much information as you can upfront saves you a lot of time in the office. They can fill out paperwork before they come in. It saves them a lot of time. So you’re just getting them informed so that they feel really comfortable coming to the office. And it’s very important that they know the person’s name that they’re talking to. So if they call in our office, if they speak with Maria at my front desk, Maria is going to make sure she’s there to, to, to greet that person when they come in. So when Joe comes in, Joe was referred by bill and Maria is that Maria already talked to Joe. So Joe knows the name.

Maria and Maria was super nice to him. So when he walks in and be like, Hey Joe, I’m Maria, it was great to see you today. Now you have an instant connection in there and there’s trust built through that process. So you get less kickback when something doesn’t go exactly how they want it to like whether it’s a payment thing or a process thing, or they wait a little bit longer than they thought all of that stuff, you get way less of those objections and negative things happening because they trust you. They give you a little bit of grace in that scenario, if they like you and they trust you in that process. So making it easy, if I would say this, go back to your office afternoon or Monday, and just sit down with your team and say, okay, let’s go through our process of scheduling people and how they schedule, map out all the steps that it takes and that what steps can we take out and make it easier for them guaranteed.

It’ll make a difference in your practice. Second one respond instantly. So we have a system set up that if they call and we put our end code is for new patients. We throw them on our schedule instantly. They get a message sent out through our skid software. Uh, if you don’t have that, just create a Gmail one. If you’re using Gmail, create an email template and save it with a video of you in your office. So we had a video, I filmed the video in our office saying welcome to our clinic. Here’s what to expect on day one, super excited for you to be here. This is what you’re going to get. Contact information from us. You’re going to get another email with a link to your paperwork. So we schedule that email to go out instantly. It’s an email it’s text message. Um, and we send even a push notification, but it’s as soon as it’s scheduled.

So if they’re a Facebook and Johnny is sitting at home on the toilet and he schedules it, as soon as it’s scheduled whoop, he gets an email with, from our office with a video of us explaining me, explaining, Hey, here’s our office. This is, this is what’s going on. Significant improvement in conversion from Facebook guaranteed. These there’s so many people that schedule. And then, you know, you don’t reach out to them or it’s one in the morning or something, but the next day they get busy. They forget, especially if they don’t have an actual appointment time. And they’re just requesting something that, and then that doesn’t work with their schedule. Then there’s all this back and forth. I’m telling you guys respond instantly set up a system. Even if you don’t have a software system that automatically does it manually set up a system of checks and balances to make sure that happens super important. So that’s a video that goes out instantly when they get on the schedule. Second, last one, third, engage.

Okay.

Let’s say Johnny schedule’s Monday, uh, Sunday night at like, you know, one in the morning because his back hurts so bad. He’s on the toilet and he’s scheduled for Tuesday. So he gets an instant email Monday or Sunday night at 1:01 AM and then Tuesday 24 hours before, which would be Monday, he’s going to get a follow-up email and engaged from our office. With another video. This video is going to be from a team member, shooting it that they can see the front entrance, whatever office let’s say, it’s Maria and Maria say, Hey, welcome to our clinic. So we’ve mixed this up. You guys can do it. If you have a team member. So welcome to our clinic, looking forward to seeing you guys, you know, whatever they want to say at introductory. Uh, the other way is to tell your why. So this is a really good one that we use a lot too.

We kind of switching back and forth. This is you as the doc sharing your why. Hey, here’s me and my family. We’re. This is our office. We started at 10 years ago. We’re on a mission to change the health of our society, our technology, we use the office of state of the art. We have state-of-the-art x-ray facility in our clinic. And our goal is to help get people better, faster. And we look forward to seeing you, something like that is your mission. Your why? Like, why are you here? Um, that goes out 48 hours before or 24 hours before, depending on how you have your schedule set up automatically by text message by email. So if you, if you use Vimeo, this is great. By the way, you might need to go back and watch this a couple of times using Vimeo, just they’re middle of the road.

I think it’s a pro package. There’s an option in there where you can take a video, you shoot and use Vimeo and create a short GIF of like six seconds. Do that create the gift because when it goes in email, uh, in the link you put in your automated message and it goes an email, you’ll see it, uh, the gift plane and your click through rates going to go way up. These are all little things we’ve fine tuned and figured out it will help you immensely. Um, cause they click on the email. It looks like the video is already playing, even though it’s not super important, do that, use the gift. They click on that. Now they’re even engaged more. And so this is really important. The engaged part of it, uh, because you can address a lot of objections before they come in, um, address, Hey, make sure you have your paperwork out again, increases efficiency.

Once they come into your office, this is now you guys have their paperwork ahead of time. So at our team huddles, before a shift, we’re reviewing which new patients are on the schedule today. Uh, and then we already have the other paperwork. So we know Johnny’s coming in with shooting sciatic pain down his leg. He’s scheduled Sunday night at 1:00 AM. Uh, and he’s coming in this morning. We’re looking forward to seeing him Maria, uh, confirmed him or talked to him on the phone or whatever the scenario was. Everybody knows when they come in and whoever’s processing him on his day. One going through the evaluation and exam knows what’s going on with him. We all know what’s going on with him. If we have to make any special scenarios, um, you know, if he has hard time walking or whatever, uh, you, you address all that stuff and it just creates an amazing experience.

And what I can tell you is all of these things create an amazing experience for new people. They will refer people before they’ve even started care in your office before they ever even get adjusted. They’re referring people into your clinic because you just wowed them with an experience. Go look at our Google reviews, higher health chiropractic, grand Rapids, Michigan, and just see the results of, of how this all works. People leave raving reviews. Think about if you went to a restaurant and it was pretty good, but it wasn’t, you didn’t, you know, you didn’t leave there like, wow, you sit down for coffee with somebody. And they’re like, Hey, how’s it going? You’re not even gonna mention the restaurant you went to, but if you went to the restaurant and they did something special and they knew your name, they greeted you when you walked in, you’re like, wow.

They knew who I am for my reservation. Oh, it’s your anniversary or whatever. They sit you down. They bring you food instantly right away. Cause they’re really starving to get to a restaurant. They bring you something right away. And then they follow up and bring you like a free little dessert or something from the chef. You’re going to leave. They’re like, that was amazing. I can’t wait to come back and you sit down with coffee with somebody and they say, Hey, what’s going out. I was just at this restaurant yesterday. Have you ever been to such and such? The experience was awesome. They did this, they did this, they did this. That’s what you want your practice to be. And you can do that. Starting with these three things, just for new people. I’m telling you guys it’s the best ROI. You’re not spending $50, a hundred dollars a lead to get referrals.

It’s free people telling people and it’s even better because the excitement of somebody telling somebody else makes them excited to come in. And, and I just, uh, I sat down with somebody yesterday in a new patient consult. And she was the cousin of somebody that came in, which was the daughter of somebody else that came in it all in the last week. So it was like three layers of referrals from one person having a great experience in the office. And we’ll go through that maybe next time, uh, next month, which is may, we’ll go through experience. Once they step foot in your office. This is all before they actually come in, getting them schedule, um, engaging. So this is something you can do if you’re not seeing a thousand people a week and your office is bonkers and have the staff and you have the team and you have the size to be more hands-on engage is physically calling every one of them going back.

You can’t over-communicate. So by text message by phone call by emails, you can’t over-communicate engage. Some people are even doing phone tele teleconference day ones now, especially for, uh, like a lot of the PX guys that are doing kids and, um, you know, neurosensory issues with kids, it’s way easier for the mom to just do it over a zoom call or something, when you can totally do that, that works. That’s making their experience great. And it’s making it easier for them. And you can engage with them through that process, uh, with software. So automate a lot of this stuff. If it seems overwhelming, just start somewhere with one, one of these, um, as you get more advanced, if you’re like, Oh yeah, we’re already doing this, automate this stuff. You can automate an email sequence. First time they come in, that just flew right out of my hand.

Uh, first time they come in, you can start an email drip campaign we used to get for this too. So every week, the first six weeks of them coming into the office, they’re getting the information about our office and our, and our clinic. And all of that is tied to education on the amazing things that happen in our clinic. And it’s tied to objections that people get for addressing care. Like what do I do if you know, I feel totally better. Do I have to keep coming? Um, uh, do I have to come so much in the beginning? Like all of that stuff, we were getting to the root cause of your problem. So we have email templates set up where you just click activate and y’all can use this stuff, uh, for sketch to just make your practice that much better and create amazing experience and drive more patients and more new leads and make a bigger impact in your community.

Uh, so hopefully this helps you guys post pandemic, new patients, three factors. This helped us see 120 plus new patients last month in the month of March in all of this craziness. So great to see you I’ll be back in may. I guess I committed to going through, uh, just great stuff that you can use to create an awesome experience after they come into your office after that first visit or during that first visit next month in may. So don’t miss it also. Don’t miss checking out Dr. Monika, uh, the third Thursday of each month. She’s awesome. And has tons. There it is.

[inaudible] dinner.

She’s awesome. So stay engaged ChiroSecure is great. If you don’t use them for your insurance stuff, we do a, we have a group practice, five docs in our office. All of us are connected through a group policy of ChiroSecure, any questions we have, they respond so fast to us. It’s awesome. Uh, I have nothing but raving reviews to say to them and I don’t get paid to say that it’s just the truth. So have a fantastic rest of your week. Uh, if you guys do this and you get amazing results, please direct message me. Uh, Dr. Erik Kowalke, I would love to find out and to hear how it’s making a difference in your practice, making a difference for you to

Your comment below. And I’ll try to comment back to you guys and help you if you have any questions on that too. So have a fantastic week. [inaudible].