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Clip Your Newspaper To Get More New Patients
In essence, what he suggested was going through your local paper, look for any positive stories about a member of that community, cutting the story out, and mailing it to the individual.
Depending on how you look at it, this strategy may appear as a fantastic opportunity for PR, or perhaps as an absolute waste of time.
In truth, neither is correct.
To address the latter first, this strategy will not be a waste of time. Of course, like any other marketing strategy, there is no 100% guarantee success rate, simply because there are so many variables involved. But to think that this strategy is just great PR would be also inaccurate. You see, this is not just about looking good in your community. This is actually a heavy-duty new patient acquisition tool.
Before I get into how to apply this to your practice, I'm going to share with you a true story.
In my community, there is a woman who goes through the newspapers, looks for stories or mentionings of community members, cuts them out, and mails it to those individuals who are mentioned in the article.
Enclosed with this "clip" she writes a brief note saying that how she noticed their name in the paper and thought that they would like it, since people usually don't even realize that their name was in the paper until it's too late.
She also mentions that she operates solely on donations, and if they would like to send a little something, she would appreciate it. This woman makes over $60,000 a year doing only this!
Now, I'm not suggestions you request money, or anything like that. Instead you may want to follow this strategy:
1) Subscribe to all your local newspapers (the major papers, local paper, tabloid papers, etc.)
2) You, or a staff member (that's the great thing about this strategy, a staff member can do all the work!), would skim through the papers. Every time there is a mention of a person doing something good (winning an award, getting some recognition, getting married, getting a promotion, receiving high grades or graduating, etc.) clip out the story and put it in a folder.
3) Once you go through the papers and collect all the clips, you do a reverse check to find the addresses of the people mentioned. There are several ways to do this. You can buy a cd-rom from a computer store which will have all the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone in the United States, and do a search by name. Or you could use your local white pages. Or you can use a search engine like the one on www.att.com/directory. The best that I've seen is the cd-rom though, and it'll probably cost less than $50.
4) After collecting the names and addresses (or names and addresses of the parent if the person mentioned was a child [please note, this can be very effective as parents always love to see their kids' names in the paper, and they will be very appreciate of you for letting them know), send the clip to the person, along with a similar note:
"Dear Mr. Jones,
I was going through the Springfield Gazette and noticed that your name was mentioned in it.
I know that I personally don't notice when my name in the paper until a week or so later, and by then it's usually too late for me to get a hold of that issue.
So I thought you would like to see the article. I've clipped it out for you along with this letter.
Congratulations on being mentioned in the paper. This is definitely something for you to be proud of.
- Your Friend,
Mike Solensky, D.C.
Springfield Chiropractic
Give this strategy a try for a month. Once a week go through your newspapers, and see what kind of results this no-cost (or very little cost, at most) strategy can achieve for you. You just might be surprised.
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716 North Ventura Road Suite 360, Oxnard, CA 93030
800-250-2655 Fax 805-293-8732
716 North Ventura Road Suite 360, Oxnard, CA 93030
800-250-2655 Fax 805-293-8732
