Before the end of the year, I wrote about three ways in which Adobe lost me as a future customer.   I want to start the New Year off with a post on how to keep a customer.  In the broadest sense, both tips have been said before in many places, but they are worth repeating.

First, exceed expectations.   Don’t think that this means you have to consider everything in the world a patient could possibly want and then give more.  That’s just not possible.  Be respectful.  Show you actually care.   Cascade Windows did this with a phone call that took the person coming to our house about 1 minute and cost him whatever 1 minute of cell phone usage costs.  They had made an appointment to be there at 10.  He was stuck in traffic and called to let me know he’d probably be 20 to 30 minutes late.  Most service people don’t do that so it was so unexpected, I’ve remembered it and told everyone.

If you have a receptionist in your office, if you’re running behind, it might be nice to call the later patients and let them know you’re running 15 to 20 minutes behind and don’t expect to be caught up by their appointment time.  Let them plan their time around your current schedule.  If they like texting, you could even have a sign up sheet to let them know.  Make sure you know how far in advance a patient would need to know so they can plan accordingly.

Calling may not work for everyone.  What else can you do?  Think about those companies that make you feel  like they went the extra mile.  Think about how that can apply to your practice.  Many of those little things are actually easy to do and take very little time.

Second, be familiar.  There’s a reason there are so many conglomerate stores that all look the same from city to city across the nation. People are comfortable with the familiar although they may fight against it.  You don’t have to look like every other office in the area, but try not to be too different.  Offer familiar touch stones in your office.  If you have a primarily Asian themed office and your patients are not familiar with the culture, make sure the magazines there are of general interest.   Have a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff prominently displayed in the treatment room.   You don’t have to use it, but patients should see it.

It’s good to be different and set yourself apart, but it’s also important to create bridges into the world of acupuncture.  It’s helpful to have a clear sense of who your patients are so you can do that.  If you focus on athletes, for instance, you’ll want magazines that they would be interested in.  Likewise, if you treat mostly elderly people for their ailments, find magazines that make them comfortable.  Find chairs that are easy to get in and out of.  They should be comfortable but you don’t want them to sink too far in!  Consider what your patients need in your office.  Consider what is familiar to them and offer touch stones so they feel they belong in your office.

Everyone says you need a website.  Now they’re telling you how to get noticed.  They’re telling you to blog.  They’re telling you you can make money online with advertising.  Web marketing isn’t your business. It shouldn’t have to be.  Here are three things to consider when creating, adding or updating a website.

First, who is your website target market.  Use the language people will use to look for you throughout your website.  If I live in “Somewhere, USA” then my audience will look for me under “Somewhere acupuncture” or “Somewhere acupuncturist”.  I should use those terms in my site on headlines, titles and in the content.  My name and my business name are likely to draw people who already know about me from a referral or who have seen me before.  I should use those terms so they can find the site for contact information but when it comes to new patients, the local area and the words “acupuncture” and “acupuncturist” are important.

Local area terms don’t need to just be your city.  I live in the Seattle area.  The broadest area is East King County. I also work in the Snoqualmie Valley.  The first general term is probably too broad as East King County covers a lot of area (and a lot of acupuncturists) but the second term is appropriate for patients as many of the cities in the Snoqualmie Valley are small and potential patients may search that term for someone nearby.

Second, if you’ve decided that writing a regular blog is important, who do you want to read your posts?   Web masters talk about keywords all the time.  They’ll give you places to go to see what terms are being searched and suggest you write articles that incorporate those ideas (for instance, “acupuncture and weight loss”).  The problem with this approach is that it’s too broad.  Keyword searches typically search larger areas than most acupuncturists will use.  You don’t want to write for Google search, either, because a search engine is a piece of software and unlikely to use your clinic for help.   Talk to people at any local gathering places. Find out the concerns of your local area.

I live in an area that floods.  Perhaps I can write about the types of health problems that flooding can cause.  Or I can take an energetic approach and talk about dampness.  If I live in an area with high winds, that’s an excellent time to talk about Wind as a pathogen.  Your posts will be timely and targeted towards the people you want to bring in.

Third, your website is there to bring in new patients and create added value to existing patients.  Throwing up google ads on your site defeats the purpose.  Your existing patients are likely to find the advertising annoying.  Potential new patients may see an ad that takes them off the site to another site that offers them something instead of an acupuncture treatment. You might get .03 cents for such a click but you’ve lost the income from that potential patient.  Advertising has a place.   Finding targeted information your potential patients and existing patients want can be very effective.

Patients often want to know more about acupuncture.  Reviewing a few acupuncture books for lay people on Amazon and using affiliate links to those products can be a way to make some extra money.  Other ideas are to advertise products you already promote, if that seems appropriate.  Some practitioners love the biomat.  You can promote the sales of the biomat on your site.  Several acupuncture website practitioners have e-books and items of interest that you can use on your website to bring in some extra income.  In all cases, these items are designed to supplement what you do and offer an added value (as well as some passive income) rather than just letting people click off your site without ever coming back.  Consider your advertising carefully.

One of the acupuncturists that I think of as a really good writer and blogger had a great question on the last post. Sometimes we hedge because we’re afraid of making sweeping statements that will mislead people or are not true.

I am not an attorney so I cannot speak to the legalities of writing beyond what I understand.  This was a disclaimer.  When you’re a medical professional and are writing about what you know online it’s always good to have a disclaimer on your blog or website.  You want to write about what you know and what you know as true but you can’t have people reading what you say and decide they have a level of expertise they do not have.  Remind people that the information you are presenting is not for self diagnosis and no one try treatments without consulting a medical professional.  If you are writing about acupuncture, then this should be an acupuncturist.

Beyond the disclaimer how do you write strongly written articles that are true but take into account that nothing is 100% effective.  First, there’s the percentage indicator.  ”Most”,” many”, “some”, “several”, and “a few” are vague.  90% is concrete and not vague and makes a much stronger statement than using a more general term.  ”Three out of four patients got relief” is also a stronger term than the vague amounts of most or many.   “All patients at my clinic have cancelled back pain surgeries within 6 treatments,” is also an accurate and verifiable statement.  If you feel you need to hedge that further, “To date, all patients at my clinic have cancelled back pain surgeries within 6 treatments.”  That statement actually is true.  However, I have only had three patients who had already scheduled surgery prior to coming into my clinic.  All three subsequently cancelled their surgeries at the recommendation of their surgeon.

When trying to avoid hedging, get more specific.  Being very specific means that you are far less worried about the general public but only about people who fall in the specific sub category about which you are writing.  If you are talking about back pain in general, use an example like the one above.  That is true but it makes no promises.

Another way to hedge is to be purposely broad.  ”Acupuncture helps back pain,” is a true statement and is verifiable by studies done at the NIH.   This is a strong sentence that can be backed up with minimal research.  While I know this statement to be verifiable as the truth, it is tempting to write, “Acupuncture helps most people with back pain.”  This is not such a strong sentence.  Technically it is also true because nothing helps 100% of the people 100% of the time.  The first sentence is perfectly legitimate because it is broad enough to encompass a generality.  Acupuncture is the subject.  What is it doing? It is helping.  Does acupuncture help?  Yes.  What does it help with in the sentence?  It is helping with back pain.  It makes no claims to how many people or how often it helps.  The only claim is that it helps.

It is possible to write strong articles and hedge the promises if you write mindfully. Be creative about not using sweeping statements.  Words like “every time”, “everyone” and “always” are just as bad as “most”, “many”, “several” and “a few.”  The “every” words make promises that cannot be kept 100% of the time.  In the same way “most” weakens the sentence when something is only 90% effective.  As a reader, I feel more empowered to try something knowing that it is 80, 90 or 75% effective than that it is effective “most” of the time.