233 Why Demographics Matter

This week’s topic:  Your marketing may need a demographic tune-up

The KC CHIROpulse Podcast is designed for Chiropractic professionals ready to elevate their practice to new heights.  This week, the show is hosted by Kats Consultants’ coaches Dr Michael Perusich and Dr Troy Fox, seasoned experts in Chiropractic business management.  This podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why your marketing may not be bringing in the right patients
• Why is important to drill down on your target market
• Why it’s important to know your niche
• Why your messaging must match your clinic culture
• …and so much more…

In each episode of KC CHIROpulse, we delve into crucial aspects of building a successful Chiropractic practice, covering topics such as establishing a strong foundation, adopting a patient-centric approach, mastering marketing techniques, achieving financial fitness, fostering effective team building and leadership, integrating technology and innovation, and navigating common challenges in the field.

Whether you're a seasoned chiropractor or just starting your practice, the KC CHIROpulse Podcast offers a wealth of knowledge and personalized practical advice to help you navigate the intricate world of Chiropractic business. Join us on this journey as we explore proven strategies, share success stories, and connect with industry experts to empower you in your pursuit of building a thriving Chiropractic practice.

Don't miss out on the latest insights and expert guidance. Subscribe now and unlock the secrets to taking your Chiropractic practice to the next level. Your success is our priority at Kats Chiropractic Business Advisors.

DISCLAIMER:  The information presented in this broadcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to offer legal, investment, accounting, or medical advice, and represents the opinions of the speakers.  Seek the consultation of a professional for advice in those areas. And remember…your results using this information may be different than described.

233 Why Demographics Matter

[00:00:00]

Dr. Michael Perusich: doctors. Do you know why your marketing doesn't hit sometimes? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC ChiroPulse podcast, brought to you by Kats Consultants in Chiro Health, USA. Our podcast is about bringing you cutting edge strategy to maximize the profitability in your practice. So I'm Dr. Michael Perus. This is Dr.

Troy Fox. We are your host for today, Troy, not hitting with your marketing, and there's one. Major reason. Well, there can be one more than one reason, but there's one major reason we want to talk about today and it the, it's often overlooked and it's your demographics.

Dr. Troy Fox: Yeah. Thousand percent. I mean, if you have no idea who you're trying to market to and what your identity is, so that first you gotta figure out your identity.

Right? Who am I? Who do I wanna, what kind of

Dr. Michael Perusich: practice are we?

Dr. Troy Fox: Yeah, so you can't have one identity. And we see this all the time, and we'll talk about this in, in more detail, but we see this all the [00:01:00] time where you put an identity on your sign, right? But your marketing doesn't match that at all. And yeah, shockingly, we're gonna talk about several things here, but shockingly, it has an effect on overall revenue.

It has effect, uh, it has an effect on your reputation in your community. It has effect on your satisfaction in your practice. So there's three key things that I look at when demographics and marketing don't match. Yeah. So let's get into it. What's, what's the first one you were, I know you had one picked out that was like, this is where I wanna start.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Well, you know. First of all, and you just said it, you gotta figure out what kind of practice you are. So you have to form your identity. I think that's the place to start, is you have to know your identity. If you don't really have an identity, you have to create one. So what can I an identity be? Well, are, are you wanting to be a pediatric practice?

You look around your practice and it's [00:02:00] 50% Medicare, well, that's not a pediatric practice. There's an identity crisis there. Now, as we talk about this, I wanna point something out. If you're in the first couple of years of practice, you want everybody that you can get coming in 'cause you need to build that base.

But as you go on in practice, you can, I'll call it specialize. And I'm using air quotes. And as we start to specialize, we've gotta make sure that our marketing. Attract the right demographic for that identity, for that specialty. You wanna be a sports-based practice. What do you do? You, you, you don't wanna have a, a practice full of just families.

Now there might be some athletes in there, but is that a sports-based practice? No, not really. If you wanna have a pain based practice, that's fine. Have a pain based practice If you wanna have a wellness practice. Don't be marketing for paying patients. So you have to really zero [00:03:00] in on that identity. So ask yourself, doctors, what kind of clinic are we?

What do we want to be? What do we strive for? Where's our niche?

Dr. Troy Fox: I think you brought up a good point with that, and right in the middle of that, the sweet spot is this. If you have an identity of, let's give an example of a wellness practice, you know. A, B, c Wellness, chiropractic is on your side outside your building, right?

But yet your advertisement is wanna get out of pain quick. Okay? So here's the problem. You want a wellness practice. If you want a wellness practice, you're talking about maintenance. You're talking about people that get adjusted because they wanna stay functional and they wanna do it over years and years and years, right?

That's a wellness practice or wellness model. So I bring you in on the $49 special. Do you have pain? Let's get you out of pain today. And then I have to either A, try to educate you [00:04:00] when you already walked in the door with the mindset that I'm to get you out of pain, doctor, or B, the classic bait and switch when I get, and I call it bait and switch because I, it doesn't feel good when you do it, but we get to the point of where, you know.

Michael, it's you, you finished your treatment schedule. Um, our outcome assessments look good. At this point we're gonna move you to maintenance. And the patient is just sitting there going, what? You never talked about that before?

Dr. Michael Perusich: I don't even know what that is.

Dr. Troy Fox: I don't even know what that is. I was here for, I was, I was here for the party.

I was here to get rid of the pain. Right. And then all of a sudden you start talking about long-term care. How does that look to your patient? So that's one of the problems with an identity crisis is that it makes it really hard for you to convert patients after the fact to your identity. Yeah. If you're not marketing to your identity to begin with.

So it sounds really simple, but I can't tell you how many times that we've seen people that have made that mistake and then they come [00:05:00] to us and go, why is my marketing not hitting? What in the world am I doing wrong?

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. And that, that, that really kinda leads into another thought. We need to take a quick break, but I, I wanna come back and I want to talk about value for just a minute.

We're gonna skip around here a little bit. We're gonna talk about value. So here's a quick word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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Dr. Michael Perusich: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. We are talking about how demographics and zoning in on your demographics and your clinic identity is so important to the success of your practice, long term, short term, and in between term. And so I, Troy, I want to talk about this idea of creating value in the practice.

So oftentimes what do we see doctors do? We see this race to the bottom on new patient marketing and new patient marketing is all about how low can we go to get on, on price to get patients in the door. And then we expect that patient then to [00:07:00] accept, uh, a $4,000 treatment plan. After that, they come in, they pay $11, whatever it is, 49, 29, whatever it is, they come in and they pay this low price.

Um, new patient fee. And so what have we done? Well, we've set the expectations with those patients. We've attracted a demographic that wants that cheap price, and then, and I said, shouldn't say cheap. That was probably the wrong terminology, that, that low value price, they want that low value price, and then we try to sell 'em a Cadillac.

At a high price, and it's confusing to them. And what happens to those patients? They don't accept care. They don't stay in care, and they become what they become dropout. Well, that patient just cost us a ton of money because we never got back to the profitability point in the clinic because we couldn't sell value to a patient who was looking for a low cost [00:08:00] care, low cost of care.

Dr. Troy Fox: I, I equate that like this, and this is a really simple example. So you marketing your, you marketed yourself as a low cost alternative, right? Because that's what you're doing. You're marketing yourself as a low cost alternative to everyone else around. Yep. And then when they come in the door, you get upsold.

So what it reminds me of is when a car dealership, so you, yep. Just what I was gonna say, car salesman, right? Because it's like a car dealership in that you get the ad on TV and you got the guy who's running around the lot. This one's 1399. This one's 54 99. And do you see the $1,300 caller or the $5,400 car when you get on the lot?

No. But what you saw was slick advertising that said, we're gonna give you the most value for your trade. And then you're gonna come in and you're looking at that going, huh, I get a really good value on my trade. I can pick up a new vehicle for cheap. You [00:09:00] walk in the door and there isn't anything anywhere.

Everything is north of $30,000 when you walk in the door. Yeah. And immediately the upsell begins. But you literally were thinking to yourself, I'm looking for a car for my high school kid. And now you are in a position. And quite frankly, I think sometimes it's irritating, sometimes it feels dirty. We don't wanna be like that as chiropractors.

Um, if you're marketing that low cost, then you're probably more of a walk-in pain clinic kind of kind of practice.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. Troy Fox: And we're not saying anything bad about any practice, I'm just saying if you're marketing to that, that is, that's the demographic. That's the type of practice that that person assumed you were based off your market.

So they're gonna make assumptions based off of your market. So if I'm a high value, high end practice that specializes in wellness, I better be talking about long-term wellness. I better be talking about what it takes to get there, and whether [00:10:00] that's just in my advertising or cleverly, and I say cleverly.

Put together in how some people do like YouTube videos, or they'll do, they'll do shorts over and over again on Facebook or whatever, whatever media that you use, which that's, that's a whole nother topic. 'cause that one's a tough one too, of figuring out where you're gonna advertise. But if you utilize education in your advertisements, in a lot of cases, you can build more value.

But if you're just using a low price to bring people in and say, we're gonna get you out of pain today. I've seen those ads so many times. It's really hard to make a treatment schedule recommendation when you just told me that for, for, for 39 99, you were gonna get me out of pain today.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. Yeah. And your car dealer example is a great one because what happens when you go into the car dealer?

You know, like you said, you're expecting that low cost car. Well, we sold that one. Let me show you one that's 10 times more and then. Then the upsell [00:11:00] comes and the upsell is, well, you know, now you need to consider the, the, um, wheel protection policy and the ceramic coating and the extended warranty and the blah, blah, blah, and you're not expecting that.

So a lot of this is what kind of expectation is our marketing message setting, and it it are we setting the right message with the right demographic, and that's how you get the right patient. Is it, it, it's, it's the triple whammy of, to get the right patient, it's gotta be the right demographic and it's gotta be the right value message for that patient.

Dr. Troy Fox: And that value message goes back to you as well. Because here's the thing, you can either devalue yourself greatly, right? And I get it. When you're new in practice, this isn't for somebody that's three months into practice, right? You're trying to get anybody in the door. You can, you're trying to build your practice anyway you can.

An established [00:12:00] practice that is having an identity crisis in a lot of cases, not only do you create a situation where there's not value there for the patient. Because they don't see it. Once they walk through the door. There's no value for you because you have in your own head an idea of where things should be, and you're a great chiropractor.

You do great work on people. Mm-hmm. Somehow you keep getting underpaid. Somehow when I tell you, you should be worth. $350 an hour in your practice, somehow you're only managing to generate 125 an hour, and you're unhappy with that. And I don't blame you because you know you're worth more. You went to school for a long time, you passed boards.

You're a knowledgeable individuals as a chiropractor, and now all of a sudden you've been reduced to making a lot less than you expected that you should. And I hate seeing that, but sometimes it's self-inflicted.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah. Yeah. So your, your value [00:13:00] message has to be consistent with your demographic, with your target market, hands down.

And then where I think the, the other critical component is you have to know how to reach those people. Mm-hmm. What kind of clinic do we wanna be or need to be? How do we create value statements that match, and then how do we find those people? You don't, you don't find those people by necessarily marketing to just the masses.

Dr. Troy Fox: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Because that's when you've got a mix of your, you wanna be a pediatric practice, but you've got a mix of middle-aged people and uh, 50% of your practice is Medicare and you've got Medicaid patients and, uh, work comp and. W what happened to pediatric

Dr. Troy Fox: Well, well, yeah. You just spoke at the Kiwanis Club at lunch yesterday and half the group fell asleep after they ate lunch.

That actually happened to me. I think it happened [00:14:00] half the group fell. Yeah, after lunch. That was as early on in practice and the half that were there, I'm not so sure that they were listening to me, but they were just happy I was there. They were glad they had a speaker that day, but if I'm trying to run a pediatric practice at that point.

What value or benefit did I get? Get? Now, if you're first in practice, like I said, that was early on in my practice. I'm gonna see everybody and anybody, but if I'm trying to develop a pediatric practice, I need to find a niche from that standpoint. But I need to also, I wanna throw this caveat out there.

You gotta look at what your demographics are in your area. Yeah. Are you in an affluent area of X, Y, Z state? Where your cash prices can be phenomenally more than they could be in a rural area. Are you in an area that has a lot of young families, well, that would lend to a pediatric practice? Or are you in an older rural community with a lot of Medicare age patients?

So sometimes you're putting a [00:15:00] square peg in a round hole. So you've gotta look at what the demographic of your area is before you decide what demographic you want to come into your practice, because you could. Theoretically create a situation where you're, you may do all the right marketing, you may know what your demographic is that you want, but they're just not available.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah.

Dr. Troy Fox: And that sucks too, right?

Dr. Michael Perusich: It does. So we need to take another break, but I wanna come back. I wanna talk about setting your messaging right? Mm-hmm.

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Dr. Michael Perusich: So we're talking about making sure that you understand your demographics 'cause it's your demographics that change your bottom line. So we'll be right back.

Okay, here we are. We are [00:16:00] back. We're talking about demographics and how it changes your bottom line. Corey, we've talked about making sure you know your identity. You've gotta create value for your service. We just started talking about you have to know how to reach them. And you, you touched on something that made me think we need to talk a little bit about how to get your messaging right.

Mm-hmm. And so, doc, I, I'm gonna give you a little bit of homework here. I want you to go and I want you to look at the kind of patients you have coming into your practice. Who's coming in, and how does that match up with the messaging you're putting out there? And if you notice that, oh gosh, I really thought I'd have more athletes coming in.

I've got almost zero. So what does my messaging say? Well, my messaging talks about being in chronic and debilitative pain. Well, athletes typically aren't in chronic debilitative pain athletes have a. Episodes of pain from trauma or injury. And so our marketing, if we want to go after that market, our marketing [00:17:00] needs to be about the benefits of ongoing chiropractic care and how it improves athletic function and or how to recover quicker from energy injuries through natural chiropractic care.

And if your messaging is different than that, you're probably not gonna get those athletes in the door like you want. So we have to make sure that messaging. That that message is on point with the market that we're looking for.

Dr. Troy Fox: And you can definitely change that as well. If you look at your practice and see that it's a certain way, it's gonna take time.

It's like moving a freight train. Yeah. It's not gonna happen overnight. Right. And, and, and you may experience a little dip even when you change your marketing strategy. Um, but when you're looking at what you want for a practice long term, if it's achievable and the demographic supported in your area, and you wanna be, let's say you want to transition into a pediatric practice, make sure you're taking all the, all the classes that you should be taking.

Number [00:18:00] one, being knowledgeable about the field that you're, you're trying to move into. You don't just decide one day, you know, I've been treating Medicare patients my whole career and I'm 30 years in and I treat about two children a year. And all of a sudden I wanna be a pediatric practice. Well, if you're gonna turn your practice on its head, you probably better be prepared.

You better have the best techniques, know all the latest research, then you can start to market for that practice. Now what will happen is you have a lot of long-term patients that have been there, right? They're not gonna just vaporize and disappear overnight, right? So you're gonna have a, you're gonna have a blended practice, but you're gonna start seeing that all of a sudden those patients that are patients of yours are gonna go.

Hey, my grandchild's got calling. Do you think? Exactly. And that, and that's where you head with that, and that's how a marketing switch will work. It's not really one of these deals where you're just gonna. Cut everybody off and say, Hey, if you're over the age of 50, you're no longer welcome here. Right. And I mean, nobody does that, but you're gonna, [00:19:00] as your practice transitions, you'll notice it's usually pretty smooth.

I've done that to where I've changed mm-hmm. Marketing message because it didn't match. It didn't match my philosophy on care that I wanted to treat patients as. And you've done the same thing? I mean, I've

Dr. Michael Perusich: done the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Troy Fox: Big pediatrics practice. My practice has always been more that long-term maintenance and wellness care.

Mm-hmm. And I treat, I treat a few kids. Do I treat a lot of people in that 40 to 70 range? Absolutely. I do. Mm-hmm. And I love that range. For me, that's my sweet spot. Yeah, I like that. Do I do, I really love patients that walk through the door, dragging a leg hoping that I can help 'em that day. That's not, that's not my sweet spot, but it may be yours, so you gotta figure that out.

Dr. Michael Perusich: You gotta figure it out and you gotta make sure that you adjust your messaging along the way, along, along the history line of your practice. Because otherwise, here's what happens. And we know this just from general statistics in the profession. If, if you don't make [00:20:00] those tweaks periodically. Then all of a sudden you wake up one day, you're 60 years old, and guess what?

Half of your practice, a third of your practice is 70, a third of your practice is 60 and a third of your practice is 50 years old. We tend to, if we don't make these adjustments, if we don't keep our messaging clear, over time our practice begins to age with us and. If that's what you want to happen, that's fine, but just know that's why some practices begin to decline in revenue and they begin to decline in, in, um, value over time.

Dr. Troy Fox: And some of that, you know, is what we call aging out because some of your patients, unfortunately, are gonna pass away as they get mm-hmm. As they get into that 70, 80, 90 range. And so as we're looking at our practice, if you're looking at. A typical range, like for me, I know my demographic and I know that my [00:21:00] highest value in my demographic are two people.

One of them is women. Mm-hmm. Ages 30 to 60, I mean, all day long. They take care of their health. They're, they're consider, they're concerned about their health and they wanna be healthy. So I wanna make sure that, you know, my marketing message appeals to them. Here's the other group. The other group is my blue collar male group.

A lot of them that own their own businesses or live and die by the ability to use their hands every day. Mm-hmm. And if they can't continue to do that, that affects their ability to make income for their family. And that's scary. Right. You know, as chiropractors, have you ever thought about having a major, major injury?

What's that gonna do to your family? So if we've got a strategy to help with that. To help ensure that you're more functional. That's the marketing message. So I need to have a blended message that works well for my female population, 30 to 60. But what is that message? It's a [00:22:00] wellness message. Yep. To be functional into your, into your elder years.

But I don't have to let my practice age out. I can continue to start marketing at about that 30 year age range. That's really kind of the sweet spot for me where I see that people. Want to start looking at their health and start realizing they're not, they're not 18 anymore. Right. That's what I always tell.

You're not 18 anymore. And the truth of the matter is, that's exactly the truth and that's the kind of marketing I look at. So that just gives you a little example of how you can, how you can continue with the same marketing message without aging out. What happens in a lot of cases is we market to that group and then we quit marketing once our practice gets semi filled up.

Right. We're just taking whoever comes through the door, whenever they come through the door, and then all of a sudden we start realizing our revenue and our numbers are dropping and we realize that a lot of our patients are in nursing homes, or unfortunately they've passed away and

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah, and it happens.

Dr. Troy Fox: They're getting older with us. Right. [00:23:00]

Dr. Michael Perusich: Yeah, and you know that the, what we're talking about today is one of the best ways to protect your practice. So make sure your demographics match the type of patient you want. And if you're feeling that aging of your practice, it may be because one of two things.

Either your messaging is attracting that patient base and, and if that's what you want, if that's your target, that's great. Or it could be happening because you just haven't tweaked those messages along the way to help keep the practice maybe a little bit younger or on, on target with that demographic that you're wanting to bring into the practice.

So your demographic being on point with your demographic is incredibly important to your bottom line and your profitability.

Dr. Troy Fox: While you're busy, hallucinating docs, because a lot of us think our practices are different than they are. Your front desk knows your demographic. They know who's coming through the door.

Yeah. So I would recommend that you do. Here's a little homework for you. If you're not having regular staff meetings, start. Yes, and this is [00:24:00] staff meeting that you're gonna start with. The first staff meeting is you're gonna sit down and you're gonna have your staff either through statistics in your office or you're just gonna sit down and you guys are gonna ballpark it because in a lot of cases you can.

What is our demographic? Who are we attracting into this practice? What do you guys think? Let everybody have some input into that because you may be kind of shocked that your demographic, according to your staff is different than what you see as the doctor. So it's a really good homework activity to do, is to let your staff engage in that.

They're gonna enjoy it as well because they know your practice as well, if not better than you do when it comes to demographics.

Dr. Michael Perusich: I'll give you a great example of that. Not too long ago I was talking to a doctor and he was trying to develop a pediatric practice and they were just kind of struggling with it, and they'd been in practice for a while and I, I said, okay, well go ask your staff.

Go ask your front desk person how many people are coming in and out of the clinic and have [00:25:00] kids at home that we haven't attracted into the practice. And it, it was, it was like a hundred. A hundred kids are their, their families are patients walking in and out of the practice. And we've never once had any kind of marketing messaging that attracted those, those people in.

That's just a lost opportunity if that's what you're going for. So I think you're right, Troy. I think your staff does know exactly where you are and who your demographic I is and who you might be missing. So yeah, I think that's a great thing to go do.

Dr. Troy Fox: So especially you hear the words come outta my mouth.

You're not a pediatric practice. Sorry.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Right, exactly. Yeah. You're not there yet.

Dr. Troy Fox: Yeah. So

Dr. Michael Perusich: everybody, here's another piece of homework for you. Go to katz consultants.com, check out all the great things that we're doing, uh, for doctors to help them run more profitable practices, profitable, can't talk. Um, we've got some pretty downloads on there and things.

And if you wanna schedule a breakout call with us and just talk about your [00:26:00] practice, we do that for free. Our passion is helping doctors in our profession. Yes, we wear the same shoes you do, helping you doctors out there have success in chiropractic. Great. Anything to add,

Dr. Troy Fox: man? I don't think so. I think we've, uh, we've got, you guys ramped up.

We've got homework for you to do. If you've listened all the way through to this podcast, congratulations because you made it to the homework part. Right?

Dr. Michael Perusich: Exactly.

Dr. Troy Fox: Fun with you. But yeah, I mean, I think we've covered it and I think, like you said, this is one of the big key overlooked things in practice that's so subtle.

But it's something you can change quickly. We love these topics where it's something that you can make a change this week. You can sit down with your staff and say, okay, simple. What are we attracting? What do we wanna attract? Why is our messaging off? How can, how can we fix it? And your staff can also engage in that, which they'll enjoy.

Dr. Michael Perusich: Absolutely. Alright everybody, thanks for tuning into the KC Chiro Pulse Podcast, a special shout out to Chiro Health USA for [00:27:00] being one of our sponsors. We appreciate you guys. Go check out them. They're doing some great things for practices as well. So on behalf of all of us at Kats Consultants, we'll see you guys next time.

Dr. Troy Fox: See you.