Creating Tangible Artifacts
by William D. Esteb
The risk of selecting the "wrong" doctor, lawyer, CPA, or other licensed professional can be quite high. Malpractice, legal oversights, missing a filing deadline, wrong diagnosis, and other dangers lurk behind yellow page ads, direct mail offers, and mall show hucksters of virtually all licensed professionals. Each of these services is intangible-the consumer doesn't know for sure if the quality of the service is good or bad until after committing to, and receiving, the service. Unlike a pair of pants, car tires, or other tangible items, professional services like chiropractic cannot be tested or tried on in advance. This intangibility factor makes picking the right chiropractic doctor difficult for a new patient, even with the reassurances of a referring friend. This is just one of several reasons why you should have an office brochure. Evaluate your current office brochure or your need to create one by these four criteria:
1. Tangible artifact. An office brochure can represent the quality of care the patient is likely to encounter in your office. Patients use your office brochure (building exterior, office furnishings, business card, etc.) and other physical manifestations as a representation of your attention to detail. If your brochure is printed in one color on cheap paper without pictures or illustrations, patients can draw the likely conclusion that you're new, short of cash, not very successful, don't intend to be in practice long, or just aren't very observant. Any one of these issues can have an adverse effect on a patient's level of trust and confidence in you. In many ways a poor office brochure can do more harm than not having one! Without an office brochure, patients may depend upon a prestigious address, staff phone manners, or other symbols of the quality of your care. With a low quality brochure you broadcast your lack of attention to detail or lack of success. If you can't do it right, it's best not to do one at all!
2. Remove internal dialogue. You may be oblivious to it, but the media has made most new patients quite apprehensive about selecting a non-traditional, alternative form of healing. While this is slowly changing, many of today's typical new patients bring with them many myths and misconceptions about you, your profession, and their own judgment for even considering consulting your office. If you recognize the noisy internal dialogue these notions create, you can address many of them in your office brochure. Explain your educational achievements, the safety of adjustments, availability of affordable financial arrangements, and that "how long you decide to benefit from chiropractic care is always up to you." Patients reason that a doctor sensitive enough and confident enough to recognize and volunteer information about these issues must be good. Offer information about these and other issues and watch new patient rapport improve.
3. Outreach vehicle. What's especially valuable about an office brochure is that it can go places that you may never get to go. When used as a first visit handout it can serve as a referral tool. When mailed to a 3-5 mile radius of your office, it can plant seeds and perhaps prompt those sitting on the fence to take action. Your office brochure can be a new patient ambassador for your office. Let the world know it exists, so requesting a copy of it can provide a low commitment action step for someone considering chiropractic care. "Not ready to start care? Request a copy of our office brochure that explains chiropractic and what we do to help patients regain their health."
4. Consistent explanations. Doctors who has found a typographical error in their newsletter know the permanence of a printed mistake. Of course the reverse is true, too. Once you get your unique approach to chiropractic finalized in your brochure, it's the same explanation wherever the brochure goes. If you depend solely on your current patient's ability to describe what you do, then you already know why it's hard for them to get their friends and family to start care! Sadly, even your best patients find it difficult to explain chiropractic in terms that are informative, much less motivational! Equip them with a tool to explain and defend their decision to others. How do you want chiropractic described to the world?
Clearly, your office could probably benefit from a high quality brochure. Before you commit the time and energy to create and produce one, make sure you have some clearly defined uses for it. Taking delivery of boxes of your brand new brochure is not the time to figure out what you're going to do with it! Here are some suggestions for possible uses:
1. Direct mail. Design your brochure so a bulk rate permit can be printed or stamped on it along with an address label. Plan on mailing it periodically, perhaps as often as several times a year! Frequency is the key.
2. Current patient handout. Use it to stimulate referrals by presenting a copy to every patient on about the tenth visit or so when your patients can clearly ascertain that chiropractic works. "Hey, if the subject of chiropractic ever comes up at work, here's our brochure that explains what we do."
3. Prospective new patient kit. Use your clinic brochure as the cornerstone to a new patient kit. Include copies of research findings, explanations of chiropractic, and other handouts that could help anticipate and answer some of the questions a prospective patient might have about chiropractic. Perhaps advertise in your office brochure that this packet exists.
4. Rack brochure. If you invest in chiropractic brochures to help answer questions and stimulate referrals, make sure your office is represented in your brochure rack. This is a good argument for making your office brochure the size and shape that will fit in your reception room brochure rack and a #10 envelop.
5. Outside events. If you do screenings, lay lectures, speaking engagements, school programs, or other outreach events, make sure you have a "leave behind" that can prompt interested people to consult your office. Plant seeds that may not germinate for months or years. What's the hurry?
6. Professional referrals. Stimulate interest and awareness among other health and legal professionals who might be inclined to refer patients and clients your way. Include a copy of your office brochure with a cover letter explaining "...just wanted you to know that we're in the area and prepared to offer your patients (clients) the highest quality state-of-the-art chiropractic care..."
I'm sure there are other uses. The point is, know what you're going to do with your brochures before you order them so you can be sure you include the right kind of information. And what should your brochure say? Ironically, very little!
The most important ingredient in a successful office brochure is a lot of pictures. We are a visual culture (70% of the public can't remember what it was like before television). Watch yourself the next time you thumb through a magazine. First your eyes goes to the picture. If the picture is interesting you study the picture then you look for a caption. If the photo caption is interesting you check out the accompanying story. Rule number one: use lots of pictures. Rule number two: tell your entire story with photo captions. Rule number three: keep the copy short.
Ideas for pictures might include the exterior of your building (if it's attractive), staff member greeting a new patient, the doctor consulting with a patient, setting up the patient for X-rays, giving a report of findings, in the adjusting room with a patient, the doctor working late at night at the desk, the doctor working with a child, sports injury, or other specialty; the list goes on. The key idea is to remove the fear of the unknown and address issues that prospective new patients are likely to have ("Do I have to take off my clothes?"). Your chiropractic philosophy? Put a little in, but keep it conventional and mainstream. Remember your readers are firmly entrenched in the germ theory and the treatment of symptoms! Don't scare them off by forcing them to wade through a lesson in deductive reasoning!
These basics should get you going. Work with a professional graphic design firm. Invest the extra money it costs to print full color. Remember, you're making a tangible artifact that represents the quality of the chiropractic care you provide. It costs just as much to send a one color brochure through the mail as it does a well-designed four color brochure. The only difference is the impact it makes and the impression it leaves.
Perhaps a brochure seems like an expensive luxury. Or you feel paralyzed to begin because you've never done one before. Remember that the best offices have the best patient communications. Giving your practice tangibility can have some very tangible rewards-more new patients.
Excerpted from
Beyond Results
Originally published in 1995
240 Pages
US $24.95
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