Finding Patient Pain Points in Your Chiropractic Marketing Plan
Cost is a patient pain point that you can easily address in your chiropractic marketing plan – provide clinical information on the benefits of chiropractic care and work closely with their insurance
What do you think of when you hear the term pain points? Chances are your mind will immediately go to trigger points on the body and how to deal with them. Although this is a perfectly understandable and correct conclusion, the term has another negative meaning. Pain points can also be a problem in your chiropractic marketing plan if not properly addressed.
What exactly are the pain points in the context of marketing? What are common pain points in chiropractic marketing? How can you solve these problems?
What is a marketing problem?
In marketing parlance, a point of pain is the term used to describe a problem encountered by a client, supplier or client of a company, which he can help solve. For example, if a small tea retailer wants to expand sales from a single city to the entire state, but lacks the shipping infrastructure to do so, this lack of capacity would be its problem.
Companies that specialize in regional shipping would then target their marketing to that retailer showing how they can eliminate that particular problem. Now let’s take a look at how marketing pain points work in healthcare and, more specifically, in chiropractic.
Unreliable online advice
The number of Americans turning to the Internet for health information has steadily increased. In fact, up to 80% of Americans said they had searched for health care information online at least once in the past year.
While it may be a good thing that more patients are educating themselves about their health issues, there is also the hidden danger that the information they access online may not be helpful, incorrect or even downright dangerous. This lack of reliable information online is another problem that your patients may not even realize.
Here’s a great place where your chiropractic marketing plan can fill a badly needed gap in patient education. Your digital marketing campaign should include links to trusted online healthcare information at every available opportunity. By positioning yourself as an expert source on the benefits of chiropractic care, you can eliminate your patients’ pain point regarding reliable sources of chiropractic care information.
Your chiropractic marketing plan and increasing patient medical expenses
Along with concerns about the effectiveness and safety of chiropractic care, cost is almost certainly the other big issue for your patients. It is undeniable that health care costs, including insurance and drugs, have been rising steadily, with no signs of stabilizing or falling.
In fact, a 2019 article in the American Journal of Public Health noted that 58.5% of all bankruptcies were the direct result of medical expenses, while 44.3% were partly the result of loss of income for health reasons. This was equivalent to 530,000 medical bankruptcies each year. This should tell you that your patients are not only experiencing health issues, but also treatment costs.
Fortunately, cost is a patient pain point that you can easily address in your chiropractic marketing plan. Take the same approach as when providing clinical information regarding the benefits of chiropractic care. Look for peer-reviewed articles discussing the cost benefits of chiropractic care over standard care and use them as a building block to talk about the long-term financial benefits of chiropractic.
Ultimately, your goal is to consider not only your patients’ physical pain points, but also the financial and trust pain points that may be preventing them from getting the most benefit from chiropractic care.
