Chiropractic Marketing

By admin in Marketing, Profitability
Photo by Rabi Samuel

Good Marketing Ideas Make Good Practice

It turns out that a well designed marketing plan makes good sense for chiropractors.

Simply hanging the name on the door is no longer a viable option for most chiropractors.   By incorporating the strategies designed to help market other small, local businesses, chiropractic marketing plans help chiropractors maximize revenue for the given community they serve.

Here are five chiropractic marketing ideas that could benefit most any practice:

chiropractor postcard designsReferrals —  Your patients can be your best ambassadors.   Encourage patients to refer your practice to their friends and family.   When you discover a referral has been made, reward the referrer.   Send them a thank you card, give them a romotional mug or a certificate to a local business, etc.

Community Events —  Participate and display at local events.   Be available to explain what being a chiropractor is all about.

Maintaining Presence —  Advertise all the time, but on a very local basis.   Consider the local paper, shopper papers or mail circulars.  Since you can never predict when someone will look for a chiropractor, design your ads to be easy-to-find and easy-to-identify.    Mail a refrigerator magnet to everyone in your local area using a Saturation Mailing List (more about this below) using one of our Chiropractor Postcard Magnet Mailers.

Website —  A good website is more important than ever.   It needs to be professionally designed.    Not only does the site need to provide key information about your chiropractic practice and chiropractic topics in general, it needs to establish your authority as a chiropractic professional.   Also, make sure your designer understands SEO — a Google Search on “Chiropractor Your-Town Your-State” should deliver your website in the top of search results.

In Focus: the Saturation Mailing list

Sometimes the best strategy is to blanket an entire geographic area with your marketing message.   For example, a chiropractor marketing plan usually needs to focus on a targeted geographic area.   For this task, you’ll need a Saturation Mailing list.

A saturation mailing list includes all the deliverable mailing addresses in a given area.   It’s an easy way to ensure everyone receives your message.   And it’s affordable:  a basic list of 10,000 addresses, for one-time use, can be rented for about $100.

The basic saturation list is bare bones: it is addressed to “Occupant” or “Resident” at each address in the postal database. An option is to include the name of the head of household, if that name is available.

An added benefit of a saturation list is that it is based on USPS data and extremely reliable, so you avoid wasted material and postage by mailing to a bad address.

At magnetbyMail, we handle saturation mailing list campaigns for all areas of the US.  We make it easy: we print the magnet mailers, locate the saturation mailing list for your area, inkjet an address on each mailer, and prepare and deliver the mailing to the post office. All for less than the price of a bagel.

 

Another marketing tip from magnetbyMail.com, your source for chiropractor postcard magnets.

 

 

How to Change Government

By admin in Marketing

OK, you’re fed up.   You’ve had enough with ‘politics as usual’ and you think that it’s time for the bickering to stop and for your views to be heard.

Maybe you want to re-focus the dialog onto an important issue.   Maybe you have a good solution or insight. Maybe you want to change the Constitution.

But you need to convince many, perhaps millions of your fellow citizens.

The problem is that, no matter what you want, there is a buzz and banter that you need to break through for your message to be heard.   From cable TV to the blogosphere, the buzz and banter is at full volume.

How do you get your message in front of the people who will make a difference?

Basically, you need to change the channels.

political action direct mail

Rather than sending your message through the Internet, print media, or cable TV, send it via a way that gets maximum impact.   Send it via a Postcard Magnet Mailing.

A Postcard Magnet Mailer is two parts: a custom-printed, laminated jumbo postcard with a refrigerator magnet attached, sent together through the US Mail with bulkrate postage.   The postcard is the carrier, and the magnet becomes the billboard.

Recipients open their mailboxes and instantly see your message.  If they like it, they’ll use the magnet on their refrigerator or file cabinet.

They’ll start thinking of your ideas, start visiting your website, and start helping change the political dialog.

All this for much less cost than a cup of coffee.

If you’d like to make sure your message makes an impact, check our Postcard Magnets at magnetbyMail.com .

And start making a difference!

Running for Office

By admin in Design, Marketing, Profitability

[ …Without Going Broke ]

vote by liberaltees

Poster at Zazzle

Every two years, political campaigns spring to life throughout the US.  Incumbants work to keep their seats against an onslaught of indignant wannabes.

If you’re running for office, you’re focused on the issues that are important to your voters.

But what are campaign managers focused on?  The same thing, right?

Not really.

Campaign managers are focused on issues like:  fund raising, scheduling, disclosure filing, and building name recognition.

If you can picture the circus entertainer who keeps a dozen plates spinning atop a dozen poles, that’s basically what a campaign manager looks like.

The biggest challenge for a campaign manager?  Making sure the candidate’s message is reaching voters.

Even if a campaign has lots of money to spend, which it probably doesn’t, getting out the message is not that easy.  In a matter of months, voters are bombarded with thousands of messages from candidates, local and national.

For example, in just one of the days leading up to the Iowa Caucuses in February 2008,  there were nine hours of TV commercials to promote the various Presidential hopefuls.

How does a campaign get its message out through all that?  What can campaign managers use to sleep at night?

Political postcard magnet mailers.

political campaign postcard designs“Oh, sure,” I hear you saying in disbelief.  How can something so small and simple do so much?

A postcard magnet mailer is an oversized laminated postcard with a magnet attached. And because its small and simple,  it’s become a useful tactical device for political campaigns…

  • each one is sent by US mail so it bypasses spam filters, and TV clickers
  • with the right design, it contains a useful and informative magnet, which can be kept in voters’ sight — on the fridge
  • the recipient is usually appreciative, which is good for the candidate
  • a magnet mailer costs under a dollar, and in many cases under 60 cents, including postage

So while opponents spend big bucks for a 30 second TV spot, a candidate can spend less than a dollar to receive coverage all day and all night.

That’s another tip from magnetbyMail.com — making campaigning affordable for all.  Check out our political postcard magnets online.

How Alumni Planners Put Marketing to the Test

By admin in Marketing

 

 

Or

How Postcard Magnets Save The Date


It’s one of the most challenging marketing assignments out there:

How to get hundreds of alumni to come together at a certain time and place?

Alumni are not an easy group to gather.   First of all, they’re scattered just about everywhere.  Second, they’re all doing their own thing:  some are trawling for shrimp and some are running billion dollar conglomerates.

So do you send an email and hope for the best?  Nope.  At least according to alumni organizers at the nation’s leading colleges.

Alumni save the date postcard magnetsWhen there’s an important event coming, alumni event planners have a go-to tool for maximizing attendance:  Save The Date postcard magnet mailers.

Hmmm.  Is there something that other marketers should know? Yep.

Because what makes postcard magnet mailers extremely effective for college alumni groups, also makes them effective for anyone else with a message that needs to be seen.

Postcard magnets are really two promotions in one: a full-color, plastic laminated postcard that makes it into a mailbox, and a magnet attached that makes it to the fridge or file cabinet.

Most other ways to communicate, from letters to emails, just get lost in the shuffle.

But postcard magnets work almost magically.  With a good mailing list, they reach a targeted audience.  With good graphics,  they grab attention.  And with an appealing or useful message they’re kept in the home or office and are seen dozens of times per day.

What would you have to pay for a TV ad with that kind of coverage?  Unless you’re GE or Coke, you probably don’t have enough.

But you probably can afford a postcard, a magnet and some bulk-rate postage.

So that’s why when it’s important to reach the right people with the right message, those alumni organizations may still have something to teach us.

 

Another marketing tip from magnetbyMail.com, your source for custom imprinted magnet mailers.

10 Steps to Prepress

By admin in Design

Preparing art for full-color printing is now easier than ever.  But there are some useful steps you’ll need to take to avoid speed bumps later.

Digital Press from HeidelbergWhat is prepress?  It’s the process of converting a layout or design into a format that is ready for a printing press.

Before Adobe’s Photoshop came along, prepress work took a team of specialists, a full day of effort, lots of film, tricky color separations and a hefty budget.  Now it takes a few minutes with a digital file.

So we’ve made a list for the more daring of you who are interested in creating a press-ready art file yourself, rather than having someone else (like us) do it.  Now, these steps work for us and our postcard magnet mailers; but if you use another printer, you should check with them first.  Also, this guide is for those already familiar with professional grade programs like Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Just know that if all this is more than you can do, or want to do, that’s fine.  Just tell us what you have, and what you’d like.  We’ll help make it happen.

For the adventurous, here are your 10 steps:

1.  Start with great art.  Check out our post about Good Photography.

2.  Use professional grade programs like Photoshop (for images) and Illustrator (for type, designs and layout).  Stay clear of home publishing software like Publisher or Word.

3.  Save a new copy of your working file as you proceed through each of the following steps, so you can return to a step if something goes wrong later.  Save the Photoshop (image) files as TIFF or PSD format.  Save the Illustrator (layout) files as EPS or PDF.

CMYK monitor vs paper4.  Set up the color mode for your image and layout files as CMYK (rather than RGB).  Our printing press is a CMYK press;  it uses four inks: Cyan blue, Magenta red, Yellow and blacK to achieve the effect of full-spectrum color.  If you send art files that are set up as RGB, you might be surprised by the results.

5.  Set your image size. In Photoshop: 1) be sure you’re working with image resolution that is 350 dots per inch (DPI) (or at least a minimum 300 DPI) and 2) size the image to be exactly what you’d like on the printed piece.  Be sure to allow some extra image area if you’d like the image to print (‘bleed’) off the edge of the card — we’ll print on bigger paper and trim the page to the correct size.

6.  Prepare a layout for your postcard and magnet, made to the exact size of the final item.  This is best done in a layout program like Illustrator (set to CMYK). You can set your type and position any designs exactly where you’d like them.  Colors can be chosen from the CMYK color palette.  Keep in mind that colors on your screen usually become deeper (darker) when they print as ink on paper.  When colors are printed, and then laminated, they appear deeper still.  Avoid small, light text on dark backgrounds, since the text could fill in.

AI link menu to embed image7.  You can position your Photoshop images on your Illustrator layout.  But to really attach the Photoshop image to the Illustrator file you’ll need to 1)  use the Place command (File -> Place) when you first collect the Photoshop image for Illustrator and 2) then, with the image on the layout, and selected,  use the Embed command (from the Links menu, select ‘Embed Image’).  Otherwise, the image file will not be a part of the Illustrator file and you’ll need to send us the image file separately.

8.  For black graphics and text, you can set the CMYK value to 70%-70%-20%-100%.  This will result in a look that is richer than simple black ink.

9.  In Illustrator, convert any typesetting in your layout to vector outlines.

10.  If you want us to print right to the edge of the card, provide us with graphics that are 1/4″ wider so we can print (with a bleed) and trim.

There is a lot here, and even an experienced designer can run into a snag.  So don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions or need help creating your files.

The end result — seeing your magnet mailer at work, making the phone ring — makes it all worth it.

 

Always here to help you make a great postcard magnet campaign:
magnetbyMail.com

 

Advertising to Gen-Y

By admin in Marketing

Ask most marketers how they reach the Generation Y audience and they’ll tell you it’s challenging.

cs-1-6-postcard magnetsGen Y, that demographic group born roughly between the mid-1970’s and early 2000’s, doesn’t use lots of the traditional media (newspapers, network tv, magazines).   So for marketers trying to reach the group, the media choices are the social networks like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.  And unless a marketer can create a buzz that goes viral, he or she is not going to reach an audience at all.

So now it’s come this: when marketers think about going ‘outside the box’, they now mean ‘outside the Internet.’   The ultimate web-based marketers are finding new solutions using ‘traditional’ media,  like  magnet mailers.  Here’s how:

The cyber game world is a billion dollar industry featuring multi-player Internet games where the other players – one’s teammates and opponents – could be on the other side of the planet.  Games like  Starcraft or Counter Strike Source are run from independent network server companies, offering high-tech computer power that needs to be fast and affordable for their Gen Y customers.

But marketing a game server company isn’t easy.  Competition is global and its fierce.  Email marketing has become ineffective and even viral marketing strategies seem to return diminishing results.

We provided the solution in the form of our Basic magnet mailer — it’s a large, full-color laminated postcard carrier, and a custom printed magnet attached. With a good mailing list, and a postcard / magnet combo designed to promote a web address, we helped a US-based game server pinpoint its Gen Y target and deliver a message that could stick around.

The end result: a 20% increase in ‘guest’ traffic at the website and five new accounts for every 100 magnet mailers sent.

Which all goes to show that, even in the tough Gen Y marketplace, if you can get in front of your prospect, you can still win.

magnetbyMail:  helping make sure your message stays in front

magnetbyMail: Now Official

By admin in Marketing

Breaking News from PRWEBWell, as if you didn’t know, our mother website for postcard magnets is magnetbyMail.com .

And, ta-dah!, we finally announced our website officially.

I’m sure this will mean that the phone lines will light up with calls from all sorts of news media.  And we’ll be giving interviews for weeks.  Isn’t that how it works?

Well, if you’ve been through this process yourself, you know that it actually rarely works that way.

Years back, when I was at a start-up sales promotions firm, we did get lucky with one of those ‘business announcements’ in the local paper.  An ad agency called looking for some ideas and, before you knew it, we were promoting Big East basketball.

But alas, marketing types like myself can’t be waiting for the inevitable lucky break.

So we’re planning a mailing — sending postcard magnet mailers to our active list of key decision makers.  The idea is to drive folks to our website.

This way, we can practice what we preach.

And  if the NBA calls because they saw our press release,  that would be good, also.

 

Oh, and if you’d also like to receive a sample mailer for yourself, just drop us a note from our Contact Us page and we’ll make it happen.

 

Always looking out for our fans….   magnetbyMail.com

 

Mail Smarter

By admin in Marketing

If you like being able to track the packages you ship through companies like FedEx(R) or UPS(R), you’ll like hearing about this new service from the US Postal Service…

USPS IMB Intelligent Mail barcode

Example of IM barcode (courtesy Wikimedia)

The USPS IM barcode is an Intelligent Mail barcode that can provide you tracking details of the mail you send.  Similar to the barcode already used on most US mail, the USPS IM barcode is 65 vertical bars that encodes 31 digits of data for USPS scanners.

Based on the 31 digits, the USPS will be able to know: the type of service for the item (1st class, 3rd class, etc), the identity of the sender, a sequence number and the Zip Code of the delivery point.

The sequence number is what’s really interesting.  This is assigned to the sender;  it identifies the mailing piece from the thousands the sender might be mailing.

So now a mailer will be able to know when (and if)  their mailing piece made it to the doorstep.  Before, it was a matter of faith.

Also, by confirming delivery, mailers will be able to update their mailing lists for future mailings.

And marketers will have end-to-end tracking of their campaigns, just like they do with email campaigns!  It’s nirvana for those using analytics.

The new Intelligent Mail service will start this May.  Mailers will need to use the IM barcode to qualify for automation prices.

Postcard magnets mailed by magnetbyMail will be processed using the new Intelligent Mail service, at no additional charge.

The fine line between the Internet and old-fashioned marketing just disappeared.

From your friends at magnetbyMail .

 

 

Cause and Effect

By admin in Marketing

From saving organic farming  to saving Haiti, there are thousands of good causes, each one with a message.  Each cause competes for our attention.  And each competes with the thousands of other messages that crisscross  in front of us every single day.

campaign promotionsAdding the Internet to the mix hasn’t helped.  In fact, it’s only increased the volume of message traffic.

And for any cause, being able to convey a message to a targeted audience can be critical.  It can be the difference between fulfilling a mission, or disappearing.

Luckily, there’s a solution: custom imprinted postcard magnets.  OK, so we’re biased; but listen to this recent example:

A community organization needs to rally county support for a major change in zoning.   Within three weeks the group needs to convince residents that changes are something that need to be approved.

The group decides to have magnetbyMail print and mail Venti postcard magnets — jumbo postcards and square refrigerator magnets — to every voter in the county.

Within days of the mailing, hundreds of hits come through the group’s website.  The previously-hard-to-get newspaper and tv news reporters appears  for interviews.  And the night of the zoning meeting, there is an unusual sight: full attendance.

The zoning changes are approved by a wide margin, and the organization makes lots of new friends for future projects.

And in many of the area’s homes, the magnets are still in use many months later.

There’s little else that works quite like a postcard magnet mailer.  The postcard is the carrier, the magnet is the billboard.  The combination is quite effective, and very affordable.

Have an important message to convey? Check us out at magnetbyMail.

Direct Mail Since Net

By admin in Marketing

It was as if Direct Mail advertising was hit by a bus a few years ago, when the Internet came to town.  Advertisers took off, thinking they could save a boatload by simply building a website, recalling the adage “build it and they will come…”

Our own Clarke Stevens looks into what happened to Direct Mail since that time in his recent article at Hubpages.com: Aspiring Media Could Impact Marketing Strategy .

Its worth a look…