Imagine, for a moment, being able to look into a crystal ball and determine, with relative accuracy, the likelihood of whether your chiropractic marketing and practice are going to dominate your geographic area and niche or fall prey to competition. I’m sure you’d agree, that would be a pretty valuable chiropractic marketing crystal ball. Well, even though no such ball exists, we do have a set of simple, yet rarely understood chiropractic marketing tools, that give us a similar level of foresight into your practice’s future.
Two of your key chiropractic marketing metrics, used in combination, are an incredible indication of how well your practice is going to do in the future, how competitive you can really be in your marketplace, and what you can expect out of your practice in terms of financial growth. Once you understand these two chiropractic marketing metrics, how they work together, and what actions you can take to impact them, growing a dominating chiropractic practice begins relatively simple.
What are the two chiropractic marketing metrics I’m referring too? I’m glad you asked. When combined, your cost to acquire a new patient and the lifetime value of the average active patient tell us almost everything we need to know about your chiropractic practice. Before I explain why, let’s lay out some simple definitions of these two critical numbers.
The cost to acquire a new patient is the average dollar amount you invest to get one new patient. For instance, if you invest $2,000 on chiropractic marketing in a single month and end the month with 10 new patients, your cost of acquisition is $200 per new patient. Your lifetime patient value, arguably the most important number in any chiropractic practice, is the average dollar value of an average patient over the life of their care with you.
To calculate this metric for a given period of time, simply take the total amount of revenue your practice generated during the time period and divide it by the total number of patients you had from the beginning of the time period. The number you end up with is what’s known as the lifetime value of a patient.
The chiropractor who calculates and reviews these two chiropractic marketing metrics on a regular basis has already given themselves an advantage over other chiropractors, even if nothing else changes. Why? Well, for one, when used together, these metrics tell us exactly how well your chiropractic marketing dollars are working. Without knowing and understanding these two chiropractic marketing metrics a chiropractor has no way of knowing whether they should be spending less or more to acquire a new patient.
For instance, is a cost of $500 to acquire a single new patient good or bad? Well, it all depends. If the average patient is worth $700 to your practice (avg. lifetime patient value), $500 acquisition cost isn’t very good. However, if the average patient is worth $3,000, $500 acquisition cost is great. In fact, if your average patient is worth $3,000, you should be willing to spend $500 to acquire a new patient as often as possible. However, if a patient is worth just $500, looking into the future – you could see how you would quickly go cash-flow negative continuing with those kind of acquisition costs. Hence, our crystal ball reference.
But, believe it or not, that’s not even what makes this combination of chiropractic marketing metrics worthy of being referenced as the two most important numbers in your practice. What does? It’s simple. The doctor who has the lowest acquisition costs with the highest lifetime patient value is the one who has the greatest competitive advantage. With a focus on impacting these two chiropractic marketing numbers, you not only can predict your practice future, you can control it.
