Best way to gain clients

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Permalink Reply by Roger Moore on October 3, 2008 at 6:31am

Heidi
Get involved in your community. Join the chamber & get to know the shakers and movers. Go to the local health clubs and talk with them (join one if you haven't already). Go to your MDs, Chiropractors, Acupuncturists, Natural Paths, Health Food Store and talk with them & give them your brochure. Ask to give talks. When you walk down the street, people should know who you are. And of course, the best method is referral from a happy client!

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Permalink Reply by Heidi Watkins on October 3, 2008 at 6:38am

Thats a great help, thank you! Are you full or part-time? And roughly how many clients do you see a week Roger?

H

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Permalink Reply by Christa on October 3, 2008 at 2:29pm

Hello Heidi,
Hand out business cards with your services, try also putting adds in the local paper where you live, also try to find some sites where you can advertise your services for free. Hope this helps!
Christine

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Robinson on October 3, 2008 at 3:35pm

Watching a Don Mottin DVD that I got from the NGH it gave lots of great ideas. Four that really stuck out to me which I thought was great was

1) When someone in your town announces an engagement you write them to congratulate them. You say something to the effect I saw your announcement of your upcoming nuptials. I just wanted to write you and telling you as a married man/women of 25 years (or whatever) I think marriage is a wonderful institution. (Your name and company name)

The reason he put that he does this is that isn't it true that most women always order their wedding dress a bit smaller then they are with plans to get into that dress by their wedding. Well guess what on our card that we send with this letter to them we have our business card that say that Hypnosis is great for Weight Loss

You can also do the same for anyone getting a job promotion as they are about to probably have new stresses or other things. It's a very gently and un-pushy way to get your card out.

I just thought that was the best. I haven't tried it yet but plan on doing it.

2) For smokers. He has a small calendar size card printed up. On one side has all his business info. On the other side it says "I quit smoking with (your company name) on _____________ When they come to you for the smoking session(s) after they "graduate" finish the session(s) you put the date in the blank with permanent marker. He says they will carry that around for years and at the first chance when someone asks them when they quit smoking they will pull it out and proudly show it. Again your company name is seen

3) This one was funny and he did say he didn't recommend it to everyone as he's not sure it was legal but he did it when he started out. He would take his fliers and then go to a newspaper machine the kind you put a quarter in and take the paper out. He'd put his quarter in, open it up and slip his fliers into each of the newspapers. Now I'm thinking about his and realistically the people that buy them would just assume that the newspaper had put them in there. It's not like they open the machine up and go through it and dump all the ads back in the machine before they close it. Just not sure I have the guts to do this one but the freebie newspapers that you find all around town, atleast mine, now there is a different story (grin).

4) Go to a large company where they have phone books in the open or anywhere really, find your ad and circle it and write in red marker, this is a good one, or something like that, fold the page down and presto you will have people finding your advert.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa J. Roth on October 3, 2008 at 4:02pm

I call on MD's, chiropractors, dentists and other healthcare professionals and solicit their referrals. They all have patients that frustrate them because the didn't respond to conventional medical treatments. It's a numbers game at first but I've been doing it consistently and now my practice is 60+% referrals from healthcare professionals, 35% word of mouth from a client and 5% that found me on the internet or phone book. I average seeing 20 to 25 clients a week and it doesn't cost me a penny in advertising!

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Robinson on October 3, 2008 at 4:10pm

When you say you call on them how do you approach them. Do you introduce your self and explain what you do and then send them a brochure? Or do you call them on the phone first and set up an appt to actually go in and talk with them?

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Permalink Reply by Roger Moore on October 3, 2008 at 4:23pm

Melissa has an excellent MD referral program - listen to her!

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Permalink Reply by Craig Eubanks on October 3, 2008 at 6:55pm

There is a famous story in the world of Chiropractic about a man who was famous for starting practices in new towns and within a year the practice would be making over $500,000. He would sell it after a few years and move to another town and do it again.

He had a target of 35 new clients a month. He knew if he could get 35 new patients a month every month, he could build a prosperous practice in less than a year.

After he had built (and sold) 3 different million dollar practices, he became a highly sought after seminar speaker to teach his methods.

At every seminar the question would come up "What is the one way I can get 35 new patients in each month?"

His answer? "I don't know 1 way to get 35 new patients every month, but I DO know 35 ways to get 1 patient a month, and I do all 35 of them"

Dan Kennedy (where I learned this story) has said "this is some of the best marketing advice I ever heard"

The great thing is... now, with the Internet, it becomes very easy to implement 35 ways to attract new clients. (This is of course, in addition to your offline marketing tools)


Cheers,

Craig Eubanks
HypnosisMarketingTips.com

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Permalink Reply by Richard Nongard - NLPBoard.com on October 4, 2008 at 2:17am

I have found that classified ads in the weekly newspapers are cheap and well read. I usually run 2 different ads in the same paper, one for smoking specifically and another generic. Then run them forever, people will use it like a phone directory used to be used, they will remember they saw your ad, and to look for it when they are finally ready.

I have also had great success with radio ads. You can buy radio ads for about 10 cents on the dollar in your local community by using google audio adwords.

Search engines search for what people input. They put in search terms like "Austin Hypnosis" or "East Texas Hypnosis" or "Dallas hypnotist"
And so buy domain names that direct to you with these common terms people search for. They do no search for a brand name unless they know it already so something like www.pointofpowerhypnosis.com (I just made that up I have know idea what is at that website if anything), is IMHO a poor name becasue nobody is going to search for those terms. But, HypnosisAustin.com or similar variations is a smart move...

The Don Mottin ideas are folksy but pretty outdated. First, the phone book becomes less important each day. People use the internet for directions, phone numbers and searches. They day of the phone book is passed. So circiling your ad in other people phone books assumes 1.) That you got sucked by a yellow pages ad salesman to buy a dying product in 2008 2.) That you can best spend your marketing time marking up other people books which are probaly in a private area anyway.
And the idea of putting your ad in a newspaper box (free paper or not) that you didn't pay for is probaly criminal, and almost as tacky as sending personal notes to strangers getting married insinuating they are fat.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on October 4, 2008 at 7:26pm

Great advice Melissa!

Hey Heidi -

If you want to move into helping people with medical and health related issues - I suggest targeting DOs and MDs who practice "Family Medicine", "Integrative Medicine", "Holisitic" and/or "Complementary and Alternative" Medicine --

Giving free talks can be a fun filled way to generate clients and I highly recommend doing it...

Best of luck!
PS- The two files are easy to use tools for introducing the benefits of working and networking with certified hypnosis professionals-

Attachments:

• hospitalnewshp101.pdf, 386 KB
• Hospital Newspaper copy.pdf, 1.8 MB

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Permalink Reply by Carol on October 5, 2008 at 12:55am

What an excellent thread! The question we all want answered, the best advertisng methods. Much to learn from all the answers, myself included being new to all this.

Thanks to all. Carol.

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Permalink Reply by John Weir on October 9, 2008 at 1:46pm

Besides using medical referrals like Melissa, I have found an awesome way to generate business is through media. I started my practice when I turn 19, I was putting myself through school, and had very little money to survive on let alone market my practice so I learned how to get free advertizing by sending out press releases and public service announcements to all media forums. What I did was generate an email list of every reporter, editor, copy-editor, radio dj, radio producer, tv personalities, tv reporters and tv producers i could find...basically anybody affiliated in the media in any way I gathered their email address for my list. Once that was done, anything that I did that was newsworthy I wrote a press release for and sent it to all my contacts. This generated me countless free newspaper articles, radio guest spots, tv interviews, and thousands of dollars in free advertizing. This also boosts your prestige level in your community.

One Note: You can't spam these contacts or send an email with more than one address on it or you will be block. So if you dont have an automated emailer, take the time to send them individually. Every time I sent out a press release I got something for it and if not they start a file on you and can possibly use your press release for filler in the future.

Hope this helps you get more clients,

JW

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