Chinese Medicine Notes

Complementary & Alternative Marketing- a Review

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Yael

It all starts with a personal story
Lisa Hanfileti is an acupuncturist from Oregon in the USA.
She graduated from school and opened her business, and due to a family illness sank into debt which almost cost her her clinic.
Lisa decided not to give up and made a huge change on a business level. This change lead to today, where she has a successful clinic, she earns money from her clinic and her website (check Lisa’s website by clicking here), and now she wrote an e-Book, in which she shares her experience with the rest of the community.

The personal story is the story of the community
Lisa’s story is not a rare one.
In many places in the world- including Israel, the USA and many countries in Europe- we have many who graduate each years, and we know that they all face the problem of finding their path to success after 4 years of school.
In Israel, you can add the problem of not having even one single hour of business school- there’s nothing that leads students to think that they will be running a business.
We also know that many people don’t survive the tough market and leave, which might make some of us feel relived, but I think it’s a cause to worry. Is there any guarantee that one of those numbers will be me? In a year? In two years?
I would like to mention that this is true for all professions of the complementary medicine, not just Chinese Medicine.

We know what our problems are (more or less).
It’s time to get some ideas to solve these problems, and the Internet plays a key role with a number of very obvious advantages:
The first is clearly- availability. Those who have a computer have access to endless information about anything, including running a business. All you have to do is look for the information.
The second advantage is the price. There are some prices that are equal when you compare items you can find on the Internet to those off the Internet. Either way one should always look carefully at the product in question.
We also have products that are usually cheaper than what we can find around us and not from the Internet, prices that are fair and that we can afford.
And another advantage is support. Usually sellers provide means of support for their buyers- forums, e-mails, and they welcome any questions, debates and so on.

We already told you about Burton Kent’s Never Market Again.
Today I will tell you about Lisa Hanfileti’s Complementary and Alternative Marketing.

Complementary and Alternative Marketing
From her personal experience, Lisa understood one simple thing- the Chinese Medicine community does not have the proper information (if any) to build a business.
This is- I think- true to the whole Complementary Medicine community.
Lisa uses this understanding to suggest a new marketing pyramid. The foundation of this pyramid is our own website.
This should be the platform of our income, both active and passive, as we recognize the various options we have while using this platform.
This suggestion is the base of this e-Book, which has business-like thinking and practical information in almost every page. This is all information that Lisa used herself and found useful.
You won’t find one word about acupuncture points or Chinese herbs. This e-Book is all about building a business and marketing that business as best as possible.

While I totally agree with Lisa’s way of thinking, some of the things that Lisa writes in the e-Book aren’t necessarily true to your part of the world. Lisa is based in the USA. In Israel, for example, things don’t work quite the same way as they do in the states in regards to marketing (yellow pages, flayers, business cards and so on), so it’s best to read those parts and remember to look at where you live and see what would work best for you.

Lisa identifies many things that are true on a global scale.
For example- there are still many practitioners that don’t have their own website. Those who do, tend to repeat the same information over and over again, without thinking about how to make the potentially new patient become a regular patient.
Lisa writes also about building your website right, thinking about the audience, key phrases to use and optimization of your website to search engines.

The cost
The e-Book costs $47, and there are many bonuses included for free.
When you think whether you should buy it or not, you should consider it’s content, but also the price.
When you remember that we are trying to keep our expenses low, $47 just might be the minimum amount to invest for the long run. What comes out of it is mainly up to us.
There are many other ways to get our clinic up and running- coaching, marketing courses just to name two options of many, but the price will most likely be higher, and chances are that many of the options that Lisa mentions as income won’t be included in what you learn.

In conclusion, I think this is one of the most important e-Books created for practitioners.
The Internet is part of our daily routine, and we can use that to be able to provide for ourselves in the field that we love so much. That’s a great notion!
You can start improving your income right away, the choice is in your hands.

To buy Lisa’s e-Book click here.