Why Presentation Matters

Our whole life, from a kid in grade school to adulthood, we've been told a lie! (Sort of.)

Don't judge a book by it's cover!

We've been told this narrative to not judge a person or thing by its appearances, but instead to look deeper and see the inner beauty.

While, we would like to believe this ideal and try to follow it ourselves, the truth is, it just isn't how most people act and behave.

Have you ever been to a website and left because it wasn't pleasing to your eyes? Or chose to skip a restaurant that didn't look "nice" from the outside?

Evolutionarily, there's good reason for this. Over centuries, humans have developed the ability to quickly judge. Especially, to quickly determine if someone or something is friend or foe, for our own survival. (There's a sabertooth tiger, let's get the heck out of here!)

And after many generations, we've gotten pretty darn good at it! We can judge someone in a matter of seconds.

Why is this important for you as an acupuncturist?

As an acupuncturist, you want more patients and you want those patients to respect you as a medical professional and to take you seriously. And, to a larger degree, I believe, you also want the profession to be taken seriously by the naysayers.

So, it's important for you to understand that people are going to judge you by your website, your business card, your office, your looks, the way you walk and talk. Everything!

And they're going to judge you for the smallest of details!

Do you have a misspelling on you're website? Judged! (<--- See what I did their?)

Is your office well lit or does it feel like walking into a dungeon? Judged!

Are you dressed like a professional or someone who needs a good shaving? Judged!

EVERY. LITTLE. DETAIL!

What to do about it?

I think it's VERY important to create a feedback loop, to actively seek people willing to give you negative feedback.

Getting negative feedback isn't as easy as it seems. It's difficult for two reasons.

One, we're emotional creatures and getting negative feedback hurts, so we actively shy away from being criticized. No one likes hearing negative feedback, it makes us feel like we're failures. It's much easier to live in our own little bubbles where in our own heads, we're the king or queen of the world. (My mom tells me I'm awesome!)

And two, no one likes to hurt someone's feelings, so most people will tell you nice things and not offend you. So, you might have to butter them up first like making fun of their mom. (Just kidding, never make fun of someone's mom, unless they're really not nice!)

So how do you overcome these?

First, put on your big boy or girl pants on and swallow your pride and understand that without negative feedback, you as a practitioner and practice are not going to get better. (What got you to your current level of success is not going to get you to the next level!)

And second, actively seek out people who give constructive negative feedback. (Not nasty mean feedback, those people you can get rid of.) Everyone knows those one or two friends who will tell you like it is. Sometimes the things they say might be harsh and make you mad, but those are the people you need to seek out! (They'll keep it .)

Quick wins

So what are some things you can do immediately? Here's a short and quick list.

• Take a look at your website.
  
  Does it look like you put it together in a weekend? Spend a couple buck to buy a nicely designed template.
  
  
• Take a look at your clinic.
  
  Could it use more lighting? Or maybe some tiding up? Let your OCD run wild!
  
  
• Take a look at yourself.
  
  Are you presenting your best foot forward when meeting and greeting your patients? Are you dressed like a professional? Be proactive!

So this year, let's try to be better professionals and better people by seeking better feedback and taking steps to improve. It's 2016 people, let's put our best self out there!

Got negative feedback? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai

Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Introducing: Multi-Practitioner Scheduling

One of the most exciting trends in healthcare is the combining of multiple practitioners and possibly different modalities in a single practice to treat patients.

Whether it's multiple acupuncturists coming together to share resources or an integrative medicine practice, where, under one roof, many practitioners with different specialities treating a patient in many ways to be more effective, scheduling multiple practitioners with one system can be a pain.

Now with Jasmine, you can schedule multiple practitioners with different specialities with ONE piece of software!

So if you're a multi-practitioner practice with one modality or multiple disciplines, Jasmine will work for you!

How does it work?

First, each practitioner has her own schedule. Well, that just makes sense!

Each practitioner can be assigned to a Service which they provide. Multiple practitioners can even be associated with one service. Oh my, we're getting crazy!

And all this leads us to eventually, a patient scheduling from your website and scheduling page. Wha-what!

So, if you're a single acupuncturist practice with aspirations of building a larger multi-practitioner office or an existing Integrative Clinic, Jasmine's got you covered!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai

Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Creating a Facebook Ad

This is the final post in a multi post series on Creating Facebook Ads, you can see the previous post by clicking Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

We're finally at the end of the series and this is what we've been working towards all this time! We're going to create a Facebook Ad! Whooohooo!

Let's do a little recap.

In the first post, we talked about the benefits of advertising and getting your practice out there and in the minds of your potential patients. We also said that for advertising to work, it takes about 7 interactions or touches before a potential customer will act on the advertisement.

Also, in the first post, we talked about the expansiveness of Facebook and the benefits of using it to find potential patients. We started a quest to find "Back pain patients in Austin" and journeyed into the far off lands of creating a Facebook Audience. (quest... journey... yes I watched Lord of the Rings during the holidays!)

In the second post, we talked about what a marketing campaign is and learned to create our first Facebook Campaign. (We ventured into the kiddie pool.)

Then, in the third post, we discovered the Facebook Ad Set and created one with a reasonable budget targeting our Facebook Audience for a set duration. (Watch out we're swimming in the deep end!)

And now, we're here at the magnum opus, the creation of the Facebook Ad. (Now we're swimming with the sharks!)

Let's get going!

Create an Ad

In the last post, we created a Facebook Ad Set called "People with Back Pain - mobile".  On the Ad Set, you'll see a Create Ad link. Click that!

You'll then be presented with the Create Ad dialog box. In the Create New Ad section, check the checkbox and we'll name it "Backpain Ad". 

Click the Create button and start your engines...

Facebook Page

For the Facebook Page section, you'll select your business page and by doing so, it will allow you to choose one of your existing Facebook posts. (Stay tuned! Coming in the next section!) 

Use Existing Post

In this section you can choose to Create Ad or Use Existing Post. Creating an Ad from scratch is definitely something you should experiment, however, for the purposes of this tutorial, we're going to Use Existing Post for the Ad.

In the Page Post drop down, select your Back pain page post.

Tracking

In Tracking, you can specify additional ways for you to (for lack of a better word) track how your Ad is performing. 

URL Tags allow you to specify UTM Parameters to be sent to your Google Analytics when someone clicks on your Ad. Here I like to specify the utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign parameters. To learn more about UTM Parameters, check out one of my previous posts:

http://blog.jasminepm.com/2015/09/where-your-acupuncture-patients-come-utm-parameters.html

Conversion Tracking is a way for you to help Facebook understand how your Ads are performing. It does this by sending them data to then better serve your Ads to people. For more information on Conversion Tracking, here's a post I did:

http://blog.jasminepm.com/2015/08/your-facebook-is-incomplete-without-this.html

Preview

The Preview pane shows you what the Ad will look like in the various formats chosen for the Ad Set. (Bask in the glory of our final product!)

Once everything looks good, you're ready to click the Review Changes button and send your Campaign and Ad to Facebook for approval!

That's it! We've done it! We've created our first Facebook Ad and you are now an internet marketing expert!

I think this is definitely a reason to celebrate, now go have yourself a glass of wine... make that 2, you've earned it!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai
Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Creating a Facebook Ad Set

This the 3rd post in a multi post series on Creating Facebook Ads, you can see the previous posts by clicking Part 1 and Part 2.

If you've been following along, you'll remember, we're creating a Facebook Ad Campaign targeting people with back pain. Back pain sufferers are eagerly waiting to find out about you!

In this post we'll talk about Facebook Ad Sets, which can be thought of as a collection of Ads. You'll learn about what an Ad Set is and how to create one to manage the criteria around a set of Ads.

Ready? Let's get started!

What's an Ad Set?

From Facebook's own documentation,

“An ad set is a group of ads that share the same daily or lifetime budget, schedule, bid type, bid info, and targeting data. Ad sets enable you to group ads according to your criteria, and you can retrieve the ad-related statistics that apply to a set.”

In short, an ad set is just a container for you to eventually create ads. (Spoiler Alert: We're going to create ads in the next post!)

Create an Ad Set

While in the Power Editor, select the Backpain Campaign we created in the previous post.

Open the edit panel by clicking on the pencil on the right side of the window. (It might be a pen! Who knows?!)

When the Campaign editor opens, click on the Create Ad Set link.

A modal dialog opens called Create Ad Set. The Choose An Ad Set checkbox should already be selected as well as the Create New radio button. All you need to do now is enter a name for the Ad Set!

Since Ad Sets are associated with an Audience and a Ad Placement (ie. mobile, desktop, etc), for the Ad Set name, I like to use a combination of the Audience name with the Placement format.

The advantage of separating your Ad Set like this is that it's easier to see which Ad Sets are not working and you can turn those off and more wisely spend your money. (dolla dolla bills y'all!)

In this example, we'll use "People with Back Pain - mobile".

Now let's click the blue Create button at the bottom of the dialog and start configuring this puppy!

Once the Ad Set editor opens, you'll notice several sections we can configure. We'll go through each one below!

Budget

For the Budget, you can set a Daily Budget limit or a Lifetime Budget limit.

Since I like to take baby steps and not blow my whole wad on The Powerball, I usually start with $5 daily budget and if I see things going well, I'll increase the budget. (Enter an amount you feel comfortable with!)

Schedule

For the Schedule, you can set the Start and End time for running the Ad Set.

Again, here I like to start small and increase as I see things working. I will usually run Ad Sets for a week. Many times, the effectiveness of Ads will start to diminish after a few days. So keep an eye on them and if an Ad Set isn't working, you can always stop them and restart sometime in the future!

Audience

You guessed it! The Audience is where we assign the previously created "People with back pain" audience.

Click on the "Saved Audience" drop down and choose the Audience. Simple!

Placement

The Placement tells Facebook where you would like them to display your Ads. (As you can imagine, experimenting with Placement will help you more effectively spend your advertising dollars!)

For me, I like to have one Placement per Ad Set because I can experiment with different Placements and turn off Ad Sets that aren't working.

Optimization & Pricing

Facebook provides several configurations for controlling the delivery of Ads and their pricing. (Here's another great place to do some experimentation!)

For now, we'll accept the default settings

Advanced Delivery

Facebook also provides configuration for how quickly the Ads get delivered.

For this Ad Set, we'll choose the Standard Delivery Type and show Ads throughout the day.

And with that, you've created your first Ad Set to manage the Budget, Schedule, Audience and Placement of your Ads!

Congratulations! Now go have multiple glasses of wine, you've earned it!

See you next time on Creating Facebook Ads!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai
Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Creating a Facebook Campaign

Happy New Year! I'm excited for 2016 and the many opportunities ahead. Aren't you?!

Also, I'm excited about this series of blog posts because they're about marketing and marketing is the way to create opportunities for your acupuncture practice!

If you remember, in our last post, we learned how to "Create a Facebook Audience" and target potential acupuncture patients in our area!

Today's post, we'll talk about creating a Facebook campaign. What's a campaign? Well let me tell you!

What's a campaign?

First the text book definition from Investopedia:

“Specific activities designed to promote a product, service or business. A marketing campaign is a coordinated series of steps that can include promotion of a product through different mediums (television, radio, print, online) using a variety of different types of advertisements. The campaign doesn't have to rely solely on advertising, and can also include demonstrations, word of mouth and other interactive techniques.”

All of this basically boils down to simply, a campaign is promoting your acupuncture practice by any means you can.

A Facebook campaign is just using Facebook to promote and market your practice, in addition, it's also a collection of ads for organizational purposes. It's a bit of an abstract concept, but we'll get into it!

Power Editor

We learned about the Power Editor in the last post and how we'll exclusively use it to create our ads. If you didn't read the last post, go do it now! I'll wait... tick... tock...

http://blog.jasminepm.com/2015/12/creating-facebook-saved-audiences.html

Welcome back! Now that you're in the Power Editor, click on the Manage Ads tab.

Create Campaign

Now let's get to creating this campaign! Don't be shy, go ahead and click the big ol' Create Campaign button.

The Create Campaign dialog box will appear. Since we're creating a new campaign ("new", because it's a "new" year... ok... lame joke!), select the Create New radio button.

If you'll remember from the last blog post (you do remember don't you?), we created a Facebook Audience targeting people with back pain. So, for our campaign name, we'll call it "Backpain Campaign". Can you believe the wit and creativity in naming?!

Buying Type

The Buying Type drop down contains 2 options, Auction and Fixed. The Buying Type instructs Facebook on how you want them to price your ads for this campaign.

The Auction Buying Type means that Facebook's algorithm will help you determine the best price for each successful Objective completed, basically an action taken on your ad like a click or a share.

The Fixed Buying Type gives you the ability to set a price for a successfully completed Objective.

In our case, we'll choose the Auction Buying Type because as our ad does better, we'll see the price of our ad go down... and cheaper in this case is a good thing!

Objective

An Objective tells Facebook your advertising goal for this campaign. And based on your Objective, Facebook will present different options for creating your ads.

Click on the Objective dropdown... and Holy Moly Guacamole! Look at all those Objectives!

We won't cover all the Objectives in this blog post, because frankly, the Internet cries a little tear if I do that! If you'd like to learn more about each Objective, check out the Facebook post on it.

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1438417719786914

In our example, we'll choose the Page Post Engagement Objective. The reason we're doing this is because, we'll use one of our Facebook page post as an ad.

One of the advantages of using Page Post Engagements is that it is rumored on the Internets and tested by me to be a better bang for the buck than creating a regular click through ad. (I always recommend doing your own testing by starting with a small budget and scaling up!)

Now that you've chosen the campaign Objective, click the Create button at the bottom of the dialog and you've just created your first Facebook Campaign!

Congratulations! Now go have a glass of wine, you've earned it! 

See you next time on Creating a Facebook Ad Set!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai
Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!