If you are in private practice (as an educational therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, tutor, etc) and are looking for a cost efficient way to get new referrals, this could be exactly what you are looking for.

NOTE - Learning100 Website Members - This recording is available FREE to you in the Tele-Forum area!

In the 21 years we have been in private business helping struggling students, there has been one overwhelmingly successful strategy we have used to advertise.

This strategy has taken us from a one person operation to a thriving enterprise that employs 18 people and sees an average 250 client hours each week.

The struggle to get clients
Before we started doing this form of advertising we tried lots of other things: newspaper, flyers, sponsorships, mailings.

But once we started doing this, our referral base began to respond very quickly.

This strategy is a simple 4-page free newsletter that we send out three to four times each year. We send these newsletters to the closest schools (public and private), pediatricians, MFTs (marriage, family, child therapists), audiologists, pediodontists, orthodontists, and psychologists.

The largest group that refers to us are school teachers (yes, I know that teachers in your area are not allowed to refer. They aren't allowed to refer in our area either. But our clinic is filled with students who “weren't officially referred by teachers”).

For years we told people about sending the newsletter. Then people started to send us their newsletters.

We discovered how many ways there are to do a bad or ineffective newsletter.

The newsletter, if done right , will build you
up in your community as the expert to call.

If done wrong, it will be viewed as just another advertisement, or will be set aside to “read later when I have more time.”

I am very busy supporting dozens of tutor/learning center owners. While many people have asked the specifics of how we get such a good response, like most of you, I just don't have the time to explain to individuals the elements that make the newsletter work so effectively.

But recently, I agreed to hold a very special phone conference to share with a small group of private practitioners the “nitty gritty” details of how we are able to produce a newsletter that gets us referrals. We made sure this special session was recorded so that no detail would be lost.

A few weeks ago we decided to burn a CD of the conference. In this one hour session, here is some of what we covered:

• The 2 major factors in assembling the perfect newsletter:
  1. Content – What it is you say in your newsletter and how you say it
  2. Format – How you lay your newsletter out on the page in such a way as to make it compelling to read. The best information won't get read if it looks as if it is too overwhelming.

Together, the above 2 factors are 85% of your success.

We also talked about -

• The 3 purposes for the newsletter…understanding exactly what it is we want our newsletter to do in order to get more referrals
• The three obstacles you must overcome in order for any advertising to work…especially newsletters
• Why the newsletter is so much more effective and cost efficient than other forms of advertising
• How writing a newsletter makes you an expert to your readers, and leads to more people referring your services
• The difference between marketing and positioning, and why positioning gets you more clients while saving you time and money
• Where we send newsletters to get the kind of response that keeps readers referring our services
• 11 Specific topic areas for newsletter articles that will help “percolate” ideas for your own articles
• What your newsletter should NEVER be about, even though it really is…
• Understand what news really is
• How to write an article, how not to write an article
• A single tip that will keep you full of ideas for newsletter articles
• 3 critical factors to getting the content to be compelling enough for people to want to read it
• Tips for writing headlines…the single biggest factor that decides if people will read even one word!
• An easy to use formula for building articles that people will read and that are easy to write
• Specific tips for proper formatting – Getting it on the paper in such a way that people want to read it
• How to get your point across even if they don't read every word
• WARNING – Don't write about this or your readers will never read anything you write ever again…and they won't refer anyone to you
• A phrase you can add to your newsletter that will get teachers to copy it and give it to parents
• A newsletter strategy that gets people to visit your web site where you will have a much greater chance of selling your services
• How writing a newsletter helps you develop new aspects of your business and makes it easier for you to sell those new aspects

That was a lot of material to go through in so short a time, however, that wasn't even the best part . Despite all of that information, the best part of the workshop was this:

• We took 3 specific article ideas (suggested by workshop participants) and thoroughly examined how to develop them into articles that would appeal to our readers, what points we would make, and why teachers would want to read about those topics.
• Then, we brainstormed multiple headline possibilities for each article idea. Since the headline is an “ad for your article,” it is a major element in writing a successful newsletter.

This part of the hour was so helpful to people because we weren't being abstract, but very practical about actually writing content that is compelling to read.

As far as I know, no one has ever put together this much information that is specific to the private practice educator.

It is a real “instruction manual” not on how to write, but rather an “inside look” at how to craft a newsletter that gets people, including teachers, to want to refer students to you.

This jam packed hour was recorded so that we wouldn't lose any of the details.

The people in the workshop are part of a group that paid $197 to get to be part of that hour.

As a way of helping “boost” your practice, for the next few weeks, we are going to make this CD available for just $27.

Why Are We Sharing These "Secrets?" Actuallt, there are 2 reasons:

• Honestly, we want you to experience some of the services that we offer business owners just like you. Every month we write articles, hold on-line discussions, and offer telephone forums to help build businesses.
  
  We know that the demand for services is HUGE.
  
  At the same time, as educators, most of us had minimal (c'mon, let's be honest: NO) training in building and running a business. We know that we can't work with every student who needs help. We need more successful people in this business helping struggling students.
  
  
• Because this is a time efficient way for me to get the information to you in a way that allows you to listen on your schedule and I don't repeat the same information each and every day. It just works for all of us!

Bonus – For the first 70 practitioners who order the CD:

Along with your CD, I will also show you how to get the name and address of every public school in the United States (school year 2002-2003). There are 99,635 schools listed.

And I'll show you where you can get the name and address of 30,377 private schools in the United States (2003-2004 school year).

At just 5¢ a school, that complete list of 130,012 schools would cost you $6500.60. When you order the CD, you get the entire list for FREE!

More and more educators want to start a private practice, but struggle with how to get enough students to have a business that sustains them.

If I were starting over, the newsletter is the
very first kind of marketing I would do.

How to Order -
To get your copy of the Newsletter CD that includes all of the information discussed above, as access to the 130,012 mailing lists, simply add this item to your shopping cart at the top of this page.

Learning100 Website Members - This recording is available FREE on this site.  Simply go to the Teleforum link and listen!