Can a Club Affiliation Help Your Clinic?

If increasing your client base is essential to you, consider a club affiliation.

A club affiliation allows your clinic to provide services and discounts to members while also increasing the likelihood of incoming referrals.

An affiliation purposefully puts your clinic on your local community radar and encourages further client growth.

🤝 The Benefits of an Affiliation

Let’s look at 3 potential benefits of a club affiliation that demonstrate how an affiliation could help grow your business:

1. New Patients – Automatically gain new patients from the club’s membership list.
2. Perceived Value – The club feels valued by having an ongoing available discount.
3. Word of Mouth – Club members share positive news about your clinic.

🔗 What Could an Affiliation Look Like?

Consider this as a scenario:

• A club in your local community has 100 members who all trial your clinical services.
• As a result of their experience, 25 of those members become loyal clients of your clinic (conservatively speaking).
• In turn, those 25 members recommend your clinic to 2 friends each, extending your client base’s reach even further over time.

In this scenario, you’ve leveraged a club affiliation program and turned it into word of mouth – one of the strongest referral types you can have as a business owner.

🤗 Make an Offer…

As an allied health clinic, you’ll need to structure your offer to suit your clinical services, and therefore, it could appear a little like this:

1. A free initial appointment for all club members.
2. Every subsequent appointment will come with a predetermined discount.
3. Additionally or alternatively, stock and inventory could be sold at a specified discount.

💡How to Find an Affiliate

Choosing a club that you have a personal interest in is a great place to start. Consider clubs that you may have been involved in over the years such as sports clubs, Scouts or Girl Guides. 

Do some research into a few local community groups that are of interest to you and see if they align with your clinic values. 

If you are having difficulty narrowing down all the options of amazing, deserving clubs out there, you could always enlist some assistance:

• 🧠 Ask your staff and patients about their interests and hobbies. You might discover an idea you may not have considered – like a gym or club they attend.
• 🏆 Run a monthly competition. Ask your patients for their business cards as an entry ticket. For the cost of a small prize, you might find some companies worth approaching.

These methods may be unorthodox – but sometimes, thinking outside the box can offer the best rewards.

🤔 Speaking of “thinking outside the box“… did you notice I just mentioned companies?

These ideas aren’t limited to club affiliations. Do you know a local company who’s employees would benefit from your services?

☎️ Connecting with Potential Affiliates

Setting up an in-person meeting with your potential affiliate is always better than a phone call or email. It is essential to be prepared and consider treating the first meeting like a new job interview.

Prove to the prospective affiliate that you know and understand who they are, what they do, and how they operate. Advise why you have chosen their particular club and demonstrate that you have carried out some solid research about their club and interests.

💖 Don’t forget – you will want to consider presenting how the club (not just the members) will benefit from your offer.

Whenever you are selling something, whether it be a product, service or an idea, you need to present it so that the potential customer clearly understands the benefits they will receive.

Remember:

• Be prepared and professional.
• Communicate the benefits in a clear, concise and friendly manner.
• Know exactly what next steps you are proposing.

🖋️ Time to Put It in Writing

Now’s the time to put your conversation into writing and make a solid offer to your chosen club. You want to include everything you discussed in your initial meeting in this letter.

• Start by briefly reintroducing yourself and your clinic.
• Explain why you have chosen their particular club for an affiliation program.
• Clearly and concisely detail what you are offering and how the club will benefit.
• Let the club know that you will create the content for an email that their club can use to advise their members about the affiliation.

Consider this example letter:

📣 Making an Announcement

The next stage is to advise the club members about your exciting new affiliation, so you should take the initiative and create a letter on the club’s behalf.

As well as the email outlining the benefits, it is also vital for you to include your Terms and Conditions attached to the offer, which could consist of variations of the following:

• Not available with any other offers.
• Exclusions (Stock, Specific Services, Payment Methods, Vouchers, etc.).
• The benefits associated with this affiliation are only open to club members.
• The clinic agrees to notify the club in writing should the nature of the affiliation need to change (and vice-versa).

Consider this example announcement:

☝️ Let’s Get Affiliated

By setting up a club affiliation, you should find that it helps open the door for new clients and opportunities within your clinic and community.

Using a Practice Management System like Nookal to track your ROI will provide you with the measurable outcomes of the affiliation with your clinic.

The results may encourage you to consider starting up an affiliation with another club within your community, expanding your business even further.

If you’re already an avid Nookal user:

• Set up your Affiliate as a Referrer.
• During the Initial Consultation, set up the Client’s Referrer as the Affiliate.
• Review the results in the Referrers and Sources Report.

Having a club affiliation is to your advantage – so take the time to consider your options, do your research, and discover how having affiliations can help grow your business.

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About the Author

Lizzie

Lizzie is our witty worldwide web wordsmith who writes wise wordage while watching Wilton, her favourite family-friendly four-footed feline feebly fishing for food. She strings superbly sweet sentences, stopping swiftly short of superfluous saccharine speak such as "synergy".