Frequently Asked Questions

1. Will I be able to add any of my own information to the pre-designed marketing templates?

a. Contact information – in the first few months, marketing pieces will be general in content so as to include all modalities. Your contact information can be stripped in at your local printer or the journal you advertise in can do this for you.
b. Messaging – as time progresses we will offer modality-specific pieces, in which you will be able to insert customized messaging as well as contact information.

2. Will I have to pay for anything outside of the monthly membership fee?

a. Depending on the campaigns you choose to use, there could be associated costs. The AGS team has done everything we can on the front end to minimize any additional costs to you:
i. with direct mailers you will have printing costs (shouldn't be more than a dollar per piece you print if you use digital printing and gang up your pieces so that they all run through the press at the same time – your local printer can assist you with this)…postage…and list purchase costs ( lists can be purchased through the AGS membership site at a deeply discounted price)
ii. With advertisements in journals there will be a fee every time you run your ad with a journal. The fee is negotiable (see marketing guidelines – Print advertising Road map)
iii. if you do email blasts you will have to buy email lists that are approved to be receiving emails
iv. Letter campaigns will require postage

3. Is there someone who can help me with specific things I want to do to market my practice?

a. Yes, if you have general questions on how to work with the marketing tools on the AGS membership site, you can contact us at
customerservice@ags-4grwth.com
b. If you are looking for one-to-one advice on how to market your practice beyond what is offered in the membership site, you can contact us for a quote on individualized consulting consulting@ags-4grwth.com

4. What marketing disciplines will be made available to me?

a. AGS will cover one marketing discipline per month until every discipline has been fully explored.
i. Web, online, demand generation, newsletters, tradeshows, advertising, public relations, message development, yearly planning, strategy, to name just a few...

5. Will there be marketing campaigns specifically designed for my modality?

a. Absolutely!
b. AGS will rollout modality-specific campaigns monthly and over the course of time to address all major modalities. We will also keep providing general marketing materials that can be customized to ensure that everyone has something until all modalities have their own marketing tract available for use.

6. How often will I get a complimentary marketing product if I sign up for a premium membership?

Every other month or so AGS launches a new marketing segment, as a premium member, you will receive the featured template of that "segment" as part of your membership. 

7. If I sign up for a membership, what can I expect to receive from AGS over the coming months and years?

In addition to AGS's constant and continued pursuit to bring our members value-add through negotiated partnerships with applicable services and content, our team is constantly developing organic marketing materials designed and created specifically for alternative practitioners.
Each piece that AGS creates is developed with specific strategic benefit for you:

    • Ads for placement in local publications and newspapers 
      • great for building your brand/image and top-of-mind awareness so that someone who may not be in need of your service at the moment will definitely remember your name - and think of you first - when they or a friend might find themselves in need of your services.
    • Lists at reduced prices (names to mail your direct mail pieces to)
      • With the list being the most important part of your campaign, we want to be sure that you are getting good names at a good price

    • Documented research to provide third-party credibility to over 25 modalities 
      • excellent as patient handouts and for inclusion on websites and other marketing materials
    • Website development and optimization
      • a variety of website templates (designed exclusively for our alternative practitioner clients) complete with step-by-step instructions on how to customize and optimize for your practice

    • Public Relations
      • A marketing tool we think you will find most useful as it will allow you to get your message out through thought-leadership and published work (for example) - building top-of-mind awareness much like an ad campaign can do for you.

    • Marketing on a shoe string (letters and emails)
      • Marketing doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.  AGS will show you how to get great results without paying a lot of out-of-pocket costs.

    • Newsletters
      • a great way to keep your name in front of your current clients (out of site can often mean out of mind)
      • provide value-add that keeps you high on your clients list of important people

    • Marketing Strategy
      • this is constant and evolving to help our clients keep their marketing fresh and productive

8. After purchasing an AGS website template are there any additional costs to setting up and maintaining it?

Website set up requires purchasing a domain name (www.nameofyourcompany.com) and registering it: Register.com or Godaddy are two of many choices available to you.  Register.com costs about $25/year or so to register your domain; Godaddy is usually a little bit less expensive, maybe $10/year or so for a domain.  There should be very little maintenance required, if any, on your part as the AGS website templates come complete with step-by-step instructions.  If you go with godaddy.com, they offer 24/7 technical support. 

Hosting is also required (who will put your website out on the internet) - you should be able to get this for about $10/month.  Godaddy offers hosting as do many other hosting services (Google on the web, we are sure you'll find plenty of hosting companies).  We can also refer the company that we work with for hosting...cost you about $10/month and they are really great about support on the back end.

9. Do you have to pay to have search engines list you?

Search engines are not a paid service, you have to gain integrity and rating from the various search engines by the page ranking criteria set by the search engine companies (e.g. Google, yahoo): longevity, how many "other" sites link to your site and certainly there are many search engine tactics that you can apply to get the search engines to recognize you.  As an AGS member you would have access to the AGS members site which offers in-depth detail on this for your search-engine success (e.g., how to implement and leverage key word searches, website analytics for tracking and monitoring websites for success and much much more).

10. How do you calculate the exact cost of each mailer, the calculation tool on the AGS website shows a dollar each in the field already?

The AGS calculating tool allows you to change any variable within it and then hit the recalculate button for a custom tailored return-on-investment for your particular marketing efforts.  The $1 per piece that we currently have posted is a per piece estimate for producing the three piece direct mail campaign that AGS launched at the beginning of this year (see our retail section).  This takes into account printing (Kinko’s type store) and postage. The cost of a mailer will be different for every campaign you launch as printing and postage costs will be different every time.

11. Does AGS help prepare what goes out in the direct mailers or give advice on what to put in it?

All of the mail campaigns for our clients (again, in retail section) are fully designed and written by our team of seasoned marketing experts with messages that specifically support the alternative and integrative practitioners like yourself to educate your potential clients and encourage them to call you for an appointment. 

The current campaigns were written such that all you need to do is add your contact information (again, Kinko’s can do this for you) and you are good to go.  New mail campaigns are in production and will allow for much more custom tailoring on your part (with recommended guidelines on what type of information specific to your practice that you should incorporate).  These mailers are designed such that you can make updates and edits to the verbiage right from your own computer. 

Please also note, that AGS offers our members access to discounted mailing lists (mail labels complete with name, address) for you to use to mail your campaigns.  In addition, in our members section, there are detailed plans that tell you how to execute your mail campaign from the minute you download your mailers from AGS right down to putting them in the mail and how to follow up on your campaign to ensure good results.

12. Can I do e-commerce (sales of products or services) with the AGS website templates?

Indeed, you can do e-commerce (sales of goods) via the internet and the AGS website templates.

While AGS does not offer an e-commerce solution (yetSmile) - as the demand/priority has not been as high as some of the other marketing needs required by our clients - we can certainly make a recommendation on which gateways and payment portals provide the highest quality of service and reliability.  Typically there is a monthly fee paid directly to the payment portal and a one-time charge (usually quite reasonably priced) for gateway software

If you require technical assistance to engage the e-commerce component, again, our web team will be happy to provide you a quote for doing so.