Chiropractor marketing is essential for finding new clients and keeping existing clients engaged. Like any local service, the landscape has changed and relying on word of mouth is no longer enough if you want to stay competitive or grow your business.
Chiropractor marketing services often consist of web design, Google ads (PPC), SEO (search engine optimisation), Google My Business optimisation and Facebook and social media marketing. These services deal with generating greater visibility for your clinic and in turn more traffic and thus patients.
In this guide we’ll cover the above but we’re also likely going to be quite controversial especially with the last point. We’re going to look at the best strategies for marketing your clinic online but also strategies you really want to avoid.
Chiropractic clinics have been using ineffective, backwards, and brand-damaging marketing strategies over the past few years. We don’t see it in any other modern business marketing and it’s quite strange!
At this stage it’s crucial that we tell you a little about ourselves which will hopefully give more credibility to what we’re going to say.
About Us
We’re a specialist MSK marketing agency whose sole responsibility is to drive growth and sustain competitivety for our clients. At this point in time we work with hundreds of clinics, from the small 1/2 person businesses, the largest single site chiropractic clinics in the UK to those with 15+ clinics around the world. We work with the best and most profitable businesses in the industry that have made their names as being ethical, effective and providing top level services.
Ok, enough about us, let’s talk marketing.
How not to market your chiropractic clinic
Far too many marketing companies are running ads for chiropractic clinics that use words like:
FREE or CHEAP or REDUCED COST or NORMALLY £100 NOW JUST £X.
This sounds like someone’s selling diet pills not serious healthcare services. Would you respond to these kinds of tactics if you were serious about your health?
In fact, given the amount of prospective patients looking for chiropractic care each month there really is no reason to run these kinds of campaigns.
Essentially this is lead generation and doesn’t really belong in healthcare marketing strategies. We recently wrote another article on Lead Generation and we strongly encourage you to read it. We won’t go over it all again but it’s directly related to this topic, here are some salient points.
The downsides to this kind of marketing are:
a) It cheapens your service
b) It impacts the profession as a whole
c) It gets the wrong kind of patients (those looking for price over quality)
d) It damages your brand
e) It turns you into the ‘cheapest option in the area’ which is difficult to recover from.
If you’re running lead generation or offering your services for cheap then you’re doing it wrong, there are better ways of building and scaling your business.
Let’s start with something incredibly import.
Don’t overcomplicate it! Marketing your clinic is easy.
Local business marketing is incredibly simple. You need 3 things:
Visibility
The more visible your clinic is digitally, the more patients will find you. If you wanted a dentist would you go to page 6 on Google or would you choose one of the top 3 with great ratings? If you’re visible, patients will come.
Great messaging
Does your website really speak to your patients? Does it communicate what you do, how you help? If you were looking for a dentist, what would you want to see on their website? If your website speaks to your potential clients, then your conversion rate will be high.
A dynamic brand
A brand is not your logo or your colour scheme. A brand is who you are, what you represent, what’s unique about your business. Why should someone visit you and not another clinic? Again, what would make you visit one dentist over another?
Here are the main areas you will want to concentrate on.
Website Design
First, you need to understand that your website is essentially the face of your business. Websites are crucial to conveying your brand, experience, professionalism, and excellence. Your website serves as the primary means of converting visitors into paying patients.
Therefore, your website, above all else, needs to be user-friendly. A user-friendly website design should hit the following points:
- Mobile device optimization
- Functional
- Intuitive
- Easy to navigate
- Loads quickly
- Uses multiple forms of media
- Aesthetically pleasing
- Simple, but not boring
Potential patients can judge your entire practice off of a single website visit. Make sure you’re making a good impression.
You also need to think about website design for SEO. A website without SEO is like a car without fuel. It may have great potential, but it serves no purpose in its current state.
But what is SEO?
SEO
Search engine optimization put simply, allows your website to rank at the top of search engines for relevant searches. For example, if people in your area search for “the best chiropractors near me,” the SEO on your website will dictate whether or not they find you.
Local SEO is important but spending a lot isn’t always necessary, especially for local chiropractors. You don’t need to pay for SEO that’s going to bring in traffic from all around the world, as those people will never become paying customers. Instead, focus on the basics:
- A search-friendly website with on-page SEO
- Search-friendly copy or content
- Local and hyper-local keyword usage (“chiropractors near me”)
- Search visibility for branded terms
- A solid analytics setup
- Optimised Google My Business and other local listing profiles
- Online reputation management
Be wary of SEO services that try to tempt you with “tens of thousands of website visits” per month. You only need quality traffic – those who will convert into customers.
Landing Pages
Digital marketing for chiropractors can take many forms. We recommend using landing pages on your website, landing pages provide a clear message and strong call to action and guides patients through the customer journey.
This includes a description of your services and the benefits of using them. It also includes price points and customer reviews, to add credibility. The sales funnel ends with a clear and powerful call to action (typically to book an appointment, schedule a call, or buy a product).
Landing page ads can be pop-up windows that open up to every website visitor. Alternatively, they can be reserved for certain users based on their actions, such as clicking on certain links or visiting specific pages. Lastly, you can use social media pages, emails, and external ads to guide traffic directly to landing pages on your website.
Google Ads (pay per click ppc)
One of the best digital marketing practices is to use Google Ads to promote your brand. Google Ads is ideal for websites that lack strong SEO or for business owners looking to make a bigger impact. Essentially you are paying Google to list your website at the top of the search results pages based on specific keyword searches.
Instead of paying for unpredictable outcomes, you will only be charged a fixed fee for every click your website generates. Begin by establishing your objectives, whether it is to increase phone calls, website traffic, or visits to particular pages.
Start out by defining your goals, whether it’s more calls, website visits, or visits to specific pages. Then, decide where you want to advertise. As a chiropractor, you’ll get the best return on investment by advertising locally, to people who will actually seek out specific services for specific conditions.
Then, you can design your message. This is what you want potential customers to see under your website link.
Next, set your maximum budget. Once met, you’re Google Ad will become inactive so you don’t end up paying more than you can afford. Finally, let the ad go live. For more in-depth information on ads see our Google Ads article.
Google My Business
If you’re looking for some of the best local SEO strategies, you need to invest in Google My Business. We say “invest,” but Google My Business is actually a free tool for business owners. When you sign up for Google My Business, you enhance your website’s visibility for local queries.
You can customize how your business appears on Google searches and Google Maps. Moreover, setting up your Google My Business account provides easy communication and exposure to potential customers. When they Google your business, your contact information, business overview, and more are immediately available.
Without ever clicking on your website, customers can find directions to your chiropractic clinic, see customer reviews, and more. While it may seem like this will take away traffic from your site, studies show that consumers are drawn to hassle-free interactions. No-click access to your business’s vital information will only help drive people to become customers.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a vital form of digital marketing for chiropractors. Studies show that the average consumer sees nearly 3,500 marketing messages a day. Most of these we disregard or filter out. Content marketing aims to address the issue of marketing going unnoticed and being overlooked.
Content marketing employs blog posts, social media updates, emails, and other subtler types of content to engage with specific target groups. It focuses on what the consumer is passionate about within the realm of the industry. For chiropractic customers, this could be:
- Living with back pain
- Ways to reduce neck and back pain
- Cost-effective treatments
- How to find competent chiropractors
- Exercises to strengthen the core and lower back
These are just a few examples of how you can create content that shows your customers that you care about their overall well-being, not just their patronage. You can also use your emails to provide them with discounts, incentive programs and other valuable offers. This will reaffirm their confidence in you while encouraging them to continue to use your services.
Social Media
Social media is an important platform in digital marketing for chiropractors. However, it might not be the easiest or most important patient acquisition channel. You can definitely increase your exposure through social media, but it takes a lot of time, energy, and focused effort to grow your social media following.
However, you should absolutely create a social media page, especially for your current customers. Here, you can keep them updated, lead them to your website, answer questions, and address concerns. However, it’s important to understand that people won’t necessarily follow your page unless they’re existing customers or have something to gain.
Email Marketing
We’ve spoken briefly of emails and using them for content marketing. However, we need to dig into why email marketing is so vital for your business. This includes how to create an email list and design an email campaign.
Email marketing takes advantage of a primed target audience. By subscribing to your email list, your subscribers have already shown a level of interest in your chiropractic services. In other words, you have a direct line of communication and advertising to people who want what you’re selling.
Increase the size of your email database by utilising landing page advertisements on your website, social media publications, and other paid advertisements. Motivate individuals to subscribe to your email list by providing them with exclusive promotions, complimentary consultations, and other valuable benefits.
It is essential to have an automated series of emails scheduled to be sent out several times per month. These emails will provide relevant, informative, and valuable content. Your subscribers must have the incentive to open your emails.
Ultimately, your emails should serve to remind people of your services. Ask how they’re feeling. Are they experiencing any pain or discomfort?
This will urge inspire people to come in for injuries, preventative care, pain, etc.
Pay Per Click Marketing (offsite)
Finally, think about investing some money in pay per click advertising. PPC advertising isn’t incredibly dissimilar from Google Ads. You only pay for the measurable influence your ads receive.
A host will publish your ad on their website. You pay a predetermined amount anytime one of their website users click on your ad.
This can be especially effective when affiliating with other local businesses with similar interests. Some ideal businesses to team up with could be supplement retailers, fitness centres, and other health specialists.Chiroprac tor
FAQs
Here are some answers to the common questions we get asked about chiropractic marketing.
How do I promote my chiropractic practice?
Hopefully we’ve answered your questions in this article but get in touch to learn more about how we can help promote your clinic.
How much should a chiropractor spend on marketing?
This really depends on the number of patients you’re looking to acquire and your capacity, as well as your location, competition and so on. However we’ve written an interesting article on marketing spend which you can read here.
How important is a website to my marketing efforts?
Do Chiropractors need marketing?
Absolutely. Without online marketing you won’t get the visibility you need to reach patients and you’ll be less competitive in the marketplace.
Chiropractor SEO - Why is it important?
SEO is the best way of getting your website to the top of search engines like Google and Bing. The higher up your are in search results, the more traffic you’ll get and the more patients you’ll see!
Can you help with creating chiropractic marketing strategies?
Of course, that’s what we do day in and day out. Get in touch and have a chat to see how we can help.
Which social media platforms are best to use?
Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok are the most prevalent. Which you use are often dependent on what you’re looking to achieve. We would advise you to stay away from running free appointment ads on Facebook however!
How important are local search strategies?
Much of what we do for the clinics we work with involves local search and optimising your website and Google My Business for local searches. So yes, every chiropractor should be using local search for their clinic even to engage existing patients as well as new.
Marketing for Chiropractors - Lead Generation
We often get asked about lead generation. This is a topic we have covered in another article. However in short we don’t believe lead generation should play a large role in chiropractic marketing although it can at times prove useful. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss.
To to better converts patients that visited your website?
CRO or conversion rate optimisation, is a topic in its own right. However it really comes down to messaging, call to actions and web design. We can obviously help with all of these. Most people find that CRO is difficult unless you’re experienced in the area.
