As the owner of successful chiropractic practice, you feel confident in running your business. You’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. You’ve hired the best staff, have the best equipment, and keep your skills up-to-date. But when it comes to using chiropractic marketing techniques, you may have doubts.
You shouldn’t. Take a minute and think about what marketing really is… it’s helping people in need get solutions to their problems.
You became a chiropractor to help people. Marketing simply helps you help as many people as possible.
And the best part? You’ve probably done 90% of the work.
So buckle up, we’re about to dive deep into 10 chiropractic marketing techniques that can allow you to help many more people.
1. Develop an Easy Referral Program
A great way to get new clients is word of mouth. Rewarding your current clients for referring new clients to your office can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make it. The most popular way of rewarding clients is by offering a discount to the current client.
3 Options for Your Referral Plan
- Ask new patients who referred them, then send that person a $10 coupon off their next visit.
- Offer a referral bonus of one free visit to a current client and their friend.
- Run a contest, and the person with the most referrals wins a month of free visits, or whatever prize you deem appropriate.
Most chiropractic care is not fully covered by health insurance, which is why referral programs are taken seriously by current clients. Any chance they have to save money while receiving quality care will be beneficial for everyone.
Minimal cost is involved, as referrals function on organic marketing.
As a bonus, when your current clients are sharing your information with their friends and family, you are receiving a testimony and free advertising!
2. Get Your Masseuse Out the Door
Many people within the community are interested in chiropractic care and are eager to learn more but are unable to come into your practice. Consider taking your massage services to them.
Start with your local schools. Offer free lunch and quick massages to local teachers over their lunch break, or during a professional development training.
Next, head out to local businesses to help them provide this service to their employees as part of an employee appreciation day.
The teachers and employees will be able to learn about the benefits, receive something nice, and associate chiropractic care with your office. After having been treated to a great (free) service, when they think about where to go for chiropractic care, your name will be top of the list.
Carefully chose the massage therapist, keeping in mind the audience with whom they will be interacting. You want someone who is outgoing and fun and can talk about your services while also maintaining the professional atmosphere that you have in your office.
And of course, for this chiropractic marketing technique to be super effective, make sure your masseuse asks the person to book their next appointment.
If possible, find a massage therapist who will be able to take the entire program on, from scheduling to working the events.
Getting out into the community, in any way you can, will help with name recognition and increasing your clients.
3. Maximize Your Social Media Marketing by Simplifying
Internet marketing is a great way to increase leads, without increasing the amount of time it takes to develop them. Through Facebook, advertisements and posts can be scheduled in advance, limiting the amount of time someone needs to spend on them.
Using social media to advertise, share patient testimonials, and reach a wider audience is the best option for chiropractors. Most people get overwhelmed with the multiple platforms and the list of options available for social media advertising. We understand. That’s why we suggest making sure your information is correct on all of them but then focusing on only 2 platforms…
Yelp & Facebook. Why? Because they are where most people look for businesses to visit.
Considered one of the most trusted review sites, Yelp is the go-to for people looking for a service. Facebook and Google Reviews are gaining in popularity, but have not quite caught up with Yelp.
Facebook is important because it is one of the first places people use for doing research on your business. If your page is blah, your prospective patient will think your entire practice is also blah. Keeping your page up-to-date with the correct information and regular posts will let people know your practice is active.
Also, your Facebook and Yelp pages are great places to alert people as to your specials, to free events, and to entice them to try your office. A digital coupon can easily be shared, as well as videos of happy patients.
Video is extremely popular on Facebook and other social media platforms. Ask some of your regular patients if they’d be interested in recording a few minutes of video sharing how chiropractic care has changed their life (more on this in a bit).
Also, Facebook is a great source of leads if you build a jaw-dropping offer funnel to the right audience. And of course, we can help you with that. Contact us today to find out how.
4. Speak to The Community
Community organizations are constantly looking for guest speakers at events, both to draw a crowd and to share information. Spending some time presenting at these events will increase your name recognition, and give you the opportunity to increase your patient base.
As a bonus, the more people see you and your name, the more familiar they will be with it, and they’ll know exactly who to call (or who to tell their friends to call) when they need a chiropractor.
Look for organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and other groups of professionals who are looking for guest speakers. Put together a short bio and a few ideas of what you would like to present and contact their event coordinator to get on the schedule.
Here are some speaking ideas to get you started:
- 5 Ways to Stop “Tech Neck”
- How Your Child’s Backpack Impacts their Spine
- How to Improve Your Golf Swing
- Is Your Pillow Causing Your Pains?
Ask if you can bring some equipment to demonstrate, some brochures or business cards to hand out, and consider giving away a free adjustment or discount to one attendee.
5. Reward Your Best Patients for Return Visits
Do you know why people return to the same grocery store? Or prefer one hotel to another? Because they are being rewarded for their purchases.
You can quickly adapt this to your chiropractic office and develop your own “preferred patient” rewards program.
Here are some of our favorites:
- Punch-card: After ten visits, your patient would get a free adjustment.
- Package deals: Purchase ten visits at once and save 10% helps.
- Monthly membership: Offer a monthly membership that includes a set amount of services, for a bundled discount.
Your rewards program can run all the time or just on special occasions. The activity garnered from it will let you know if it’s successful and the peak times to run the program.
6. Share Your Expertise
You are the authority, so why not share that experience and authority with others? Writing for other blogs, publications, or newsletters will help expand your reach and promote your authority.
A great place to share your thoughts is on the blogs and websites of chiropractic associations and programs.
Start with the college or university you attended. Simply check their website for submission guidelines and send them your ideas.
A well thought out pitch to an editor should include:
- The topic of your story and why is unique
- The reason you should be the person to write it
- A brief (2-3 sentence) bio of yourself
- 2-3 links to other examples of what you have written
These sites have a built-in authority and great reach. As such, they are often busy and are scheduling posts months in advance, so if you have a great idea, send it to them immediately!
They will help promote your content, sharing it throughout the community, and boosting the ranking on search engines like Google.
7. Write a Book to Establish Authority
Along with publishing a blog, consider publishing a book! Everyone has a website and a social media presence, but a book can help you stand out.
The book you chose to write can be about anything chiropractic but should relate to your specific audience. If you work with athletes or parents, then write about topics that will interest them.
No need to worry about looking for a publisher, an e-book is pretty quick to write, compared to a longer, traditional book. And you can self-publish it, making this chiropractic marketing technique much easier to implement.
Here’s the quick rundown on how to self-publish on Amazon Kindle:
- Create an Amazon KDP account
- Add new title
- Enter your book
- Target your audience
- Upload a cover
- Publish!
Publishing a book boosts your authority on a subject. Then you have the opportunity to market your book and your practice a variety of ways such as:
- offering webinars or seminars to talk more about your specialty
- host videos on Facebook to increase social media traffic to your pages
- give away the first chapter when someone joins your email list
- give away the book to anyone that refers a new patient
Publishing a book is the first step in what can be a very lucrative and successful marketing project.
8. Share Success Stories
Something that is really comforting to other people when they are seeking a new health care or service provider is first-hand testimonials.
Sharing the testimonies from your current or past patients are the perfect place to utilize photos and video. Videos are going to take over the majority of social media this year, and they are so easy to produce.
Create a small video/photo setup in a corner your office with great lighting (we like ring lights and a smartphone).
Start by asking patients if they are willing to share how your chiropractic care has impacted their lives.
Then, have one of your staff ask your patient these 6 questions in the video corner of your office:
- What’s your name & where are you from?
- What was your biggest skepticism or hesitation before coming into our office?
- How did that perception (from question 2) change after your visits?
- Can you give me one specific example of how our services have changed your life?
- What would you say to someone who was thinking of using our office but right now is on the fence?
- Is there anything else that you think is worth sharing or that you want to share that you haven’t been able to yet?
You should have someone that is not you asking the questions. As the authority and the chiropractor, it is simply too awkward for the person giving the testimonial to answer them to you.
Video them if at all possible. If they aren’t comfortable on video, do an audio recording and take pictures of them in your video/photo corner. And don’t forget to get official permission from them to use their testimonial by having them sign a media release form.
Add these to your social media and website views. By adding reviews on Facebook, people will spend up to 10% more time on your site, and reviews on Twitter increase the time spent on site by up to 35%. People really do read reviews!
You can also have people write up their review and post it on your website or as a blog. This is a great option for those who aren’t comfortable in front of the camera but still want to share their stories.
One additional note, make sure you aren’t paying people to leave reviews, and if you are exchanging any services for a review (or discounts!) that it is clearly noted in their review.
9. Break Bread
People love food. And they love company. When you combine the two, you open up a world of possibility for new clients.
Hosting dinners to build your patient base is a bit complicated, but worth it because you can get 30 to 40 new patients each time you do it.
Local restaurants are a great place to do this chiropractic marketing technique. Look for one that has a larger room for bigger parties.
Schedule your talk for before the meal, or during dessert, and for no longer than 20 minutes.
Talk to the wait staff about the schedule so they aren’t interrupting your talk and distracting your potential patients
Food quality and food choice are really important. You’re going to be talking about health, so you’ll want to do it with healthy food options.
One way to really excel at this would be to find a mentor who has done this in a different business and attend one of their dinners.
If the first time doesn’t give you the results you were hoping for, try again, this really can work!
10. Stay in the Inbox
Monthly newsletters are a great way to send information to everyone at one time. But they should not be treated as an opportunity to share everything at once. You’ll want to pick and choose what gets sent out via email and when. Monthly is a great timeline to start.
Growing an email list can take time, but you may be surprised at just how quickly you can do it. In fact, you may already have an email list… your current patients!
Be sure to also add a sign-up box on your website and make sure that people can easily find the way to sign-up on all of your social media options. Most people respond best to something that entices them to sign up. This could be a coupon, a free consultation, a checklist of ways to prepare for their first visit, really anything. As soon as they sign-up, they get this special delivery. Then, they will start getting your monthly newsletters.
Your newsletter can share links to the content you have published this month, particularly those hosted on other sites. It should also include the link to your book and upcoming information on referral programs and rewards programs.
Treat your newsletter as though you have three minutes to tell your audience what is going on in a month. And make sure it reads well on mobile!
10 Chiropractic Marketing Techniques Summary
With these ten great ways to market, now it’s time to choose what you are going to try. Pick the one you like most, develop a marketing plan and schedule and get going!
Don’t try all ten things at once, but be strategic about your decisions. After a few months, you can grow and add more strategies!
However, if it all sounds too overwhelming, give us a call or send us a message below. Take advantage of our experience to reach the top of the ladder, build your practice, and increase your reach.
