Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

There is an internet marketing secret that most “website guys” would rather you not know. It has to do with something you hear about all over the internet regarding the word “traffic.”

The secret is…

“When it really comes down to it, the amount of website traffic doesn’t really matter.”

This applies to website visitors specifically, but more generally to office visits in your practice as well. Let me explain…

Regarding the internet, there is no end to the amount of techniques you can use to get visitors to your site. You can use Facebook, Twitter, social media, social bookmarking, Google organic search, Google Adwords, YouTube videos, article marketing, Yahoo organic search, Yahoo ads, Bing organic, Bing ads, Ebay ads, and on and on.

If the yellow pages rep. stops by your office and says he can guarantee you 300 clicks a month for X amount of dollars, what do you say to him? I would say, “so what, what’s 300 clicks to me! How about you get me 300 qualified clicks to my special landing page?” Of course he’s likely to say that’s no problem. But from my experience, these ad reps are clueless about how to really market online. They are still thinking in terms of how many people see your ad, like all the newspaper and yellow page reps have done for years.

But it’s not the same online. What you want to buy is qualified traffic. People who are interested in what you do and how you can help them. A patient with severe sciatica is 100 times more likely to respond to a special page on your website discussing sciatica, than is a person with only a stiff back.

But even if you get qualified traffic, that’s still not what you care most about. What you really care about first and foremost is conversions! You want your website to convert visitors to patients. Who cares if your site gets 1000 visits a day (which could be some bored teenager in China or something), if you don’t get any new patients out of it.

How do you track conversions from your website? The same way you do (or should be doing) with any other type of marketing. You ask the new patient where they heard about you. It’s best to have some check boxes on your intake forms with the major types of marketing you do, i.e. website, newspaper, referral, etc. Of course you can leave an “other” check box so they can write in someone other than the selections you’ve given.

So how does this apply to your office?

In a general sense, this is true of all your patients that come in. You want to measure and watch your conversions to care. If you spend $10,000 this month on marketing and that brings in 30 new patients, how many of them stayed around for your recommended care plan? What was your conversions percentage? How much are they paying per visit?

You see, if all you cared about were the total number of visits to your office (or total number of new patients), you’re missing the most important numbers to track. Would you rather see 500 visits per week and make $5000, or see 100 visits and make $10,000? ? In chiropractic its common to hear people talking about how many visits they see per week. Yet you’ll rarely hear anyone say how many conversion they had this month, or what their gross collections were or how much they average per visit in collections.

If the only thing you cared about was visits per week, you could have someone stand out in front of your office on the road with a sign that said, “Free care for everyone!” But unless you’ve got a huge trust fund tucked away, this “free care” strategy will run you out of business.

The point is don’t just measure the total number of visitors to your website. Or the total number of patients you see a week. This numbers might be used to check growth, but they don’t tell you much in and of themselves. More importantly you need to measure conversions on your website and in your office recommendations.

Advanced articles on this subject:

Your Website is Not Enough

6 Chiropractic Internet Marketing Tools

14 Ways to Increase In-Office Conversions

A couple of years out of chiropractic college, I had hit rock bottom. No money for rent. Barely enough for food. And certainly no money for Christmas presents for our little daughter at the time. (If you want an exercise in empathy, try telling your two year old that there’s not enough money for even a single gift!)

Not being able to provide for one’s family is a heart-wrenching affair, which can send any “tough guy” into a deep depression. And that’s when I had a huge business awakening. Here’s what I learned:

“It’s not just about your patients!”

I know, you’re probably thinking this isn’t any huge breakthrough at all. But here me out a bit. I had been told over and over in school, by consultants and many industry leaders that “If you take care of enough people, they’ll take care of you” or “Don’t worry about the money, just take care of the patients.” Now both of these have an element of truth. You certainly can’t focus your life on the ‘love of money’. You also can’t be worried about ‘numero uno’ all the time. But the problem with these coined phrases is that they don’t tell the whole story.

You see, I had plenty of patients at the time. But I was giving away so much free care and discounted care that I was barely able to feed my family. People would pull up in Porsches and Jaguars to my office, while I was parting my old jalopy at the other end of the parking lot. I realize now that I was ‘doing stupid’ by the shovel full, but at the time I was under the impression that I just needed to see more patients. More visits from more new patients would solve my problems.

Except that it didn’t solve anything because I was marketing to the wrong patients! And on top of that offering them severely discounted care plans!

That’s why it was a huge breakthrough for me. Because for the first time in practice I realized that patients didn’t give a darn whether I drove a jalopy or a Mercedes. They just wanted their care. And I had a lot of nice caring patients, but in the end it didn’t matter to them how successful I was.

So why on earth am I so worried about what they thought of my recommendations. An extra $10 a visit was nothing to them, but a huge blessing to me and my family at the time.

This is one of the reasons I went from an average of $17 a visit to over $80 a visit — in just a matter of 4 months.

Now it wasn’t just charging more that turned my practice around. Thankfully, I was blessed with a wake-up call on how to use effective marketing too. My marketing plan before had simply been this: whoever calls or comes by asking me to market, that’s what I’ll use to get more patients in the door.

A few thousand dollars later and very few new patients I realized the famous “marketing doesn’t work” saying must be true. Little did I know that this saying was both right and wrong. You can guarantee that crappy marketing does not work. But effective marketing does indeed work. The key is being able to determine between the two!

Lessons to learn from this true story:

#1. If you’re not struggling now, make sure you never have to by doing right things right now. Don’t wait to market when you need new patients. Put a chiropractic ad in the newspaper every month. Make sure your internet marketing plan is up to speed. Send your patients “stick letters”.  And more.

#2. If you are struggling, stop wasting money on ineffective marketing and get some good marketing. Passing out business cards and brochures isn’t going to cut it in most cities. Get an ad set up to run before Christmas. (My Ultimate Chiropractic Ads have a 90 day guarantee. What do you have to loose?)

#3. Be thankful for what you’ve been given. I learned my lesson the hard way. But not a Christmas or Thanksgiving holiday rolls by without me thinking back on those hard times, and being thankful for the blessing I now have: a great wife, four beautiful children and I get to help chiropractors grow their business every day!

A few months ago I met an super-successful Australian physiotherapist that shares many of my marketing insights and values. (Physio’s in Australia have been dealing with a cash market for years…much like where our market is currently heading.)

When he told me he was giving away 214 marketing tools, a worldwide marketing with hundreds of health practitioners (including many chiropractors), and a monthly marketing CD for less than $100 a month, I thought he was joking.

Click here to see what I mean.

Paul Wright is living proof that a dream lifestyle is possible. He owns 3 successful “Get Active Physiotherapy” clinics in Australia, spends more time at home than his wife likes, never misses a school concert or sports carnival, and visits his clinics for only a few hours each week. He no longer even lives in the same city as 2 of his clinics.

He prefers spending time with his family and friends, at the beach, or at home working on teaching other health professionals how to succeed in business.

How would you like to have the last 20 years of Paul’s best posters, newsletters, articles, lectures, MP3 recordings, handouts and tools that focus on conditions like back pain, neck pain, shoulder and knee injuries and more?

You can grab all 214 of them and much more in his Profit Club Membership Program. All for a measly $67 AUD ($65 US right now) per month.

Here’s what you’ll get…

#1. Unlimited access over 200 marketing resources on the “Member Only Profit Club” website. This includes…

- 14 Medical Doctors Letters and Promotional Materials: Just cut and paste the all or part of these letters to increase referrals and relationships with local doctors.

- 24 General Business Development Items: Includes templates, clinic systems and marketing materials that will increase your clinic productivity and business results.

- 27 Business Building Audio Files: Over 20 hours of MP3s including popular recordings like The 10 Biggest Sales and Marketing Mistakes, The Get Published Interview, The Marketing Triangle and much more.

- 56 Patient and Client Newsletters: Paul and his team currently spend more than 2 days a month specifically writing these newsletters to send to patients and referrers – you can have access to them all. Simply cut and paste the text that you like to build your own newsletter.

- 30 Posters and Signs: Swipe all these high-quality, graphic design marketing materials that Paul’s Get Active has used over the years. Simply add your clinic details to these professional templates.

- 22 Protocols and Procedures: The best business protocols including front desk scripts, sales measurement tools, and cross referral protocols that will immediately increase your revenue.

- 23 Seminar Outlines, Posters and Handouts: Includes seminar handouts, outlines and posters – use these seminars to build your business NOW.

- 13 Vouchers and Other Marketing Materials: Paul’s most effective, creatively designed coupons and flyers that have brought thousands of dollars into Get Active over the years. Simply inserts your contact info and use.

- 5 Financial Tools to Track your Health Business Success: Paul has included here a few of his favorite excel spreadsheets that he uses every day to measure the success of his clinics.

Component #2. Each month you will be mailed an interview with Paul on CD, including topics like: marketing, website search engine optimization, getting more clients, increasing doctor referrals, leadership, customer service and other current issues and opportunities for health care businesses owners.

#3. Marketing Forum. You can instantly access a forum where you and other like minded health professionals can share marketing ideas and thoughts that will benefit everyone – including request signs and posters that our design team can add to the site.

How much for all this?

Only $67 (AUD) a month – and you can cancel at any time. That’s $65 US right now, but the exchange rate changes vary daily so sign up now and lock in this low price.

Join here:
http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?af=1247001

Join now and grab these Three Special, Limited-Time Bonus Offers: Special Bonus #1: Your choice of one of Paul’s “Million Dollar Health Professional” DVDs. (Valued at $125 AUD)

Special Bonus #2:FREE CD Interview “The Biggest Mistakes of Health Business Owners –How They are Costing You Thousands” with Health Business Coach – Anthony Capiaghi, D.C. (Valued at $75 AUD)

Special Bonus #3:FREE CD “How Your Website Can Make Money for Your Health Business” with Web Guru – Derek Recsei (Valued at $75 AUD)

Click Here to Get Everything Listed Above

Yours for greater success,
Michael Beck, D.C.

P.S. Paul has a 30 day money back guarantee so you really risk nothing by joining now. Grab the 214 resources, monthly CD’s, marketing forum and the 3 bonuses now at:

http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/?af=1247001

Is Google Adwords an effective way of doing chiropractic marketing? And if so why aren’t more chiropractors using it?

Before we go in depth with this question, let’s look at some basic terms. Adwords is a program by Google whereby you can place your ads on their search engine. When people type in certain phrases, called keywords, your ad will show up. If the person clicks your ad, they are taken to the site you have linked up with the ad. You only pay if someone clicks your ad (hence the term “pay-per-click advertising” is sometimes used) and do not pay if your ad only shows up but is not clicked. You bid a certain price for your ad to show for a certain keyword. So I might bid $2 for the keyword “back pain”. To keep it simple, we’ll say that if I’m the highest bidder my ad will show first. If the second highest bidder, my ad will show second, etc. (It’s actually a bit more complex than this, as you can beat out the highest bidder by having a higher click-through rate.)

So with that introduction, let us discuss the use of Adwords for chiropractors.

Fact #1
It’s a proven that your potential patients are on the internet, looking for solutions to their problem. Just look at how many searches Google’s keyword tool show occurred in the last 30 days in the United States:

chiropractor = 450,000 searches
back pain = 1.8 million searches
sciatica = 301,000 searches
neck pain =368,000

These are just a few general keywords. I haven’t even included all the specific keywords like “herniated disc back pain”. If we included all these specialty keywords, you could probably double or triple the categories listed above. Just click on this picture and you’ll see there are over 800 related terms just to back pain.

Now some chiropractors might say, “None of these searchers in my town!” Depending on how big of a city or town you live in, there may be only a few searchers for each keyword. But when you market to multiple keywords, you can bet all those keywords added up together make up some serious numbers. For example, my average ChiroPatients Online client has 798 keywords in their account.

Fact #2
Adwords does work to bring in more revenue. Google’s recent earnings report shows they made $7.29 billion last quarter, up 23% from this quarter last year! And guess where 99% of Google’s revenues come from? Their pay per click advertising. In addition to ads on their site, they also manage (or serve) ads on other large websites like Ebay, Blogspot.com, Youtube, and many more. So the question is why are more and more people spending money on advertising if it doesn’t work? Sure there are a few people out there who will spend money every month regardless of if they ever see a return. But in this economy, no small business is going to shell out tons of money on something if it proves to be a waste of time. And most of Google’s advertising clients are small businesses.

So given these two facts, why aren’t chiropractors making better use of Google Adwords? One of the biggest reasons is due to “bad experiences” with Adwords in the past. (Which sort of reminds me of the patient who’s uncle had a “bad experience” with a chiropractor, so he’s really scared to come in.)

Let’s look at some of the mistakes doctors have made:

1. Using XYZ yellow page company to send you “clicks”.
Clicks in general mean nothing in the broad picture. What you want is quality patients coming to your website and scheduling appointments. So these guys who promise “300 clicks a month” are really not doing much at all for you. You can hire a person in the back room to click your ads just as easy as they can.

2. Not setting a budget.
Some doctors will try Adwords a time or two, but forget (or not know how) to set a budget. Next thing they know Google is charging them $5000 for 1 days worth of clicks from China. Which bring us to the next mistake…

3. Not setting a geographical radius.
I usually set a 10-20 mile radius around the doctors practice. This means only people searching from computers inside that area can see the ads. If you’re in Paris, TX you don’t want your ad showing up in for people in Paris, France or Paris, Idaho. Plus there are bad people who will hire guys in India or Pakistan to just sit there and click your ad all day, running up your bill, which makes you stop advertising. This is called click fraud and Google will catch it most of the time, but some slip by.

4. Not cutting out bad keywords.
Sometimes you put in words like “chiropractic” but Google keeps showing your ad for searches on “Parker College of Chiropractic”, or some similar keyword. So now you’ve got to tell Google not to do that anymore by labeling that as a negative keyword. This will lower your costs since you won’t be wasting bad clicks anymore.

5. Not testing ads
Just like when you test offline ads, you should be testing Adwords ads too. In most campaign ad groups I’m testing two ads against each other. I’ll then pick the winner, delete the loser and write a new ad to start testing. This will gradually increase the number of people clicking on the ads over time, and lower your costs per click (due to complex algorithms we don’t have time to address here.)

6. Having an ineffective website.
Having a bad website is not a subjective term. Google has a complex system of analyzing your website to see if it will be pleasing to the visitor. Even if you’re not using Adwords, if you have a website they have measured it according to their standards called page rank, quality score, incoming links, internal links, number of pages, content, keyword saturation, and more. So the quality of your site can rise or lower your prices per click.

But more than Google liking your site, you want your site to convert visitors to patients. This can only be done by what’s called a landing page. A landing page will educate the visitor on why they should pick up the phone and call you to schedule now. Most landing pages are designed to fit the specific keyword the person was searching for on Google. So it works like this: person searches for “back pain” on Google.com, they see your ad that talks about back pain, they click the ad and land on a page that tells them why you are the doctor they should see for back pain. One of the biggest mistakes people can make with Adwords is by sending them to a non-specific web-page, like your homepage on your site.

Why aren’t you using Google Adwords? Leave a comment below.

Which marketing strategies are currently working the best? How much should you spend on each of them? Find out in these two snippets joined together for you from my recent Decompression Marketing Elite program.

In the video I mention the following categories. More resources can be found to help you when you click on these links:
Chiropractic Newspaper Ads
Google Adwords
Websites/Blogs
Internal Referrals
Social Media/Facebook
MD/Attorney Marketing
Workshops/Lectures