Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Every chiropractor wants to get new patients from the internet. As they should. It’s easy, inexpensive (compared to other marketing) and relatively easy when you know what you’re doing.

After getting a website, the first question to ask yourself is “where does my website rank on Google?”

I speak to many chiropractors who have had a website for years, but they still do not know where they rank on Google’s “organic” search results. The term “organic” simply means natural, as opposed to paid ads.

In this picture to the left, the area marked in red is the section for paid advertising. The middle section of the page that is not marked in red is the organic search results. These results are based on Google’s complex algorithm for determining which website is most relevant to the searcher.

If you pay someone to run your website, the first thing you should measure is how many new patients you are getting from it. The second thing you should be tracking is where it ranks in the organic Google search results.

To do this, go to google.com and search for the term “chiropractor”.  As long as you’re in the area you practice in, your practice should come up. You really need to be in the top 3 search results to get new patients from your website. If you’re in the top 5 results you’re doing well. Below #5 and your website is not effective at all (except for a yellow page type listing for existing patients to look up your phone number.)

If your website is not in the top 3 listing, let’s look at the top 5 reasons why?

1.) Your website is new (under 6 months old).

Google is not simply about first come, first serve. But they are a wary of new websites. I’ve worked on sites that rank highly within 2-3 months, but this took a focused effort of giving Google exactly what it wants to see. So it might take a few months for a new website to rank highly. But you should still be doing everything right that in 3-6 months it will rank. It’s easier to set things up right from day 1 than it is to go back later and fix it.

2.) You are in a very large city (1 million+). Not a suburb, which in this case is considered a small town, but your practice is physically in a city like New York, Dallas, etc.

You can still rank in the top 3 in a larger city, but everything has to be done right. The competition is obviously much bigger. Sometimes you can choose a specific neighborhood and rank well for that, like” North End Boston” or “North Dallas”.  If your prospective patients are typing in these terms when they go online, you would be better off setting up your site for that neighborhood. Also, many patients are not going to drive across miles of traffic to see you, so it may be a better use of your time and money to focus on your local neighborhood.

3.) Your site is not optimized for certain keywords.

Keywords are what people type in when searching for help. The most obvious ones are chiropractor, chiropractic, etc. But there is a long list of keywords you want to rank for. Some others would be back pain, sciatica, decompression, and so on. Many chiropractors will pay thousands to Joe Computerguy to “optimize” their websites. Problem is that Joe Computerguy is optimizing the site for 1999 standards, messing with meta-tags and met-keywords. This is website basics. To rank high on Google you’ve got to play in the big leagues and optimize using the newest technology.

4.) You’re still using an old website layout

Moore’s law says that the amount of computer technology out there doubles every 24 months. But you wouldn’t know it looking at some chiropractor’s websites. Many doctors have websites for their office that look exactly like websites we all ad in the late 90′s. Technology has drastically changed with regards to websites, making it not only easier to build a webpage but much more inexpensive. Google loves a dynamic interactive website with regularly updated information. In areas where all the other chiropractors have outdated sites, you can just straight to the top of Google simply by updating yours.

5.) You don’t have enough backlinks

Google keeps a count of the number of websites linking back to yours. The site with the most backlinks, taking into account #4 above, will usually rank first on Google. To see how many websites you have linking to you, use a free checker like Backlink Watch. Run a few of your top competitors through there too. Do they have more backlinks than you do? If so you need to start building some more.

By constantly working on these, you’ll have a website at the top of Google in no time. Then you’ll be ready for some heavy duty chiropractic Adwords campaigns.

Today I was reviewing the practice stats of a Decompression Marketing Elite client and noticed that this client was doing exceptionally well with internet marketing, getting a whopping 1873% return! The internet is one of the most cost effective ways to market your practice. There is at least a billion people using the internet in the world. And it’s growing more and more every day.

At this point, it’s not a matter of if you should be marketing online, but simply how you should be marketing online. But where do you start? What works for chiropractors?

There are literally thousands of different ways to market your practice online. But not all of them will bring you a return on your time or money spent. Some are frankly a complete waste of your time, no matter what anyone tells you.

Let’s take Google for example…

On the Google search engine there are only 21 slots on the results page (11 paid, 10 organic) for keywords. And we all know you gotta be in the top 5 listings are you are going to be overlooked. How do you go about getting in the top 5 listings?

Some “web site experts” are still claiming you’ve gotta have good meta tags, and they’ll gladly do that for you at the low price of $1000. Most chiropractors don’t have a clue what meta tags are (why should they) so this geeky language makes the “expert” sound like he knows what he’s doing.

The problem is that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important components of your website, meta tags are about a .05. Which means you could leave meta tags out and still be at the #1 spot if you did everything else right. Meta tags were hugely important in 1998, but in today’s world they are simply minor in comparison to other components.

So as you can see, there’s a ton of information to sort through and learn. The problem is you have very little time to do it. And neither do I. This is why I have developed easy to use tools for internet marketing, as well as found great services that can save you time and money.

Here’s a list of some great internet marketing resources you can use. Most are chiropractic specific. A couple are my own and the others are people I’ve dealt with in various ways in the past, meaning they can be trusted.

ChiroPatients Online – My own niche specific done-for-you website, blog and Google Adwords automated system.

Complete Internet Marketing System – A fully automated new patient internet generator that includes email, videos, blogs and more.

Automated Social Networking – A system where all your online social networking is done for you each month.

Customized Twitter Backgrounds – Semmy has the lowest prices on high quality Twitter backgrounds.

Aweber Email System – The best email system on the internet.

ChiroMarketing Academy – My membership site on how to lessons on internet marketing, print marketing, conversion and more.

Leave a comment below and tell us if internet marketing has worked well for your practice.

Are you getting quality new patients from your internet marketing? You are marketing your practice on the internet, right?

Internet marketing is a lot more than just having a website that looks pretty. Too many chiropractors rely on a brochure type online marketing to bring them new patients.

But if you’ve had one of these “brochure” sites for long, you’ll agree it’s not that effective in bringing in new patients.

The problem is you’re missing out on tons of potential new patients. More and more people are using the internet to find chiropractors. And even more people are going online to find solutions to their problems, like answers for conditions they are suffering from.

As of today, 1.5 million people in the U.S. searched for the term “chiropractor” on Google in the last 30 days. That’s just on Google (not Yahoo or Bing), and doesn’t include other similar terms like “chiropractic” which had 3.5 million searches on Google in the last month. Here are a few more numbers on Google searches in the last month:

• back pain: 4 million
• headaches (not even including migraines): 1.8 million
• Neck pain: 1 million
• Neuropathy: 823,000
• Sciatica: 623,000

So how do you get these searches to turn into new patients for your practice?

Join me for a free webinar  where a special guest and I will show you how. This webinar is for those who barely know how to use their email all the way up to those who are expert internet marketers.

Watch the replay here:

http://dcpracticetools.com/chiropractic-internet-marketing

Here’s a sneak peak at what he’s using to bring in new patients to chiropractors every day:

Blogs: Blog are great because they are fully customizable, easy to set up, and search engines like Google loves them. Load them with videos, posts and links to your social networks to get even more new patients out of a blog. Too much work for you? Find out on the webinar how to have weekly blog posts done for you at pennies on the dollar.

Email Marketing: Are you using email marketing yet? Learn how to Create and send unlimited email marketing campaigns. Target market based on opt-in demographics, patient profiles and more. Very easy to use.

Direct Response Marketing: If you’ve read this blog for long, you know I focus a lot on direct response marketing. And you should too, especially on your websites. Find out to get a complete direct response system funneling all leads directly to your phone line and/or email inbox.

Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing: How to use sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus how to have them cross marketed with your website.

Niche Marketing: In today’s over-marketed world, you’ve got to focus on specific high-response niches. Learn how to use 15 individual websites for each niche; back pain, spinal decomp, wellness, cold laser, auto accident, neck pain, carpal, fibro, and many more. Plus, create as many additional niche systems and sites as you want.

Patient Retention: Discover how to use monthly, direct response chiropractic e-newsletters written and sent to your patient or prospect lists each month. This includes new patient stick campaigns, reactivation campaigns, an appointment reminder service and much more.

Videos: How to effectively use patient attraction videos created and personalized for you.Also these videos can be submitted to over 16 internet directories each month.

Join now and be there to listen to an expert internet marketer is doing it for his clients. I guarantee you’ll learn something new because this guy has been known to use over 41 different automated patient attraction systems.

Watch the replay here:

http://dcpracticetools.com/chiropractic-internet-marketing

This is a final post of a 2 part series. The first part is Chiropractic Video Marketing, Part 1.

Now that we’ve looked at how to market you video for new patients, what kind of equipment do you need?

Here’s a list of the inexpensive equipment you need to make your video look like it was made in a million dollar studio.

Webcam or digital video recorder.

Almost any webcam will work, but I recommend a higher quality recorder if possible. I use the Flip Video Ultra which is extremely simple and easy to use. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, records up to 60 minutes, and requires no software or wires to upload to your computer. It only has a few buttons, like play, stop, power, fast forward and rewind, so it’s not complicated at all. You simply flip out the USB port and plug into your computer, then the video you just recorded will upload.

The biggest problem with the Flip Video is that the sound quality isn’t that group. It would be nice if you could plug in an external mic, but the Flip Video series does not offer this. However the new Kodak Zi8 is a small HD camcorder that does have an audio input port. This one comes highly recommended so I’ll likely be upgrading soon.

Microphone for quality sound.

Bad sound can totally ruin a good video. This is why the Flip Video mentioned above has it’s drawbacks. To get good quality sound, I recommend the low cost Audio-Technica ATR35S lapel mic. This mic is normally less than $30 and can be plugged into the Kodak Zi8.

Video Screen Capture

This type of software allows you to capture what you are doing on your computer while talking into a microphone. You might choose to record a workshop on screen with power point presentations or do a staff training video on how to use your practice software. This is the software I use to make training videos for this blog and ChiroMarketing Academy. On doctor I spoke with is using it to record his new patient class and having it duplicated onto DVD’s to hand out to his patients for referral purposes.

The software I use is called Camtasia and costs about $300. I recommend you try the 30 day free trial and see if you like it. You can find it here:

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp.

For recording with Camtasia or editing my screen capture videos, I use the Logitech USB headset which works great and is very affordable (less than $35).

Editing Camcorder Videos and Creating DVD’s

When you use the camcorders mentioned above for patient testimonials, your orientation class, etc. you want an easy software to edit those videos and/or make DVD menus/titles. While Camtasia works well for editing screen capture videos, it is terrible at handling videos imported from a Flip Video or Kodak HD. For editing and creating DVD’s the best software is Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9. This is a reasonably priced (currently less than $99) software that allows you to create DVD menu titles, edit audio and video, and much more.

It can do a lot more than you’ll likely ever need, but it’s great for non-AV people like myself. I just import the video from the camcorder, cut out what I don’t like, and export it in a format for youtube.

Using it to make DVD menus, titles, et. is really beyond the scope of this post, but if you’re interested in learning how I recommend you check out Terry Dean’s Internet Lifestyle System. In this set of DVD’s, he spends quite a bit of time on how to easily use Sony Vega for DVD production (plus there is lots of other very valuable internet marketing lessons in this set.)

A few years ago using video on the internet was pointless because most people had dial-up internet and could not play the videos. Now, the majority your patients have a high-speed connection, allowing to watch even movies and TV shows from the internet.

I follow quite a few internet marketers. In the past few years, many of them have run tests on video vs. no video on a website. Results always show the use of video to be much more profitable.

So how can you use video to grow your practice?

1. On your landing page.
This is an ideal location for a short 2-5 minute video of you talking directly to the prospect. The important thing here is building a relationship with your prospect right away, so they don’t hit the back button and go somewhere else. You should still have some text on your landing page for those who don’t want to watch the video.

2. On your blog.
Your blog is a great place to post videos. You can record videos on special upcoming events (instead of or in addition to writing your post), do short educational videos, remind them to do their home exercises, educate on your nutritional or supportive products, and more. You could occasionally post short videos of you and your family on vacation or goofing off around the house. This will build a better relationship with your patients. Some blogs are just “videocasts” where the blogger never writes and only posts videos. I don’t recommend this, since Google can only read the text on your blog Without text on your site you will loose the SEO bonus of having a blog.

3. Sites for traffic generation.
Youtube gets a huge amount of traffic daily, and you should definitely have a video there. You can upload your video to youtube.com and then embed it on your blog. I recommend using a site like TubeMogul.com. With TubeMogul you can upload a video one time, and they will distribute it out to over 10 highly traffic’d video websites like YouTube, GoogleVideo, Myspace and more. At the time of this writing, it’s still a free service.

The key to making this work is having your blog’s web address at the end of the video or running on the bottom of the screen throughout the video. Because anyone can embed your video on their site once it’s on YouTube, without your address no one will know how to find out more info about you.

4. On your main/traditional website.
If you have a static website (webpage that never gets updated) you can still post videos on it. The problem with this is that you can’t target the videos as specifically as you can on a landing page. Therefore, your script would need to include a more generalized description of you and your practice.

5. As a ‘video email’ to patients.
You can send out a broadcast email (or include it in your Autoresponder series) from your www.easyemailsystem.com account that gives a link for a video. For example, email #7 in my autoresponder could be a 3 minute office tour on video. You would write a few paragraphs in the email, then give the to the webpage your video is embedded on.

6. Workshops and special events.
You could record a new patient orientation workshop or advanced nutrition workshop to put on DVD or post on a website. If someone misses your new patient class, send them to the website or hand them the DVD you had cheaply, but professionally duplicated at Kunaki.com

In the case of advanced workshops, you could break them up into lessons and even charge the patients to watch them — six video lessons on weight loss, or a online workshop for detoxification. The first time you could do it live and record it, after that it could run on autopilot for your. You could also put it on DVD’s and sell them as a product at your front desk.

7. For staff training.
Ever lost or fired a staff member and had to retrain the new person? Does this happen over and over every year? Why not record what you teach them and make it part of your office training manual. With screen capture software and a camcorder, you could have a nice set of office training videos that would cut out 90% of your time on training a new employee.

In the next post, we’ll look at the inexpensive equipment you need to make your videos look like it was made in a million dollar studio.

Find more “how to” lessons on internet marketing, print marketing, conversion and more, at www.ChiroMarketingAcademy.com.

Google has released their attempt at social media. Many internet marketing gurus suspected that with the rise in popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook, it was just a matter of time before Google launched something of their own.

While I don’t think Google Buzz has huge new patient generating compatibility, it certainly is a place to build valuable “back links” to your website. The more links you have, the higher your SEO ranking will be on Google, which means you’ll come up higher when people search. And of course coming up high on Google certainly means getting more new patients!

To participate in Google buzz, you’ll need to have a Gmail account. And frankly you should already have a gmail account. No free email account is easier to use, filters spam, and delivers the correct email message:

Sidenote on Email Delivery: It’s will known in internet marketing that certain email carriers have a really bad delivery rate. Yahoo, Hotmail, and the worst, AOL all have a terrible delivery rate, which means they either don’t deliver your messages sent out to patients or they wrongly put your messages in the spam folder. I cannot tell you how many times doctors using an AOL email account have become upset with us, thinking we were refusing to reply to their support questions. However, we had sent them numerous emails, but since they an an aol account, it’s pointless to expect they even received those replies. My point is, if you are using these email providers, especially aol, you’re missing a lot of important emails that people are sending out to you.

Now, back to Google Buzz. Check out this short video with summarizes what Buzz is all about:

http://dcincome.com/blog/how-to-use-google-buzz-strategically/

Imagine my surprise when, as I was getting a new ChiroPatients Online client set up yesterday, I found a new chiropractic keyword. Not another word for chiropractic, but a keyword that is a symptom your patients have.

(If you’re not familiar with the term “keyword”, you may want to read a previous post where I covered this called How To Use Internet Keywords In Your Offline Marketing.)

Here’s how it happened…

Ever so often, as we’re setting up a new client, I’ll do some keyword research using Google’s keyword generator tool. With this tool, you type in a keyword like “neck pain” and it will throw out about 700 related words people search for on Google. Plus, it will show you how many searches each keyword gets per month.

As I’m working on a list of symptoms that people would type in Google, I stumbled across an interesting keyword. The keyword list Google’s tool generates for you always includes related keywords.

However, this time a keyword popped up that was not one I had heard of before. I just assumed it was a mistake. Something Google just through in the list because it sounded like another keyword, but wasn’t really related.

But since it gets over 300,000 searches monthly, I thought it would be worth checking it out. I typed into Google’s search engine, and sure enough it’s a related keyword.

I’ve never heard it used before — not in chiropractic school, not in practice, and not by any consulting group. Maybe they teach it now in chiropractic school, but I doubt it.

So I went ahead and put the keyword into my client’s Adwords campaign. When I checked his account this morning, I was shocked to find this keyword triggered my client’s ad 10 times in his area in the last 24 hours!

Since his ad only show for a 20 mile radius around his practice, this is big. Very big because his ad is the only one that shows. No one else knows this keyword exists, therefore they aren’t bidding on it. That means he’s the first and only ad that person sees on the page. And he’s going to pay a very small amount when someone clicks his ad.

For example, a typcial search on Google looks like this. With 3 ads up top, and 8 down the side.

This of course drives bids way up, making it very costly to be in #1. But imagine if you were the only ad showing for a popular keyword. Then you get to be #1 with very little cost. And even more important, you’re the first thing people see on the page and the only ad showing.

In the interest of my clients, I can’t reveal what this keyword is. But I did confirm it’s a new keyword. By using Google’s Trends tool, it showed that the keyword just came into use in 2009. Google Trends will show you how popular a keyword is over time. And you can see if it’s trending up or trending down.

My guess is that MD’s are telling their patients they have this problem, and the patients are going home to search for it online. Here’s a screenshot of the Google Trends research.

The lesson from this is that it pays to do your research. And it definitely pays to know what you’re doing with Adwords so you can be first in the market for new keywords. Without the internet and Google’s keyword tool, I’m not sure chiropractors would even know this word was being used at this level for another 3-5 years.

If you’d like someone to handle your internet marketing for you, check out this free webinar. (We have room for only 2 more clients this month.)

http://www.ChiroPatientsOnline.com

As we finish out 2009, I want to look forward at some possible trends in 2010. Today’s post looks at the last 2 predictions (out of 5 total) I see for next year. To view part 1, click here.

#4. Better Internet Marketing For New Patients

While chiropractors have been using websites for over a decade now, I predict an increase use of the internet to get new patients. This reasons for this are many — increasing use of the internet in general, rising popularity of Facebook and Twitter, Google’s affinity for blogs, and more.

In 2010, it’s likely that the majority of chiropractors will realize that internet marketing is about effectiveness, not the flashy graphics and “pretty websites”. Even in 2009 I noticed many of the website developers were removing their ‘rotating spine’ charts and adding more content instead.

Content really is king with search engines like Google. I have found that we are able to get professional websites with direct response copy up quickly using blog software. Then we ad a few blog posts written from the doctor-to-patient view point, and within days Google is ranking our brand new website in the top 5 spots. We can then keep this doctor there by adding new blog posts over time.

While many chiropractors realize the usefulness of organic or free search engine optimization, most do not yet grasp the potential of pay-per-click marketing (PPC).

Based on this, I also predict that more chiropractors will discover how well Google Adwords can work for new patient marketing. It surprises me that more chiropractors are not taking advantage of this great marketing tool. Many tell me it’s because they’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. However, the problem occurs when doctors send Adword’s “visitors” directly to their homepage on their website. By using condition-specific landing pages, with direct response copy, plus email marketing follow-up, my internet marketing clients are finding this method very successful and will continue to do so into next year.

Admittedly there is a learning curve to Adwords, along with the reward and punishment system Google has built into it.

But in my opinion its well worth the time spent for the return on investment, especially in the long run. Of course for those who don’t want to learn it or don’t have the time, we created ChiroPatients Online specifically for this reason.

#5. Deeper Patient Relationships

Because of what many are calling the New Economy, patients are more careful with their money. Even though we are moving out of the recession and the overall economy will improve in 2010, people are not ready to be back in the 2008-2009 feeling where money was tight.

If you’ve been in practice for long, this really is no surprise. Patients, being human beings like the rest of us, tend to drop out of things over time. Yet I expect this to rise in 2010 as more healthcare opportunites will come into the market combined with more careful spending mentioned above.

Both of these, the careful spending and more competition, means that chiropractors will have to work harder to keep their current patients.

It still surprises me that doctors are willing to spend so much to get a new patient, but scrimp on spending anything to keep them over the long term. Something as simple as mailing a chiropractic newsletter once a month is a bare essential. Holding true patient appreciation events and creating V.I.P. lists will take your practice to an even higher level.

Other great strategies for keeping your patients longer include dinner workshops, patient of the month programs, referral contests, and stick letters.

You can also expect more online patient communication to grow in 2010. The most powerful of these is email marketing, but many chiropractors will also get their facebook and twitter pages up and running.

This concludes my 5 big predictions for 2010. I recommend planning for them sooner rather than later.

Did I miss one you thought was important? Do you have a prediction I didn’t mention? Leave your comments below.

As a way of saying thanks for reading my blog, I wanted to give you one of the many lessons from ChiroMarketing Academy. This is a written article posted there, along with all the video and audio lessons to fully flesh out your marketing plan.

Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving!

You’ve heard it mentioned before. Every chiropractic coach or consultant harps on it. Some chiropractors have even claimed to have reached the magical place where that’s all their practice relies on.

I’m talking about referrals.

The ever elusive type of new patient every practice loves. Referrals, on average, are easier to convert to care, cost little-to-nothing to acquire, and are just all around less stress on your practice. [...]

I often get asked if online social marketing and networking really work to bring in new patients. My answer is usually “it depends on what you mean by social marketing and networking.”

Before I explain, let’s first define what these words mean.

Social marketing: marketing and advertising that reaches potential consumers via social networking website, such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Social networking: a social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

As you can see, these two terms are closely related. And often times they are used interchangeably within internet marketing circles.

Let’s look at the major components of a good social networking plan that can bring in new patients…

Press Releases
Press releases can be submitted online (for free) to many of the press release sites. This will get picked up and listed on the major search engines news, like Google News and Yahoo News.

Video
Most people have high speed internet and love to watch videos on Youtube. By submitting short 2-5 minute videos educating prospective patients on your services, you’re going to increase your web traffic and potential new patients.

Blog
A blog is what you are reading now. It’s basically a website that makes it easy for regular updates to be posted. Search engines love blogs, and will rank them higher than static pages on the same topic because blogs are new content. And Google especially likes fresh content.

Articles
Submitting articles to free article directories are a great way to generate traffic to your site. Other blogs and websites will pick up your article and spread it around on their sites, increasing the number of links you get back from it, creating a “viral” effect.

Social Bookmarking
This is where you save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. By bookmarking your own blog posts and adding friends, others will see what you like and click the links back to your site. Example sites are Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc.

SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is when your website or blog has been optimized for certain keywords, thereby increasing your ranking on Google and other search engines. (Having a blog alone will automatically increase your SEO.)

Social Media
Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook are the major sites here. The average person on these websites are females around age 35-40 — the perfect chiropractic patient! You can also interact with people who are talking about their health problems.

So, back to my original question, do these sites actually work to bring in new patients?

Yes, when used together, they definitely work. But, you have to do them often enough and with a purpose. Here’s what I mean…

If you think you can just post a couple of things about you had for dinner last night, like everyone else does on Facebook or Twitter, and expect to get new patients, it’s never going to work.

You must use specific marketing phrases and techniques on these sites to bring more traffic to your website. The more people who come to your site, the more new patients that will call and schedule.

Two chiropractors, Dr. Len Schwartz and Dr. Matt Loop, just released a social networking and marketing video at their Automated Social Networking 3.0 site that shows you the exact layout of what you need to do

Their free video is simple, easy to understand, and provides you with a proven and tested Social Media Marketing formula for achieving online or offline success!

Check it out here:

www.InternetForChiros.com

I found that they explained the complex issues of social marketing very well, especially on the second page. There you’ll see a 30 minute video where they draw everything out on a whiteboard.