Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

In 2009, a chiropractor can not rely on simply having a website to bring him new patients from the internet. It’s simply not enough anymore (and likely hasn’t been for a few years.)

Now if it was still 1999, and you were the first to get a website up in your town, then you could expect to get new patients from it over the next few years.

But by 2004-2005, just about everyone had a website in your area. This brought up a new problem, since there was now quite a bit more competition online.

So what happened?

Overpriced SEO services happened. Web designers came to you and offered to “search engine optimize” your site for around 2,000 dollars or more! For this amount, they would go in and “tweak  your code”, essentially stuffing keywords and meta tags on your site, somewhat optimizing it so you would come up high on Google and Yahoo’s free listings. (Turns out it’s not so “Free” if you have to pay someone $2,000 to do it!)

This worked for a short while, until search engines like Google figured this out and developed a program to detect all the fake “stuffing” that was going on. (Believe it or not, there are still SEO companies out there today spending 10 minutes doing this and charging chiros a ton of money.)

So now it’s 2009. What’s changed? Well, quite a lot has changed on the internet. Many industries have implemented new technologies and moved on into the whole Web 2.0 phase. Even many small businesses have realized they can get new customers online at a less expensive cost, thereby cutting ineffective offline marketing.

But where are most chiropractors?

Still stuck in 1999, simply thinking a website alone will work? Or in 2004, thinking if they have a website all they need is some quick optimization to help it out a little?

If you’ve been thinking these things too, it’s really not your fault. No one has really stood up and said…

“No, it doesn’t work like that anymore!”

Instead, website companies just update their graphics and make their site look prettier, knowing they can sell you on looks instead of effectiveness.

But no matter how good you dress it up, a website is not enough (unless you practice in a very small town and you’re the only chiropractor there.)

Let’s look at the offline world. You have a sign on your door or on the front of your building, correct? This sign is important, because it tells people where your office is and if they are driving by they know how to find you. But does this sign magically go out and tell people to come into your office? Does it go 5 miles down the road and find qualified new patients?

Of course not! You have to do other types of marketing first to get people over to your office and come in as a new patient.

Your sign is part of your offline marketing system, but it does not make up 100% of it (unless you are in a really small town). Well the same goes for your website. Your website is not going to go out there and grab qualified prospects for you. Sure, a few people may pass by your site and come in as a new patient, like a walk in would when driving by your office. But do you just want to live off of walk-in traffic?

Look, here’s how internet marketing works. You must have 3 steps running all the time.

#1. Source of qualified traffic. (Pay per click, articles, organic listings, blog, incoming links, press releases, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Some of these work better than others.)

#2. Conversion of that traffic to scheduled new patients. (This is where your website comes in. But just ‘any ole website’ won’t do. You have to have good copy and layout to make it work.)

#3. Automatic follow-up with the traffic that doesn’t call and schedule. (Here you use email autoresponders to do the work for you.)

If all you have is a website, you only have  #2 covered above. And judging by most chiropractic websites out there, they struggle with even doing #2 right.

I know, we are chiropractors. We’re not trained to know all the ins and outs of internet marketing. Nor do we have time to keep up with all this “new fangled” stuff. That is why sometimes I hear the following statement…

“Dr. Beck, I don’t understand all that internet marketing stuff out there.
But I get that you need a website. Can’t I just get by with that for now?”

My answer: sure, you can “get by”, but don’t be upset when you don’t get many new patients from your website.

And not understanding how internet marketing works is no excuse not to learn it or pay someone else to do it for you. Most patients don’t understand chiropractic when they first come in to see you. But it doesn’t take them long to appreciate the benefits of your care.

The same goes for all the components of internet marketing. You don’t have to understand it all the mechanics of it to reap the benefits of having tons of new patients come in to your office from it.

We know people are searching everyday in your area for a chiropractor, or solutions to problems that you can help (they are because we can see that with Google’s keyword tool), then why aren’t they finding your website and causing the phone to ring off the hook?

Do patients find your website when someone types in “fibromyalgia treatment” on Google? What about “neuropathy”? Sciatica?

I can make that happen with ChiroPatients Online. There are still a few spots left for October, as long as your area has not been taken already.

Are you using pay per click (PPC) internet marketing to bring in more new patients?

Most search engines have PPC as part of their services. Google has it’s Adwords program, Yahoo has Search Marketing, and MSN has AdCenter. Adwords is the biggest PPC marketing platform because Google controls so much of the online traffic right now.

Some chiropractors are starting to realize that they can get new patients at a low cost using PPC marketing. But the key is knowing what your doing so you don’t end up overspending (or worse — getting a bad “track record” attached to your Google account, increasing your PPC cost forever.) In the video below from ChiroMarketing Academy, you’ll see the first section of the “Google Adwords Training Video”.

Do you have a chiropractic website? Does it bring in new patients?

Most chiropractors sum up their whole internet marketing plan
with one sentence…

“I got a website”.

These websites might look pretty, have flashy graphics, music, and lots of other cool things, but they don’t even scratch the surface at being an automated chiropractic marketing machine. Even though it may have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to design and put up, it fails at getting new patients through the practice doors. Why don’t “traditional” chiropractic websites work?

2 Big reasons:

1.) Most chiropractic websites don’t give the person visiting any relevant information. Think about it this way…

A new patient walks into your practice. They’d like to find out if you can help them with their headaches. But the first thing they see is a flashy banner sliding in front of them. Then, you turn up some loud music or a video educating them about chiropractic.

Next, they are given the option of going through one of 10 different doors.Each door has a word written on front of it. Words like… “Home”, “Location”, “Conditions”, “Contact Info”, ”FAQ”, “Chiropractic”.

They really aren’t sure which door to pick. None of them really say “headaches”, which is what they were thinking you could help them with. So the new patient goes about opening one door after another, trying to find something relevant to their problem. Finally they give up and hit the “back button”, walking out the door to look somewhere else.

Is that what your do in your practice? No chance right?

Here’s the point, a website needs to give relevant information to the person landing on it. If it doesn’t, they aren’t going to hang around very long, much less make an appointment. Most people searching for your services don’t go online to receive an education about chiropractic history. They want to know how chiropractic can help them.

2.) Websites are just one piece of the puzzle, not the complete puzzle.

In my ChiroMarketing Academy course, I teach members the four pillars of building a chiropractic internet marketing plan. Only one of the four pillars is a website (and even then, it’s not the typical website you see every chiropractor with).

Here are the other three pillars…

-You need a source of web traffic. Just like your offline marketing, you need a
method to get new patients to your web pages.

-You need a method of collecting information, like first name and email
address. This can be in the form of a landing page, or simply a email form on your main website.

-You need a follow-up system that continues to remind and educate
them about how your unique care can help with their problems.

We go into each one of these in detail in the ChiroMarketing Academy course.

So if you have website, look at the other three pillars I mentioned above and see how you can improve it. Remember, the purpose of an internet presence is to bring in new patients. You don’t need an online brochure, you want to use technology to automate your marketing.