Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

Are you using the internet to its full potential in your practice?

Most chiropractors are only touching the tip of the iceberg. The list is almost endless of tactics to use: email marketing, PPC ads, blogging, mobile apps, Facebook pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google SEO, etc., etc.

In every country around the world more people are using the web every day. Check out this short video showing just a few stats:

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.

Are you using email marketing to its fullest potential in your practice? Watch this short training video to learn about the different email systems I recommend. (This video is a portion of Bonus Lesson 1 in the ChiroMarketing Academy.)

(This post is part two of a two part series. To see the first 3 strategies, click here.)

#4. Use Good Telemarketing

Many chiropractors think telemarketing is some kind of sleazy type of marketing that only ambulance chasers would do. Unfortunately if you think this way, you could be missing out on a great method of getting new patients.

Using telemarketing services with a reputable company is such an easy way to get new patients.
One thing to realize with telemarketing is that the conversions are probably going to be lower than new patients from the other strategies I mention.

The lower conversions can lead some chiropractors to believe telemarketing patients are not worth the trouble and too much work on the doctor and staff. But it’s really return on investment that you should look at.

I ran telemarketing campaigns for almost 6 years straight and always made a considerable return on my investment. One client of mine is getting 10-15 new patients A WEEK from telemarketing, and converting a 50% of them to care.

#5. Use Effective Direct Mail

Direct mail is one of the oldest forms of marketing. Even with the rise of internet, radio and TV direct mail marketing still grows each year.

There are many different forms of direct mail — postcards, letters, magalogs, magazines, tear sheets — but postcards and letters are the most often used by chiropractors.

If your marketing budget is tight, you should start with postcards then move into letters at a later point. It’s also important to note that you should not start direct mail until you have other less risky marketing strategies in place — namely newspaper ads and internet marketing. This is because direct mail requires more patience and testing to be profitable. But don’t let this deter you, because when used properly, direct mail can be very profitable.

When it comes to postcards, you can choose between the small regular size, a half page size and an oversized postcard. Most direct mail testing shows that the bigger the postcard, the better the response. Of course much of the response will come from the words, or the “copy”, on the postcard.

The list you buy is going to determine about 50% of the response you get from direct mail. Make sure that you find a decent list broker so you’re getting good addresses.

#6. Use PPC Marketing And Social Media To Get New Patients

PPC stands for “pay per click marketing”, and you should be using it to bring new patients into your practice. The three big PPC companies currently are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. When someone searches on Google for the term “chiropractor” your ad would show up. If the person clicks on your ad, they go to the website you designate and you get charged a small fee.

The best thing about PPC is that you only get charged for people who click on your ad. You aren’t getting charged for everyone to see your ad, just for those who click on it. Also, you can customize and tweak the ads, so that you’re only getting certain types of patients. For example, you might want to set up a PPC campaign just for spinal decompression and focus on speaking to that patient about his disc problems. (For more info on setting up a PPC account, see my previous post here.)

Another great tool to get people to your website — and then call you to schedule an appoint –  is by using social media. Social media is a catch phrase for all the popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and many of the blogs out there. To use this method, you basically create accounts on these sites and link them back to your website. If you’d like to learn more about this method, I recommend you grab Dr. Loop’s course here.

#7. Do The Report of Findings Right

You may be wondering why I would mention the ROF in an article about marketing. I do this because how you handle the report with a patient will likely decide if they will refer their friends or family in.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of mistakes in this part of a chiropractor’s office.

You want to give the patient a short, no-fluff report with certainty. Some chiropractic coaches will tell you to give a long winded speech here to hard sell the patient on care. If the patient really wants help with their problem, and you have some objective findings to show them, you won’t need to hard sell them on care.

A report should not take longer than 10 minutes. Tell them what you found. Tell them if you can fix it and a BRIEF summary of how you’ll do that. Layout their care plan and explain why it takes time. Go over the cost (this is best if your staff does the financial part). If insurance is involved, have that prepared and covered by your staff at this time.

Have a simple, easy to follow payment plan for your patients. At least 2 options of payment, 3 at most. Remember, very simple. I have seen so many complex systems that almost force the patient to “go home and think about it.”

Also, you’ll want to begin mentioning how your office sees families (if you do). If done in a non-forceful way, it’s likely the patient will begin to ask questions about their spouse or children. This is a great opportunity to educate them on sending a referral in.

Have you heard of blogging?

Blogging is about the most cost effective marketing you can do online. Running a blog is virtually free, it’s the fastest way to get you on the front page of Google and you can keep in contact with your patients on a regular basis.

Blogging is a way to post articles chronologically on a webpage. What you are reading right now is a blog. It’s simply a free software installed on this hosting account. I log in, click on “write” and start typing. If you can write an email and send it, you can run a blog.

What’s it cost? To get a domain name, it cost me $7. $17 a month for hosting. I paid a graphics person $45 to make the header graphic up top. That’s all I spent, a whopping $59.

A blog gets you great ranking on search engines. Google loves blogs because they are new, fresh content. Google prides themselves on keeping current for their search users, so they will give more credit to a blog over a traditional website that never changes. For example, I’ve only been running this blog for less than 6 months and have the #1 and #2 spots on Google for the term “chiropractic newspaper ads”.

Other sites below me have been around for a lot longer than mine…some for almost 10 years.This is for an internationally competitive keyword term. You could do much better for a local search term like “yourtown chiropractor”.

Another great thing about having a blog is that it’s very easy to regularly contact your list of patients (or even prospective patients.) As soon as I hit publish on this article, it will go into an email system that sends out an email notice to everyone on my list. I didn’t have to manually go in and email everyone. All I had to do was publish a blog article and everything was done for me. Essentially, this could be your e-newsletter to your patients.

Don’t worry if you can’t write (at one point you couldn’t adjust either). You can hire someone called a ghostwriter to do it for you. With a little practice you could write 200-400 words once a week. Or have your spouse, staff member or even your teenage do it for you.

We cover blogging, how to set it up, what to write about and how to get it ranked on the top of Google. Find out more by going to my chiropractic internet marketing course.

So why aren’t you blogging? How long before the office down the street starts blogging and jumps to the #1 spot on Google?