Chiropractic Marketing | Chiropractic Advertising | Chiropractic Ads

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”.

Where is your practice going in 2009?

In this month’s issues of The Chiropractic Marketing Newsletter, I’m covering the 7 most important numbers you must track in your office…and what you should be doing to improve them. This newsletter is an 11 page ‘seminar-in-a-box’ mailed right to your doorstep every month. It’s only $29.97 per month, can you cancel at any time (but I don’t think you’ll want to when you see the valuable information that’s revealed.)

This issue mails out on March 9th at 10AM CST. If you want to receive your issue in the mail, make sure you subscribe by then.

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Here is an excerpt that covers #5 out of 7. The newsletter goes into much more detail about how to improve each of these 7 numbers to bring more growth and profits to your practice.

#5. Case average.

Case average is a number that represents how much money a new patient will generate over time in your practice. You will sometimes hear it referred to as “lifetime value of a patient.”

You figure it by taking your collections for the month (or quarterly, yearly) and dividing by the number of new patients during the month. And make sure to use the new patients defined as in #1 above, not just the number of patients who started care.

Some chiropractors don’t like to figure this number, because they say you’re putting a dollar value on the patient’s head. But let’s face it, you’re running a business here. There are two parts to running your own practice… a clinical aspect and a business aspect. This newsletter is about the business aspect. (I trust you’ve got the clinical side figured out.)

The biggest reason to determine case average in your practice is to make good marketing decisions. Combine it with your conversion rate and you can really drill down on your marketing

Let’s run through an example…

An ad costs you $1500 to run. The last two times you ran it you got 13 new patients. You’re thinking about running it again, but your not sure if its really worth it.

But because you read this newsletter, you’ve been keeping track of your numbers for awhile. You know that every new patient that walks in the door will equal an average case of $1500. And you know that if a new patients comes in, you have a history of converting about 60% of them to care.

So if the ad produces 13 new patients, you’re going to convert 8 of them (13 x .60 = 7.8 rounded up).

8 new patients times $1500 case average is $12,000.

So now back to the question. Should you spend $1,300 on an ad to get $12,000 in return?

If you said “NO”, you need to go back and reread the above paragraph until you get a yes.

As a side-note….

This is the problem with judging your marketing solely on the number of new patients. Some chiropractors think…”13 new patients, well gosh Dr.. Beck, that’s not very many. Dr. Joe Blow said he got 187 new patients from an ad!”

That’s great for Dr. Joe. But I wonder what his conversion percentage is? And what’s his case average? Because if he really did get 187 new patients and converted most of them, he’s got a million dollar a year practice.

This bring us to our next number you must be tracking…

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What good is it to have a website if no one is visiting it? Getting traffic to your website is vital for your chiropractic internet marketing plan. Here are 7 methods to drive tons of traffic to your website.

#1. Pay Per Click.

This refers to the ads you see when searching for keywords on the major search engines. The best pay per click ads are Google Adwords because they get the most views. These who up on the right side of the page when someone searches for keywords. When someone clicks on it, you pay a fee and the person lands on your website. Yahoo and MSN also have pay per click ads that are less costly, but Google will send a lot more traffic. Make sure you set it to geographical limits, so you aren’t getting clicks from people 10 states away. When setting up and using Adwords, be very careful because it can be costly if done wrong.

#2. Blogs.

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. While blogs take some work to set up, they are very easy to use. If you can send an email, you can post to a blog.

#3. Articles.

Submitting articles to free article directories are a great way to generate traffic to your site. When writing articles, you want to keep them within 500-800 words. Make sure you include your town’s name and keywords you want to get like “chiropractic” or “decompression” in your article. Also you will need a resource box with a short bio of you and your website’s link. A great directory to submit to is http://www.ezinearticles.com

#4. Videos.

Vidoes are rather easy to make today. And since most people have high speed internet, they are great to use. You can do a short 2-5 minute video educating prospective patients on your services. Uploading it to the major websites like Youtube and Google Video will get you a lot of traffic. Make sure to submit it with your website link embedded in the video. Also mention your town in the description when posting the video.

#5. 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. Make sure you write it in a “newsworthy” tone and with a good news headline. There are many free press distributors online, like www.pr.com. Also, you can pay a site like prweb.com to submit it to the news directories.

#6. Trade links with other businesses.

If you know other local businesses in your area, you can trade links to your sites. This not only allows for more traffic, but will help drastically in your search engine rankings. Make sure to make your link keywords like “Yourtown Chiropractor” instead of just your website address.

#7. Mail postcards and run newspaper ads.

This is the most costly of all the above list. However, it also could have the highest return on time and money. Get a list of homeowners and send out small or large postcards, with a headline, some copy and testimonials. Make an offer for a free report on some problem and tell them to visit your website. Expect to spend about .40 cents an address.

Of course once you get visitors to your website, you need a proven strategy to convert the visitors to new patients. In my next blog post, I’ll recommend tips for doing just that because getting a return on your marketing is essential.