Table of Contents
The Importance of Online Marketing Strategies for DCs
There are now over 70,000 licensed chiropractors across the US, and even more worldwide.
In some cities, it seems like there is a chiropractor on every corner.
And while that is massively beneficial for the profession as a whole, you might have some conflicting feelings when it comes to your practice.
“How can I stand out?”
“How should I build MY brand?”
“How will people find ME online?”
The Smart Chiropractor's Guide to Converting More New Patients From Your Website
Your practice might struggle to gain traction and ultimately grow without leveraging some key online marketing strategies for DCs.
To put it a different way…
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With growing competition not only in our profession but in competing services or even services that complement what we do, a plan for generating more web traffic and leads is critical to building a stable practice that’s primed for growth.
It’s also crucial for helping you get more of your ideal patients to walk through your doors online and in person.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a quick guide covering the 3 most important and worthwhile online marketing strategies for DCs.
Worthwhile to help you focus and dial in your marketing efforts.
Worthwhile to help you create a marketing budget that generates returns.
"The pregnancy campaign was also big for us. We saw 2 pregnant patients in 4 months prior to TSC and last month had 10!"
Dr. Ryan Grenier, DC
Optimal Wellness
Worthwhile to help you reach those patients that are a match for the brand of care you provide.
Worthwhile to help you spend less time marketing and more time treating and communicating.
Before we dig in, remember one thing…
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You are not a marketer, Doc.
You don’t need to do it all when it comes to marketing either.
You’re a doctor of chiropractic and a teacher.
Marketing for your part should be all about reaching, teaching, and inviting.
That said, let’s dive in to the first of our chosen 3 key online marketing strategies for DCs…
1. Search Engine Optimization for Chiropractors
Don’t roll your eyes – this will now and forever be on every list of top online marketing strategies for DCs.
This strategy will always be number 1 for good reason.
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Nearly 70% of activities online start on a search engine.
Over 50% of web traffic comes from organic searches.
With search engine optimization (SEO), you increase the likelihood that your practice will appear when people look for local chiropractors.
Define Your Audience and Your Content
So, where do you start?
Don’t think you have to run out and get Google certified right away.
Great SEO just like every single other aspect of online marketing strategies for DCs – from social media posts to emails to ad campaigns – starts with knowing your audience.
First, define your target audience based on demographics and psychographics.
Think about the type of practice you have.
Think about the core group of people you want to serve.
Think about the chiropractic issues your patients are facing.
At The Smart Chiropractor, our “prime directive” if you will is to help our member DCs Teach & Invite Consistently, and we’ve found this mindset to be especially helpful and effective when it comes to SEO and all online marketing strategies for DCs.
Consider this…
Pro Tip
When you proactively answer the most common questions people in your community have about their health (Teach) and then provide a solution (Invite), you position yourself and your team and your practice as THE local expert for those health concerns.
And if you do this consistently, you’ll inevitably notice more traffic to your website and a higher ranking on Google Search.
Knowing that, you can look at the first of our online marketing strategies for DCs in an even more simplified way.
How would Google know what to rank you for without consistently producing great content?
Now let’s revisit our Smart Chiropractor (TSC) program for a moment to bring that full circle.
As a way to help our TSC members consistently put out content that follows the Teach & Invite Consistently (TIC) model, we provide 4-5 blog post each month (depending on the number of weeks in that month) in easy to edit Word Docs complete with recommended keywords, optimized copy, and featured image if needed.
That means that each and every year at a minimum, TSC members have 50+ optimized articles that they can feature on their website to help them rack up visits and rank on Google.
And that content all goes back to providing the answers to the health questions people are already searching for online.
Now, here’s how you can do this yourself.
Let’s say you’re interested in focusing on those in your community who are dealing with chronic neck and back pain.
As a chiropractor, you know many may have developed these symptoms following a car crash.
You also know that bad posture may be the culprit behind their symptoms.
Boom.
You’ve got a couple of great, commonly searched topics right there to help you take action on this first item in our list of essential online marketing strategies for DCs.
Recap
By simply understanding the pain points of your ideal patients, you can help develop a list of blog topics that would be beneficial and worthwhile for you to cover.
Know Your Keywords
Once you’ve done that, the next step – as you undoubtedly guessed – is to create a list of specific, targeted keywords to associate with your content.
We’ll dive into the finer points of keyword research and selection in a separate post for those DCs who want to take a more active role with their marketing team or who simply love to geek out on marketing.
But, for now, remember – you’re a chiropractor, not a marketer.
Whether it’s our team at the Smart Chiropractor or another marketing team helping you execute the different points of your ideal online marketing strategy, your focus stays the same.
You’re a doctor, a teacher, and an expert in your field.
With that in mind, here’s what you need to get started and contribute only what DCs can to your marketing efforts.
Pro Tip
You can start building your basic keyword list by visiting sites like Answer the Public and Google Trends.
Then (ideally) each week, choose one of the keywords from your list and start creating blog content that focuses on and features that keyword.
You can take it one step further and create videos using the same content.
Simply focus on conveying your expertise as a chiropractor through your content to boost your credibility and optimize that same content with your chosen keywords to boost your presence in online search.
Don’t Forget About Google Business
When talking about online marketing strategies for DCs, it’s also important to consider local SEO.
Start by making sure your Google Business profile is up to date and optimized.
You can read more about that in this article.
Once you’ve done that and especially if you’re not doing so already, make it a point to ask your patients to post their reviews.
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The power of positive reviews is very real and helps your practice stand out in online searches.
Let’s switch gears and dive into the next bullet point in our list of key online marketing strategies for DCs.
2. Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Chiropractors
While it’s true we at The Smart Chiropractor don’t recommend chiropractors resort to discount ads to promote their services (you can read more about that here), ads do still have a place in most all online marketing strategies for DCs.
As you probably know, you can use platforms like Google and Facebook to create text or visual display ads that serve as another avenue for members of your community to find you online as the scroll, search, or shop.
A common strategy used by many DCs is to send someone to a page on their practice website following a click on an ad.
They then offer something on that page as a way to convert those clickers into marketable leads.
Audit and Optimize Your Website
Before we dive into ads further, we want to make sure to highlight one big thing.
As you use these online marketing strategies for DCs, make sure to audit your website.
A fast, mobile-optimized site can strengthen your marketing efforts.
How?
It all boils down to one simple principle…
Pro Tip
If your site is slow or outdated, people WILL leave.
That’s not a guess.
That’s not up for debate.
It’s 100% true in all cases all the time.
What’s more, your cost-per-click will probably increase as well.
But we digress.
Let’s return our focus to ads – specifically, retargeting ad campaigns.
Implement Retargeting Campaigns
Again, while we don’t recommend basing your ad campaigns on discounts, we do recommend all DCs incorporate retargeting (remarketing) ads as part of their online marketing strategy.
Have you ever visited a website and noticed an uptick in ads related to that website in the minutes, hours, or days after?
That’s retargeting in a nutshell.
Retargeting ads help keep your practice in front of your website visitors.
It allows you to stay top of mind and often draws those same visitors back.
Pro Tip
Retargeting is one of the best forms of paid advertising because it allows you to continue to market to a warm audience who is already familiar with your practice and your services at some level.
Perhaps they’ve visited your website.
Perhaps they’re receiving your emails.
Leveraging these warm audiences can help you drive down your overall ad costs and increase your marketable leads list.
Pro Tip
Retargeting is a bit more work for ad companies, so they may try to push you towards more demographics-based targeting based on their margins, not in the best interests of your practice.
Far too many chiropractors focus exclusively on demographic targeting which ultimately costs more money and produces diminishing returns acoss all implemented online marketing strategies for DCs over time.
Remember, great SEO just like every single other aspect of online marketing – from social media posts to emails to ad campaigns – starts with knowing your audience.
Speaking of audiences, let’s turn our attention to your engagement.
Don’t Forget About Follow-Up
Those pay-per-click ads can be a great tool to leverage to get people into your marketing funnel or loop or whatever term you prefer.
The point is, those ads have delivered you a precious lead and potential patient who’s looking for help.
You need to engage that lead or possibly lose them forever.
We cannot stress how important it is to have a complete system for follow up to get the most return out of your marketing investment.
Let’s look at the numbers.
On average, paid ads have a 20-40% conversion or success rate.
That means that off the top, 60-80% of the “leads” you are paying for may not take action and convert to care.
Excellent follow up can help skew those numbers in a more positive direction.
Let’s revisit The Smart Chiropractor for a moment.
As part of TSC, we include our ChiroEmails service, and as part of this service, we send out weekly educational emails to our members active patients and marketable leads.
You’ll recall we mentioned earlier in this guide covering online marketing strategies for DCs that our goal is to help them implement that Teach & Invite Consistently marketing and communications framework, and this is another way we do just that.
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Just like retargeting, follow up email campaigns and long-term nurture campaigns help keep your practice and the care solutions you provide top of mind.
When you stay top of mind, you increase the likelihood a patient or a lead takes action and opts-in or opts back in for your care.
Even converting just one extra lead per month will boost the ROI you see with your paid advertising.
Now, let’s talk building an email list.
3. Email Marketing for Chiropractors
A big part of building up your patient base is building up a marketable lead list.
Feature a Lead Magnet
Pay-per-click ads can be very beneficial when implemented correctly.
Similarly, adding a lead magnet or actionable opt-in form to your website can help you make big gains in your marketable lead list.
Remember, know thy audience.
Revisit those common pain points we discussed in the first of these online marketing strategies for DCs.
Use these to create a resource potential patients would see enough value in to exchange their personal email address or phone number for.
Perhaps it’s something as simple as an e-book.
Perhaps it’s a free mini-course.
Perhaps it’s a quiz or assessment.
Whatever “it” is – again, just like retargeting mentioned earlier in this list of online marketing strategies for DCs – plan for follow up.
Let’s look at the numbers.
The average chiropractor receives about 750 website visitors each month.
The question is – how many new patients come from that number – maybe 10 or 20?
So, the bigger question is – what happened to the other 700+ people who visited your website?!
Odds are they didn’t just visit your website “for fun.”
Nurture, Nurture, Nurture!
It’s more likely that they have an issue you can help with and live close by.
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And just because they didn’t decide to call right then doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.
A lead magnet with a dialed-in follow-up sequence helps keep you top of mind so that more of those leads can become new patients.
As you may have guessed, this is something we also offer at The Smart Chiropractor in addition to our other marketing efforts focused on retention, referrals, and reactivations.
We provide a selection done-for-DCs e-books and pre-built opt-in forms for our Docs to add to their websites so they can capture more leads from their website.
The guides have no Smart Chiropractor branding, the forms take less than 5 minutes to install, and opt-ins are sent directly to our members’ 100% full service ChiroEmails dashboards.
What’s more, in addition to receiving a series of 4 follow-up emails related to the guide they requested, these marketable leads also start receiving the weekly education emails we covered earlier in this guide.
So, what’s the bottom line for your bottom line here?
Know thy audience and engage with thy audience, Doc.
Doing so will not just help you build a bigger marketable list of leads and more effective marketing funnels and enhance the results of every one of the online marketing strategies for DCs you implement.
It will also help ensure you convert more of your traffic to new patients week over week, month over month, and year after year.
Value-based lead magnets are a great way to get started (and can help you stay out of the spam folder when done correctly).
Sending newsletters featuring your latest blog posts is another great option that can help you see real benefits from your email list.
After all…
Pro Tip
Your email list is ultimately the most valuable asset you have in your practice.
Use it and use it wisely!
Do the same with each of these online marketing strategies for DCs through with the overall strategy of Teaching and Inviting Consistently, and you’ll set yourself up for an improved ROI and a schedule book full of more of your ideal patients.
A Word About The Smart Chiropractor
The online marketing strategies for DCs we discussed above can help you turn one-time patients into repeat customers.
But what if you need additional support?
That’s where we come in.
We’re experts at helping docs improve their flow of active patients because we think differently.
Our docs have an advantage because our team works on this every day.
Know that you don’t have to develop your entire marketing strategy alone.
There are specific components like content campaigns, social posting, and email marketing we can help you with right now.
To learn more about what we do, what we don’t do, and how our services can complement and boost your marketing efforts, we invite you to book a no-pressure demo demo with our team today.
We’re dedicated to the “know thy audience” mentality, and our team is here to get your questions answered.
It all starts with a click.