7 Chiropractic Marketing Solutions Worth Considering
Posted: February 9, 2023 - By Health DevSome healthcare facilities and providers are under the impression that marketing is only for marketing experts in e-commerce and retail businesses. However, that’s far from the truth. Marketing is an essential part of any business’s success, and that includes chiropractic practices.
Like any other business, chiropractic practices have to market themselves to attract patients. But with so many marketing options out there, it can take time to figure out where to start.
This guide explains the importance of a well-developed marketing plan for chiropractors. We also talk about marketing solutions you can implement in your practice.
Why Chiropractors Need a Well-Developed Marketing Plan
A marketing plan compiles all the goals, strategies, and tactics you want to implement to reach your target market. It’s a roadmap that ensures your marketing efforts are cohesive and effective.
Creating a marketing plan may seem daunting, but it’s worth it in the long run. Having a plan helps you in many ways. Here are some of them.
Ensures Focus and Transparency
As a chiropractic office, you must have some goals. For instance, you might want to increase your patient lifetime value by 20% this year. Or, you might want to add 500 new patients within the next 12 months.
How will you do this without a plan? You need a marketing plan to ensure you’re focused on the right things and transparent about your progress.
Set Measurable Goals
Keeping in line with the concept above, a marketing plan will help you set measurable goals. Then, you can track your progress and know whether or not you’re on track to reach your targets.
Provides a Guide for Expenditure
Chiropractor marketing solutions require a monetary investment. You need to spend money to make money.
But you don’t want to spend more than you need or on the wrong things. With a marketing plan in place, you can assign a budget to each marketing initiative and make informed decisions about where to spend your money.
Marketing Solutions Every Chiropractor Should Consider
Chiropractor marketing is just like any other type of healthcare marketing. You must use every channel, from email and social media to automation and website optimization in your chiropractic marketing plan. Below, we discuss some chiropractor marketing solutions.
1. Chiropractic Website Optimization
Your website is the most critical marketing asset you have. It’s the digital front door to your practice. You’re missing out on many potential loyal patients if your website is not optimized for SEO.
In a 2021 survey, 32.8% of respondents said on-page SEO elements, including meta descriptions and titles, were the most important SEO factor. On-page elements were followed by organic user behavior, depth and accuracy of content, and structured data. Here are some tips for creating a conversion-optimized website:
- Make it mobile-friendly: Over 50% of the global web traffic is from smartphones. That means if your website is not mobile-friendly, you are inaccessible to half your potential patients. Website mobile-friendliness includes responsive design, which automatically adjusts the website content to fit the device’s screen size.
- Optimize for local SEO: Include your city, state, and zip code on your website. Also, create a Google My Business listing and populate it with as much information as possible. These two local SEO tactics will help you rank in the map pack, which is the three-place local listing that appears when someone searches for a “chiropractor near me.”
- Use targeted keywords: Research the keywords people use when searching for a chiropractor in your area. Then, use those keywords throughout your website, including title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, and body copy.
- Generate reviews: Include a call to action (CTA) on your website, asking patients to leave a review. You can also send review requests via email or text message. Google reviews are the most important, but you can also generate reviews on Yelp, Healthgrades, and Facebook. The more social proof you have, the more website visitors trust you.
Besides these basic tips, website design and speed are also important SEO factors. Your website should be easy to navigate, updated, and fast. All these factors influence your website’s rank on Google and how long a visitor stays on your site.
Many chiropractic offices also run an online blog where they post educational content to attract potential patients. If you run a blog, here are some tips to optimize it:
- Use white space. Make the text easy to read using short paragraphs, bullet points, and plenty of white space.
- Include images. People are more likely to read an article with images. Plus, articles with images get more shares on social media.
- Make headlines that pack a punch. Write headlines that are clear, interesting, and keyword-rich.
2. Automated Patient Communication
Automation is one of the most effective chiropractic marketing solutions since it keeps you in touch with your patients without lifting a finger. You can use automation for email marketing, appointment reminders, and post-treatment follow-ups.
Suppose you have a ton of no-shows. In that case, you can use automation to send a reminder email a few hours before the appointment.
Similarly, send an automated email or text to patients after their appointments. The email or text can request them to leave a review on your social media pages or website.
Automation saves you plenty of time that you’d otherwise spend on administrative tasks. It’s an effective way to improve patient engagement and increase retention rates.
3. Social Media Marketing Services
A beautiful website is not enough anymore. You must have a solid social media presence to engage potential and current patients. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide two-way communication channels.
You can use social media to post educational content, answer patient questions, and give a behind-the-scenes look at your practice. Suppose you want to offer one of your chiropractic care services. You can hold an Instagram poll and let your followers choose between two or more offers.
Then, you can display the offer most people have voted for. Since the offer is based on your target audience’s preference, it’s likely to get more traction and a better response.
Social media also helps you create a positive relationship with patients. For instance, you can hold Lives, where you can answer common questions about chiropractic care.
You can also give shout-outs to patients who have had great results after visiting your practice. These social media marketing strategies will help you connect with your patients on a deeper level and foster your online presence.
Chiropractors can also use paid marketing tactics on social media to boost their reach. By running ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can target new patients in your area who have searched for chiropractic-related terms.
4. Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is still as significant today as it was a decade ago, with 65% of marketers using an automated email marketing strategy. A chiropractic office can benefit immensely from an email marketing campaign.
You can use email marketing to cultivate a relationship with your patients and keep them updated on your latest offers. Moreover, you can also segment your email list to send targeted content.
For instance, you can create a segment for patients who frequently visit your office and another for those who haven’t been to your office in a while. Then, you can send targeted content to each segment.
For the former, you can send emails about the new services you’re offering. Meanwhile, you can offer discounts to the latter.
A well-defined email marketing campaign will have different types of emails. Follow-up emails are among the most important since they convert leads into patients. You can also send appointment reminders and post-treatment follow-ups via email.
Moreover, you can use email to send e-newsletters, which are a great way to keep your patients updated on the latest chiropractic news.
Suppose you’ve onboarded a new chiropractor. You can include an article about them in your e-newsletter. It will tell patients about the new addition to your team and help them get to know the chiropractor before their appointment. The same applies to any new chiropractic procedure or equipment you’ve introduced at your practice.
5. Reputation Management
While a marketing plan and beautiful chiropractic website displays might help boost your SEO, patient trust comes down to what people say about you online. From Google reviews to testimonials on your website, potential patients will research your practice before making an appointment.
That’s why it’s essential to have a solid reputation management strategy. You can start by monitoring your online presence and responding to all reviews, both positive and negative.
If you see a negative review, don’t delete it. Instead, take the time to respond to the patient’s concerns. This will show potential patients that you’re willing to listen to feedback and make changes based on it.
Moreover, you can use positive reviews as testimonials on your website and social media platforms. Seeing what other patients say about your practice will help build trust and boost your SEO.
Reputation management also involves managing your NAP (name, address, phone number). You must have a consistent NAP across all platforms, from your website to your Google My Business listing. If your NAP is incorrect on even one platform, it can drop your rankings.
6. Online Appointment Scheduling and Reminders
A big chunk of health care went online during the pandemic, catapulting the growth of telemedicine in chiropractic offices too. While chiropractic practices cannot operate online, they can digitalize many steps in the patient journey.
For one, you can introduce online appointment scheduling on your website. Patients can choose a date and time that works for them and book an appointment without having to call your office.
Moreover, you can send automated appointment reminders via email or text message. This will reduce the number of no-shows and late cancellations.
You can also use online forms to collect patients’ information before their appointment. Keep this form in the room when the patient arrives for their appointment. It will save the healthcare provider time and make the patient feel more comfortable.
7. Marketing Performance Analytics
Creating a digital marketing campaign is not enough. If you don’t analyze and track your marketing performance, you can’t determine what’s working and what’s not.
Marketing analytics refers to the process of collecting data and using it to improve marketing performance. You can use analytics to track your website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rate.
When analyzing your marketing performance, you need to choose the KPIs (key performance indicators) that are most important to your practice. For example, if you’re focused on website traffic, you’ll track the number of website visitors.
Meanwhile, the KPIs for your email marketing campaign will be different. Some of them include the following:
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Bounce rate
As for content marketing, you need to track the number of page views, social media shares, and comments. You can track your KPIs using Google Analytics or another analytics tool.
Once you’ve determined your KPIs, you can start tracking your marketing performance. Check your analytics regularly and make changes to your campaigns based on the data.
Suppose you find out that your website has a high bounce rate. It could be due to several factors, such as a slow loading time or irrelevant content.
Tweak your website and see if the bounce rate improves. If it doesn’t, try a different approach. The goal is to constantly improve and use new chiropractic marketing strategies so you can attract more patients to your practice.
Invest in a Complete Chiropractic Growth Marketing Solution
Instead of implementing individual chiropractic marketing solutions, it’s best to incorporate all of them by working with a chiropractic marketing company. One, it helps you save time. Two, you get better results because the strategies are integrated and work together to attract new patients.