As a Chiropractor running a practice, it’s more important than ever to be on your “A” game when it comes to your online presence. It’s no secret that the internet has changed the way patients have sought out health care options. Patients are making more educated choices about their health, and they’re doing their research online first. The power of the internet has drastically increased patients’ ability to make informed decisions for their care.
The question is, how does a Chiropractor maximize their digital footprint? How can you, as a Chiropractor, position yourself to educate patients and pull them into your practice? There are a lot of moving pieces here, and it can get technical, but we broke it down into 7 actionable steps for dominating your local market online.
By following this system, you’ll be putting your practice front and center online. The benefit? Practice growth. Your practice will see new patient numbers like it’s never seen before. If you’re a Chiropractor who is looking to grow their practice, get started implementing the Chiropractor Digital Dominance Program™.
All activities that you perform to promote your practice (regardless if it’s online or offline) are going to push more traffic to your website. That’s why step number 1 is to make sure you have a killer website. Your Chiropractic website needs to be polished up so that it is successful for you and all your efforts to promote your practice are maximized.
Here are key components to think about with your website.
Make sure your design is modern. Old and dated designs do not make a good first impression. The design should also be mobile responsive. Well over half of your website visitors are going to be visiting from their phones, so your site needs to work well on all screen sizes.
Besides just making the website look pretty, it also needs to drive visitors to convert. Conversions are things like: phone calls, form submissions, calendar bookings, etc. Put your phone number in your header and make it clickable. Put strong calls to action like “Book Appointment” buttons throughout your content. Push visitors to take the next step.
Somewhere on your site, highlight your patient testimonials. The social proof is extremely powerful for potential new patients. This builds a huge amount of trust that you care about your patients and helping them achieve their health goals. We use a Google Reviews floating widget which validates that the reviews are from real patients.
Chiropractic stock photography is cheesy. We’ve all seen it, and so have patients. For a few hundred bucks, you can hire a local photographer to come in and take a bunch of really great photos of you and your team, working on patients, around the office, etc. These pictures will do wonders in showing off your professionalism and highlighting your practice in the best light possible.
Offer your website visitors the ability to book an appointment right on your site. A lot of people do not like to pick up the phone and call businesses. And a lot of people don’t like filling out forms because they never hear back, or it turns into a phone call anyways. Putting an online calendar allows patients to book themselves an appointment without having to interact with anyone which increases conversion rates for your visitors.
How your website is built and the content on the pages plays a major role in how well you can rank on search engines like Google. Having a beautiful website with custom photos is great, but if people can’t find your website on Google, it’s not going to limit your success. You have to optimize your website to be crawled and ranked properly by search engines so you can actually show up in search results.
As a Chiropractor, you’re not expected to know all the ins and outs of building a website, learning the tools, and managing it. It’s recommended that you work with a website partner to hit your goals. But this list gives you talking points and a list of deliverables you want from your website partner.
Once you have your website in a good place, it’s time to start doing the activities that will drive in patients and build your online reputation.
The quickest way to get more patients to find you is to run Google Ads. What is great about running ads on Google is that patients that are searching on Google are already actively looking for your service. They are typing in things like:
This is low-hanging fruit for your practice. Patients that are out there searching for care have already recognized a need and are actively looking for a solution. You want to show up here, and Google Ads puts you at the very top of the list right away.
The second best thing about Google Ads is that you only have to pay for the ad when someone actually clicks on it and visits your website. This model is called “Cost per Click”. That means you’re not wasting money on ads for people to not engage with you. Every dollar spent is for someone that actually searches for your care and visited your website. There’s not a better targeting option out there in any kind of marketing.
To get started, first identify all the top services and symptoms that you want to focus on. Based on that list, start writing down all the search terms and variations someone would type in if they needed help with those items. For each group of keywords that you come up with, you’ll create a unique campaign. Inside each campaign, you’ll write ad copy that’s related to the keywords in that group. For example, for your “Back Pain” keyword group, you’ll want your ad copy that talks about Back Pain Treatment. That way the ad that is served in search results matches the keywords that they are typing in.
That is a quick breakdown, but it gets much more involved the deeper you go. It’s helpful to work with someone who’s an expert with the Google Ads platform and understands all the intricacies of running paid search ads.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this has to do with activities that help you climb the organic rankings on Google’s Search Results. The higher you rank, the more traffic you’ll receive. Think about the last search you did on Google and how far down you scrolled before you clicked on a result. Or worse, how many pages deep did you go? You probably stayed on page 1 and clicked on one of the top results.
Your potential patients are doing the same thing. If they don’t click on an ad, they are scrolling to see the organic results and only looking at the top options. So you have to get yourself listed at the top in order to get all the organic traffic from Google that you can.
There are two sections of organic results on Google:
This is the map that shows up at the top. It usually will list the top 3 businesses related to the search term. This is your Google My Business listing which is what puts your business on Google Maps and in this search results box. You are competing with every other Chiropractor in the nearby area to get into the top 3 spots so you can show up here. There are a ton of activities you can do for your Google My Business listing to grow your rankings so you can show up near the top. We wrote about ranking your Google My Business page here.
Below the map listings are the organic websites. When you built your website, hopefully, it was optimized for search engines, but you also want to participate in ongoing activities to continuously improve your rankings and build page authority. Things like posting educational content on your blog, publishing content and resources for your patients, building backlinks from other websites, and tweaking your technical structure to meet all necessary requirements. These activities help you climb the rankings so more patients can find your website. We also wrote a bunch of information about website SEO here.
You’ll want to focus on both your Google Maps Listing as well as your website’s SEO so you can show at the top in both spots. That way patients can find you regardless of which spot they are looking.
A lot of Chiropractors have run (or are running) Facebook Ads and have struggled. Chiropractors have been flooded with a wave of “digital marketing gurus” who overpromise and underdeliver what Facebook ads will do for their practice. Then they end up running these awful “New Patient Special” lead generation ads. You end up with all these bad leads that never turn into long-term patients.
The reason why is because this is the wrong strategy. Facebook Ads work, but you have to think about Facebook differently.
People do not go on Facebook looking for a Chiropractor. They are on Facebook to interact with their friends/family, post memes, and watch videos. Most of the people that see your New Patient Special for the first time and actually click on it don’t even know who you are or what you do. They just saw a good deal and thought “why not”. They are not committed to bettering their health long-term and they are more than likely going to ghost you.
Here’s the correct way to tackle Facebook Ads for your Chiropractic practice:
First, you need to build a following of people who actually care about their health and are interested in what you have to say. The best way to do this is to post educational videos and promote it through ads. You can create short videos that teach people about symptoms and treatments that they are likely experiencing or know someone that is. Just 1 to 3 minute long videos and promote them out there to your local area.
As people watch these videos, you can add them to a custom audience that you target over and over again. This is called retargeting. That means you can serve them more educational material, repeatably, over a period of time. Week 1 you have them watch a video on headaches, week 2 it’s about back pain stretches, week 3 it’s about posture, week 4 it’s about nutrition… Before you know it, these people have watched you several times talking about bettering their health. They know your face, your name, and your clinic. This is called the “know, like, and trust factor”.
People that have watched your videos are:
Over time, you’re going to build this audience to be hundred and thousands of people in your area. As that audience grows, you can then start serving them promotional offers to come in and get checked out. These people have already been primed and are much more likely to actually be interested in taking you up on your offer. This is how your nurture an audience and turn them into real patients that want to work with you.
Instead of constantly trying to run a promotion to bring in new patients, you actually build a reputation of authority. You build a strong brand and name in the community that people look to for help. Your practice will get a lot further this way.
We wrote a whole bunch of info on this strategy and how rethinking your social strategy will get you far better results than what you’ve seen in the past. Read the Chiropractor’s Guide Facebook Ads here.
92% of consumers read reviews for local businesses. What this means is that 9 out of every 10 new patients you see went online to read your reviews before they came in. Reviews are extremely important for you to build trust with new potential patients. That means you have to have a system in place to grow your online reviews so you can further grow your reputation.
Plus, search engines like Google actually check to see how many reviews you have and your overall rating. Businesses that have more reviews and good feedback from their customers will rank higher in search results.
So there is a lot of value in focusing on your online reviews.
Our recommendation is to find a way to automate your review collection. There are lots of marketing software options out there that can email and text your patients with a link to leave a review. That way it makes it super easy for your patients. Some software will even tap into your EHR / calendar so it will automatically send out these text messages after they’ve checked out from their appointments. We use one called CHIROPIPE that we’ll talk more about in a second.
There are several other great strategies you can use as well to help drive consistent reviews for your practice. We wrote a whole guide on this.
Once you collect reviews, you need to make sure to respond to reviews. Patients that are reading reviews are also going to see if you’re paying attention to the feedback. Regardless if it’s positive or negative, you have to engage to show that you are listening and that you care.
71% of consumers say they’re more likely to use a business that has responded to their existing reviews.
We like to create a template document with several canned responses that we can quickly copy and paste so that way we’re not re-writing responses from scratch every single time.
Every Chiropractor knows that patient referrals are one of the greatest ways to drive new patients. You can further drive your referrals from your patients by taking advantage of the digital space.
Once a quarter, send out an email and text blast asking for referrals with a promotional offer. Position it in a way that you’re honestly trying to help. Don’t come off desperate but instead a position of support.
You can use a digital form to allow patients to submit their referrals. This helps you automate the referral outreach portion as well. Once that form is submitted, you can set it up to automatically start reaching out to that referred patient via text and email inviting them in to get checked out.
In your messaging, you can offer an incentive for referrals as well. You can put this on your website and social media pages to help further promote your referral program. Get active with your referral program so your patients know that you take referrals and want to help more people in your community.
In several use cases we talked about above, we mentioned using marketing software. Marketing software is powerful as it helps pull all of your efforts together and helps you automate things so your team is not bogged down by repetitive tasks.
For our clients, we use a tool called CHIROPIPE. This tool is powerful and we wouldn’t be the agency we are without it. Here are some primary highlights for jumping onto this platform that will take your digital efforts to the next level:
Not only does it help streamline everything you’re doing from a digital standpoint, it actually has built-in functionality that is designed to help grow your online presence. The practices that adopt this software tend to do significantly better with their digital footprint than those that do not.
You can learn more about this software by going to the CHIROPIPE website here. Your team will thank you.
As a Chiropractor, you are also a business owner. And as a local business, your online footprint is extremely important for your long-term success. Putting in the effort and investment is going to reap rewards for your practice for years to come.
The level of effort to get all of this implemented, managed, and kept running smoothly is high. That’s why we’ve built out this program as a completely done-for-you service. Our Chiropractic marketing program is built around the philosophy of your long-term success online so you can see real sustainable growth that impacts your business and your community.
If your practice is looking to grow and needs help getting your digital program running on all cylinders, we’re here for you.
Nick is the Founder of CHIROBASIX, a marketing agency that specializes in helping Chiropractors dominate their local markets and drive new patient acquisition.
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