Chiropractic Marketing: The 13 Best Strategies to Get More Patients

Curious about the most effective chiropractic marketing strategies out there? Many of the strategies on this list have helped chiropractors generate more than 70K per month in new patients! Whether you’re a high-volume practice and you’re simply looking to throw some more gas on the fire or you’re not quite there yet, this blog post will go through thirteen of the most tried and true chiropractic marketing strategies to bring in new patients and business this year.

How Can You Promote Your Chiropractic Business? How Can a Chiropractor Get More Clients?

When it comes to chiropractic marketing, it’s a good idea to have both short-term and long-term strategies to rely on. Short-term strategies will include things like discounts and offers while long-term strategies will involve more classic chiropractic marketing strategies like referral programs and other types of networking. Here are some of the most effective long-term and short-term strategies:

1. Existing Patient Referral Programs

It’s imperative to have some sort of program in place where your existing patients refer you. In fact, this is one of the most effective referral sources. There are many different ways to go about encouraging your existing patients to refer you to others, but one way is through your progress exams. At the bottom of your progress exam, you can ask clients to write down the name and phone number of someone they think would benefit from chiropractic treatment. When that client goes to schedule their next appointment, you can present them with an initial exam card (along with the initial exam fee). Another tip is to ask new patients if they were referred; not only does this give you information but it also plants the seed that you have a referral program in place.

2. Networking with Other Health Providers (Establishing Office Referrals)

In addition to having your existing patients refer you, it’s also important to establish relationships with other providers who will also go on to refer you. Indeed, it’s commonly thought that once you begin seeing 120-130 patients per week, the majority of your clients will be sustained through (office) referrals and word of mouth. When it comes to networking, there are a variety of ways to connect with others:

• Meet and Greets or Happy Hours

To start off, consider setting up meet and greets or an hour-long happy hour with local providers like physical therapists and massage therapists. Ideally, you’d set up two to three every single week. A tip is to encourage your invitees to invite others as well.

• Referral Groups

There are also weekly, local referral groups that you can connect with in your community; you’ll typically pay an annual fee.

• Monthly Marketing Drop-Offs

You can also connect with other offices by doing monthly marketing drop-offs like flowers/plants or even chocolate. This is not only a great chiropractic marketing strategy for connecting with other providers in the first place but also for maintaining those relationships as well. In summary, the idea here is to get known in the community and to build relationships; once you’ve established yourself, referrals should generate most of your client base.

3. Connecting with Businesses Outside of the Health Industry

When it comes to networking, don’t stop at health providers. There are a lot of other opportunities to establish meaningful relationships outside of the health industry, too. Here are some examples:

• Gyms/Trainers. Set up a short meeting to show trainers what you can do; gyms often serve a similar clientele as you do.
• Hair Stylists. Hair stylists tend to know a lot of people, and many of them have neck and wrist issues – a perfect fit!

Chiropractic marketing is about establishing as many relationships as possible, so think outside the box!

4. Reconnecting with Your Existing Patients

When it comes to marketing, it’s much less costly to connect with existing clients than to acquire new ones. In some cases, it may be as much as 25X more expensive to acquire a new patient. That’s why any strategy that involves connecting with your existing patients is a good idea. People are busy; often a simple reminder that you exist can go a long way. When it comes to reconnecting with your patients, there are multiple ways to do this, but here are some ideas:

• Thank your patients via email, text or even a handwritten card
• Send an appointment reminder via chiropractic practice management software

5. SEO, Email Marketing and Blog Posts – The Foundation

When it comes to chiropractic marketing, there are other foundational long-term strategies that form the backbone of many successful chiropractic practices out there. This includes SEO (and blog posts), which are great long-term strategies to increase return on investment, as well as email marketing in order to stay top of mind. Blogging will help you rank for local keywords that people are searching for; additionally, since Google loves fresh content, it’ll help with your rankings even more. Blog posts also establish you as a trusted authority. With email marketing, emails and newsletters help you clue in customers to specials or deals, new changes and generally help you keep them up to date on what’s coming up at your practice.

6. Ads (Google and Facebook)

Many chiropractic practices out there also see a lot of success with paid ads – particularly Google (the first choice) and Facebook. The benefit of Google ads is that they have high intent. In other words, they capture people searching for your services at that exact moment. Facebook ads are another good option, but there are some dos and don’ts in order to make sure you’re successful. For one, it’ll be a lot harder to market to a cold audience than to re-market to your existing audience. Alternatively, or in addition to, you can also create a lookalike audience and advertise to people who look very similar to your existing audience. Another good strategy is to use Facebook’s Ad Library to see what your competitors are doing. If you see an ad that did particularly well, you can simply duplicate their efforts. Many chiropractors are also seeing success with reputation marketing. Reputation marketing is all about using social proof (positive customer reviews, social media mentions and awards/certifications) as part of your advertising and promotional materials. Including this type of content in your ads can help them gain even more traction. Pro Tip: Instead of advertising for a single service, try offering a package for an initial exam as well as a few adjustments. This way, clients will see it as more of a complete solution, and you’ll also give yourself more time to build relationships with clients.

7. Organizing Group Chiropractic Events

In line with networking, another good chiropractic marketing strategy is to connect with local human resources departments in order to offer ergonomics/spine health lectures/workshops or even actual services to help staff feel their best and avoid issues like chronic back pain from poor desk setups, etc. Indeed, group chiropractic events are a great way to generate dozens of bookings and potentially build long-lasting partnerships with local businesses in your area. And perhaps most conveniently, they’ve also proven very popular with both employees and employers alike. With 70% of stress estimated to be work-related, employees love receiving specialized on-site treatment that eases work-related pain and discomfort. Generally, this works by reaching out to a variety of businesses and offering in-office/on-location services for their employees at a select date. Once they’ve established the terms and conditions, chiropractors will send mobilized therapists to offer workshops or perform the agreed-upon services. If the employees like the service they’ve been provided (and chances are they will!), you can further incentivize them to book individual appointments with time-sensitive promo codes. In the end, these conversions can boost your business significantly, potentially netting you dozens of future appointments in a short time frame!

8. Getting Involved in Your Community (Sponsor Events & Wellness Seminars)

As you’ve seen, networking is a huge part of any chiropractic marketing strategy. Aside from connecting with other health providers and businesses, it can also be a good idea to sponsor local events or even wellness seminars. Sponsorship often comes with the ability to host a booth, which gives you an opportunity to connect with those in the community.

9. Discounts and Offers

While we’ve focused on mostly long-term strategies, discounts and offers can be effective short-term strategies in order to get more patients through your doors. Over the long term, though, you’ll want to invest in long-term chiropractic marketing strategies like referrals and so on. Again, you can visit Facebook’s Ad library to see what your competitors are doing when it comes to discounts and offers.

10. Offering Online Booking

More and more chiropractors are moving to practice management software, with a key feature being online booking. Online booking allows clients to book appointments (or send appointment requests) online at any time they’d like, all per your set schedule. Online booking results in 34% more client bookings – all made possible by being able to book after hours! You can also link intake forms (and even SOAP notes!) to the booking process and have patients complete information in advance of their appointment. As a result, chiropractic offices save up to seven hours every week on scheduling and administrative tasks.

11. Boosting Your Social Posts

While social media is a go-to strategy for every business out there, the thing is Facebook is changing. They don’t show as much content from business pages anymore unless you’ve paid them to do so. So, if you want to get more eyeballs on your social posts, it’s a good idea to invest a little money ($10 or so) in order to get some extra traction on your more important social posts by boosting them.

12. Getting More Reviews

Patient reviews were ranking factors in Whitespark’s 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors survey. If you want your Google Business Profile to appear higher in search results, reviews can help – both positive reviews and quantity of reviews. Reviews also help with social proof as well. Here’s how to get more reviews on Google.

13. Showing Potential Clients What You Can Do

With the rise of accessible technology, the world has become visually oriented – especially online. Every day, millions of people access social-visual channels like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok to connect with friends and check in with the world. But, it’s not all a distraction. In fact, the best online marketers know this – and that’s why social media outlets like Instagram and Facebook remain their advertising platforms of choice. Why? Well, research suggests that our verbal intelligence is dropping, while our visual intelligence is growing. Even a sizeable 65% of people today are classified as visual learners. Thankfully, visual marketing strategies work for a variety of businesses – chiropractic care included. Dr. Chris Stepien of Barefoot Rehabilitation has found particular success in promoting his services via social media channels. By taking “before” and “after” pictures and/or videos of a client’s range of motion (with their permission, of course!), he’s able to create compelling online visual content that clearly demonstrates what he can offer prospective clients. However, this same type of content can be applied to your paid ads as well. Once you’ve created some “visual evidence” of your own, social media channels aren’t your only option for sharing, however. Try spreading your content to other promising outlets like your email marketing campaigns or website to maximize results!

Wrapping it Up on Chiropractic Marketing

When it comes to chiropractic marketing, it’s key to have a mixture of both long-term (referrals) and short-term strategies (promos) to work with. Long-term strategies will involve referral programs for both existing patients and other providers while short-term strategies will involve things like promos and other offers.

Recommended Further Reading:

• Chiropractic SOAP Notes: What to Include and How to Not Get Behind!
• The 22 Most Popular Chiropractic Tools

Interested in learning more about online booking and chiropractic practice management software? Book a demo with a Yocale product specialist today.