18 Marketing Essentials: How to get new clients into your office!

You’re ready to accept new patients, but you’re having a hard time getting new clients into your office. Ask yourself, what’s your current marketing strategy, and how are potential clients supposed to find your chiropractic services. We’ll explain eighteen essential marketing ideas to get more phone calls and set up more appointments for your chiropractic clinic.

Website and Social Media are Not Enough!

Your chiropractor's office is all set up, sign on your door reads “chiropractor,” your expensive high tech website is looking great, your social media accounts have been created, you’ve added your family and friends, and you are posting tirelessly. Still not many new patients!? But you know they are out there. Why don’t they come to you? You are confident that you can help them. So what’s the problem?

Well, a website alone without visitors is like trying to sell your services to a room without any people in it to buy it. Social media is overflowing with advertisements, and people are ignoring them, or simply clicking away as fast as they can. Another very important thing to keep in mind is that some of your potentially best clients might be your older generation that doesn’t use social media. How do I get new patients, then? You might ask. Let’s look at the statistics before we go any further.

Advertising Statistics

Famous marketing statistic “The Rule of 7” still applies today, more than ever before. Especially with so many advertisements that are being displayed in front of us every minute of the day. Statistics show that your potential patients need to see your promotion on average seven times in short time frame before they decide to act on it. If you wait too long between, they’ll forget about it.

• Approximately only 2% of all sales are made on the very first contact, or the first time they see an advertisement. 

• On average 3% of sales are made on the second contact.

• About 5% of sales are made on the third contact.

• Sales do increases to about 10% on the fourth contact.

• Much better results are after the fifth contact, on average of 80% of all sales are made on the fifth through twelfth contact.

18 Marketing Essentials in Chiropractic Business

Now that we have a better understanding how re-marketing works, and how often you have to remarket to the same group of people, we’ll talk about ways that you can promote your chiropractic office. 

• Multiple Channels - Use different ways to reach your prospects, and don’t rely on only one way to promote your business. 

• Consistency – Stay consistent with your marketing. Promote often, and over again. Promoting chiropractic office periodically or seasonally can harm your response rate. As mentioned in “The Rule of 7” your prospects have to see your marketing approximately sever time before they start registering it in their mind, and decide to make a phone call to set up an appointment. You wouldn’t shower once and say “I’m good until next year,” same goes with your marketing. It’s a constant process. Repeat, and refine. 

• Website – Set up your website, with your domain name. Be sure to use professional name and hosting, not a free site with advertisements and annoying pop-ups, as it appears unprofessional. If you are not sure how to set up your website, it’s always a good idea to hire a professional website designer. 

• Blog – For search engines to pick up on your keywords, it is highly important to have a company blog. New blog with fresh content should be added at a very minimum once every two weeks, and it should stay consistent. Write about something that your patients will relate to. 

• Video – Adding a short video now and then to your website, blog, and social media will trigger more search engine engagement, and it will keep your audience on your site much longer. It could be something simple as a 30-second video that shows few stretches to ease back pain, for example. 

• Social Media – Create social media accounts for your business. Update your address, phone number, email, and about your services. Link your social media to your website, and vice versa. Post frequently, and post valuable info. Best practice is to post 80 percent useful content and 20 percent advertising. Engage with your followers, comment back and answer questions. More engagement, more visitors to your site, and more phone calls. 

• Google Local – Add your business to Google Local maps, it’s free. Add your address, phone number, website, upload a photo or few. It’ll help with online searches. Google will mail you a postcard or use another way to verify that it is really your business, so it might take a couple of weeks to show up on there.

• Submit Your Site to Google – Just type in Google search “Submit site to Google” then add your website, and it’ll signal Google search engine to visit your site and start indexing it. This could take few weeks to get indexed. We suggest installing Google Analytics code on your website and setting up Google Webmasters console to keep track of your visitors etc.

• Yellow Pages – Go to their website, and add your chiropractic business. It’ll help with local online searches later. It’s also free. 

• Message – Think of a quick, bold, catchy message that will get their attention. Simply writing “Dr. Joe Doe the Chiropractor” might work, but writing “BACK PAIN? The first visit is FREE!” might work better. Focus on their problem, and quickly show a way to solve it, works much better than simply selling a service or a product.

• Business Cards – Affordable and still very effective. Every chiropractor must have it on their front desk and with them at all times. Having a nicely printed business card with you at all times will do wonders. You never know when you’ll run into someone at the local mall that you haven’t seen in a while, and they’ll ask what you do. Or better yet, you ask them first, and let them speak, and then they will have to ask you what you do. Since they asked, you might as well tell them, and politely give them your card. Maybe they don’t need a chiropractor right now, but they might know someone who does. Strength is in numbers. The more eyes that see your marketing, better the results. When designing your business card for your chiropractic business, be sure to include all your contacts, social media, email, address, etc. Don’t rely on exchanging contact info thru phones, as batteries often die when it’s the most important moment. Another problem with exchanging information digitally is that we tend to save a number on our phone, and then we never look at it again. With a business card, at least out of politeness a person will take a look at it while still talking to you. They’ll keep it in their wallet, and take another look later.

• Vinyl Banner - Very effective temporary signage at low cost. Easy to replace with another offer as needed. Offer a special, or do some promo to attract prospects that are driving or walking by your chiropractic office. Hang your vinyl banner on the wall or on the fence where it can be seen easily. Use a bigger banner, 3x8 or 4x12 feet is common. Keep your message short, and use bold easy to read the text. Use high contrast so you can see it from a distance. Example, dark red background, and bold white letters. No more than three lines of text, to get the most attention. Especially if they are driving by and only have few seconds to look at it. 

• Door Hangers – Deliver door hangers to your neighborhood doors. A full-color door hanger with a beautiful photo and a nice special offer they can’t refuse usually works the best. Keep at least the front side very simple to catch their attention at first glance. Be sure to include your call to action. Something like, “The First visit is free, call today,” and don’t forget to include your contact info and address. Door hangers work much better for chiropractors than social media as they don’t have a way to click away. They have to pick up your door hanger, look at it for few seconds, and then bring it inside the house. While walking, they might take another look. They might set it on the counter, or leave it there for a family member to see. Your door hanger will be working way longer than a three-second online advertisement. Especially if your call to the action says something like “Bring this door hanger with you to receive free consultation” or something along those lines. 

• Postcards – Versatile and effective form of marketing for your chiropractic office. 

• Mailing a single postcard. If you have an address list, you can mail it directly. No envelopes needed. Just address it, stamp it, and drop off in the mail. Done! Many people don’t know, but you don’t have to pay the same postage for mailing a single postcard as you would pay for a First Class Letter. While First Class Mail Letter is $0.49, you can buy stamps that are designed specifically for postcards, and they are only $0.34. Keep in mind that your postcards sizes for this sort of stamps are 4x6 inches and 4.25x6 inches. They cannot be larger or smaller. Another idea for mailing individual postcards is to send out appointment reminders a week ahead. For this option, you’d want to order uncoated paper postcards so that you can write date and time on them by hand.

• Patient Brochures - Speak to your clients while they wait in your office to be called. Create few brochures, educate and inform your patients about related topics. They are likely to take a brochure home with them and share with friends and family. Of course, you will print your address and contact info on the back of your brochure. It builds credibility and brand awareness.

• Flyers – You can hand them out at local events, or business activities. 

• Sidewalk A-Frame Signs – Great tool to attract prospects that are walking by. At the end of the day bring the sign inside. 

• Magnet Cards – Print your contact info and other details on a magnet card. Your clients can take home and place on their fridge door to call anytime. Great way for the whole family to remember your chiropractic office info as they will see it daily.

This is not a complete list, but this list does cover some real essential chiropractor marketing angles. We hope those ideas come usefully, and we wish your chiropractic business all the success.