Chiropractors: How to Reliably & Predictably Generate New Patient Visits

Our team at Bbg has spent over a year talking to 120+ chiropractors about their business and marketing.  What are their main challenges?  What do they love about their business?  How have things changed over the years?

What resulted was a deep understanding of what makes the Chiropractor-Entrepreneurs of the world tick.  And what gets in their way.

You have plenty of options to bring in more clients -- and many of them work well.  Events, referrals, networking, direct mail...  And you’ve probably tried most of these and seen good results from at least some of them.

There’s still an issue.

You simply can’t be everywhere when it comes to events and networking -- and you can’t rely on the same old sources that everyone else uses, including referrals and direct mail.

No, instead, you need something different that breaks away from traditional methods, but also actually works with a measurable return on investment.

Fortunately, there is something out there that can reliably and predictably bring in new patients without requiring your personal attention every moment of every day.

Very few of your competitors are using this currently, but those who are enjoy an automated flow of phone calls coming in by local residents looking for a chiropractor who can make them feel healthy again.

Let’s talk about exactly how you can get your phone ringing with new patients by intelligently using the Chiropractors new best friend: The Facebook Advertising Platform.

There are three elements to effectively approaching this, which I will explain in further detail:

1. Low Barrier Initial Interaction
2. High Value Offer
3. Test, Test, Test

1. Keep the Initial Interaction at a Low Barrier

Imagine casually going about your day only to have someone stop you and ask if you’d like to schedule an appointment with a chiropractor.

“Excuse me? No -- go away please.  I need to get back to my, uhh, work.” (As your head drops back down to your screen and you continue to scroll through your Facebook News Feed.)

Clearly going in for the kill doesn’t work.  Sure, at some point, you’ll hit that person that was looking for a chiropractor that same day or week.  But you’d have to stop in front of a lot of people to make that offer...

How about if someone came back around and offered to share a basic guide on wellness through exercises in proper posture, movement, and stretching that you could do within five minutes to feel as agile, flexible and alive as you did when you were a teenager?

“Oh... YES, Please!” (That’s a no-brainer.)

Make it easy for someone to say yes to that initial interaction.  When you can talk to 10x, 20x, or 50x more people, you’re much more likely to find those people looking for a chiropractor this week.  (Plus, they will be thinking of you if, unfortunately, something happens to them next week, or month, or year.  Or, more hopefully, they are wellness oriented and appreciate the health benefits you can bring them.)

2. Make Your High Value Offer

Some call this “The Godfather Offer” -- going to this person who willingly and happily interacted with you and making him an offer he can’t refuse.

Now remember where we are conceptually in this process: we have been going around town and giving people this freebie that they love getting and feel instant gratification when they use it.  They are already warmed up to you as the helpful, non-salesy Chiropractor in town.

And now, when you do try to “sell”, you still do so in a customer-centric way -- in a way that they are excited for you to “sell” them.

How could that be?

Well, we win their trust by removing the next barrier in our interaction -- this time going from a new relationship with you as the helpful Chiropractor to stepping foot into your practice for billable face-to-face time.

There is no single offer to make.  Rather, find something that works best for your practice and in your experience.

Some of our clients have offered free screenings; some free exercise guides and equipment on the initial visit; some a free massage.

The point is this: you simply need to make an offer that helps that person step forward and say, “You’re my Chiro!”  Because your competitors are making similar offers; and hopefully yours is better, but if not, you’re the one who already provided big value upfront without asking for a sale of any sort.  That puts you ahead of the rest.

3. Test, Test, Test

A small business marketing consultant and mentor of mine once said: “In marketing, if you can’t measure something, don’t do it!” (A bit of a paraphrase of a common quote attributed to Peter Drucker.)

We love Facebook because you can measure!  You can measure with exact precision!

And because of the ability to confidently measure, to perform like a high level data scientist even as a complete newbie, we can perform sophisticated tests with great simplicity.

Testing is at the core of success.  With every client we have, we test the front-end offer at the initial engagement, we test the ad creative/images, the ad copy, the target audience, the landing pages, the back-end “Godfather” offer, and every other element we see fit.

Of course, testing all of this can be overwhelming... Just reading about all that’s involved makes me feel overwhelmed!

But There’s Good News!

The painful part of doing Facebook Advertising is knowing how to run ads that work, how to write the ads and select images, what different variable to test and how to do that simply...

Contracting a Facebook Advertising agency for a year would cost approximately $18,000 to $30,000.

So, what we decided to do was to allow you to control your own campaign but take out all the confusing variables and simplify every step in the process.  All for a fraction of the cost of hiring an agency at a one-time four-figure fee.  The result is a step-by-step guide you can follow to set up a Facebook campaign yourself, or hand it off to a staff member or your local college marketing intern to handle.

Regardless of how you approach this, we wanted to address those problems we discovered by talking to dozens of chiropractors: how do we consistently, profitably bring new patients in with a trackable return on investment and without taking up all our physical time when we need to see our patients as well?

Dare we say... Problem Solved.