Marketing for Your Chiropractic Practice

Key Points:

• You must have multiple marketing channels — if one channel suddenly dries up, you’ll be glad to have those other sources of new patients up and running. 
• There are lots of marketing options for your chiropractic clinic — cultivate a mix of digital and non-digital channels. 
• You can and should learn some marketing basics for your own knowledge, but then you need to hire experts that can handle marketing your clinic while you run the business.

Note: This is the introduction to a five-part blog series on successfully marketing your chiropractic clinic. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and stay tuned for the next installments! 

You might be a great chiropractor, you might have an excellent bedside manner, you might even be a great CEO and leader of your practice — but one thing is guaranteed. You didn’t go to school for marketing. And frankly, you shouldn’t have to! 

After being in practice for nearly 10 years, growing two successful clinics, and scaling my business to multiple millions in revenue, I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing. In this blog, I want to share some general marketing principles that will help guide your practice through all the ups and downs of business — and make sure you never get caught without a reliable source of new patients for your chiropractic practice. 

Rule #1: You Need Multiple Marketing Streams

Here is the #1 rule you must follow to market your chiropractic clinic well: you NEED multiple marketing streams that bring new sources of new patients into your clinic. 

You absolutely cannot rely on only one channel to bring patients into your clinic — whether that’s social media, word of mouth, in-person events, or your website. You need a combination of these in case you suddenly lose one channel and you have to turn to another source for new patients. I recommend at least three marketing channels, but more is beneficial. 

Take the pandemic as a prime example. Our clinic, Simply Southern Chiropractic Center, relied heavily on in-person event marketing prior to the pandemic. When lockdown hit, that channel completely dried up. I was so grateful we had other sources of new patients to rely on when that happened. I knew before this happened that it was a good idea to have multiple marketing streams, but that experience drove it home for me. 

Your Chiropractic Marketing Options

Remember, you aren’t just limited to social media or your website for marketing your clinic. Here are some marketing options to look into further. 

• In-person events: These can be an excellent way to get out and meet prospective patients and actually show people how you can serve them. 
• Your website and SEO: Search engine optimization helps your website stand out on Google and attract the right customers. You can also publish a blog or video content that educates your prospective patient and offers free resources. 
• Email newsletter: Put a newsletter signup on your website and start collecting email addresses as soon as possible. Then you can email your list and let them know about special offers, promote new content you publish, or simply remind them to make an appointment.
• Social media: While you don’t have to rely on social media for all customer acquisition, you should at least have a professional-looking social media presence on Facebook and Instagram. 
• Billboards: They’re still around because they work! For targeting local customers, a billboard can be a reliable marketing tool in your toolkit. 
• Print ads: You can still take out print ads in local magazines and newspapers. Every community has at least one of these, and people still pick them up in grocery stores, local cafes, and doctor’s offices. 

This is not an exhaustive list of all your marketing options — see what else you can come up with that might be unique to your community and location. 

Learn the Basics, Delegate the Rest

In the beginning of your practice, it’s good to work on marketing yourself and your clinic and learn the basic principles. But after that, you must delegate your marketing to an agency or external team members (independent contractors). 

Remember, you didn’t go to school for marketing. Outsourcing these tasks frees up your time and energy for the things that only you can do in your business. 

Don’t Play the Comparison Game

Try not to compare your clinic and your marketing to other chiropractic practices. One clinic might have more Google reviews than yours, but maybe they aren’t translating that to actually bringing in new patients. Another clinic might have thousands more followers on social media, but maybe they spend way too much time posting and not enough time optimizing their patient experience, which will actually drive future conversions. 

Stay in your own lane, find the marketing channels that work for you, and focus on whatever gets new patients through your door. The rest is just noise and vanity metrics. 

Reading Recommendation: Who Not How by Dan Sullivan

This book really opened my eyes to the value of hiring the right people to do the jobs you need instead of trying to do everything yourself (and burning out along the way). Sullivan teaches that investing in the right people can bring a 10x, 100x, or even higher return on investment over time. Consider reading this book your homework before looking for the right people to invest into for your marketing team. 

This is Just the Beginning of Your Marketing Journey

I hope this overview of marketing a chiropractic clinic helped demystify marketing and showed that you don’t have to do it all yourself as the clinic owner. In fact, you will go further much faster by hiring the right people to help with your marketing. By outsourcing your marketing and having multiple channels that bring new patients into your clinic, you’re setting yourself up for future success and long-term sustainability as a chiropractic practice. 

Want to see an example of a professional social media presence? Follow Million Dollar Chiro on Instagram! 

Looking for professional mentorship? Here are two ways you can work with me:

• Six or twelve-month one-on-one coaching packages: If you’re a chiropractor looking to grow your business and aiming to reach seven-figure revenues or more, then consider applying for private one-on-one coaching with me.
• Owning a Chiropractic Practice online course: Not quite ready for one-on-one support? Learn all about the business side of running and owning a chiropractic practice in my online course.