The marketing field is constantly evolving. Instead of merely seeing a billboard sign or watching a TV commercial, people can interact with brands via Google, websites, on social, and through online content like blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.
However, with all of these potential touchpoints, it is no wonder local chiropractic practices often feel overwhelmed when trying to figure out how to promote themselves online and reach new patients.
The key to online marketing success is showing up at the right time, in the right place, with the right message. And one of the most effective ways to accomplish this is through the use of well-planned digital advertising campaigns.
So, in this article, we’re going to go over some top digital advertising tips for chiropractors, to help you better reach new patients!
The Benefits of Digital Advertising for Chiropractors
Digital advertising, or pay-per-click (PPC) ads, appears across the internet on sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and more. It can be a great way for medical professionals to generate brand awareness, promote specific services/products, and attract new patients.
Unlike traditional mass advertising (i.e. TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, etc.), digital advertising excels in letting you target your ideal prospects at the perfect moment.
With digital advertising you can:
- Drive more patients: Lead-generation ad formats are specifically designed to help increase the number of new patients who contact your Chiropractic office (instead of the competition).
- Fine-tune your targeting: Digital advertising platforms allow you to harness the power of Big Data to target people in your area, who are interested in your services and are actively searching during your business hours.
- Increase brand awareness: You can run cross-channel campaigns to help people recognize your practice, have positive associations with your brand, and understand the variety of services you provide.
- Control your budget: With pay-per-click advertising, you are in control of your budget. You can decide how much you bid for specific keywords and set your campaigns automatically pause if they reach a certain spend threshold — to prevent things from going over budget.
- Easily track and adjust your campaigns: Unlike traditional mass advertising, you can access detailed analytic information about your digital campaigns to track what is (and isn’t) working. Furthermore, you have the ability to test and optimize campaigns to further increase your ROI.
Digital Advertising Channels & Platforms for Chiropractors
As previously mentioned, digital advertising is constantly changing and there are always new potential channels and platforms emerging on the scene. However, there are three forms of digital advertising that have a proven track record for helping small chiropractic practices reach their marketing goals.
Search Advertising:
This type of digital advertising is like spear-fishing. Rather than broadcasting your message to a wide audience, you hone in on people who fit your targeting criteria, right at the moment when they are searching for chiropractic services. Search advertising is a great channel for lead generation since you show relevant ads to people with strong purchase intent. The two most important search advertising platforms you should be using are Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising (also known as Bing Ads).
Social Advertising:
Social media sites like Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor are important digital advertising channels for chiropractors. Unlike search advertising – which is keyword-based – social advertising is interest-based. Namely, the platform’s algorithm has determined that a person might be interested in your ads based on their previous behavior (the types of content they consume, the people they follow, their demographic info, interests/hobbies, etc.). Social advertising is particularly suited for helping businesses nurture relationships with people interested in chiropractic, but aren’t quite ready to schedule an appointment.
Display Advertising:
With display advertising, your ads appear on websites like YouTube, news sites, entertainment sites, and blogs across the internet. You can think of it as a digital equivalent of a billboard — but one that offers you greater audience targeting capabilities. For example, you can target your ads to run on specific sites that you know are popular with your audience. Display advertising is most often used for branding and general awareness-building. It is also a great option for remarketing campaigns (which target viewers who have visited your website) to stay top of mind with prospective patients.
Digital Advertising Tips for Chiropractors
Digital advertising strategies require a certain amount of knowledge, skill, and time to manage properly. However, do not let this intimidate you or stop you! We are here to help. The rewards of attracting new patients and growing your business are worth it.
Here are six important digital advertising tips for chiropractors to help you develop and execute a solid digital advertising strategy for your practice.
1. Set Campaign Objectives
To be successful with digital advertising, your campaigns need to support specific business goals and objectives. A general goal like “I want more patients for my chiropractic office” doesn’t cut it. You will end up wasting money on ads that don’t provide any meaningful return for your practice. Instead, you need to build your campaigns around SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) objectives. For example, “Spending X amount of money, I will drive X many new patient leads in the next X months from X campaign”. In addition to knowing what you’re trying to achieve, you also need to decide which metrics you will use to measure campaign performance. Establishing your goals and performance metrics in advance makes it easier to organize your campaigns, optimize performance, and effectively allocate resources.
2. Target the Right Audience
In addition to setting SMART objectives, another critical step for running a successful advertising campaign is fine-tuning your targeting. This involves really getting to know your audience, beyond basic demographic information or the fact that they need a chiropractor. Rather, you need to understand their needs, motivations, responsibilities, interests, and technological preferences. You need to know what types of keywords new patients use to search for your services, when they search, on what types of devices, if they use voice search, etc. You can then leverage this knowledge to ensure that your ads show up at exactly the right place and time to catch their attention. Creating an ideal customer profile will be an invaluable resource to help you set the right targeting parameters to reach new patients.
3. Create the Right Message
An ad can show up at exactly the right time, for the right person – but nothing will happen if it doesn’t have the right message. Rather than boasting about your business, compelling ad copy centers on how you can help solve your customer’s problem. Consider how language, visuals, and layout work together to represent your brand and convey the value of what you offer to prospective patients. Understand that good ad copy not only catches people’s attention, it establishes a clear path that prospects can follow to become new patients.
4. Set Up Tracking & Reporting
A major strength of digital advertising is that it gives businesses the ability to track performance through the entire customer journey – from initial impression to final conversion. Make sure you take advantage of this fact and set up campaign tracking and reporting. Doing so is the only way you will know if a campaign is successfully meeting its objectives according to the performance metrics you established during the planning phase.
5. Continually Optimize Performance
Once you have good tracking in place to monitor performance, you will want to regularly optimize your campaign to maximize ROI over time. Never set and forget a digital campaign. Instead, run A/B tests and make small changes to your campaigns based on the results. Elements like ad copy, targeting, and keywords can be fine-tuned to continuously improve performance.
6. Expand Your Campaigns
When you first get started, you will want to focus on search advertising to grab the low-hanging fruit of people who are searching for chiropractic services right now. However, to maintain a good lead flow, you will eventually want to reach potential patients earlier on in their customer journey. This is when you should expand into social and display advertising to build brand recognition and engagement with people who fit your target audience profile, but who don’t immediately need your services. However, by reaching them early, you are the first office that comes to mind when they eventually DO need to visit a chiropractor. By coordinating ad campaigns across search, social, and display, you can dominate your local market across the entire customer journey.
Take Charge of Your Digital Advertising with Surefire Local!
At Surefire Local Marketing, our mission is to help make online marketing easier for small businesses. With the Surefire Local Marketing Platform™, you can effectively manage your digital advertising campaigns from a single dashboard. Moreover, our expert team members are always available to share digital advertising tips for chiropractors.
Book a demo today and see how we can help you grow your business profitably!