Marketing 101 for Chiropractors
Digital marketing is evolving faster than ever, and as a chiropractor, you're not just a healthcare provider—you’re also the CEO and marketer of your practice. Without a solid grasp of marketing fundamentals, it's easy to fall for one-size-fits-all strategies that waste time and money.
Join us as we break down proven, cost-effective, and innovative marketing tactics designed specifically for chiropractors. From social media mastery to Google Ads that convert, we’ll equip you with the tools to attract more patients, build lasting relationships, and dominate your local market. Stay ahead, stay profitable, and take control of your practice’s growth!
Marketing 101 for Chiropractors
Strategic Marketing Planning for Your Chiropractic Practice in 2025
What if you could turn predictable slow seasons into periods of thriving growth for your chiropractic practice? Join me, Dr. Enrico Dolcecore, as we explore the art of crafting a powerful marketing calendar for 2025. By diving into past performance data, we uncover hidden trends and strategize for both peak and low periods, ensuring that you're always ahead of the curve. You'll learn the secrets of planning around personal and team events, and how to keep your growth momentum strong even when vacations roll in. Don't miss the live session on December 9th on YouTube, where I'll be offering personalized advice and answering your most pressing questions.
We'll also look at how to harness community-level engagements to elevate your practice during the second quarter of the year. By aligning your marketing with seasonal themes like stress awareness activities and Easter wellness celebrations, you can boost your visibility while fostering meaningful community connections. Discover how partnerships with local businesses, fitness studios, and ergonomic consultations can not only attract new patients but also fortify your standing in the community. Let's unlock the potential of unwavering effort and strategic adaptability to ensure your practice thrives through 2025 and beyond.
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- Book a free discovery call with Enrico to level up your business
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Marketing 101 for Chiropractors. I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori, and this week we're going through your 2025 marketing calendar and what you need to do right now to plan this all out for next year. The biggest thing you can do is look at your statistics and see when you need to market and how you need to market at certain points in your business. After a few years, you start to pick up on trends that happen in your office. Or maybe you're planning to take a vacation next year, or maybe you're planning some internal things with your family or whatever it may be, or your team that you can work around and keep a perpetual, steady growth going, so that 2025 doesn't just break records. It leads into 2026 with bigger growth.
Speaker 1:So that's how businesses move forward, and the biggest mistake people make is maybe overextend themselves early to get ready for growth by adding more staff, adding more people, adding more payroll, whatever it may be and then not growing into it. The other mistake is just not planning to grow. So let's make sure that we do the second and make sure that we are planning to grow for 2025. Here's some things that you can do to plan for 2025 and then execute them quite well. So, first things first, we want to create a marketing events calendar based on our statistics from last year. So you're going to overlay them. So let's look at 2024 or maybe even 2023. You're going to see ebbs and flows in the practice and I want you to print that 12-month stent. If you use stat, uh, track, stat or anything like that, you just print the graph super easy stuff or use your EHR and then looks at, look at the highs and lows and plot the month to month or even week to week. I would do 52 plots on this thing and see the ups and lows, the big weeks and the low weeks. If you can do 2023 as well, you may see a correlation on trend at certain points. You may see the beginning of summer, when school's out a decrease or an increase in your practice. You may see around the holidays an increase or decrease and then you may see some random overlaps in March or maybe October, just some weird times where things go down for whatever reason it may be in the area that you're at. These are critical points in your statistics to plan for marketing for next year.
Speaker 1:Then, as we overlay those, we say, okay, we see this trend here. We see January always being a peak for the last three years. Always that second, third and fourth week are doing great. And then we see a peak in May. For some reason, those last two weeks in May are always doing well. And then we see a peak in May. For some reason, those last two weeks in May are always doing well. And then we see a big uptick in October, for whatever reason it is, or November those are similar to my graphs and then we see this.
Speaker 1:So what we're going to do is we're going to plan our marketing around that, especially our digital marketing, our ads or Google, whatever it may be and we're going to rev them up during the peaks the peaks it makes less sense, right? You're already busy. That's when you're going to rev it up to prepare yourself for the decline into the valley. And then what you do is, once you have that decline into the valley, that's where you start to increase ad spend or turn on the ads. That's when you do this to avoid a big, sharp dip down into that. Or, if you're planning around a vacation, maybe you're going to actually have to close the office. Maybe you're a solo doc and you need to close the office for a week and a half, whatever, or you're scared to do it. This is how you do it. You plan the marketing around that and you start pre-booking patients at that time. So let's say you're going to take a vacation July 1st through the 14th two weeks vacation July 1st through the 14th two weeks. Never dreamed you could do that.
Speaker 1:At the end of May, whenever that peak is, you turn on your ads and you run them through the course of June and you have an internal offer, external offer and a digital offer all going at the same time. This doesn't mean discounts, it just means ads that are going out. Then you start to onboard the new leads that are coming on. You start booking them appointments and you book them June 15th, june 16th, june 19th, june 23rd, june 25th, june 29th and then, as you're booking them, you book them July 15th. There's just this gap and you get them. They're like, oh, is it a two-week wait or three-week wait to see you? And you say, yeah, the doctor is fully booked until june, july 15th, you have this discussion in the office and you've got these patients booked for when you get back and then working around knowing that your patients that get regular care are going to be busier that last week in june because the ones that see you once a week may have to come in twice that week to make up for the two weeks you're gonna be gone, or they may they may be coming in three times a week and you got to keep whatever that, wherever they are in care, is when you stack them in there. Maybe they come in twice a month. You're going to make sure that they get in that June 30th and July 15th when you get back, so that they can squeeze that second appointment in July by the end of the month, so you can plan these things, take your vacation and not lose spend. You know, you see how this can work. So using your statistics is number one. Print your statistics, have them in front of you.
Speaker 1:On Monday, december 9th, on Adjusting Success live on YouTube. Go onto YouTube, go to Enrico D Marketing, watch us live and you can bring questions. You'd be like, listen, I've been doing this for the last couple of years. What do you suggest I do in this area with this type of a practice that I run? I do NUCCA. I run a strict upper cervical practice. I don't really take care of much kids. I want to get into kids. How do I make 2025 a more family-based practice? And you ask those questions and we brainstorm together. Others will learn as well. This is how these things work online, so that's great.
Speaker 1:So next is the calendar. So you got to get a 12-month calendar. Put it up on your wall. I've got a big giant one in our office, in the clinic, so where the doctors are, they can see it all the time. We have everything on there all of our events, any breaks, any staff vacations that are taking time off, so we can work around it and plan ahead. These calendars work really well.
Speaker 1:You're going to break it into quarters, four quarters, and that's how you're going to plan your year. You want to put marketing events, both internal and external, and then adjust your google and facebook ads accordingly. So, for example, quarter one january through march you're going to have a focus in your marketing and this is just typical, you know, general type thing that we're going to go through here new year's health resolutions and winter wellness. That covers pretty much all of north amer. It's a part of the lingo during that time of the year. So your internal marketing events for January will be things like a new year, new you, health workshop or virtual workshop or virtual class or ebook or whatever it is that you're giving, or a guide that you're giving on how to have a new year, new you, and you're giving out this guide for free or having it in a class of workshops worked in your area. Those are always great. Do that and then have a patient referral contest. Win a free massage, win a red light session, win a free this, win a swag, a stanley cup or something like that, something with your swag on it, or they can win something that they want and have a referral contest. So people will leave you Google reviews and Yelp reviews, wherever it is that you want them, and just grow your review thing as well. So that's your January February.
Speaker 1:You're going to have a Valentine's day adjustment special, maybe discounted for couples. Make it a family thing for those upper cervical practices that just help adults and like how do I get into family? Making it a family thing Make mom and dad or the parents come in together on a discount. Come in and get checked. That would be a great thing around Valentine's Day. And it's also Heart Health Awareness Day, so focus on how chiropractic impacts cardiovascular health. You can do a fitness class, a workshop, how motion helps, how proper diet helps. That's the little tip there Guides, free things that let you go. Or you turn these things into virtual workshops or in-house workshops that your patients can come to and always have something to invite people to, always have something to invite people to every single month. This creates community.
Speaker 1:And then in March, for example, you're going to spring into health challenge. You know, encourage patients to bring in a friend for an evaluation, a referral. They get a referral thing, whatever it may be. Wellness open houses are great too. Offer free spine checks and mini health consultations, and the list just goes on and on and on. We can use health month as your topic so you can focus on those things and the ideas just keep going.
Speaker 1:That's all internal right. So then that's your internal plan for the quarter. You do it month by month, and then you have to have an external plan. What are you going to do externally? If you're a solo doc, you pick and choose these things. You may want to do one internal thing and one external thing, but the general rule for growth is two internal things, two external things every single month to see continuous referral growth in your business. This works across multiple Industries. So external marketing for Q1 would look like maybe partnering with a local gym or fitness center or fitness coach in your area that you help, partnering with them and doing a workshop together, or having them come in do the workshop for your patients in your office. You don't even have to do the work. How great is that?
Speaker 1:Sponsor a community event like a farmer's market or wellness expos. They're typically thriving during the first quarter of the year that's when all these events typically happen and sometimes in the summer. Offer free posture screenings at local schools or offices. Just go into offices. If you're an insurance-based clinic and you know certain demographics have the insurance that works well in your office, go ask them where they work, where they teach. Go to those schools or offices and do screenings at the State Farm office. Or if you get into one State Farm office who has a team of like 10 people, you get into all the State Farm offices around you or the Edward Jones place or the financial offices wherever these people are that play a role, whether they have insurance or not, works well. Grocery stores sometimes have health and wellness things for their teams where you guys can come in and then participant in local charity runs as a team to build community awareness, if you guys are runners or if your team is, uh, whatever. These are just examples, guys.
Speaker 1:Okay, things to just think about and things that you love. You come up with your own ideas. And then your google and facebook ad strategy. That doesn't mean you have to put in a bunch of money into it, but for google maybe for google search or your keywords for seo is uh, make sure you're targeting chiropractor near me, winter wellness tips, chiropractic for weight loss, like all these little key words that may spur people searching for other things. Like, maybe they're looking for wellness tips and then you pop up. Your website pops up being like, oh, the local chiropractor has wellness tips and they click on you. They go to your website. They don't see much. They click back, they're on the Google. Then the next thing on there is your Facebook profile. They click on that and guess what? You just posted a whole bunch of stuff about wellness tips for the winter and they're seeing it and they're like, oh, it's actually correlating. That works really well, too.
Speaker 1:Facebook ads create campaigns around New Year's special and the Valentine's special and use testimonial-based videos or before and after stories for engagement. That's your digital plan. That's Q1. Do we dive into Q2, q3, q4? Do you want to do all of that? We can do it through this entire podcast to just give you examples of how you break this all down into internal, external and digital marketing. And the budgets are typically free because you're boosting this stuff or, sorry, you're boosting it through your digital platforms. You're posting, posting, posting all about this your 10 tips to wellness, your New Year's resolution new you, new year, new you. You're just putting these things out there all the time and creating content around there and then using the videos you've already created from last year on patient testimonials, all these things that you can just keep putting on there and then maximizing your keywords on your Google. This is stuff no marketing company does for you no one. No one does this for you and this is the most efficient way to grow. Everything else is a band-aid approach. Starting a Facebook ad just to try and grow your practice is a band-aid approach because you're going to get a different type of lead coming into your office and if you don't have a system and procedure around that on following up, getting them in and converting them and converting them in office and not only to convert them to do a plan but to stick with the plan, then this becomes a tedious bandaid of marketing that doesn't actually work. And if you've got no Google search going on, never modifying the search key terms, never expanding your reach organically, then you're going to be stuck in the chiropractor near me bubble. So that's what we need to be focusing on moving into 2025.
Speaker 1:Let's go into quarter two just to give you an example. Otherwise this podcast is going to become really long. So April through June is quarter two and the focus here might be something like spring rejuvenation and preparation for summer activities. Right? So your internal marketing. April is typically stress awareness month. You can do like a free spinal stress assessment If you do any type of scanning in the office or any type of stress response scanning. You can do that in the office and invite them in to get a scan a thermal scan, a static EMG, whatever it is that you do and invite them in to get a scan a thermal scan, a static EMG, whatever it is that you do, tytron, whatever it is to check their stress. And then Easter Family Wellness Day you do like something based around Easter a scavenger hunt, fun activities, chiropractic discounts, easter egg drop, whatever it is we want to do. You can make your business the community go-to spot for things like that.
Speaker 1:In may it's mother's day. That's always a great one discounted massage, red lights uh, come in, get a rose or flowers or whatever it is that day, or succulent plants or something that you're giving away that day. And then patient appreciation days are always great around april, may and june at the end of the school year, because everyone's kind of getting into that summer mode and the weather's getting better. Great time to do that and not destroy your office. You can do it outside or do it at a local park or team up with other local businesses and do that. And in June it's Father's Day, which you can just spin off your Mother's Day thing and do stuff for dads. Maybe a summer kickoff barbecue or picnic at the office, or combine it with the patient appreciation day and have a barbecue day. So many great ideas when it comes to this and you need to do this stuff to be part of the community.
Speaker 1:We've got this white coat syndrome in chiropractic where we think patients just flood our schedules and they just want to come see you and you're going to be booked up for months, just like the local PCP and the local surgeon. It doesn't work that way. It hasn't worked that way in 135 years. You have to get out there and convince people that chiropractic is something that they need, not just something that they may want something. So this is how you do it by becoming top of mind, and we all play a role in doing this, and you'll see growth quickly if you try this stuff.
Speaker 1:External examples for quarter two would be, you know, collaborating with yoga or Pilates studios or other type of fitness places. The same thing kind of goes on with there. You can offer free ergonomic evaluations to local businesses. You can host your own booth or your own fair by getting other vendors to come out to it. Once you build community, that's what we do. We've created so much traction that vendors want to come to us and pay us 50 bucks for a table for the day, for a few hours. Set up their booth and show people what they do. Partner with local coffee shops to display chiropractic posters or brochures. These are just examples for you to spur some creativity and some motivation so that you start planning for 2025.
Speaker 1:Do you have to do all of this? Absolutely not. Pick the things that work for you and always redefine your keywords and always keep up with your content so that it's all jiving together for everyone. There you go. Good examples. Do you like that? And I would do that for all four quarters of the year and have a roadmap to the year so you and your team know what to plan and then done is better than perfect. You just try and get it done. Sometimes you miss something, sometimes it's a last-minute switch. You're like forget it, we're not doing the barbecue thing. Whatever it may be, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Maybe you start getting really busy by Q3, and you're like man, this has been all so great. Don't take your foot off the gas pedal, keep it on there. But maybe modify Q3 and Q4. Reduce the amount of stuff that you're doing and focus on the things that are working and you know 2X what you're doing there. If it's Facebook ads at that time, you just really hone in on that. You make that work and that's how you plan to win for 2024. Join us on Monday, december 9th, at 9.30 pm, eastern, on Adjusting Success If you want to make this more interactive for next year.
Speaker 1:You plan to succeed or not plan and you fail. You know that's what they say. How does it plan to succeed? Not planned and you fail? You know that's what they say. How is it planned to succeed? And if no plan equals a fail, whatever the saying is, you just have to be ready for 2025. If you have any questions, reach out to me, enricodcom or info at EnricoDcom. Have a great week. Thank you for everything that you do. Without you, no one's going to live a healthy life in your community. Remember that You're the staple there and you have to believe that. And once you believe that you'll put all your effort into growing your business, not just for financial prosperity but for community health and wellness You're going to live your mission. You're going to live your purpose, and it's just a lot more fun doing it that way. Take care, stay well.
