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
Call Me Maybe? The Art of Not Burning Your Marketing Dollars
Ever wondered why your chiropractic marketing seems to be generating leads but not patients? The problem might not be your marketing strategy or the quality of leads—it could be what happens after those leads come in.
Jen Troy of The Troy Method pulls back the curtain on one of the most overlooked aspects of practice growth: consistent, professional lead follow-up. Most chiropractic offices make just 2-3 call attempts before abandoning a lead, mistakenly believing that "if they wanted our help, they would call back." This approach is essentially burning your marketing dollars.
The truth is that modern lead conversion requires persistence and a systematic approach. Your front desk staff might be excellent, but they're juggling multiple responsibilities, making dedicated lead follow-up nearly impossible. The result? Potential patients slip through the cracks while you continue investing in marketing that seems ineffective.
In this eye-opening conversation, we explore why the traditional approach to handling patient calls doesn't work for marketing leads, how the mindset behind follow-up calls needs to shift from "bothering people" to "helping them find better healthcare," and practical solutions for practices of all sizes. Whether you handle marketing in-house or work with an agency, you'll discover why successful conversion requires an intentional process rather than a casual approach.
Ready to stop wasting your marketing budget and start converting more of your leads into patients? This episode provides the insights and strategies you need to close the gap between lead generation and new patient appointments. Your marketing isn't broken—your follow-up system might be.
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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Marketing 101 for Chiropractors. Really special guest this week Jen Troy from the Troy Methods here. Thanks for joining us Hello.
Speaker 2:thank you so much for having me. This is a long time coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've been working back and forth together for a while and I just thought, hey, you know, let's talk about this. We've had some great podcasts recently come out about, you know, the leads don't suck, you suck. You know, the leads don't suck, you suck. You know. I was just, you know, making fun of doctors there for a little bit and it really triggered a whole response from a lot of people saying, well, hang on a sec, what are you talking about? And that's what got me into the idea. I'm going to call Jen. I'm going to tell you why. You've been seeing this for years in the chiropractic profession, of like with all types of marketing, saying, hey, marketing doesn't work, uh, the leads are no good. Well, let's start this whole podcast off with that. What have you noticed over the years? That, uh, has been the biggest struggle for chiropractors in their offices.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that's such a big question, okay. So, yes, I agree, that is the marketing doesn't suck. Things behind the scenes on the doctor's side might suck. I know it's hard to hear and don't stop the podcast now. Hang with us.
Speaker 2:Here's what I've seen, and even having worked in a practice for a lot of years, even with a staff who's so well-trained on how to handle phone calls and all the things, their time is the problem. So we have this kind of overarching oh, my marketing isn't working. Nobody's showing up to the door. Oh, they're bad. When they come in, they're not quality leads. What's happening in what I've seen?
Speaker 2:Four years I've been doing this and only this lead follow-up and booking appointments for offices I've seen that there's a gap between those leads coming in and how they're being handled once they come in, and if they're being handled at all. That's the problem that we've seen the biggest gap. Even working in the office, I thought oh, the leads aren't? They're not that good. Nobody's picking up the phone, nobody's calling us back. We're texting, we're calling Again to answer your question. In short, it's the after it's. If an agency is getting leads for a practice, somebody has to be on top of them 100 of the time. It has to be their primary role. It can't fall to the back burner, and that's what I've seen been the challenge with offices when they're saying their leads suck um. Most often it's the follow-through and the follow-up that is actually when we pull back the curtain a little bit, it's it's
Speaker 1:that piece of it yeah, it is, and we didn't even talk about. So jen, uh, runs the troy method. It's that piece of it. Yeah, it is, and we didn't even talk about it. So Jen runs the Troy method, it's her company and it's uh. You can go into detail about this, about the a call center for funneling leads into, so your team doesn't have to make the call. So that's what you guys have been doing and it's been evolving as well. So what are you up to now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, um, it started after I left the practice. I moved away. I had to figure out what to do now that I had left the practice I was working in. Go back to a practice, and that's y'all know. It's that running a practice isn't for the faint of heart. I had kids. I wanted to try to stay home and figure something out.
Speaker 2:When I moved from the practice, I saw how big of a gap lead follow up was Again, even with my trained staff, who was phenomenal. They were this. This ball was dropping constantly, and so I saw something. I saw something there, just helping my office back in the day with our lead follow-up and fast forward after working, starting with an agency and them finding out that I was doing this remotely, I slowly but surely started adding multiple offices. We've worked with hundreds of offices now over the last several years.
Speaker 2:So we've just taken it like what am I doing now? It's that service like and it's exponentially better than it was when we started. We've learned a lot. We've pivoted some of the ways we do things. The team that I have now is stronger than ever. So we take leads. That's what we do. We take the leads and we book the new patient appointments. We pick up the phone and we call them, and we call them again, and we call them again, and we call them again until we get somebody to book an appointment or tell us no, leave me alone. And there's a reason why we do it that way. That's the method. It's kind of formulated over time, but that's why we do. What we do is you have to have the consistent, steady and repeatable process to get patients and leads into the practice.
Speaker 1:And I know you got chiropractors nodding their head right now saying that is exactly one of the biggest balls we drop, and it's because it's tough. We're so used to uh, patients calling. The number one phone call chiropractors get every day in their office is hey, I'd like to book an appointment. It's your current patients calling you. We see this through google advertising as well. Docs call me up all the time. Can you run my google ads? Yes, we can run your google ads. We run google ads and they see 60 of the calls when you track them are their current patients and you're like well, what that? Why are they clicking on my ad? Well, because people just click on the first link they put in your name and you show up at the top. But your sponsored link is now at the top. But anyways, long story short, they're the ones calling you trying to rebook an appointment, reschedule an appointment, get their husbands in. Whatever it is, they're your number one call per day. Then the other calls that you guys like, hey, do, do you guys accept new patients? So you're like, yes, we do, and you do your thing. And one, two, three, you get their information again and we're so trained into that. Those are our.
Speaker 1:90% of our calls are that you don't get people kicking tires calling you. You don't get people. You might get some insurance questions, or do you take my insurance, or how much do you charge, and then they they may go somewhere else. That's fine, but that's such a small percentage. When you get into this type of marketing Facebook marketing, whatever it is lead generation marketing now you're getting all those other, the 10% you're just high-voluming that to. Instead of one or two calls a week, now you're getting 20 or 30 leads per week coming in through your marketing and you guys all throw a fit like these guys suck, everyone sucks. These leads all suck. These leads don't suck. You're just never been used to having full conversations with them, never been used to the sales process of like, hey, how do I convert you in this next 10 seconds to become a patient into our office? We're not trained in that. I tell you this.
Speaker 1:So chiropractors complain about going to chiropractic school and knowing nothing about business. Right, then you learn all that stuff. Then all the intricacies of running a practice. Forget about call centers, forget about marketing psychology, reversing being a car salesman I mean these. These people who are in car sales know it better than anyone else. You're trapped in there. If you ask one question, you're trapped in a car lot for two and a half hours and you may or may not walk out with a car. So they know a whole system to this right and same thing with you guys, and that's why it's called the Troy method. You guys have figured out a method over time of what really works at converting more leads.
Speaker 2:Your team has no time to do any of this, so that's the value, and what thousands of dollars a month getting spent on all these new leads coming in, these leads that they're like holy smokes. Holy smokes, they cannot convert themselves. You know, okay, yet we have some self-booked funnels and all the things. But to get the best bang for the buck, you've got to have somebody either on your team or hire somebody to wear this hat. It can't be something they do in the middle of the shift on their lunch break. When a lead comes in, it can't wait three hours, four hours, 24 hours. You might as well just take a match to your marketing dollars. That's what I say. If you're not having somebody follow up consistently and all the time, it's like lighting a match. Don't even just turn your marketing off. You know like somebody has to be there to follow up and stay on top of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and that's what you guys bring to the team there. So how does it work on the back end? So somebody says this sounds amazing, I need that, or I'm going to turn off my advertising. What does it look like working with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some agencies are going to be mad at me for saying that working with you. Yeah, some agencies are going to be mad at me for saying that so we assign. What it looks like is we have somebody who's assigned to a practice, so we're not like a round Robin where you got to wonder, like who's going to be taking my calls. We're also primarily USA based. I say primarily because I do have two Spanish speakers that aren't in the country. Spanish is their first language and they handle my Spanish clinics or the clinics that need that. But we are USA based. That's another, you know, thing doctors worry about is the language barrier. That you know. Who am I actually? Who's actually going to be on my calls when we assign a person to your office?
Speaker 2:Most of my team has had an office chiropractic experience. I have begun to really see how valuable the patient having somebody on my team who's had that office experience and patient experience, we just elevate their phone skill set, their sales skill set when they join my team. So we assign a person to a practice and we really want to operate like an extension of you. We don't want it to feel like a call center. We don't want. I actually hate that we're compared as a call center, but that's effectively what we're doing. We do not want the patients to feel like they're talking to anybody else but your office. So we assign somebody to you. We get into your scheduling system if we can. It's like you're hiring a team member that just sits remotely. You don't have to train and you don't have to worry about all that stuff, and it's I mean, it's at a fraction of a cost of a full-time team member.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. We've been using you guys. You guys are absolutely great, professional. You can't mimic this. I know AI comes into the question all the time. I feel like every podcast in 2025 is AI something, some question about it and as good as it gets. I've been through some of these demo calls with some of the best, I think, in AI right now as far as sales across all industries, and a lot of them are embedding into healthcare and it's there. It's cool. The tone is great. You can get accents, you can get southern draws, you can get northern accents it's pretty cool. Northern accents it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:But any professional I think our ideal clients are people that are professional, higher income earners, upper middle class I mean, that's what chiropractic typically gets people who can pay for your service. Yes, they're picking up on AI for sure. The long pause, the incorrect answer right? Yeah, it's pretty quick within seconds. They know they're not talking to a person. I'm still one of those old school guys that's probably going to hang up on that conversation. I just want to be talking to a machine and I feel like a lot of my ideal clients would probably feel the same way there. So we're not. I don't think we're there yet, I don't think it's one of those things that we have to throw out the window, but what I think the value is, the troy method is bringing real live us based uh, personnel to help answer your call, so you can at least get that, which is which is absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for bringing AI to the to the conversation because, um, I think it is important. You and I had briefly touched on this. It's, it's, you know, like quality patients in the door is what has been one of the biggest complaints I hear before somebody hires us like, oh, my market, like we just talked about, my marketing stinks. It's not bringing in quality patients, they're not pre-qualified. Um, how's ai gonna do that for you? So I caution the use of it in entirety.
Speaker 2:I think it absolutely has a time and a place. I also think it's pretty incredible how it has the voice, the cadence, that kind population. Right, older, you know, they have spinal degenerative conditions, neuropathy conditions. They're an older, they don't. They're not a big fan of technology, still, they're still trying to get on the technology train. So, you know we're toying with AI kind of like I talked about. I just don't think it should yet replace humans in its entirety. Maybe after hours, weekends that's kind of what we're dabbling in right now picking up an inbound call that we may not be able to answer because we don't have 30, you know, overseas agents just waiting for a phone call to be picked up. So, yeah, I think it's. I think it's evolving, but that's not what we use 100% of the time we have people on the phones constantly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it has its role in automation and in a lot of funneling and all this. It's there. I think it's there, but as far as some of these people leaning towards hey, I'm going to get AI to answer my calls, I don't think the chiropractic profession's there yet. I think most owners are going to be cautious about it and I think they're all agreeing with us right now as they listen to this too. So what do you feel is the biggest hurdle right now with even leads and marketing in general? Where are we at with the marketing? Are people as responsive as they were two years ago to Instagram marketing, facebook marketing, google marketing? Are they picking up the phone like they used to? Are people becoming, you know?
Speaker 1:I read this article the other day saying people are about to ditch these phones and throw them in the garbage and just detach from texting and calling, and Gen Z is really starting to go back to flip phones because they're just like. This is making me sick. So where do you think we're going with this marketing? Are people picking up? How are your efforts?
Speaker 2:looking. I can relate to that sentiment. I'm tired of my phone too, to be honest. It's no, you know. It's interesting because we track stats. We track stats with all of our clinics across the board we have now for the last several years, and I think people are a little less responsive to the social media marketing. We track engagement. It's interesting, it's fascinating to see some of the differences of just the social media marketing. It's different. I can't put my finger on it because I'm not the agency who gets to see kind of all those stats, but from our perspective it does seem to have changed and it's harder, I would say it's harder today to get people on the phone.
Speaker 2:That's why we stay true to our method of consistent, steady nurture. If you don't get them right away, you know that five to 15 minute timeframe and actually that window seems to be going smaller and smaller you lose people, and that's why it's so important for offices to have something in place that gets to a lead right away. That's that's going to be your best bet. And so I have seen a shift, I have seen things change, things like. You mentioned google ads, and I know you do that for a lot of your clients um, those are better. It's higher intent. People right, they're searching, they click and they're calling. I do that for the majority of services. I want to find in my area chiropractor near me, back pain near me, whatever it is. Those are higher intent. My dog clearly wants to join the podcast. So I think, yeah, it's definitely shifted, but consistency in the follow-up remains the same. Got to stay consistent because our conversion is still strong with the people we do engage with.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and that's where you know improvement of your ad strategies are better too. So those people, even these agencies, being left in the dust with the same type of ad strategy that's been working three years ago, it doesn't work now. You have to be captivating, you have to capture the lead's attention and get them involved in some type of follow through, instead of just the give me your name and phone number and hope for the best type thing. So I'm finding that too through my testing and getting that is putting them through a little bit of a, a little bit of a journey. So, ending the, the lead form, if you're doing lead forms, ending it with okay, you're in your final step. The next step is to book your appointment. Please pick up the next call coming to your phone right now, or please answer the next text coming to your phone right now and boom, it's the link to book an appointment. So a little bit different than just thanks, you're all set, expect a call soon.
Speaker 1:So these little things that I'm finding small percent conversion upticks from that as well. So there's ways to do this and I know some of the listeners try their own ads too, and this might be a call for Jen to giving her a call being like, listen, I run my own ads, I'm doing my own stuff, but you're right, we dropped the ball on following these people up. So what have you found in chiropractic offices? What's their system for following with leads? What have you found? What did they typically do they a lead comes in? How many calls do they give them? How long do they follow up? What do they typically just drop off and stop calling that patient?
Speaker 2:Favorite question of the day here Not enough. How about that? Not enough at all, and so, but what I've heard, the feedback I've seen, is maybe calling two to three times max. Might leave a phone message like a voicemail or two, and then they might send the same amount of and that's it. Then the office is, the staff is like I'm not bothering these people anymore, I don't like. If they don't want to call me back, that must mean they're not interested, and I used to think that way too, like back in the practice when I didn't really get it. That's not how it should be handled.
Speaker 2:And here's, here's a big thing I think most. I think that it's important to know about me, not a chiropractor. Wish, if I could reverse time, I would be. I've actually considered it even still, but I, my vision, has shifted in what I'm doing to get every single person on the planet a primary chiropractor, like I want it to be so prevalent, just like traditional medicine, and just like everybody feels like they have to have a primary medical doctor. Um, I have a primary chiropractor. I don't have a primary medical doctor that I go see, um, when I, anytime I need to see them, they're my primary, and so I say that, I tell you that because that's why we are so aggressive with our follow-up. My whole team is on that same mission and has that same vision with me. I want more people to know just how powerful chiropractic is. So that's why we get up and we do this every day and we pound pavement, we make a lot of calls, do this every day and we pound pavement, we make a lot of calls and we bug people.
Speaker 2:Okay, so back to your question. The office doesn't do it enough, and and again, it's, it's. I get it. You think your staff thinks they're bugging people. Well, I want to bug people enough because I want them to get to the right kind of office, I want them off drugs, I want them doing less surgeries. And the way we do that is to stay consistent with following up with them the minute that.
Speaker 2:If there's one thing that docs could take away from this call, it's that their staff that's doing this has to shift their perspective on why they're making these phone calls. It's not just to book another new patient appointment. It is, but it's also far, far bigger than that, and that's why we call and we call, and we call and we call. We don't just call two or three times, we don't just call five times, we call a lot because we have that vision of getting them to the right practice. Because if we didn't have a why that big and that powerful, it would be hard for my team to want to call two or three times or any more than that either.
Speaker 2:So I will tell you that's the biggest misstep in a practice is that they're only calling a couple of times and then they feel icky. I'm feeling salesy. I'm feeling icky. If they wanted our help, they would call us back. I'm feeling icky If they, if they wanted our help, they would call us back. I agree and disagree. They get busy. You didn't call for five, six, seven hours or until the next day. Their life got back to normal, their pain. They're like I'm not going to worry about this right now. I got 20 other things to do. We just keep calling. So they don't call enough.
Speaker 1:I know that was a real long answer to your question no, yeah, I was looking for a number and I think you nailed it. It's two or three times. I mean, that's really it. That's from my experience with my team and it's for those same sentiments, for sure, it's the. I don't want to bother them. I don't want them to get mad If they're not calling us back. Obviously they don't want this. It's really not true.
Speaker 2:And it's not true. And here's the thing. It's not that your staff is bad, like there's phenomenal staff out there. They're wearing other hats, though you know. There's so few offices that only have a staff member doing the lead follow-up and that's it. That's their only hat, because it's very easy to start piling on. Well, let, let let me have them verify insurance benefits, let me have them put you know to fill the other time in. Um, and that's where. That's where they start. This thing starts falling by the wayside because it is. It takes the skillset and it takes the mindset to to stay consistent with this. I know, cause I felt the same way back when I worked in the practice and didn't really understand the gravity of just how much leads needed. If you're going to be spending money on social media marketing specifically, you got to get after it and stay consistent. You have to make calls. You can't just rely on automation. You got to make calls too. You got to have personal connection. That's super important.
Speaker 1:You do, you absolutely do. No, you nailed it and that's it. And you know, some people might be saying no, no, I think we do better than that.
Speaker 1:Ask your team, Trust me, they're quitting after two or three, one voicemail and two calls and they are giving up on that lead in. And my question is you know where does that go? And I have other podcasts on this where we go into the nurture sequence about all this. And since you've taken up for our team here in our locations, they asked me like well, I can make some calls. I'm like no, you don't have to make any calls. Like they're like they're literally telling me well, what do I do now? I'm like well, there's tons of other stuff we need to do. It takes off a huge thing off their plate when you take off a lot of their calls Because I told them what's most of your calls. And they're like it's lead follow-up, because when patients call, they're just booking the next appointment. Very simple, we're rescheduling. Those are easy. And if they come in from Google, those are easy too. They've paid.
Speaker 1:Because, they're already on the phone we take, come on in, yeah, so they're just so used to that and you don't realize as you, as this behemoth of marketing starts to build on your practice, which is, you know, social media marketing, it creates this whole other industry where you'd like you just told us, the people hire a lead follow-up person just to call for leads in their office. I mean, that's a part-time to full-time position. That's pretty expensive. I don't know what state you guys are in, but, uh, you got to pay them a fair wage to do that. It's kind of it's kind of crazy. So there's that as well. So, yeah, you guys bring a huge um, a huge element to that. If you're into this type of marketing, you need, uh, the followup, otherwise you're really losing on the law, that stuff.
Speaker 2:Awesome, 100%. And you said something to a behemoth is my favorite word of the day. But you said something to like they. They have to track. It is important. They can't go off what their staff is just telling them they're doing. There has to be a system most offices use, like if they're you know the go high level or whatever. You have to track how much your team is actually calling, because they can tell you they're calling, you know the go high level or whatever. You have to track how much your team is actually calling, cause they can tell you they're calling five times, but are they? Do they even know? And it's not that they're trying to be deceitful, it's that do they even like if you're? If there isn't a system to track it, you don't have any idea how many times they're actually calling. They could feel like they're calling a lead five times when it might have only been two or three. So I think it's super important.
Speaker 2:A lot of offices come to me and when I ask what their current conversion is, how many calls they're making right now, how many leads are coming in, they don't know. They need to know their stats. So super important. It's like you can't just throw money at something and hope it works, although it would be nice, right, as business owners, I get it. I want to throw money at something and hope it works too, but this is a big, big gap that, uh, if you're spending money on, you got to make sure you're you're following through on it Super, super important. It's why we exist, um, it's the only reason we exist is for this reason and there's such a need for it, um, because so many offices are too busy to to pick up this, this ball and run with it.
Speaker 1:So true, yeah, so true, yeah, Awesome. So yeah, Troy method look them up. Contact Jen If you have any questions about this stuff. They've, uh, they've got it figured all out on that end. So as long as you got the funnels coming in, you got the leads coming in. This is definitely someone who can help you out. So thanks for doing the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it. Another selfish plug. I have a course out there, too, that if you don't want to hire somebody but you need to train your staff, there is a course out there that I've created that helps get them in the mindset of what lead follow-up is, how often the scripting, the questions that we get asked. You know how to handle objections. It's a it's a really good little course that helps train staff. We've had some of our offices utilize it in the past.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's through my website, wwwthetroymethodcom. There is. There's a spot on there for the course. It's, I think, seven modules of, again, the mindset you need to be in to even be on calls, the difference between a lead and a referral and how the phone calls have to be different, what the script should sound like, how we handle some of the insurance objections and things like that. So, yeah, check it out. I'd love to chat even just chat with anybody that has questions about how my team does it. I'm here for the profession. I want every patient to have a chiropractor, whether you work with us or not.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Go check that out, and thanks for your time today.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
