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
Stop Throwing Away Half Your Ad Budget With Better Lead Conversion
Are your Facebook and Google ads generating plenty of leads but few actual patients? You're not alone. The frustration of watching potential patients ghost you after initial contact is all too common in healthcare marketing.
Converting clicks to patients requires more than just generating leads—it demands a systematic approach to nurturing those connections into booked appointments and actual show-ups. Without an effective conversion process, you're likely throwing away 50-70% of your ad budget.
The challenge begins with speed-to-lead. Contacting potential patients within five minutes via call, text, AND email dramatically increases your chances of conversion. But even with quick response times, many practices falter by relying on just one communication channel or giving up after a single attempt.
Today's digital leads require a multi-channel nurturing approach. Some people prefer texts, others respond better to emails, and some need that personal phone connection. By implementing a consistent 3-5 day follow-up sequence across all platforms, you create multiple opportunities for engagement.
Trust-building is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of lead conversion. Remember, these people found you through an ad—they have no existing relationship with your practice. Sending personalized videos, testimonials, and educational content helps bridge this trust gap and significantly improves show rates.
The most successful conversion systems combine automation with human touch. While automated texts and emails provide immediate acknowledgment, your team needs training to handle personal calls and objections with empathy. The key is positioning the appointment not as a sale but as the natural next step toward solving the patient's problem.
Track your metrics religiously—specifically your lead-to-booked ratio and your booked-to-show ratio. In a healthy conversion funnel, you should aim for at least 40% of leads booking appointments and 90%+ of those appointments actually showing up. If either metric falls short, you've identified where to focus your improvement efforts.
Finally, ensure perfect alignment between your promotional offers and the actual patient experience. The quickest way to damage trust is promising one thing in your ad but delivering something different when patients arrive. Remember, you're not selling appointments—you're offering hope for solutions to health problems.
Ready to stop wasting your ad budget on leads that never convert? Implement these strategies and watch your patient acquisition transform from frustrating to predictable.
- Join Marketing 101 for Chiropractors Facebook Group here
- Learn more at EnricoD.com
- Book a free discovery call with Enrico to level up your business
If you're running ads and feel like leads are slipping through your fingers. Today we're going to talk about how to finally turn those clicks into patience walking through your doors. Lead generation is only half the battle. The real money is in the conversion and I know you're starting to feel this if you've been trying to run your ads, or even if you have an ad agency running your ads for you. The lead generation is there. You can create leads with instant forms or funnels or landing pages. You can get people's information. They're willing to give that information because your ad copy is somewhat good. So they're there. They're like, yeah, I want that and they take that. But remember, they're filling out probably six or seven forms to other offers that they see through there as well.
Speaker 1:So many chiropractors run meta and Google ads and get leads, but only a fraction of them book or show up. The common frustrations I hear from teams that I work with, both the CAs and the doctors is that leads ghost us after the first contact. There's just no response. Staff struggles with follow-up and patients don't trust the ad offer. Many clinics don't know that, but some are intuitive enough to be running ads and tell us hey, I don't think there's much trust. When I do a $49 promo or I do this or I do that, I haven't really built my reputation yet. When they see my ad, they really don't know who I am, and they're absolutely right. The reality check here is if you don't have a conversion process, you're throwing away 50 to 70% of your ad budget Because a lot of them will ghost you. A lot of them will not respond. It's not about the leads, it's about the conversions. So people tell us this all the time I'm getting $17 leads, I'm getting $28 leads, I'm getting $31 reads, I'm getting $40 reads, whatever it is. That's how you decipher what your ad spend is going to. What information is it giving you on your ad spend? If you spend $1,000 a month and they're $40 each, you can do the math there and get your 24 leads per month from that. But what does that mean? How many new patients are you actually getting in the books? And typically it's a fraction. How many new patients are you actually getting in the books? And typically it's a fraction. This is why the conversions break down.
Speaker 1:We're going to dive into this here and it's simple, but it's difficult. It's a simple problem solve here on a podcast, but in a systems and procedures or an SOP type thing in your office it's not as easy as it looks. We need to get speed to lead. We know this and I hope you guys know this too, and your ad agencies. Everyone is texting the lead immediately. They're getting an email and a text immediately. But what about that call? Who is calling them immediately During office hours?
Speaker 1:Your team needs to be trained to have that CRM up or however those leads come in, I set it up as an automatic email to the front desk immediately when the lead comes in. They get the email because they get usually a notification or a chime when emails come in. It works really well for them. Some offices we do the email and the text directly to the front CA or the office manager so that they can see it on their phone immediately. So they call them that fast. So we have to have all three platforms set up for phone, email and text, and that's what we need to do.
Speaker 1:So waiting hours to call them equals a dead lead, not going to get them. You're going to say well, enrico, what happens if the lead comes in on Facebook at 1030 at night? What are we going to do there? Well, of course you're not going to call them at that time. That will be a red flag for them. Why is a medical office calling me at 1030 at night? But what you do want to have is the text and the email sent out immediately, notifying them that they've received your form, that you've received their form and that you are going to get in contact with them. So we have the wrong follow-up channel.
Speaker 1:Some people prefer text over calls and we try and call, call, call, call, call and they never respond back to us, and so we give up on all mediums. You don't know these cold leads because you just don't know who they are. So we have to follow all three mediums. You'd be surprised how many people respond to email sometimes, but the fact that you only have a two email sequence means that you never really gave them a chance. You might end up in their spam or their junk. You never really gave them a chance to do that. So we have to have a better communication as well, and what we typically have is poor communication.
Speaker 1:Scripts sound too pushy or too generic. There's a lack of automation, no consistent nurture, just one call and done because your team's busy. These are the top things that are happening that are holding things back. The weak communication cannot be scripted, can't have everything scripted. Your email is going to be automatically scripted. Your text is automatically going to be scripted and given to everyone. So the phone calls have to be genuine. They have to be from a team member that represents your business and gives them a call from a personal level saying hi Michael, thanks for filling out that Facebook promo that we had on there for coming in for a consult. I'm Enrico from Full Life Chiropractic. I'm the office manager here, just seeing what day works best for you to come on in. That can be a voicemail in itself. If you get that, call us back at this number 1-2-3-4-5-6, and we'll get back to you and book a time ASAP that fits for you.
Speaker 1:And then another thing with these types of ads is this we're just not building any trust. Patients don't know you yet. They need assurance before committing to anything. So we have to build up that reputation. How do we do that? Through social media and just running ads. By running an ad, you just bombard your demographic with your advertisements on a sponsored feed and they still don't know you. And just because you're running ads doesn't mean that they know you any better. So how to get them to know you better is to develop relationships. This is where texting, email and phone calls builds that relationship. Those non-scripted voicemails you leave that are genuine to the patient, calling from a medical office, making it feel real.
Speaker 1:The emails that send them to your website so for them to explore a little bit more, rather than straight to booking an appointment in your widget that books an appointment, maybe saying, hey, check out this link about sciatica or low back pain, whatever your ad was about. Sending them to a link on your website so that they get to the um services page or the treatments that you uh, treatment the conditions that you help with. And you have a sciatica page. That's your landing page. They go there Now they're on your website and they might just go to home or find the doc. See what the doc looks like. The doctors look like. They're like oh man, I want a book with Christine. I'm going to go and it looks like she comes from my hometown. Whatever it is, they're going to relate with the doctor and then be on your website. Instead of the push straight to a book. We have to soften this stuff with advertising and have all channels covered.
Speaker 1:So the conversion system that works better, which means that if you're getting 50 leads a month, what does that transpire to? Does it transpire to one new patient? I was helping a doc down in South part of town and we generated 197 leads for him in like three months and he had I think he got on the phone with seven of them and I think he had three come into the office and that was the worst yield I've ever seen in my entire time of doing this. And we, of course we stopped, we paused and said something's going on, something's up. Either you know I'm missing the ball here or something's going on. And whether they were honest or not, I couldn't dissect what was going on, but it must've been the follow-up. There's no way to generate almost 200 leads and not get anyone on the phone or anyone to book an appointment. That makes little to no sense to me. So let's talk about this conversion system.
Speaker 1:We have to break down the framework in your practice that turns leads into appointments and the number one thing is immediate response Call text, email within five minutes of that lead coming through. This can be automated. You can even automate a call voice drop for them where, if they pick up the phone, it rings to your phone so that you can answer it and you can set up call times and all this stuff and get a little savvy with this for your office so that this doesn't even happen after 6 pm when you guys are closed. There's ways to do this. You can use automations, like we use High Level for everything, for instant text. Thanks for reaching out. We got your request. We will be in touch shortly.
Speaker 1:That's a much more softer way to engage with somebody. Where they don't feel like they have to respond to that, where they don't have to feel like they have to DND you for that, or where they have to like stop text or delete, they say, oh yeah, I did fill out that form and like 17 seconds later I got that text. That's pretty awesome. And then they got an email that they may or may not check and just don't rely on just one call. So if it is during office hours when these things come in at like 9.30 in the morning and you get that notification, your team has to be trained to get to that quickly. So we automatically send email of the lead contact information directly to the front desk. Some offices ask for the automatic text to go to the front SCA as well, if they're open to that, so they see it on their phone. They're like, boom, the phone number's right there on their text message. So they pick up the office phone and they call Jim or Mary whoever it is that filled out that form, and that makes it quicker during office hours.
Speaker 1:We have to be savvy with our automations after office hours to still follow this rule of being in touch with the client, with the potential client, and scripts that work. We have to use scripts that work. Don't rely on just one call. Use calls, texts and emails over three to five days. Don't give up on these leads Just because they filled out that form at 10 o'clock last night.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow they're busy at work. It's a busy Thursday at work. They're not getting back to their emails or their texts. Then Friday it eases up and you just sent out that follow-up email or that text and that automation. That was at the right time and they reply. That's who you get. When they reply, they're just done, they just got out of their car, they're waiting to have lunch with somebody and they're waiting there. Boom, that text comes right through. They're like, oh yeah, the Cairo yeah, let's do this. I'm free on Monday after work, three and six. So if you got anything there, that'd be great and they can engage a conversation at that point. This If you got anything there, that'd be great and they can engage a conversation at that point. This is how it works in reality. We're still humans. This is how the world works. We're trying to fit into people's busy schedules and we have to understand that with this form of marketing. That's why this can't be your only form of marketing. So that's the problem there. It's your most efficient per dollar form of marketing, but it cannot be your only form of marketing marketing, but it cannot be your only form of marketing.
Speaker 1:Scripts that work is exactly like I said previous. Hi Michael, this is Enrico from Full Life Chiropractic. I saw your request info about our new patient offer. When is a good time for you to come in? That's the script Position, the appointment as a natural next step. That's why we're calling you. We're here to book you in. You said you were interested. Let's see if you really are. Come on in Text reminders 24 hours and two hours before the appointment are, from the research, the best times to do it 24 hours. But hey, we're looking forward to see you tomorrow at 4 pm and then, two hours before, we're looking forward to see you in two hours.
Speaker 1:Here's our location. That is just a way to remind them to show up, personalize videos and testimonials via email to build trust. How many of you are doing that? How many of you are sending a YouTube video via email to these potential leads? Do you think that's a great idea? To really build trust digitally? To send them to your YouTube channel to have a welcome video about, hey, who you are, what you do, where we're located?
Speaker 1:Hey, we're across the street from Marshall's, beside the Chick-fil-A, and we're in that Optum Plaza on 5th and 4th Street, 5th Avenue and 4th Street and they're like, oh, this guy lives right down here. You make it relatable. Make sure when you're coming down 4th Avenue, remember the construction there or whatever. You guys know your towns. When you're zipping by, say hi to Mike at Mike's Pizza for me, whatever it is, be relatable. And as you come in, it's a quick tour of the office or just a quick you standing in front of the office and just saying, hey, I'm so excited to see you. If you make a decision to come into our office, we'd love to help you out here. We've helped thousands of people in our local community from Rochester to Detroit to Troy.
Speaker 1:You know your areas and you talk about this and you get them in there. I have a few NFL players that signed jerseys in our office. I stand in front of those types of things for these videos. You never know who you'll catch. They might be a Jets fan, they might be a Steelers fan. You don't know what's going on. They may see that and you'll catch some stuff. We take care of some athletes here. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge the jerseys right there or whatever you guys do in your office.
Speaker 1:There's little ways to relate back to your ideal clients and that's the way to do it. Personalize videos, try and add that it's a one-time thing. You shoot the video, you're done. The content is created. You put it into the automation email that gets sent out. Maybe it's the third email that they get. First email is like thanks for filling out the form. We'll be with you shortly. Check out our website for more information. For more, more information, send them to your landing page on your website. And then the third email is like hey, here's how you can get started with us. Here's a little bit more about us. Click this video to watch the short video, or whatever. Click this YouTube link to watch our short video and it's in there. Boom. Maybe some people will watch it. We need automation, but we also need human touch. That's how this stuff is working now, in 2025. This is how this stuff is working.
Speaker 1:Automate the reminders, but train your staff to handle objections with empathy, both through text, email and phone. I understand you're busy. Let's find a time that works. That's your follow-up stuff. What do you call it? Hey, it's Enrico from Full Life Chiropractic. Again, I left you a voicemail yesterday. I'm doing it one more time. I hate to be a bother. I just understand that you're busy and I want to stay on top of this, because you reached out to us and I think you need some help. That's why you reached out to us. Let's find a time that works for you. Give me a call back. Here's our number. Hope to hear from you soon. I mean just that follow-up. So when they do listen to the voicemails, they're like yes, I am interested, make sense.
Speaker 1:We have to go back to the systems and procedures in the office and you have to automatically be changing these routinely. You can't stay on your 2024 the same way you've been doing things. You have to change it and adapt to people. Things are moving fast. People are changing fast. Psychology is moving fast. People are changing fast. Psychology is changing fast. We're going from this we culture again post-COVID of. Like you know, covid changed everybody to think about everyone. Right, we're like culture, sociology, the people around us, infrastructure, government. The election was last year, it was this we thing. But as all of that simmers down, it now is becoming a me thing again. People are now thinking about themselves again and I'll tell you from an economic perspective, when we start thinking about we, wallets tighten up and the economy has been crazy. The inflation has been nuts. People just don't have the money. But the good thing about when things turn back to me, wallets start to open up again.
Speaker 1:Get on top of this. Trust me with this, facebook can be a source of new patients for you and it doesn't have to be frustrating. You can do this. If you need help, reach out. I love this stuff and we train your teams. This is a different thing between all the ad agencies. I'm in my office. I have a satellite office, I have associates. I'm doing this from your perspective. I'm not an ad agency. Not all the bells and whistles, not the flashy videos I do for you. No, but we do ads that work and I teach your team how to do this stuff. So if your team needs help, if you're working with another agency, call me up. I don't care, you don't have to switch. Train your team, let's get that going. And I don't care, you don't have to switch. Train your team, let's get that going.
Speaker 1:Go on to EnricoDcom. Use the stuff that's on there. Go to my YouTube channel. Tell your team watch those two videos. I mean, the stuff is there for you. We're here to help in any way that you need to. But some last tips for you on this. These are pro tips when it comes to all these leads.
Speaker 1:We've generated thousands of leads. We've built an email list off of Facebook. It's been phenomenal. Track your lead to booked ratio. You need to know this and booked to show ratio In high level. What we have is like seven columns New lead number one Everyone funnels into that.
Speaker 1:New lead. Making contact is the second funnel, the second column making contact. So our CA knows to take that one and say I'm making contact, I'm trying to text email and call them. Made contact, boom, I left a voicemail. I've contacted them on the phone. Sorry, I've talked to them on the phone. They're not interested. They replied to a text saying they're not interested. They replied to an email saying they're not interested. Fine, they go into the lost, not interested category. Or they said I'm interested, boom, hot lead. Now they're called a hot lead. So they have a system in there. When they sit down, yes, attend to the people first that are new leads, but the hot leads are the ones that get my first call. That way, if I get tied up doing a million other things, I at least made those three calls to the hot leads who responded saying yes, I would like to book a time, or yes, next week works for me. They're on it to get them in the books.
Speaker 1:The conversion rate from that column to show is really high. It's the people that are not responding. That's tough to get them into that. So we need to know your lead to booked ratio and your booked to show ratio, how many of the leads booked an appointment and how many of those booked appointments showed up In a healthy funnel, in a healthy ad spend, whatever you're spending $1,500 or $2,000 a month. Whatever it is or whatever your budget is, converting the lead to booked ratio is frustrating. It's low. It just is low. If you're shooting 40%, I think you're doing fantastic. Your team's doing a great job. So that means that a four out of 10 leads that come in, four of them are booking an appointment. Now, where you can do a great job is in the booked to show ratio, where those people are just been so well nurtured by the things we talked about on this podcast that you have a 99% show up rate. That's how you get the four out of 10. That's how you get the 40% conversion of your leads on your Facebook ads to actually become new patients. That's how you do it. If you break that funnel on the end there, yeah, you got the four to book, but if they only one of the four show up now you got one out of 10 of the leads showing you have a 10% convert. That's what the frustration right, and I feel you. I know that frustration. We've had months with that too.
Speaker 1:Role play scripts with staff weekly. A lot of teams don't review this weekly, just be like hey, I've been telling all the leads last week this on my new voicemail that I leave them. How's this sound? I hear my team doing stuff like that all the time. Our office manager is talking to the associate. The associate's like, oh, that sounds a little pushy. Try that and it becomes more human. It's great.
Speaker 1:Use short testimonial videos in follow-up texts and emails. You've done the original stuff. You got to them in the three to five minutes. You got your automations out. What are you going to do over the next three to five days? Create these types of automations where you use short testimonial videos in follow-up texts and emails. Send them a video via text. Say hey, check out awesome testimonial we just had at Full Life Chiropractic. See what happens.
Speaker 1:Text offers consistent, don't bait and switch. That's another thing that can happen too. Where you have a $49 thing, people come on in on day one but they're not going to get it on day one. They got to come back on day two because you're following the, the coaching program that you went to about how you don't adjust on the first day. But you did a 49 special and they could have just freaking gone to the joint for 29 bucks and got everything that they wanted, but no, not with you. And now you've tart. You know it's a tart, sour taste in their mouth for day two like why didn like? Well, I didn't even get adjusted. You're trying to funnel your new patient protocol into a lead. Make sure your offer matches exactly the protocol that you have. You should have strict protocols for that.
Speaker 1:We do CLA, substation scans, the three technologies, all this. We do not do that for our promotional offers, so we put none of that in our promotions. Come on in for a new patient exam, consult and report of findings at first adjustment or not, a first adjustment for whatever 99 bucks. Once they come in, we're not scanning them Like our decomp ads that we do for 49 bucks. There's no scans, there's nothing.
Speaker 1:I do the consult standing in the x-ray room. You've got five minutes, man. They don't know that. They don't know that. But they come on in. They got five minutes. Talk to me, that's it Great. Walk six steps back and stand in front of that x-ray.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take an x-ray of your low back, see if you qualify for spinal decompression, pain of pee lumbar, maybe some flexion left and right. If we need to see something, they might have an MRI review. Whatever it may be, it's done. There Consumes 10 minutes of my time. I feel okay with the 49 bucks, it's all good, covers my ad spend. And now we're like, great, let's try the table. That's what they want. See something on the X-ray Like listen, we're not going to pull on that at all. You need an MRI, or I think Cairo is going to be better for you, or I think Cairo and spinal decompression is going to be good for you. So what I want you to do is try the decompression today. Let me know how you feel. I'm going to call you tomorrow, see how you feel, and then I want you to book the day after tomorrow to come back. I'm going to have a plan for you based on everything we did right now today and how you respond, to see how we're going to get this better and we're going to work together over the next couple of months and get this better. That's my exact script and that's not even a script, it's just natural communication that I have with the patient, and that's for spinal decompression. I could talk all day, but I'll let you go for this week.
Speaker 1:Use these testimonials, keep offers consistent, don't bait and switch and remember you're not selling an appointment, you're offering hope for a solution. Oof, that's what advertising is all about. If you need help, guys reach out. I'm here to help. This is what I do. I love you guys. I love the profession. I love everything. Have a great week, keep doing what you're doing. I know you're working hard, but the world needs you.
