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
The Art of Building a Referral-Based Practice
Referrals represent the foundation of a thriving chiropractic practice, yet most practitioners leave this crucial growth engine to chance. When patients come to you through a trusted friend or family member, they arrive with pre-established confidence in your abilities and demonstrate significantly higher lifetime value than those acquired through advertising.
The modern practice landscape has pushed many chiropractors toward a model focused on quick-fix therapies and supplemental modalities that create a revolving door of patients seeking minimal visits with rapid results. This approach may generate impressive new patient numbers initially, but it creates a perpetual need for more patients while wearing practitioners down with constant grinding. The path to sustainable practice growth begins with reconnecting to what makes chiropractic truly special – the subluxation model that differentiates you from all other wellness practitioners.
By intentionally creating systems that generate referrals, you transform your practice from one dependent on external marketing to one that grows organically through patient advocacy. Practical strategies like timing your referral requests after patients show positive progress (typically around 8 visits), implementing milestone recognition programs, creating patient success walls, and developing digital testimonial campaigns all contribute to consistent referral generation. The most successful approaches combine in-office systems with strategic online content that showcases real patient transformations.
Your challenge this week: ask just three patients for referrals. This simple action, when repeated consistently and supported by systematic procedures, creates the foundation for a practice that truly refers itself. Want the exact scripts that make asking comfortable and effective? Email info@EnricoD.com for a free PDF guide on referral language that works.
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flow naturally, both inside and outside of your office and even online. Referrals are the highest quality new patients you can get. They trust you before they even meet you. We know this, but most chiropractors aren't intentional about creating them. Today we're going to fix that. You have to be intentional on this. Referrals really do matter. They're the backbone of any business really, especially in service-based industries like us. Referred patients have a higher lifetime value than ad-generated ones. We know this. If we could just run a referral practice, we would take that and run with it all day. They show up, they commit to care and they refer others. They already trust you because the trust is transferred from the family or friend that referred them to your office. Now what has been happening over the I call it the social media generation right now, with getting leads to come in and getting marketing like that, is that we try and convert people at a higher volume with really crappy care plans that maybe are just visit by visit and the people that do come in and come in for a second, third, fourth visit. We count them as conversions and we're like, okay, the ads are working and they may do like four shockwave treatments and they feel better and they're done. Then they were happy with you. The doc did great, the team was nice, the shockwave technology worked, or the sound wave or whatever therapy you're doing worked. Now they're going to refer their pickleball or CrossFit buddies and they now Jim comes in and Jim's like hey man, my, I got an elbow Tom sent me and they're like great, we love Tom, he's great, thanks for referring Tom. And you, you know, send Tom a text and Jim's like hey, man, I got an elbow Tom sent me. And they're like great, we love Tom, he's great, thanks for referring Tom. And you know, send Tom a text and Tom's like great. And then now you start on with Jim and guess what? Jim is expecting Three treatments and he's going to be better.
Speaker 1:And what has been happening over the last few years we're all guilty of this is by funneling these types of people into three visit plans. Now they're not even a plan. You're just going to visit by visit. You start to scratch your head and wonder why you're going through so many new patients and still needing more new patients. It's because you created a beast with these secondary modalities that you've leveraged onto your business. We are guilty of this with red light therapy. In our office. We try and couple it with our weight loss program, which is valuable, it's high ticket, it works, but we sift through a lot of people that come in and pay 49 bucks for one red light session and are out and we wonder where all these new patients are coming from. So that's my admission, my guilt that I'm sharing with you. In our office we do it too. We're guilty. We're not the straight practice that just does upper cervical or whatever it is. We try other things as well, and you may too as well, and you kind of bounce your head off the wall and wonder why you're seeing so many more patients and referrals and that's the issue there. So what I'm talking about is building good systems like on last week's episode that we talked about that building good systems in the office where you are stacking value for people. And all we have in chiropractic and I don't care what side of the fence you're on on this is the subluxation model.
Speaker 1:You have to preach this. You have to preach it like Reggie Gold, like Charlie Kirk, like Wayne Dyer. You have to preach this. This is what differentiates you from the PT next door, from the myofascial therapist, from the holistic practitioner, the wellness counselor. I've seen so many unqualified people pretend to be qualified now than ever before and they just, they run practices. They have online virtual practices.
Speaker 1:I'm like, what's your accreditation? They're like I'm a wellness coach. I'm like, okay, I don't know what that means, but whatever, nothing knocking that. I mean I'm just, but with chiropractic, I mean, if we're just going to fall into that whole bucket, what are you? I'm just a wellness person, I'm a chiropractor. What does that mean? What does that actually mean? Guys, you really have to jump on this in whichever way works for you.
Speaker 1:I don't know what schools you went to. I work with a lot of Palmer Life and Sherman Docs. I mean, we can talk. We can talk about this stuff. There's no pushback. You start talking to other people National, western USC and all that stuff and then they're like what's now? Come on, we're evidence-based. I'm like it is all evidence-based joint motion and fixation. That's all we do is optimize that. We optimize the motion, fixation of spinal joints so that the nervous system can work optimally. Now, call it whatever you want remove subluxations, remove fixations. We have to fix on that message, or your message or your system that you have. That is unique. You need to stick on that and run with it. That's how you build a referral-based practice. We're coming to you for this. Whatever it is tonal adjusting to help unwind nervous systems of as young as possible kids so that they can flourish and thrive. For whatever specific conditions that you help with, the focus has to be there.
Speaker 1:This general blanket of just helping acute pain gets you into these practices where people are unhappy. Chiropractors are unhappy with this, whether they're successful, making money or not. I've got chiropractors that are doing great, making money or not. I've got chiropractors that are doing great Taking home, clearing home. Home income not gross in the practice over 300K I mean, that is a successful chiropractor that are like dude, I can't keep doing this. I'm driving myself into the ground, yeah, yeah, that's what ends up happening because you created a beast. It's a machine that looks good on paper. Other people are coming to your office like man you're successful and you're just like dude. We are grinding, we are grinding. There's no glory in this. We are grinding. And that's where the frustration comes from. And it all comes down to this marketing, this backbone on. What are you putting out there? How are you branding yourself?
Speaker 1:You have to follow the thing that makes you different and you chose chiropractic. And ingrained into the DNA of chiropractic is the removal of subluxation. Your job is to find, target and eliminate subluxations from the spine. That's what you were trained on. All the other acute conditions that you kind of got tempted to go down and be the knee guy or the shoulder guy or the or whatever it is, the, the pregnancy guy, whatever, gal, whatever it is. That's fine too. It's great. It's the awesomeness of our industry and our scope that has expanded to allow us to do all this. It's very cool, I'm, it's awesome. But you're going to feel like you're lost because you're not driving home the thing. And once you drive home the thing, people stay, refer and pay forever. They just want to.
Speaker 1:We have a lady in our office and my practice is only seven years old. She has spent $43,000 on chiropractic care, nothing else, none of the other modalities that we do, nothing else. Her average visit per week is like four. She comes in and gets checked. She feels like her Atlas can't hold. That's her primary focus. She comes in and gets checked. She feels like her Atlas can't hold. That's her primary focus. She gets checked all the time. Most of the time she's holding, but she pays. That's a record for me in my practice for one person to be spending that kind of money.
Speaker 1:But it just shows you when you zone in and hone in on the thing and people are like holy and it changes their lives. There's no, you're not convincing anyone. Many of us have to convince ourselves that what we do actually works. How many of you are there where you're like, yeah, I'm a chiropractor and yeah, it's pretty cool, but there's not a doubt. I'm not saying you're doubting the chiropractor, but there's like this yeah, it's not. Is it that great? That? That kind of I guess it is doubt. That is that's the definition of doubt. It's you're doubting. If it is that great and it translates into your practice. You know home issues are business issues and business issues are home issues. They go both ways. So, clearing up your mind on that oh man, this turned philosophical. I didn't mean to do that.
Speaker 1:Referrals Referrals do matter. They trust you In-office referral system. That's going to work. Ask for referrals proactively. You got to do it. Many of you don't even ask. You're like no, I can't do that. I'm not like you, enrico, I can't do that. I'm like you don't know what I'm like. Yeah, I'm in front of a microphone right now saying what I need to say and I sound confident, but in practice I'm like you too. There's people that are like, oh, do I really want to push it? Is it uncomfortable?
Speaker 1:Most docs wait and hope that they conversation during the care plan progress checks. Whenever a check comes in, what I use is after a few visits, let's say a past eight visits. I consider that a good patient, a compliant patient. They're sticking to the care. They've done their eight visits within that first 30 days or so. If it's a twice a week care plan, they're good, they're doing good At that time. How's it doing? They're like, hey, man, I feel like 80%, like that's awesome, right there. That's a trigger for me to have a positive feedback.
Speaker 1:Typically, what you'll see from patients is like, oh, it's still. You know it's still there. And they start pointing right, they're not there yet. I find like if they're still talking about the pain, they're probably not a good um testimonial yet, or referral yet. When they start saying, dude, I finally slept or that was whatever you did last time, that was fantastic. I'm like, boom, I grabbed the Google card. I'm like, hey, can you leave a review about this? Do you know anyone else with these types of hip pains? Gosh, like half the women in my bootcamp are like complaining of me and hip pain. I'm like here's six cards, give them to all six of them. She's like you know what I do? I talk about you all the time but I'm going to give the card that it works.
Speaker 1:The transition is so well in those moments if you read the room. So some other little tips that have worked for me over the years. Use them if you want. Don't use them if you don't want to. The new baby gift box. We do a lot of pediatrics, prenatal, postnatal care in our office. It's a gift box with like a clean hand cream, a belly cream, a little terry towel, a onesie branded with our logo on it and then the front little cute thing on the front for them. We have them in three month, six month and 12 month sizes. So you know when they come in and say baby was 11 pounds, we're like, okay, we're not going to give them the three month one, we're going to send them the six month one. T-shirts for their hundredth adjustment.
Speaker 1:Patient success photo walls, people sharing experiences that feel special to them. Capturing those moments can really spark referrals internally. Incentives that actually work, that are ethical, non-discounted, referral-based systems, are monthly prize draws like gift baskets, massage guns, local restaurant cards. Those are hits, those are all hits. Patient appreciation days, where patients who bring a guest get entered into something big. We used to give away barbecues in the summers. We stopped that the last couple of years. Barbecues in the summers we stopped that the last couple of years. One because we did switch into a new office and it's upgrades. It's super nice and throwing in a barbecue in there at the front was just, I think, tacky, so we stopped that. Boy, was it a hit? It was huge. Tons of tickets were put in it. People loved it.
Speaker 1:Emphasize gratitude over gimmicks. When you do this stuff Online referral growths. Social proof equals digital referrals. You have to have social proof. Every testimonial video is a referral on repeat, because you can just use those videos over and over again.
Speaker 1:Train your staff to ask people. They're listening too. So when people are raving, would you mind sharing a quick 30 second video about how chiropractic has helped you? They'll be like yeah, I'll do that. The best would be for you to come into the office one day when you're all ready for it and we'll shoot it on our iPhone or iPad and it'll take like 30 seconds of like shooting, but we'll be there for five minutes to prep you beforehand and then just to refer, refer it out. Would you be willing to do that, or would you like to just shoot it on your own at home? We'd use that too, but here's the script Follow this.
Speaker 1:I found Dr D online when I was suffering from this and this. I came to them and within this amount of time I started to feel better, and now I'm not only better, but I've also found out that this, this and this has happened. I highly recommend, if you're suffering from anything like this, to contact Dr D at Full Life Chiropractic and find relief yourself. I mean, that's the typical template that you would teach them how to do that. Those are the winners, those are the great. And it's coming from their mouth about their issue, about their specific thing, and it just it's great for a whole bunch of reasons.
Speaker 1:Community content as well. Share success stories on social media with the permission from the patient. So everyone gets a testimonial video release form that they sign, video and picture form that then it's signed, it's in their file, it goes out there If anyone ever contacts us saying hey, you know what? I have second thoughts about that. Can you take it down? Don't use it against them. That Well, you signed, I don't have to take it down. Don't do that. Take it down. Someone doesn't want to be there, their kid was involved or something like that. Take it down, but we have it there and legally you could keep it up. But this is in case someone reports and says that equals instant referrals. You literally post on social media say tag your friends about this. That may be having this. That works really well.
Speaker 1:Script your review request. If you found today helpful, would you take 30 seconds to review? Give, leave us a review. It helps people who are just like you find our office. That could be a text, it could be an email. You could send them a link to your Google review page. There's so many ways to get this done. Referral campaigns these can be highly successful as well.
Speaker 1:Quarterly or biannually, bring a friend week, just a week where you open it up. It can be during Halloween week, it can be back to school week, it could be spring break, it could be mid summer, it can be any time that you want to do. Pick one or two weeks a year where it's bring a friend week, and you just bombard the emails that go out a month before. You're like hey, the week of October 25th through the 31st, dress up and bring a friend. Patient appreciation weeks and events barbecues, smoothie bars, raffles, kids day, whatever it is that you want to do, these things can work If you've got the time for it. Your team wants to do stuff like that Online contests tag a friend who needs better posture.
Speaker 1:That equals a giveaway. If you do it, you're put into. We see everyone that's tagged or shared it because it's right there on your feed. You put all those people into a raffle. They win the basket. You pick somebody from it and say hey, tonya, thanks for doing the. Tag a friend challenge, you actually won. You give them a call. They're like oh my gosh, that's awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Segment Referrals don't just happen, they're engineered and you know this, I know you know this. You don't know how you do it, but you do it. As the years go by in practice, you start to just think you're doing a great job. People love you and they refer to you and you're absolutely 100% correct on that. But the ego gets in the way on that. And then you expect it and unfortunately I don't know what universal principle this is and how it works, but when you need it it doesn't happen. When you don't think about it and don't need it and you're thriving, the referrals are pouring in and you're like what is happening? We are full, we are busy.
Speaker 1:It's funny, when you're busy, you're busy, busy. And then when you're slow, you're like scary slow. There's never like this. We're kind of slow and we're kind of busy. It's never. It's never there that there's like dude, we don't have time to any times to slots, to put in new patients. You're like, how did that happen? And then there's other times like dude, this is the slowest week I've had in in years. What's going on? I'm panicking here. Is that how it works like? You're like well, that's curiously slow. What's going on? And then you know you dissect it and try and figure it out. And then you panic both ways. It's funny. I don't know what universal law that is or how that works, but it just keeps repeating itself. It keeps happening.
Speaker 1:But if you dissect it it's because you ended up focusing on a couple things. You had a few good team meetings in a row, three weeks in a row, things stuck. Your team got inspired somehow, some way. They didn't tell you how, they didn't know why. They were just like yeah, you know what? I haven't done this in a while. They forgot to tell you. Your manager of three years just went out and did it, sent out an email blast, a couple things jived up and you got six reactivations that called in. Plus you got the phone ringing that week with six new patients. Plus the ads brought in six leads that actually booked and showed you got 18 new patients this week and you're like what the shnikes you know. You guys know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:If you've been in business, it happens, right, but it's not completely, um, random. It's not completely random. There's reasons for it and life is so fast that you may not notice the things you do. So if you have systems and procedures that you continuously follow, it's a recipe for success all the time, because you're always focusing on the things that matter. That's the. That's what systems and trainings and weekly meetings and things with your team that are so important. It just keeps everyone using the right ingredients every week to be successful, to bake the cake great every week.
Speaker 1:When you don't do that, ingredients are missed, things are forgotten, and by Friday you're like that was the most disgusting. What did you guys forget in that? And they're like, oh, we forgot the eggs. I'm like that is gross, it was just a horrible week. My analogies suck, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:So challenge for you this week in your office ask three patients for a referral. That's it that. Analogies suck, I'm sorry. So challenge for you this week in your office ask three patients for a referral. That's it. That's your challenge. Do it Just ask three patients the first three.
Speaker 1:You might get this done on Monday. You might just be like there was three great people on Monday morning. I asked all three of them and then, whether it happens or not, you did it. You asked them. But just this week, ask, and I'll have a free resource for you the referral scripts that actually work, pdf. Just email me info at EnricoDcom and say, hey, where's that referral script? I want to use that for my team and myself so I can just stay on point and put it in my systems and procedures, so that it's in my manual for my office, so that we can always go back to it quarterly and review it and be like oh, we forgot to ask for referrals.
Speaker 1:Let's keep asking for referrals. Just send it that way. Or if you've got the email each week for the reminder for the podcast, it's there in the attachment. Just click on that, it's yours. That's it, guys. Try it this week. Ask for three referrals, see how that goes and get back to me, leave a comment, say, hey, our referrals are going up or our referrals are going down, by implementing these one or two things. That's how you build success. Have a great week. Keep doing what you're doing. Your community needs you. We all need you. Keep up the great work.
