Why Your Leads Still Suck

Ever feel like you’re spending more on ads and getting worse leads? You’re not imagining it. AI now decides who sees your content based on attention signals—scroll-stopping hooks, watch time, and real conversations—not on old-school likes and comments. We unpack a practical, repeatable system that makes Instagram your most reliable source of high-intent chiropractic leads, without handing your budget to an agency that can’t fix your content.

We break down the four content pillars that train Meta’s algorithm to reward you: educational posts that make complex ideas simple, relatable lifestyle clips that humanize your clinic, social proof that builds trust before the click, and engagement prompts that spark comments and DMs. You’ll hear exact examples for 30–45 second reels, why captions and first-two-second hooks matter, and how native, imperfect smartphone video routinely outperforms polished studio footage. Then we map a weekly cadence—five core posts plus auto-posts on weekends—that turns consistency into compounding reach and better lead quality.

Next, we show you how to turn organic winners into paid ads, stack your offer with real value, and retarget warm audiences like video viewers and engagers. Learn why an always-on awareness campaign at $1–$3/day quietly lowers your CPM over time, how to exclude existing patients from promos, and when a focused landing page beats leaky lead forms. The result: cheaper clicks, fewer tire-kickers, and more DMs from people ready to book. If your best post is your ad, you’re publishing wrong—flip the script and let your content lower costs before you ever open Ads Manager.

Want the posting plan and ad sequence we use? Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a quick review telling us which pillar you’ll start with first. Your future patients are already scrolling—meet them with content they can’t skip.

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2. Learn more at EnricoD.com
3. Book a free discovery call with Enrico to level up your business

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Leads Are Failing Now
• 1:35 AI Rules the Feed
• 4:15 Instagram Over Facebook
• 5:40 Engagement Lowers Ad Costs
• 8:34 Trust Beats Discounts
• 10:35 Four Content Pillars
• 17:05 Educational Content Tactics
• 21:15 Relatable Lifestyle Ideas

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

Hey everybody, welcome to another podcast of Marketing 101 for chiropractors this week. Why are my leads sucking? Or maybe you've tried a new ad strategy and the leads have plummeted. This conversation sounds like the never-ending gerbil wheel, rabbit wheel, gopher wheel, what do you guys put in there? Uh gerbils, whatever. Okay. Hamsters, hamster wheels that never ends. I've had this similar podcast back in 2023 saying if we don't build a structural profile for meta, meaning Instagram and Facebook, the ad quality will start to dwindle when competition starts to increase because your better content creators will climb above you for organic reach. We talked about organic reach. Now with the new AI models, which are all the algorithms now on all social media sites, AI is taking charge. They've literally fired a bunch of people that used to work at Google, Meta, um, TikTok that were there doing content strategy are gone because of their new AI algorithms. They even put all their ads in there. So this podcast is going to be about content creation, but the the point of this podcast is to improve your ad quality. This is this is why. So at the end of the tunnel, it's ad quality, but the whole podcast is about content strategy to build your profile. And it's the same rules. You're gonna be you're gonna be shaking your head listening to this, being like, I knew half of that. But the other half is a structure that you can do right now. This will help improve your ad generation, it will help improve your reach, it will help improve the right people by getting them engaged into your um profile. We used to call these likes and comments and engagement. The AI doesn't even care about that anymore because now it can literally use human behavior of scroll stopping, and they can tell if you're reading that post. And I cannot confirm this, but the the camera that's pointing at you, they are scanning your iris and your pupils, and they know exactly what part of the screen you're looking at when you're doing this. And this will come out probably in the blog pretty soon by Meta and AI showing how they uh retinal scanning and pupil uh following is the new cool science that they're doing. But really, I think they've already been doing this. Google, I know, has been doing this. So they know where you're looking on the screen and they can track everything. So they don't even need to, you don't even need to like a comment or or like a post or an ad or anything. They don't care about that. They know if you stop, it's good. If you scroll by, it's bad. So, what do we got to do to stop them to at least read our posts, to read our engagement? This is what's gonna improve your ad quality. If you don't do this, I think by the end of 2026, you're gonna give up on Facebook ads completely. For some of you, you're like, how would I get new patients? And for the others, they're like, Thank God, are we going back to the dark ages? So it depends who you are and where we're at, but you will you will give up because of the cost that will go up and up and up. You'll be spending two, three thousand dollars just on ad spend, and the these agencies are gonna just keep increasing their prices. So you'll be spending$6,000 a month for one Facebook ad campaign to go out just because of competition. By the end of next year, if that's out of your budget now, it's probably gonna be out of your budget next year because you're not gonna grow your practice in the next 12 months because you're lazy and um you're not listening. That's just I'm just being truthful. Uh, so that so listen up and take this to heart. Meta rewards engaging content, not just the advertisers. Yes, they want you to advertise. Yes, they want to take your money because they know you don't know what you're doing, but they reward the engagement out there. Your posts have to engage the viewers, and that's how they know you create content that is worth posting to more people. That's the whole point, especially Instagram. I want your focus to switch from Facebook to Instagram. You're still going to use Meta, but I want you to focus on Instagram. You're gonna get more leads and more quality leads from Instagram than you are from Facebook. A couple reasons for that, probably a podcast for another day, but just focus on that when you're creating your content. So shooting things horizontal, um, the long way up and down, just so you can repurpose this stuff properly for good Instagram ads. If your page has consistent organic engagement like comments, shares, video views, your ad CPMs drop and lead quality improves. Cost per marketing device. So every time you put out an ad, your cost per we used to call it cost per click, but the cost per marketing is going to drop and the lead quality is gonna improve because you have more engagement out there with your stuff. So you may notice this in your feeds as you go through and you follow people, and especially in Instagram, you just see the same people. If you look at the top, it'll either be an organic post. So you're now just seeing them because you've directly follow them, or if you don't follow them, you still see all their stuff. How does that happen? Through their sponsored media. And some of that is they get so much, so many views that because you've seen them before, they're even putting their organic media in front of you again, even though you don't follow them. You have to go up there and strictly unfollow them or block them to not see their content anymore. That's where this AI algorithm is all coming from. Patients don't just buy your$57 offer. They buy trust. Content builds authority before they ever click on your ad. If your best post of the month is your ad, you're doing content wrong. And I want you to just let's take off from there, right there. That that comment right there. We have to structure our content into a few pillars, three or four pillars that I want you to focus on. The educational pillar. Explain health concepts simply, your chiropractic complex uh concepts, your subluxation comp complex. You can you just need to express health topics clearly and simply. So, why poor posture causes headaches? The truth about spinal disks, why stretching and adjustments matter? Use analogies, visuals, or quick demos. And the ideal format is 30 to 45 second real structures with captions. Use AI to do this, CapCut, um, Opus AI. They'll put the captions in for you. So all you need to do is shoot that 35 second video and put it, save it in your phone and get this content. Find the time to do this. So educational, do this once or twice a week. Then we need relatable or lifestyle type posts. Humanize your clinic. You're not just a business, you're not just a revolving door, you're not just a purchase. We're we're a very purchased society. Amazon has turned us into this click and buy and never see another human again, or even drive to a place. You have to be relatable and lifestyle oriented. A day in the life of the chiropractor. These posts are the some of the most engaging posts. Even if you don't get a thousand likes on your post or a hundred likes or 10 likes, these are the most engagements. These are the scroll shop stoppers. A day in the life of Dr. D. Your followers want to see this. Some random new people do want to stop and see this. Who the heck's this guy? It creates it creates a little bit of buzz. A day in the life of the chiropractor, funny moments with patients. Make sure it's HIPAA compliant and safe. Funny stuff that you go through, push on someone's lumbar spine and they fart, joke about that. These are relatable things. These are things that, you know, people come in and they're like, I, you know, I don't want that to happen to me. They're like, I've been to the chiropractor before. I can relate to that. They squeeze me, they bend me, they do side posture, and I feel like I've got some gas. It's going to be a bad adjustment. Use analogies, uh, and then behind the scenes clips, your morning routine, the staff laughs, the team huddles, the jokes that you guys talk about in the back, the routine that you do, preparing for the day, the work that goes into managing clinic for the day. People don't recognize that there's a lot of work that goes behind this, and the things you got to do, writing reports, writing notes, x-rays, going through behind the scenes can be funny, it can be real, it can be serious. These are great relatable content posts. Do these once a week. Social proof, showcase real results. That's why I love x-rays. People don't know what they're seeing, but they know what they're seeing. It's an x-ray, it's bones, they get it. And in chiropractic concepts, they get it too. Showing a scoliosis can improve. Uh, pretty good social proof that chiropractic works. So, video testimonials are absolutely fantastic if you can get them from your patients. Before and after posture photos, success stories, do that. Make it part of your exam to take posture photos. You can just take a picture, just get their permission. Say, hey, can I take a picture now? And in six months, can we take another picture? Or in three months and show you just posture in the regular clothes that you're in. Uh, posture pro, prosture screen. You save these into there, those are fantastic. And then anything else that you use, uh pre-impost scans, whatever you want to show that stuff. You you you can reuse this content in retargeting ads in the future forever. So it's not useless. The funny jokes and the laughs that you guys do may not be recyclable, or maybe all content can be used on forever and ever and ever again. For everything we've said over the last three years, if you just listened a little bit, you'd have hundreds of pieces of content saved on a on an uh external drive somewhere or your Google Drive that just could be used re-over and over and over again if you created a system with your team that can just repost. So um, social proof, reuse the content and retargeting ads, and then engagement and community. So we got four pillars educational, relatable, or lifestyle, social proof, and now the fourth pillar engagement slash community. Make people comment. How do you do that? People don't want to leave comments. Polls, myths versus facts. Guess what this x-ray shows? Can you see the anomaly? Can you see what's the issue here? What's your biggest daily ache? That's your post. What's your biggest crick? What's your biggest issue? Um, what's your one thing you need each day that you can't live without? Get comments once a week. Get the algorithm in your favor with something. What's your favorite coffee shop? What's you know, let's let's get people engaged in there. Uh, these posts feed meta's engagement signal. The algorithms have changed. AI now uses this before before this AI takeover, it was algorithmic mathematics. So you had to have some type of material thing happen on the newsfeeds in order for the mathematics to add up to change the equation, meaning clicks, likes, hearts, laughs, happy signals, emojis, comments, shares. Shares were huge if the people shared it. And you got bonus points for that. And it was put into the mathematical algorithm. Now it's data driven. So it is AI going through not just the 17 points that of math, they are going through 177 points of AI intelligence, like the things I was telling you about. I'm not 100% sure about the eyeball thing, but I'm pretty sure there's the eyeball thing where they're tracking your eyeball on the screen, on your tablet, on your phone, and on your desktop. So turn off those uh things makes it a little bit complicated, but you can't. You literally cannot turn it off. If you decide to turn off the privacy setting for the camera on your Facebook, you can't use can't you can't use the Facebook app. There's no way around it. So um, so that's just the way it goes there. So they definitely are tracking all of that stuff there as well. So create content that stops people. There you go. So here's a strategy for the content because we got to have a strategy here. Break your week up Monday through Friday, and then auto-post for Saturday or Sunday. You need to post at least five times a week. At least five times a week. It's the bare minimum that makes it out once a day for the five. And if you truly look at the stats, you don't want to know what the number is. It's actually three times a day, seven times a week, the true number to build following and grow and turn into like an Instagram, um, what are they called? Influencer or something like that to grow views and do this. We have a massage therapist who joined us in our team who rents room. He started as a IC, then uh, you know, 1099, and then he's like, no, I want to just rent. And he's busy. And he rent he now rents two rooms because he's hired someone else. He's a small smart businessman. He gets 10 to 20 million views on his Instagram and his TikTok on the stuff that he does. He records it, he says it's another full-time job. He works 30 hours a week doing posting, which is out of control. He does it himself, and he shoots uh video of people's feet or or calves mainly or jaw. That's his focus. And it's the same thing over and over again. He dubs it with moaning, like pain, like people going, ow, uh, some of it's porn, uh, whatever. But it he dubs it, and this stuff gets 10, 20 million views. Now you're gonna say, Well, Enrico, it's because it's feet and dubbed with some weird sounds. What kind of creeps are liking that stuff? Fine, maybe a million, but the other nine million are viewers from all over the place, though. So they're not just localized within a five-mile radius, they're localized, they're everywhere, they're Europe, US. But that traction, our phone rings every single day because people confuse which number to call. They're calling us at Full Life Cairo to book a massage appointment with him. The guy has completely put me in my place and has showed me what is possible. It's absolutely, and that's why he rents a room for me and he's in my space because I'm learning. Uh, it's absolutely phenomenal. He posts every day. If you don't give up, you can do some amazing stuff with that. You just got to figure out what it is. He's got it figured out for us as chiropractors. I would take pictures of people lying down face down on the table and getting their torso from like maybe the mid of the head to their belt, just a picture, or shoot a video, a 30-second video, just them lying there. Then you put this onto your phone and you superimpose anatomy picture with transparent background on them of the spine. And you just know where to touch. And you just by by your hand, you're touching. And then afterwards, you can be like the merrick chart, and you can just put in captions saying these nerves supply thyroid and immune system, these nerves supply lungs and respiration and oxygen absorption, these ones supply digestion, these ones supply sexual reproduction. And you just, I mean, that's that's a great one. Uh, just examples of what they do. Find these people on TikTok and Instagram, see how they're getting millions of views, and that's what you want to do. Forget, forget the amount of comments they get. It's half hate. But all the hate comments are feeding the algorithm. It doesn't matter. Like, oh, you're a quack, you're not a real doctor, kinesiology is not real. You know, they get all the hate. And he's like, Man, I get so much hate. I'm like, yeah, try being a chiropractor. We get the same thing. He's like, really? I'm like, yeah, totally. Um, so these are the things there. So break it up. Monday, educational. Three morning stretches to fix lower back tightness. Tuesday, a testimonial. Sarah avoided surgery after four weeks of decompression care at our office. Wednesday, lifestyle. What our morning team huddle before patients arrive. Thursday, engagement. We do myth or fact, chiropractic can fix scoliosis. Yes or no. Friday, offer$57 new patient special reminder with the link that you used in your ad that's currently running in the background on the sponsored for$30 a day. You're running that one, and now you're putting a link on Friday to the same offer so they can go straight to the landing page or straight to the form or link right to your website's contact us form to fill it out. And they now get the$57 thing too. For the people that have been following you on the sidelines for all these years who have never become a new patient. That's your five. Then I would do an auto post for Saturday and Sunday, maybe another educational one and another lifestyle one that your team can just reuse and repurpose over time. That way you get the daily stuff going. So this is how we get organic reach up. We have to have a quick hook. It's got to be fast. In the first two seconds, there's got to be a quick hook. So when you have that patient 10-second video of their back and it's superimposed with the spine floating over them, a picture. That's a hook. They're like, what is happening here? What is that? Or you're starting with like a side, like a blair technique, and I've got my my finger on their neck, and I do this twist with my hand to set it. Like I start and then we zoom out, and then bam, the table drops. Like that's that, those are my most viewed videos. Is people are catching that and they're like, What just what did he do to their neck? Um, and then start videos with movement or bold text. So we want subtitles always. Always have the subtitles if there's any narrating going on. Most users watch their videos muted. That's why. Uh, native feel, don't over-edit. Smartphone videos outperform polished ones. Okay. First comment strategy: add call to action or values. Here's the stretch I mentioned below. Now you are feeding the comment section. Engage in the DMs. Meta tracks conversations. More messages equals cheaper ads later. Repeat, engage the DMs. Meta tracks conversions, more messages equal cheaper ads later. If you're running ads and you're getting DMs, you're doing it right. You're doing it right. If you're running ads and you're getting zero DMs, messengers, you're doing it wrong. And it's costing you more, and you're getting bad leads. So linking organic content to ads. Best performing organic posts turn into paid ads. So this is where you don't have to figure out what to do for your advertising. When you have a post that just takes off, and you're like, they really love that post about the Merrick chart and the where the nerves go. That is now becomes your ad. Now you can lengthen the ad copy, explain more about chiropractic and the offer and what they're going to get and value stack. Come on in for$57. Get your first posture screen, uh, you know, posture analysis, x-ray, evaluation, doctor's report all for$57. Normally$200. And this now becomes an ad. Run warm audience retargeting to video viewers and engagers. This is where you can go to retargeting and say people who like or commented on your page. Now you can retarget them to the advertising that you're doing. Use testimonials as ad creative and use educational posts as soft awareness ads. And remember, once or twice a year, upload your patient email list from your EHR into Facebook and omit it from your target audiences because they've already become new patients and they're not allowed to sign up for the new offers that you put. Smart retargeting option there. Meta rewards, high engagement content with cheaper clicks. Your organic feed is your ad testing ground, not the ad manager section. Meta literally tells you which posts your audience loves, just put ad dollars behind the winners. Okay, so improving our lead quality is by a few things. Good content attracts informed leads. People who already trust you are going to come from your following. Avoid only running discount ads. Balance with brand content that positions you as the go-to expert. So typically, you want to start with an awareness campaign first with no offer. Who we are, what we do, and I run that. I run my awareness campaign in the background continuously for one, two, three dollars a day, depending on what the budget is for 30, 60, 90 bucks a month. That's my awareness campaign budget, is let's say$90 a month, and we run it. And as it builds the thousands of views, then I rotate it with the second promotional video. Then I have a third one, and for and they're all set up there. I only have to check that maybe once or twice a year because it's running for months. And then I switch the video just so it keeps running. And everyone that's seen it, when the frequency starts going up above two, I change the video and that's it there. I know this is a lot of information, and I know why you default to agencies to help you. I don't think there's another agency out there that does this, that does this. They don't do, they don't help you with this. They just run your ads and they know that if you don't get leads, you're gonna fire them at some point. So they want to try and get you leads, but then they get you the leads and then they're crappy, and then they blame you that the leads are crappy because you're not calling them or you're not doing this. And the blame goes on to your team, and you're like, well, this doesn't work, this doesn't fit their system and how we do it. I only have one CA and it's me. I don't have the time to chase down these people this much. I feel like we're doing a pretty good job calling them three times, texting them three times, and emailing them a couple times. What else am I supposed to do? I get the frustration. Why? Because I run my clinic just like you do. None of these bozos do that. I do. So, example, run an ad sequence, educational, testimonial, offer. That's what you want to do with your ad sequencing. Try these strategies if you've been frustrated with the ads. And I know many of you are in 2025 because of all the changes, the lead quality has really stunk. We have to move towards more of a landing page thing, more of an educational. There's got to be that step of catching the people who are interested in the ad and them not just automatically signing up. The the forms are also very easy for them to make a mistake and just fill it out just by clicking on the ad to learn more. They didn't learn more. They popped up your inform and automatically it filled and they wanted to get out. And they tried to get out, but it submitted it. And now you thought you got a new lead. You call them, they don't remember you. They're like, What are you talking about? I didn't sign up for you. Like, dude, I got your first name, last name, phone number, and email. Did you not sign up? They're like, You're a scammer. I don't know where the hell you got my information from. They literally do not remember you. That's what's happening. It's because the inform things become so easy and they've used it for other things. Maybe they signed up for an online thing, they bought something off Facebook. Who knows? So, your action steps for this week, right away, right away is identify your four content pillars that we talked about. We talked about educational, relatable, social proof, and engagement. Plan five posts per week at least. 30-minute batch planning. Make time before your weekly team training, after your weekly team training, one team training a month where you guys spend 30 minutes as a team recording the funny stuff or getting some of the you can shoot on each other. One of you can be a patient, your CAs can be patients. It doesn't matter. Uh, shoot short form reels weekly. Don't overthink this stuff. Just shoot short form. Remember, we said 30 to 45 seconds. Boom. Engage with every comment and DM. Do something with the comments. Ha ha ha. Thanks for the input. Yeah, this, like anything, just leave a comment. Um, track the top performing organic posts and promote them. Consistency beats creativity. Don't have to be creative with this. It's about consistency. Look at these top influencers that get million. Look at the kinesiology guy in my office. It's not perfect, it's not really that creative. It's just consistent. Consistent. The chiropractor who posts daily wins. Not because they're the most original, but because their community sees them as present, real, and trustworthy. And that can be you too. Go out and get them. If you need any help, I'm always here for you. Info at enrico d.com. Reach out to me. I'll send you my tech. I'll send you my cell phone number. You can text me. Whatever you need help with, reach out. I'm here for you. Go get them.