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
Your $29 Exam Is Training Patients To Ghost You
Price tags don’t build trust. We open the hood on why discount-first marketing is collapsing for chiropractors and show a smarter path: education, authority, and clear positioning that draws in patients who are ready to commit. Instead of chasing volume with “new patient specials,” we map a funnel that teaches first, answers the three demands every buyer brings, and turns curiosity into confidence before the first visit.
You’ll hear how to craft short, specific videos that meet people where they hurt—low back pain, neck pain, headaches, sciatica—while setting expectations about exams, timelines, and outcomes. We talk through the scripts that help patients feel seen, the clinical proof that supports your recommendations, and the simple questions that link relief to life goals so value rises above price. If you’ve felt the grind of no-shows and low conversions from cheap leads, this is your playbook for better-fit appointments and steadier revenue.
We also dig into niche positioning: why “we help everyone with a spine” dilutes your message, and how a focused promise—moms with chronic headaches, desk workers with posture pain, athletes chasing recovery—raises case value and reduces burnout. From transparent care plans to proactive follow-up calls when someone drops off, we outline a trust-based operating system that outperforms coupons and withstands ad cost spikes. Ready to build a brand people believe in before they walk through the door? Hit play, then share your niche with us.
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SPEAKER_00:If your marketing only works when you're offering$27 exams or free x-rays, you don't have a marketing problem, you have a positioning problem. Patients are more skeptical than ever. They've been burned by gimmicks, they don't want cheap care. They want confidence. They're choosing the right doctor. In this episode, I'm going to show you why discount-driven chiropractic marketing is dying in 2026 and how to build a trust-based brand that attracts better patients who stay longer and pay full value. Welcome to another episode of Marketing 101 for chiropractors, where each and every week we help you grow and scale your business by staying ahead of the curve and well informed. The old model is breaking the discount care. You guys have seen it all, and I've also got your feedback over the last 12 months from many doctors across the country saying, I don't want to give away discount care, or I don't want uh the bots, or I don't want the cheap leads, or I don't want these things. And I love it. I love that response by doctors of not doing it because in our industry, we've done it forever, given away the cheap exam, given away these things. I'm not saying this doesn't work in effective marketing and funneling. I'm saying that being cheap is no longer an advantage when you're doing your marketing at all. The group on style offers are all gone. Chiropractors are barely on them anymore. And if they are, they're doing it for some side thing. They're doing it for either red light, weight loss, shockwave, um, other modalities in the en massage therapy. And that still works and that's still fine if you want to. It's hard grind with that because you don't make any money when they come in and they may not book a second appointment. The$21 exams, you know, not really working anymore because people are no longer shopping from one Facebook ad to the other. Before with competition, people would. They say, Why is this doc doing a$99 promo and this doc doing a$19 promo? Uh, I just want a$19 adjustment. I'm gonna go for that. Or, you know, why would I pay$99 for an adjustment when I can do that? Remember, your market doesn't really know what chiropractic is. They know that they're gonna get an adjustment. That's the product and service that they're looking for. If they are experienced with chiropractic, the rest of them, the other 80%, don't even know what the experience is. So when they sit there, they're wondering what's going on. So your ad has to be constructed properly, no matter whether it's discounted or not. New patient specials are everywhere. You see that all the time. That's pretty much the number one tagline in all marketing on Google ads, Facebook ads, meta ads. They're everywhere. And what's happened is volume over relationship is what's the true problem and why we're not sticking out when we need to. In my office, in my brand, over the eight years that I've built it in my community, this new community I'm in, uh, it has been about brand and purpose. So it didn't matter what offers we were doing to attract the newer people, we were retaining patience based on the brand and purpose of what we do, which is never discounted. The reason why discounted things have worked up till now and still do, I'm going to show you how to do it, is that it has low comp it had low competition and no longer has low competition. The ads were cheaper, they're more expensive now, and there's less consumer awareness of what's going on. So the reason why it's failing is because everyone runs the same offer.$29 new patient exam. Patients shop price, not people anymore. So they've been we've trained them on Facebook over the last seven years to do that. There's low compliance, they may book or do whatever it says on the ad and not show, not call, no, no chance of getting them. A high churn rate on the patients that do come in from that. This is why uh doctors say these are bad leads. And I'll tell you why there's never a bad lead. And then burnout for doctors and staff. It is once you flood this stuff or you do get a marketing funnel that works and you start getting a lot of these leads, it's a lot of phone calls, it's a lot of texts, a lot of follow-up, a lot of paperwork being sent out. Show rates might be a little bit lower, a little bit more cumbersome than the conversion rates in the office. The doctors are doing these$29 exams, they're getting ticked off because they're only getting paid$29. The ad cost them$30 per lead. You know, it's a wash, yada, yada, yada. You know what I'm talking about. Discount marketing trains patients to leave the moment someone else is cheaper. That's truly what we're building here, and we're doing all these discounts. Now, we all know the answer to this is that get in through the door, and it's a different story. And we all think as providers is all I need is a few minutes with them inside to show the value. So there's two types of chiropractors that maybe three. There's two types of chiropractors once one uh once a dot once a patient walks through the door. The one that's on purpose and doesn't sway from the prov the services that they provide and the reason they provide it, and the other ones who are just people pleasers. Many of us are guilty of this. I am too. Meeting them where they're at, they have an ankle sprain, uh, a toe that hurts, a wrist that hurts, and you're like, uh, my whole system is corrective biophysics and you know, doing spinal molding. How am I gonna fix this wrist? I can. I got shockwave, I've got manual therapy, I can adjust, I can do all this stuff. And and we people please like, oh, I'm sorry about your wrist. Um, the offer was for you know a spinal assessment, x-rays, and first visit and exam. Is the wrist the only concern that you have? And opening that up, those are the two different types of docs, the ones on purpose that are gonna sway the conversation to the full spine, health, and nervous system, and the other ones that are gonna, oh, let me see your wrist. The grab the wrist and start assessing it. Uh, you got to pick which one you are because one's much easier than the other. So, what patients actually want in 2026? This is the feedback when I get, you know, from psychology, just from doing all these exams with patients, is what they want is clarity. They're looking for solutions to problems. They really are. People are just burnt out on information, burnt out on gimmicks, false promises, teamu, Instagram, Facebook, all the stuff, all the fake websites, all the gimmicks that are out there, the red light sleeping bags, all the stuff that just doesn't work. They've tried it. They want safety, they want outcomes, they want confidence in the doctor, and they want a plan, not a patch. People are craving some type of plan. Some type of plan. Here's your chance, here's your chance. And a big advantage in 2026, I don't know if you've seen this in your state with patients, they're coming in with no health insurance. It's middle of January, end of January, and people are coming in with no health insurance when they've had coverage. Like, I'm not renewing this year, I'm not paying$29,000 for it this year. I can't blame them. Uh, many can't afford it. And they're coming in, they're like, now I've got this cash because I was spending 19,000 last year, and I've got 19,000 bucks. They do, they do. We've healthcare has trained people to do this. So whether you take insurance or not, this is a year of of opportunity. This is I see so much opportunity with this, and you should be advertising and you should be talking about that, and you should be tightening your systems on the inside. They're asking for, can you help me? Because now that health care has failed us, uh insurance health care has failed us, the insurance plan has failed us. I feel as a consumer, they feel left out. They feel like I I now no longer have the health care that I need, that I thought I needed. And you have this opportunity to teach them, hey, here's what real health care and preventative care is. That's emergency care that you were paying for. How many emergencies have you had over the last 15 years? And they'll they'll name one or two, they broke an arm or they had to be rushed for appendicitis or something that they were glad they had insurance, absolutely. But they're not gonna have many more examples of that. And I had one person that priced it out. They're like, if I need my appendix out, I'm better off paying cash than I am paying for my plan this year. I'm like, wow, that's that's crazy. So they want to know, can you help me? Do you understand my problem? And is this worth my time and money? Those are the three subconscious objections, or they're not even objections, they are demands that the consumers are coming in, your patients are coming into your office with can you help me? That's always number one. If you've done any of those old coaching seminars from 20 years ago, I remember sitting there with a pen and paper, writing things down. Can you help me? Master Circle, you know, all these people, can you help me, right? Uh, do you understand my problem? They don't want you to explain what's going on. They they want to be like, Do you understand? And the way you convey you understand is repla replaying and replying exactly what they said about their symptoms. And they hear it themselves again, like, oh, he repeated or she repeated exactly what I said. That's one. And then some proof, an x-ray, a scan, something where you're like, look, this is probably a reason why you're experiencing the discomfort that you're having. And then, is this worth my time and money? And that's your job to sell them on the value on that. Is this worth my time to come and see you three times a week for whatever your the price of this plan is for six weeks, eight weeks, twelve weeks, whatever your plans are, and the value on that? And if you did this right, yes, I can help you. This is why you have the pain and what's going on. Then this final closing is very easy. How will you feel, Sally, when your low back's not hurting anymore and you can sit through a full workday at work with no pain? Oh, that would be fantastic. Great. How is this gonna bring value to your life? What else will you do? Oh, I haven't even thought that far yet. I've been in pain for so long. Think about it. What will that change in your life? How will this improve your active daily living on a day-to-day basis? It's like maybe I could rejoin that gym. Oh man, that would be amazing. I love that goal, Sally. You know what? I'm gonna write this right down on your intake form. Big goal for 2026: get back to the gym with no pain. How's that sound? Oh wow, I didn't even think about that. Great. Well, you know, in this four-month plan that I have for you, you're gonna be coming in twice a week. We're gonna give you some homework in the next month after the pain subsided. If you do everything I say, I promise you within the four months, we'll be signing up for a gym membership. And they're gonna ask where to sign and what credit card they can use to pay. People don't buy chiropractic, they buy your certainty, they buy leadership, they buy a guide. Be the guide. Trust is now the currency to move forward. So the trust-based marketing model, you can still do the$29 exam because the premise and the purpose is now lined up. Lead with education. Do you have to do seminars and workshops in your office with chairs? No, I think those days are gone. You can still do it, but those days are gone. Short videos explaining conditions on your social media, all conditions you can think of. Just go through your last 50 new patients from 2025 and go through their chief complaint. You have it on your front page of every intake. What was their chief complaint? You're gonna see a lot of low back pain, neck pain. We know this headaches. Fine. Those should be your top three videos that you're gonna put out. Short videos explaining low back pain, sciatica, pinch nerve, neck pain, headaches, migraines, cluster headaches, attention headaches. What to expect? What to expect in your office. We're not just gonna crack, snap, and pop you. We're gonna go through this model of care and clear expectations for your process. Within so much time, you should be feeling so much better. Within this much time, you should be moving this much better, and within this much time, your body should reach a pre-existing condition of injury or health that you're better off than when the first day you walked into our office. And you show that process. For each patient's gonna be a different time because energy and and time and healing takes time, but there's a general model that's there, and you're gonna do that based on the techniques and the way you've set up your office. It's uh it can uh cultivate around all the techniques that we do. Show the doctor, not just the offer. They want to see you, they want to see you. All these pictures of the decompression machine, this person doing this, but you know, they want to see the doctor leading by example. Your voice, your philosophy, your standards. Be transparent, explain the care plans, not in detail on the advertisement, but on your social media, on your website, explain the process and why you have corrective plans, set expectations, remove the mystery, remove the friction that's there that prevents people from booking the appointment, prevents people from booking the second appointment. You may think you got them as a new patient, but how many leave after the second or third visit or presented a care plan and you think, you think that they didn't book the third visit because the care plan was too expensive or too long. It wasn't that. You missed something in there. It's never the time or money. If they have a condition, they have your trust, they have your certainty, time and money is no longer the objection. It was something else. It was something else in your office. And it's great to pick up the phone, call that patient back. Some of the best feedback I've had in my career is from a patient that came in two weeks ago, a new patient, and maybe came in for two visits and then didn't come back. The results are amazing. I used to say, Hey, Jim, you know, I you came in two weeks ago and they haven't booked another appointment. My team's been trying to call you. I thought I'd leave you a call. I'm so glad I caught you on the phone and didn't have to leave a voicemail. Can you tell me what's going on? Or if I leave a voicemail, I'll be like, hey, Jim, it's Dr. D. Can you call me back? I have a uh personal favor from you. You came into our office, you came in, you're not responding to her, but could you respond to me so I can better improve my business? I really value your feedback. You'll get a call back. Jim will call you back. Jim, hey, Dr. D. I really did not like how I was treated at the front desk. I'm like, what? Jim, tell me what's going on, man. Whose head do I have to chop off? No, no, no, don't chop anyone's head off, Dr. D. Uh, but you know, I came in, no one was sitting at the front, waited there, someone came up, they were flustered, kind of told me, Hey, do you have your paperwork done? I was like, Yeah, I think I think I had it all online. Oh, yes, you did. And it just it wasn't. And then that comes to the team meeting, you don't, you know, and your team works on it and be like, hey, we and your team will agree and be like, yeah, we've really fumbled that one. Um, and sometimes I've been able to reconcile it. And Jim's like, you know what? I didn't ever think I'd get a phone call back, but I'd love to come back and and book in because I I really want to do fix this. Like, great. Oh, that's great. You'll be surprised how these conversations go. Sometimes you leave voicemails and they just don't get back, but it's changed my business. At the beginning, I tried to guess. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. Do you think that was a little too expensive? And they're like, No, I what? Why would you say that? You know, don't you just wait. You call them, you get their feedback, it goes a long way. Be transparent on everything. And then what we want to do is position as a specialist, not as a coupon. You can do the$29 thing, you can do the$49 exam, you can do whatever you want, you can do the 99 promo to get there because we we know how marketing works. By this point, if you've been listening to this podcast, we we've covered the basics of marketing. It's no longer marketing 101. If you've been listening to me over the last couple of years, you're probably at 201, 301, master's levels. Uh we're not there. We help moms with chronic headaches. Like people are like, What do you mean by specific? So when I onboard a new chiropractor to help them in their office to start their ads or start their program or build their funnels so that that team can have a system that works, I ask them, you know, what's your niche? What's the one person? If we just got one type of person to come into your office, just all you did was sprained wrists. That's it. You're the sprained wrist chiropractor of Missoula, Montana. And they're like, okay, what would be the slogan? What would be the theme? What would be the ideal client's message on this? And they're like, they're they run a blank. I'm like, we help moms with chronic headaches. How specific is that? You're a mom. You have to have kids, so that is just eliminated all women that don't have kids. And you have to be a mom with chronic headaches. We help moms with chronic headaches. We help desk workers fix posture-related pain. Posture-related pain. Are you in a weird posture all day? Are you sit at a desk all day? Do you stand behind a cash register all day? Do you work retail all day? Are you in a weird position all day? We are the experts in helping workers fix their posture. We help athletes recover faster, right? The key shift here is you're not competing with other chiropractors. You're competing with the confusion that's out there. You're not competing against the chiropractor down the street. People have options for bad posture. People have options for headaches. People have options for recovery athletes have tons of to recover faster. They don't have to come to you. They can go to cryotherapy, they go to physical therapy, they go to occupational therapy, they can go to a stretch lab, they can go to massage therapy, they go to acupuncture, they can go to a kinesiologist, they can go. There's so you're competing against all their options out there, and you have to display how you're the solution to the problem. That's what marketing is all about. That's what it's all about. They they didn't think about that. They're like, oh, I was gonna go to the stretch lab for my tight hamstrings that I think is leading to my low back pain because I play pickleball all the time. But Dr. C on on Facebook, right here from ABC Chiropractic down the road, it's like five miles, you know, five miles from my house. Uh, they say they help low back pain and relaxing muscles by fixing pelvic tilt with this cool thing he does in the office with this technique. Wow, is this new the Thompson drop? Did they just invent the Thompson Thompson Thompson drop uh adjustment? Wow, this must be new. I I didn't know Thompson drop came out in 2025. I'm gonna go see him for the Thompson drop technique and you're like, okay, I can help you, guys. We have to think, we have to clear up the confusion, right? So the clarity is just through that's how you get clarity, that's how you get positioning is through your marketing. So if you're not doing this stuff, Facebook and Meta and Instagram marketing is still the best cost, it's the cheapest entry point. So if you're uh trying to grow a clinic or your marketing budget is minimal, Google Ads is not the best way to jump in. It costs a lot, you're not gonna get much traction. The best foot in entry is your social media. It's just you can do a lot of free stuff on there and you can post a lot for free as well. You can get an Instagram following and just post. And from those posts for free, people may book appointments from that. Just on Instagram is huge for that. You just gotta be consistent with it. Then when you add ads to it, now you reach more people. So, how things change your marketing? What to change immediately is replace the cheap exam ads with do you wake up stiff. Every morning. Why back pain keeps coming back? Three mistakes people make with sciatica. You've seen all these videos. Three mistakes people make for their retirement. Three mistakes people are making for their fitness. Three mistakes people are making and why they can't drop weight. Three mistakes why women have painful cramps. You see it on Instagram. The seven mistakes, the three mistakes, the five mistakes. People are like, ooh, what am I? What am I making mistakes? I want better financial health. I want better retirement. I want, you know, it's there. You can do the same stuff. Build ads that teach first. So your awareness campaign should teach people. Hey, I'm Dr. Mullen from ABC Chiropractic, and we do this, this, and this. And the reason we do this, this, and this is to solve this, this, and this in the patient base that comes into our office. So when these types of people come in, they go through this process and they get these results. Then you want to offer clarity, exam, x-ray, treatment protocols, and the results, and then invite the right people. You target the right people. You put in your audiences in there, you retarget. It's a whole system. Your funnel becomes education, authority, relationship, and then conversion. All the marketing companies out there are throwing out ads to try and get you to convert. There's no education. They're doing the grab, the quick grab,$49 grab. Come on in for$29. There's no education in there. It's the snap, crackle, pop. There's no authority with that. And there's no relationship building with that. It just brings you leads that hopefully your team can convert and put a few people into the office so that the doctor can sit down. Now take that person who just saw the crack, snap, pop video for 49 bucks. They're like, what is going on with all this other stuff? Why are you doing an ortho exam on my spine? And why do we need to take x-rays? I just wanted that where that girl was getting adjusted with her neck. I just feel like that just needs a good pop. We have to build that. And that's through our social media. We do not need to discount, rush, no shows, and then burn out the doctors. So if you want better patients, you have to become a better guide. That should be your focus for 2026. If you want higher value cases, you have to lead with higher value messaging. And if your practice depends on discounts to survive, you built a fragile business. Back to that example of we help moms with migraines. You could, you could have$8,000 packages for these types of so niche that you're so niche that you help moms. This probably postnatal is what I assume the messaging would get. Postnatal moms with headaches, not pregnancy pain, round ligament pain, pelvic tilt, pelvic floor issues, migraines. I mean, you could because you're so niche that you come in here, you could lay out an entire program and what they get. You can include your massage therapist in this, massage therapy over those months that you're gonna help them. You can build these huge cases around because of how unique you are. And the reason why we can't sell high ticket is because we spread our abilities too far. We can help everyone with a spine. Remember, remember those guys in all the coaching groups? If they have a spine, you can adjust them, right? That's too far of a reach for marketing. Because that means anyone with a spine, you can help dogs, cats, humans, you can do right. So being niche is how you increase your value. The the larger you cast your net for leads, the lower your case value will be because of burn and turn. The narrower you cast your net, the higher your case value will be. And trust me, the the let the latter is easier, it's more prosperous, it's more rewarding, and it's definitely less burnout. The failure of chiropractic marketing isn't louder, it's clearer. And the doctors who win in 2026 are the ones patients trust before they even walk into the door. So use social media according that way, and you will see great success in 2026.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to subscribe, like, share, and leave a ringing. It helps get our podcast out to more listeners. Welcome to join marketing 101 for chibertons on Facebook for Vincent and reconciliation for more information.
