Chiropractic Marketing: 5 Ways to Reach Your Local Community

I realize that there are many ways to market your chiropractic practice. Some are fantastic, others mediocre and some, downright ineffective. 🙁

My questions is do you know which ones effectively work for you within your community plus provide a substantial return on your investment?

If not, then you’re not only hindering your efforts to disseminate the chiropractic message within your community but also killing your chances of becoming a profitable entrepreneur!

Marketing is an art not a science. Therefore, you have to think creatively when putting together your marketing game plan. If you focus entirely on the monetary gain, then you’ll lose right out of the gate.

Remember the famous quote by Zig Ziglar that states, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want. “

So, before you chisel out that revolutionary game plan, make sure you lay the proper foundation for relational marketing. Inbound or relational marketing is built on relationships and relationships require time to develop.

To see how this works, let’s explore five tips that will aid you in reaching your local community for chiropractic.

1. Get your practice online

I can’t reiterate how important this step is. If your business isn’t online, you’re invisible to a huge amount of people.

Why?

Because people turn to Google these days instead of the Yellow Pages to find what they’re looking for.

Case in point, a couple of weekends ago, I was speaking to a large group of chiropractors in Atlanta, Georgia on Web 2.0 Strategies. One of the doctors in attendance shared a story that drove home the value of being online.

He said that his practice is located one block from a local college. After establishing himself within social media, he noticed an influx of new patients from the college. After asking them how they found out about his practice and services, he was shocked what he discovered. They didn’t even know he existed until they found him online!

The point is being one block away with good visibility isn’t enough to connect with collegiate prospects. It took the power of the Internet to open those doors. And, if he hadn’t have moved his business online they would’ve never given him the time of day.

Lesson learned?

Online beats offline any day of the week!

2. Provide valuable content

Anyone can have a website these days. But, to have a website that attracts customers and retains them requires more effort and know-how. The chiropractors that understand this will reap the rewards well into the future.

Why?

Because content is king and when you write content that solves problems for people, you’ll been seen as the chiropractic expert within your community. Not only that, but you’ll be able to build genuine relationships that foster trust which is the catalyst for future business.

3. Spark meaningful conversations

If you write valuable content, then this will take care of itself. Conversations typically evolve once people start leaving comments on your blog.

But, don’t forget that the conversation continues on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Make sure you stay abreast of these conversations and participate in the conversation whenever possible. This can easily be accomplished through FriendFeed which aggregates other social media networks into one seamless platform.

On a side note, it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for FriendFeed since it was recently acquired by Facebook. My speculation is that Facebook will adopt their aggregation service within Facebook’s feed. If so, you’d only need to log into Facebook to update and manage all other social media networks. The jury is still out on this but it is possible and provides a huge opportunity for Facebook to continue its dominance within social media networks.

4. Let people know you’re online

It takes more than just having a search engine optimized website or blog to be recognized online these days. You’ve got to promote it.

So, start branding yourself every chance you get. List the social media networks you’re a part of as well as your blog’s address on company letterhead, business cards, email newsletters, et cetera.

Announce it during your new patient orientation classes, public health talks and community events. Don’t let a single event or opportunity slip by where your online presence isn’t advertised or known. It’ll not only do wonders for your site’s traffic but also will establish new contacts that you’d have never received otherwise.

5. Stay active online

This one is huge! If you devote the time and energy to start a blog, stay in it for the long run. Don’t abandon it and allow the cobwebs to form around your content.

How do you overcome this?

By posting consistently!

Post, post, post … and then, post some more! You’ve got enough valuable content swimming around in that skull of yours to fill many months if not years worth of posts.

Plus, remember that Google LOVES content. The more you feed it, the higher your blog ranking becomes for certain keywords.

Ninety-five percent of people simply do not look past page one during a search. Therefore, your goal is to shoot for page one with all major search engines quickly and consistently. You can achieve this goal by incessantly posting valuable content.

The above five tips, if practiced repeatedly, will prove to be some of the most powerful tips you can utilize for online chiropractic marketing. Don’t just read them, implement them! If you truly want to reach your local community for chiropractic and your potential as an entrepreneur, invest online. It’ll serve you well for many years to come.

What do you think? Share your thoughts, comments or ideas in the {comments} section below.