Marketing Challenges Chiropractors Face When Trying to Grow Their Practice

What’s the purpose of a business? Generally, I would say it’s to help people solve a problem. And as Zig Ziglar used to say, “the more people you help, the more successful you will be.” So the challenge is, how can you attract more patients to grow your practice?

One of the biggest issues in America is back pain, according to a study conducted by the Georgetown Health Policy Institute.

“Nearly 65 million Americans report a recent episode of back pain. Some 16 million adults – 8 percent of all adults – experience persistent or chronic back pain, and as a result are limited in certain everyday activities. Back pain is the sixth most costly condition in the United States.”

For this reason, owning a chiropractic practice can be an excellent opportunity to help a bunch of people, while reaping the financial rewards.

Chiropractic care can significantly reduce the chance that a back pain patient will require surgical treatment. This offers an effective method to reduce immediate pain and give patients a reason to return in the case of future injuries. In spite of the benefits of paid recurring patient visits and its associated income, many chiropractors struggle to find a way to keep revenues steady, or even growing, month to month.

Below, we discuss some of the challenges of marketing a chiropractic practice and offer suggestions on how you might overcome them.

Competition with ‘Traditional’ Medicine

In most populous areas, it’s not enough that you have plenty of other chiropractors to compete against, but also with primary care physicians. Because of the past practice of disparaging non-allopathic physicians, most members of the public typically associate medical care with MDs. Traditional medical pros definitely have an advantage by participating in insurance and medical networks that feed them a steady stream of patients and referrals.

Chiropractors, on the other hand, must work to attract patients with outbound marketing, referrals, networking and even paid advertising. Once acquired, patients must be nurtured to keep the chiropractor’s name top of mind. It’s imperative to develop a marketing system and run it consistently to ensure you’re helping enough people to keep the practice growing.

No Systems or Organization

Doctors of Chiropractic enter the profession with the intent to help people, so much of their focus is on that very task. Spending a majority of their time assisting and adjusting patients makes it difficult to build an organized, systematized business, especially for solo practitioners. This makes hiring competent professional staff and advisors all the more important to help the business side of the equation thrive, especially for marketing strategies. Marketing professionals can especially help with developing and implementing systems to generate new patients and re-attract existing patients to ensure a steady stream of healthy revenue. Hiring a knowledgeable pro to get your marketing set up for automation and repetition can help your practice develop steady growth.

Lack of Differentiation

In a crowded urban landscape, with a great deal of competition, it’s rare that a chiropractor can separate his or her practice from the rest of the pack. It’s imperative in chiropractic, as in any business, to stand out from the competition, but how?

First, remember to provide great customer service. While many patients will remember that your treatment helped resolve their musculoskeletal challenges, they will also remember the experience. From their first encounter with your ads, visiting your website or social media, meeting you and your office staff, and visiting your facility, patients do remember.

To take advantage of a great customer experience, ask your patients for online reviews, testimonials and personal referrals to spread the word and attract new patients.  Consumers today consider online reviews to be as important as a referral from a close friend. If you can add a patient video testimonial to the mix, shared on your website and social media, you’ll find yourself in a truly unique spot.

In addition, it’s important to stay current on treatment techniques by attending conferences, seminars and other educational opportunities. Many chiropractors use additional certifications and qualifications to stand out from their competition.

No Marketing Plan

We all know what happens if you don’t actively market your business: its growth becomes stagnant. The old adage “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” is not even remotely true, unless, of course, you let the world know about your mousetrap. We recommend you plan and budget for business growth at the end of the year, to sustain steady growth. If you missed the boat last year, by all means get started right away.

A good marketing strategy contains a mix of organic and paid marketing, but make no mistake – they both require some investment. Organic tends to take a little longer and yield long-term results, but paid advertising can yield fairly immediate results.

What’s Next?

Overcoming the challenges listed in this article can seem formidable, but the right team can help crush the challenges of self-marketing. There is one strategy that we specialize in that can quickly breakthrough the limitations of the marketing techniques described here, and increase appointments, and revenue, quickly: patient database reactivation. Using this strategy, we help well-established Chiropractors add 40-100 appointments to their practice in 90 days or less with this strategy. This strategy can stand on its own, or can be used to generate additional patient appointments and revenue while other, long-term marketing strategies are implemented. To find out more, contact the author with a direct message, call 614-503-4950, or visit our website at invisionstudiosllc.com to learn more.