Did you know that the US chiropractic industry is worth around $15 billion? Chiropractors treat approximately 35 million Americans annually and that figure is only growing as people continue to turn towards holistic treatments to help their ailments.
If you’re wondering how your chiropractic practice can attract new patients while retaining current ones, then your marketing strategy is one of the core features of your operations to evaluate and refine.
From leveraging word of mouth referrals to encouraging your patients to leave reviews, we’ll dive into a few top marketing tips for chiropractors that can help promote your practice in a sustainable manner.
Keep reading to learn more!
How Much Should You Budget for Advertising Your Chiropractic Practice?
One of the immediate questions you likely have for any facet of your practice is about cost: how much something will cost, how can you be sure it’s worth it, how much effort will it take you to execute, etc. are all valid queries. Marketing efforts are no exception, of course.
It’s recommended that you spend around 5% of your gross revenue on marketing efforts if you want to maintain your practice and somewhere between 7% and 15% of your gross revenue if you’re wanting to expand and scale your practice.
For example, if your gross revenue is $10,000 per month then you should put aside $500 for marketing initiatives. Of course, marketing budgets can change over time and other factors come into play, so these numbers are all relative to your particular practice and goals.
What Is a Customer’s Lifetime Value + How Does It Impact Your Marketing Efforts?
Your patients are how you keep the doors open–or rather, the profits you garner from delivering great chiropractic care to them are how you keep the doors open. But how can you estimate the financial gains your practice will earn from each patient?
That’s where knowing a customer’s lifetime value is the ace up your sleeve. Abbreviated as CLV, this formula helps you anticipate the total financial worth of a patient at your chiropractic office. This math can be applied to any industry and is especially helpful to those working in the healthcare and service fields.
A customer’s lifetime value can be calculated in the following way:
Average Annual Value x Relationship Years + Patient Referral Value
= Customer Lifetime Value
Let’s put this into practice and say you have a patient who visits your chiropractic practice once a month and each visit costs $100. The total revenue generated is $1,200 and you factor in a 20% profit margin, so the Average Annual Value of that patient is $240.
Let’s say this patient continues to visit your practice for 5 years before moving to another state; the math would shake out to this:
AAV ($240) x Relationship (5 years) = $1,200
When you start consistently tracking this metric at your chiropractic practice, you can leverage marketing tactics and strategies around pricing, sales, patient referrals, patient retention, and more in order to reduce costs and boost your profits.
After all, knowledge is power–when you know what to financially anticipate from a typical patient over the course of their relationship with your practice, you can make better informed decisions about how you engage them.
For example, if you know that an average CLV at your chiropractic practice is about $500, then you wouldn’t want to exceed that figure for your marketing budget.
Take a Crack at These Marketing Tips for Chiropractic Practices
Ready to revamp or ramp up your marketing efforts to maintain or scale your chiropractic office? Check out these marketing tips:
Keep Your Website Updated and Accessible for Mobile Users
Everything and everyone are online these days, so it’s imperative that your practice has a solid website that looks professional. Potential patients will find your website while searching for chiropractors to check out, so having a nice website that reflects you and your practice can help distinguish you from the competition.
In addition to ensuring that your site is optimized for mobile users, which is a feature in most DIY website building platforms, consider including the following:
- A section that outlines your background and the values that guide your practice
- Your mission statement
- Contact information, hours of operation, location details, and more
- A place for announcements or specials
- Social media links
- A blog where you demonstrate your expertise and interests through engaging articles
- Link to leave a review on Google and other rating sites
- And more!
Personalizing your site will help clients, both new and existing, learn more about you; building that relationship is critical to long-term success!
Get Engaged with Your Community
Engaging with your community can take form in a multitude of ways, ranging from hosting an open house to sponsoring a little league team or offering discounts for first responders and veterans. Whatever you’re passionate about, see if there’s an existing event or organization you can connect with–or start your own initiative to spread the word! This demonstrates your care for those in your community and helps raise awareness of your practice and values.
Don’t Ignore Social Media Platforms
Just about anything can go viral these days–why not a montage of your crunchiest chiropractic cracks? Or maybe you have a charming parakeet in your waiting room that the internet would love to meet. Regardless of the potential to go viral, utilizing social media platforms is a no-brainer to connect with your patients and keep them informed of what you have going on each month.
Wish You Had More Time to Get Creative with Marketing Strategies? Partner with Holistic Billing Services!
Marketing efforts can take creativity to ideate, time to execute, and energy to maintain and track–if you’re swamped with your medical billing and coding processes, then you already don’t have the bandwidth to pursue this important component of your practice!
Your friendly experts here at Holistic Billing Services completely understand where you’re coming from, and we have the experience you need to support your revenue cycle. From accurate coding and prompt submission of claims to answering your questions and keeping up with healthcare legislation, we’re here to help you succeed!