7 Key Elements to Growing Your Practice Online

In this session, we look at 7 key elements to focus on when it comes to building your online footprint and connecting with more patients in your community.

We live in a digital era. As a business owner, it's vitally important to establish a robust online presence. This is where patients learn, discover, and interact with you.

Follow this blueprint and take actionable steps today to start building a stronger online presence, connecting with more patients in your community, and growing your practice.

Watch the video recording of this session here:
https://chirobasix.com/podcast/7-key-elements-to-growing-your-practice-online/

----

You can also get a ton more information on the top digital strategies for practice growth by reading our book: "The Chiropractor's Marketing Playbook".

Grab your copy of the book here:
https://chirobasix.com/book

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Chiropractors, welcome back to another session.

(00:04):
Super excited about today's material.
We're going to be going over the seven key elements that you should be focused on for growing your business online.
So the digital space, obviously there's lots of things that you can do to promote and market and advertise your practice.
But what we want to do is, you know, create a really dialed in focused game plan that you can go and start executing on to start growing today.

(00:29):
It's hard to know, like, what are the things that you should be doing and focused on that are going to end up driving the results for you?
And hopefully the material today is going to help you get, you know, super dialed in and focused on the right actionable steps that you can take today to start igniting that growth.
So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen for those watching the video.
I've got some really good visuals that will help kind of tell the story.

(00:52):
If you're just listening to the audio, we'll make sure that the link is included in the notes.
So that way you can get access to the video recording if you find that valuable.
So go ahead and share my screen here. And yeah, here we go.
Let's just go ahead and start diving into this. So seven key elements to grow online.
And the first thing we want to do is understand why is this even important?
Why should you care about this material?

(01:15):
Why do you want to focus on creating a really good online footprint?
And the answer to that question is pretty obvious. We live in a digital era, right?
Everything that everybody is doing has some type of online footprint.
So you need to position yourself online so people can actually find you, engage with you, learn with you,

(01:38):
discover you, build trust with you and your brand and you as the doctor, get in touch with you.
These are all the things that are taking place online.
Regardless, if a user is looking for a product, a service, if they're looking to just engage with their friends and family,
it's all taking place online.
And so it's really, really important that you as a business owner are positioning yourself in a way that's going to help grow that online presence

(02:03):
so people can find, discover, get educated, engage with you and get in touch with you.
Hopefully book appointments that come in and see you. So very, very important, the digital space.
And now, you know, the question is really now that we know that it's important, what do we need to do?
What is the plan to actually build that presence online and get in touch with more patients and grow your health community?

(02:30):
So let's dive into that. So the first thing that we have to look at is the patient journey.
So before we start talking about campaigns and strategies and, you know, the things that you should be doing,
we have to understand what is that journey that patients take before they book that appointment.
And that journey typically starts at, you know, they're starting to experience some type of symptom or health concern.

(02:53):
And then the end of that journey is they book an appointment or they get in touch with you and they walk in your door.
And everything in between those two points in time impacts the journey that they take.
So there are several touch points that happen in between that.

(03:14):
And if you think about your own buying experience, this is true for you as well.
You know, imagine you were in the market for a new car.
It's not like you just wake up one morning and you're like, I need I'm going to go buy a new car and replace my current car.
And you go to the dealership and you you buy one on the spot. That's that's not that's not likely.
Right. Typically, there's several things that take place in between there.

(03:39):
You do some research online, maybe you talk to friends and family, maybe you do some test driving,
maybe you shop the market to see where the good deals are.
There's several things that take place in between when you decide to buy a car or when you start realizing that it's time to replace your car
and when you actually go and pull the trigger and make a decision and take an actionable step.

(04:02):
So it's the same thing for chiropractic care.
You know, maybe you have some more hurdles because there's a lot of, you know, a lot of people are not well educated in the power of chiropractic care.
We're going to talk about that. But, you know, you want to position yourself in the same way along that journey.
How can you create as many touch points as possible to educate, to build trust,

(04:25):
to engage with the people in your community and position yourself as the go to authority for help?
So we're going to look at several different channels that are going to help patients along that journey in the digital space.
So that way you can connect with more people and continue to nurture them along that path
and get them to actually book that appointment with you and come in and see you.

(04:46):
So the reason why it's important to consider the entire journey is because you really need to focus on being everywhere.
If you were to just run Facebook ads, but then you don't have an email system or you don't have a good website or you don't have a presence on Google,
you're going to miss out. So you want to have systems and strategies and touch points along that entire journey,

(05:11):
regardless if they're on Facebook, if they're on Google, if they're in the email, if they're on your website, all of the things matter.
This concept is called omnipresence. It's super, super powerful when you can build an inflow of patients and leads from multiple sources.
So I use this analogy where imagine you built a swimming pool and you were trying to fill that swimming pool full of water.

(05:38):
Would you rather have one garden hose filling it with water or would you rather have a bunch of them, 10, 12 different hoses,
trying to fill that pool with water? And the answer is you'd rather have more, right?
So how can you do the same thing for your business?
How can you create multiple channels and streams of patients and leads?

(05:59):
And how can you nurture people along that journey, regardless of where they're at, and be their front and center for you to position yourself as that go to authority and help
and get them to book an appointment with you versus go somewhere else or worst case scenario, they don't do anything and let their health deteriorate.
So now that we know about the patient journey, we know that we want to create omnipresence.

(06:25):
Now we have to figure out how are we going to target the people in your community.
So to target them and to build strategies around that, we want to understand where people are at.
And generally speaking, if you look at the population in your area, you can bucket them into two different groups.
The first group we call this informed or maybe educated group.
This is going to be the group of people that they already understand chiropractic care or know about it.

(06:51):
Or maybe they already understand that they have a health problem and they're out there actively seeking help.
Maybe they're searching chiropractor near me, maybe they're searching for back pain treatment near me, migraine treatment near me.
They're actively seeking help for this.
A lot of times people go to Google to look up information about their problem or potential solutions or treatments for their issue.

(07:16):
Maybe they go to friends and family. Maybe they're on YouTube watching health videos.
Maybe they're joined in Facebook groups to try to get help with this issue.
But they're actively engaged, right? They're actively seeking that out.
And then you have the second bucket of people, which we call the uninformed people or the non-active people.

(07:37):
These are all the people that are experiencing back pain and headaches and migraines and carpal tunnel and all of the things.
But they're not familiar with chiropractic care. They're not actively seeking you.
They're not actively trying to find a solution for that problem.
And unfortunately, this represents a much larger portion of the population.
So we're going to talk about how do we actually go after both of these groups?

(08:03):
How do we get, how do we capture people that are already actively looking?
And then how do we get in front of more people that are not actively looking and educate them, teach them,
get them more bought into the idea that they can have a healthier lifestyle and bring them into the practice.
So let's look at both of those groups. And to do that for both groups, the first place that we want to start is your website.

(08:28):
Your website is your digital foundation for every marketing and promotional activity that you do,
regardless if you advertise online or you advertise in the traditional sense with commercials and billboards and flyers and screening events
and all those type of things. The end result is that you end up getting more people on your website.
And this is just the nature of the world that we live in. People are going to see your sign and they're going to look you up.

(08:54):
They're going to go to your screening event and get your business card and they're going to go to your website to book an appointment or whatever the case is.
So the website is the foundational piece. And you have to make sure that this is in a really, really good position to one, be found.
So we're going to talk about the three goals. The first goal is to be found. Your website has to be people have to be able to get to it.

(09:16):
If they search you on Google or whatever the case is, it needs to show up. The second thing is that it needs to nurture people.
So once they get to the website, are you educating them with really good content? Are you showing them if they're searching for treatment for their shoulder pain?
Are you giving them lots of good information of how they can help solve that issue?

(09:37):
Where is their shoulder pain coming from? How can chiropractic care help that, et cetera?
And then the third thing is, is your website converting people? Is it actually getting people to take the next step?
Do you have an online calendar system? Is your phone number readily visible?
So we're going to talk about a few of those things. But those three goals are super important.
So you have to button up your website and focus on this because anything that you do to promote your business is going to push people to the website.

(10:03):
And you want it to be in a really good position to convert these people.
So let's talk about a few of those conversion optimization.
How do we get people to actually take the next step in do the actions that are going to drive them into the office?
So up on the screen, we have some examples of things that you can look at.
So, you know, your home page or any page, really, you got to have really strong calls to action.

(10:27):
So some really good examples of that is in the header and where your menu is at the top, you got to have a book appointment button.
You got to have your phone number that's clickable so people can click on it and initiates a phone call.
Those calls to action have to be big, high contrast. So they pop off the page. So it draws your eyes to it.

(10:48):
That's super important is that your calls to action are very obvious.
This is a concept and design that there's psychology involved in this, right?
You want to make sure that people know exactly, OK, this is the step that I should be taking.
It's very obvious where I'm supposed to click. So put those buttons nice and big in the header in your hero section,
where usually there's like a hero image at the top with your page title or whatever.

(11:12):
Have another call to action, book appointment, call now, schedule appointment, whatever that call to action is.
In the bottom right, we like to have a chat widget.
Lots of people don't like picking up the phone and they don't want to fill out a contact form because they feel like they'll never hear back.
So instead, give them this option where they can just click and do a little chat session.

(11:36):
A lot of times this doesn't even have to be a live interaction.
They hit the little chat widget, they fill out the thing, and then you just you get back to them.
You text them later, you call them later. Super, super powerful.
You'd be surprised how many leads you get just out of a little chat widget.
Some pretty simple steps that you can take to help increase the conversion rate of people hitting your site to take that next step.

(11:57):
Next is, you know, can your website be found?
So are you optimizing your content and your website with really good keywords, with really good content?
So here's an example on the screen. You know, here's a back pain treatment page.
When someone types in back pain treatment, do you have a page dedicated for back pain?
Do you have you talk about back pain treatment? Do you talk about the causes of back pain?

(12:22):
Are you building out really good educational material? Here's another example of headaches.
Here's some, you know, you're teaching people about these things so they can learn more about the problem they're experiencing and how chiropractic care can help them.
This does two things, right? It teaches them, it educates them.
But also, the second thing is when Google crawls your website and they see all this really valuable content,

(12:45):
they know that you are a good resource for people that are on Google searching for these problems.
So then you rank higher. They position your website higher on the list so more people can find you.
So having good content knocks two of those things out.
You can educate and nurture your patients and you can also rank higher on Google so people can find you more frequently.

(13:07):
Super powerful to have really good content. So content, content, content, and then optimizing for conversions with really strong calls to action consistent.
So that's some really high level information on positioning your website.
Go through your own website and look at your conversion actions. Are they obvious?

(13:28):
Look at your content, look at your headers, making sure that the details and the keywords that you want to rank for are showing up in your content. Super, super powerful.
The next section, the next tip, actually the next two tips, number two and number three, is going to be your Google presence.
So Google ads and then your SEO. We call this our Google domination system because you want to show up everywhere on that Google search results page.

(13:55):
So when people are actively seeking, you know, they're in that group of I'm looking for help. You're showing up.
Google is the number one platform for when people are actively looking for something.
So it only makes sense that you want to position yourself really well on Google to show up when patients are already actively looking.
So let's look at a Google search results page. If you if you break out the sections on a Google search results page, there's three.

(14:23):
There's three sections. The first at the very top are Google ads. These are paid search ads.
How this works is you pick out all the keywords that you want to show up for. Chiropractor near me, for example, back pain treatment near me.
You pick out all these keywords and you say, hey, Google, when someone types that into Google, I want to show up at the top.

(14:45):
This is low hanging fruit. You want to show up here. So it's worth paying Google to show up in those spots.
And actually, you don't even pay to show up. You only pay when someone actually clicks on the app.
So the cost, it's a cost per click model and the cost per click.
It ranges by the market and level competition and the search volume.

(15:06):
But typically, the average cost per click is going to range anywhere from three to twelve dollars somewhere in that ballpark.
And that's worth it. That five dollars, that six dollars, that seven dollars for that click is highly worth it because that person was actively looking for treatment for you, for a chiropractor.
And they saw your ad and they clicked on yours and went to your website.

(15:29):
So it's worth spending that seven dollars for that click or that five dollars for that click because it's a very high likelihood that they'll actually convert since they were already actively looking.
You want to be that first result there. So Google ads. The second section on the Google search results page is the Google Map Pack.
This is a picture of the map and it's got some business listings on it.

(15:52):
And then it shows the top three listings in the area based on the location and the keyword that was typed in.
This is super, super powerful real estate. Fifty two percent of the local searches and in a click on the map pack.
So that's a ton of search volume that's going to land just in this one section.

(16:15):
So you want to position yourself here. We're going to talk about like how do you get yourself here and key strategies for that.
And then the third section on the search results page is the Google the actual website results. So organically, how does your website rank in comparison to all the other websites that are out there for your area?
So we're going to talk about strategies, which we did a little bit already, but we'll talk about more strategies for positioning your website to rank really well organically on the search results.

(16:45):
If you can get yourself to show up at the top of all three sections, you are dominating that search results page.
And that's what we want. That means regardless of where someone scrolls when they search for chiropractor near me or whatever the search term is, you're showing up there at the top and they're finding you.
And there's going to be a lot of volume of that you can get that people are already actively seeking.

(17:07):
So let's dive into these different sections. So Google ads. We talked about this a little bit.
Pick out all your keywords that you want to show up for. Say, hey, Google, I want to show up here when someone types this in and you pay them when someone clicks on that app.
So here's some tips for this. The first thing is to pick out all the most valuable keywords.
You don't want to have low intent keywords. You want to have high intent when someone is actively ready to go.

(17:34):
Back pain treatment near me. That's super powerful. And then when you create this list of keywords, try to group them into things that are similar.
For example, chiropractor near me, family chiropractor near me. I'm in Wilmington. So chiropractor in Wilmington.
You can also do other locations that are nearby. Chiropractor in Leland. That's a town nearby. Wilmington.

(17:57):
So that could be like a group of keywords. And then another group of keywords could be prenatal chiropractor, chiropractor for pregnancies, prenatal chiropractor near me.
That's a group, right? It's all about the prenatal stuff. And then maybe there's another one for back pain treatment, back pain treatment near me, back pain treatment in Wilmington.
That's another group of keywords, right? Group all your keywords by similarity or topic.

(18:19):
Because what's going to end up happening is you're going to want to build out your ads and your landing pages where you push people to based on that topic.
So you want to make sure that the search term that was typed in, the keyword that you're focused on, the copy in the ad itself, and then the landing page that they land on when they click on the ad is all relevant.

(18:44):
So if they typed in back pain treatment near me, you want an ad that shows up that says back pain treatment.
And then when they click on that ad and they hit the landing page, you want the landing page to say back pain treatment.
So that way it's very relevant to what they typed in.
That's why you want to group your keywords separately like that, because then it allows you to build really relevant campaigns.

(19:06):
You don't want them all lumped into the same thing. Build out the keyword list, the ads, and the landing pages to be relevant to the keywords so that way they all relate to each other.
The experience for the user is much better when they are clicking through on an ad that is related to what they typed in and they're landing on a page that's super relevant to what they typed in.

(19:30):
It also increases your relevancy score with Google for your ad and it lowers your cost per click and increases your click through rate.
So super powerful to make sure that everything that you build on here is relevant.
Other things that you want to keep in mind is there's a lot of keywords out there that you don't want to show up for.
So if someone was looking at chiropractor school or chiropractor jobs or back pain meme or maybe a competitor's name, those are not keywords that you want to show up for.

(20:03):
So you can actually in Google create what's called a negative keyword list and you can list out all of the keywords that are not valuable for you.
You do not want to show up for these and it will prevent your ad from popping up when those keywords get typed in because it does happen.
And sometimes you can build up this list, this negative keyword list, and you're going to miss some.

(20:24):
You're not going to get all of them right away, but you can monitor those search terms as they come in and continue to add keywords to that list if you notice bad search terms popping up in your reporting.
So key point to make sure that you build out a negative keyword list.
Next is doing ad scheduling.
So making sure that your ads and campaigns are only running during valuable times for you.

(20:52):
So you can actually schedule your ads to only run during certain days and times.
And if you're on a limited budget, you may want to only schedule your campaigns to run during the days and times that you're actually open.
So if you're not open on Sunday, but then you run ads on Sunday, people are clicking and they can't get in touch with you or book their appointment.

(21:13):
You're wasting ad dollars, right?
If you lose, it's a less likelihood that they'll see you on Sunday and then remember to come back and book something on Monday or Tuesday.
So you can save yourself and optimize your ad spend by focusing your dollars on the days and times that you're actually open to receive phone calls and get people booked.

(21:36):
So that's another really good tip.
Another good tip would be using ad extensions.
So when you build out your ads, you can add things like site links and location extensions, phone numbers, call outs, lead forms, all sorts of cool things that help your ad pop off the page and stand out in comparison to the other ads.
Use all of them. Add all of the extensions that you can.
Google will decide when it makes sense to use any of the ad extensions that you provide.

(22:01):
But, you know, don't skip this part.
Be thorough in adding all the extensions because this is going to make your ads perform better by having these extensions active.
Okay, so that was Google Ads.
The next section on the search results page is going to be the MEP pack.
So on the screen, I got a picture of what that looks like.

(22:24):
And you can see the top listing on this one is an ad.
That's an ad extension that I was just mentioning.
When someone runs Google Ads, they can add a location extension, which shows up on the MEP pack like this.
The other three below that are organic listings.
And this is driven by, it used to be called Google My Business, but now it's called Google Business Listing.

(22:45):
I don't, you know, same thing.
Basically, you can claim your practice, your business on Google Maps.
And this gets you into their ecosystem for their map platform.
And what happens here is the top three listings get ranked on the search results page.
So you want to get your business listing ranking in the top three.

(23:07):
And there's lots of different things that you can do to help influence that.
There's just a lot of activities. So let's look at some of those.
Obviously, the first thing you need to do is claim your listing and fill it out and optimize it.
So, you know, your name, your address, your phone number, those are the key components.
Adding your hours, adding your categories, your services, your contact information, adding your website link.

(23:31):
All of those are really, really important.
Fill out the business listing as much as possible with all the really good content that you can.
This is going to help, you know, make the listing really robust.
If Google has two chiropractic listings to serve and one of them is all the way filled out,
and one of them is only like halfway filled out, it's going to use the one that's all the way filled out.
So be robust in how you, you know, optimize this listing.

(23:53):
Fill in all the key data points on the back end of the business platform.
And this will help your listing for sure. That's step number one.
But step number two is all the additional activities.
So an example of those activities is adding photos.
And obviously, you want to add your logo and a hero image for the listing right off the get go.
And you're going to add a few photos right off the get go.
But you want to continuously add new photos over time.

(24:16):
So don't just upload a bunch of photos and then forget about it for a year.
You really should be doing this. We do this for our clients every week.
Every single week we're going in, we're adding a few more photos to the listing.
This helps show to Google that you're active, that you're in business,
that you're constantly pushing out new content for people to view, you know, the culture

(24:38):
and the vibe going on in your office. Like you want to be active here.
And what's really great is if you take these photos with a smartphone
and you snap the photos, it'll actually geotag the location of that photo
and like the photos raw data.
And when you upload that to Google, Google can see that data
and they understand that that photo was taken at your location.

(25:01):
So powerful ad photos.
There's also these different photo categories that you can use.
Use them. This helps position the photos into what exact aspect of the business it is.
And it changes how it displays those photos on the search engine results
when people are looking at your listing.
So use the categorizations. That's super helpful.

(25:22):
Add photos on a regular basis. Use your phone so it adds the location to it.
And then categorize them correctly.
The other thing that you need to focus on is reviews.
So reviews are super, super important.
Obviously, it's really important for your own online reputation.
When people are looking for a chiropractor or a service,

(25:43):
it's very common for them to go look at reviews.
So you want to be driving new reviews on a regular basis.
Ask for reviews that they actually give you a link that you can pass out to collect reviews.
But not only do you want to collect more reviews consistently,
you also want to respond to those reviews.
Google sees that if you're engaging with people,

(26:05):
and also patients also see this if you're actually paying attention to the reviews that are being left.
When you respond, it's showing Google that you care and you're paying attention.
It's showing more activity on your listing.
It's also showing patients that you're paying attention to their experience and that you actually care.
So respond to every single review, positive, negative.

(26:26):
Always be professional in your responses.
But keep active on this. Stay on top of it.
Continuously reply to all your reviews and collect new reviews consistently.
Another thing that you should be doing on your Google listing is posting on a regular basis.
A lot of people don't know that on your Google listing, you can post updates to it,
just like you would on a Facebook page or if you have any other social profile.

(26:51):
You can add posts to your listings.
We like to do this, again, at least once a week for our clients
because you want to show that consistent activity.
I will say that the posts don't get a ton of activity typically,
like views and clicks and stuff like that from people that are searching.
But they do get some and people will click on this.
And it's also a big algorithm boost where Google, again, can see that you're engaging, you're adding content.

(27:18):
It's fresh material. It's giving Google more information about your business.
And it's able to show this in the search results.
And it's a positive signal for Google to help build that authority and grow the listing rankings.
So post on a regular basis, just like when you post on Facebook, you know, go ahead and also post on Google.
Super powerful. OK.
And then outside of Google itself, Google actually obviously crawls all the other websites that are out there.

(27:45):
And they want to see your business listed in as many places as possible.
There's all these third party directories and citation sites that list local businesses.
You know, Apple Maps, Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, all of them.
They all list local businesses, right?
So you want to position yourself on all of these to make sure that, one, if patients are on those platforms, you're showing up there too.

(28:10):
But more importantly, is Google is seeing you there.
They want to see the same name, the same address, the same phone number in as many places as possible.
If they see you listed on a ton of other websites, it builds your credibility.
It grows your authority and it helps you rank higher on the search engine results.
If again, if Google is looking and sees two different chiropractic listings and one of them doesn't have any references to their business anywhere else

(28:36):
and the other one is listed on all these other websites, who's going to rank higher?
It's pretty obvious.
So you want to go ahead and make sure that you claim your business on as many third party citation sites as possible.
There's tools out there.
Yes, is a popular platform that allows you to do a bunch of them at once.
You don't have to do them manually, but continuously grow your third party citations and directories.

(28:58):
That'll help your map listing.
OK, so that was a bunch of tips on the Google Map Pack.
The second or the I'm sorry, the third section on the Google page is the website listings, how you rank organically with your website.
So we talked about content.
That's super important.
I want to talk about some of the other big buckets.
So if you look at SEO, you could really get yourself lost in the technicalities of SEO.

(29:23):
And I'm not going to give you like this big old course on all the things that Google looks at and its algorithm, because there's hundreds of things.
And not all of it is as important as others.
But what I'm going to do is break this down really quickly.
There are three primary buckets when it comes to search engine optimization.

(29:44):
So let's look at these.
The first bucket is the technical structure of the site.
And that's really just how the website is coded.
Do you have header tags?
Do you have schema?
All of these title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags on your images, all of this like technical mumbo jumbo.
And really, as a doctor, as a business owner, you probably don't have a lot of impact on this.

(30:08):
This is really more geared towards who actually built your website and did they actually do it technically sound so that way Google and other search engines can crawl your website, read your content and rank it properly.
That just has to do with how it was coded.
So work with a website partner that has a good track record of building good websites with good technical structure for the SEO purpose.

(30:32):
That's the first bucket.
And if you want to get into technical structure, do some Google and you're going to get in a rabbit hole really quickly and all the technical things that go into the website and making it optimize for search engines.
And there's lots of tools that can help guide you with that too.
But again, you can get in the weeds really quickly.
The second bucket is valuable content, which we talked about this a little bit on your website.

(30:58):
You want to have really good educational content.
This is going to be individual pages for every symptom for every service that you offer.
If someone's searching for back pain treatment, you want to have a page that's dedicated just for back pain treatment.
And on that page, you want to have all sorts of really good content.
Where does back pain come from?
How do people treat back pain?

(31:19):
What can chiropractors do for back pain?
Calls to action to come in and get back pain treatment.
Build out these individual pages for all these different symptoms and all the different services because that's what Google wants to see.
They want to see that you have really good information that can be shared with their audience.
Google wants to serve the websites that have the best answers to the questions that people are searching.

(31:42):
That's what entices people to use Google is because they can get answers and they can get the information that they're looking for.
So build that information and put it on your website so that way Google sees it and they want to position.
They want to push your website in front of those people that are actively looking.
And this is an ongoing battle.
You want to consistently, continuously make good content to put on your website.

(32:06):
We'll talk about some strategies for that, but that's the second bucket.
The third bucket are your off page signals.
Everything that's happening off of your website that show that you have authority.
So we talked a little bit about that with citations and directories.
You also want to have a good social media presence.
You want to build backlinks.
You want to be on the chambers website.

(32:27):
All of these different things that are happening off of the website to show that you're a legitimate business and you have authority in your market.
So sometimes that can be hard to control.
Building backlinks can be tough and there's lots of different strategies out there.
I don't recommend that you sit down and try to grind out backlink strategies.
But if you build really good content in the second bucket, you will naturally get backlinks from other sources because people will want to link to it.

(32:54):
If you build good content, people will link to it.
With other off page signals like the citations and directories, those are big.
Make sure that you include your website.
Again, we want to create a consistent name, address and phone number on all the sources.
This helps boost the credibility and the consistency for your business.
The social media presence.

(33:16):
You got to have social channels, Facebook, Instagram.
Tic-tac's really big right now.
Believe it or not, Twitter actually has really good positive signals for Google.
Google loves Twitter for some reason.
So build out these social channels.
I know it takes effort to keep consistent content flowing, but make sure that you have a presence on these platforms because those are positive off page signals that you want Google to see.

(33:41):
So if you, for your SEO strategy, have a really good website that's technically sound, you're building out really valuable educational content on a consistent basis, and you have really good off page signals, you do all of those things well, and you will rank up on the Google search results page.
So that's a really dumbed down version, simplified version of how SEO works because inside of each of those buckets, you could have a career on just those individual buckets.

(34:11):
Just picking one of those buckets and just doing that.
That could be a career in itself.
So I don't expect you to dive super deep into this, but just having a good understanding will help you build game plans and activities and get the right people helping you to do those activities to help make sure that you rank well on the search results page.
Okay.

(34:32):
That was tip number two and three.
That was a big section there.
I'm going to jump into the tip number four, which is your social media presence.
So, when it comes to social media, there's really two different avenues or ways that you can tackle social media.
The first one is very well known.
It's building the having a page or a profile for the business, and then posting on the on the feed for that business posting content.

(34:59):
And that's great and you definitely want to do that.
That's definitely important.
What I see is that a lot of businesses and practices, that's where that's where it stops right there.
And the challenge with that is, first, the when you post organically on your on your Facebook feed or your Instagram profile, the only people that see that content are the people that are already actively following you.

(35:25):
So they like the page, they followed the profile, and now they can see your content that you're posting.
And the challenge with that is that that's a very limited audience.
Right. So in your town, there's probably thousands of people, and you probably only have, you know, maybe a couple hundred few hundred people that are actually liking and following your page.
And the other challenge with this is that the people that are already actively following you are typically going to be people that are already existing patients.

(35:56):
They are friends and family or staff members.
So when you post, you're not actually getting content and visibility to new potential patients.
That's where paid social media promotion comes into play.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, all the social channels.
When you pay, you can get your content into in front of a lot more people that are not already actively following you.

(36:19):
So now the question is, how do we use paid campaigns to actually drive traction?
And, you know, if you've been in the chiropractic space for a little bit or at all, you probably are familiar with running Facebook ads.
Like that's really common for practices to do.
And what you'll see a lot of time is the Facebook ads that are being run by these offices are lead generation ads.

(36:45):
A lot of times it's a new patient special, right?
You know, the ad is, hey, if you have back pain, we have this special going on for $27.
You can come in and get your first adjustment.
That's really common. And that can work, right?
You're able to get your discounted offer in front of people and get them to clip that coupon, book the appointment, and come in and get their back cracked.

(37:10):
And the challenge that we see with that style of advertising on social media is that you generally don't have the best quality of the patients that are coming in the door with that,
because those people were just looking for a good deal.
They may not have actually bought into the idea of living the chiropractic lifestyle and a healthier life and all the long term benefits of being under a chiropractor's care.

(37:33):
The second thing that you deal with is bad contact information. Like these people, you try to call them, you try to email them, you try to text them, and you don't get any response.
The information is bad. The people, you know, don't respond. All that. So you have poor quality leads.
And that can be really challenging when you're trying to promote your practice. You put money into these campaigns, you get some patients in the door, but they're not the best quality.

(37:58):
And then the rest of the people aren't responding or it's bad contact information. That can be feel like you're spinning your wheels a little bit.
So what we want to do is look at this, you know, we look at this a little bit differently.
We want to run lead generation ads. We want to run that offer. We want to get people a reason to, you know, sign up and come in and see you, give them some incentive.
We're going to continue to do that. But we're going to look at this a little bit differently.

(38:21):
How can we increase the quality of those people seeing the ads? How can we educate the people ahead of time so that way they know what they're getting into?
If you look at, if you go back to the, we were looking at the different patient groups, this is going after this uninformed or the non-active group.

(38:42):
These people are not actively seeking care. You're serving content and an ad in front of them while they're scrolling through Facebook.
People don't go on Facebook to look for a chiropractor. So you're kind of interrupting their day.
And also the other challenge with this is that most of the people out there are not familiar enough with chiropractic care.
They don't understand the power that it has. If you look at the statistics, 35 million Americans are seeing a chiropractor every year.

(39:10):
That represents about 10% of the population, which means you have 90% of the population that's not seeing a chiropractor every year.
And the likelihood of that is because they're not aware of the impact and the power that the spine has on their entire health.
So if you compare that to the dental industry, 65% of people are seeing a dentist every year. And why is that?

(39:32):
Well, the dental health and hygiene has been baked into our culture.
Everybody knows that you should be brushing twice a day and see a hygienist every six months.
And if you go to any store, you're going to see a whole aisle dedicated for toothbrushes and toothpaste and floss and all the things related to dental hygiene.
And you don't have that in the chiropractic space. You don't have a mass amount of people that are out there promoting and bought into the chiropractic lifestyle.

(40:01):
It's a very small percentage of people, right? So 90% of the people that you're serving ads to on Facebook with that new patient special, they don't even know what chiropractic care is.
They don't understand. So what we want to do again is look at this differently. We're going to start at the top of the funnel.
So on the screen, I have a picture of a funnel. And at the very top of that funnel is awareness. It's not lead conversion. It's awareness.

(40:24):
How do we get more people familiar with chiropractic care? How do we get more people aware of you as the doctor to get help with all of these different health concerns?
So we need to we need to fill the funnel from the top with awareness. How we do that is on social media as we create videos, we create educational content.

(40:45):
Videos specifically perform really, really well on social media, and they're very inexpensive to promote through paid ads.
So creating video content can be challenging. We try to make this easy. What you want to do is create small short clips of you providing good educational material related to a particular topic.

(41:06):
So an example of that would be headaches. And a video could sound like this. It's one to three minutes long. And it's go something like this. Hey, I'm Dr. Nick.
Lots of people experience headaches. Here's some reasons people experience headaches. XYZ. If you're experiencing headaches, here are some tips that you could try to mitigate your headache problems.
XYZ. When we see patients that are dealing with headaches, here's what we do to help with that. We do this adjustment. We focus on this area. And this is why XYZ.

(41:33):
If you have headache problems, please give us a call. Come get evaluated. We'd love to help out. Boom. Done. Easy. You could shoot that video on your phone.
You can get little lights for a few bucks on Amazon. You can get a little mic to make your audio sound better on Amazon for a few bucks. And your videos are perfect.
You don't have to hire an expensive videographer. You don't have to get all this fancy, expensive equipment. You can create those videos in a few minutes just on your phone.

(41:58):
And now you have this great video that you can post and publish and promote via social media.
Now take that concept and multiply that by 10 different videos, 20 different videos of all the different symptoms and services you provide.
Now you can really start creating this big wave of educational content being promoted in your community through social ads.
When you post a video with a little snippet of text on Facebook and then you promote that with some ad spend, you can get views for that video from one to four pennies.

(42:31):
That's very inexpensive to get lots of views on your educational content.
So now what we want to do is start pushing these videos out there and putting ad spend behind them.
And what happens is once someone watches one of your videos, a few things happen. One, they became educated on whatever topic it was in that video.

(42:52):
The second thing that happens is now they know you as the doctor and your brand and your practice.
You're starting to build a relationship in this online rapport with them, which is super powerful.
And then the third thing that happens is we now know that they have some level of interest.
It could be a small amount of interest. It could be a really large level of interest, but they're somewhere on that spectrum, right?
Otherwise, they wouldn't have watched the video. They would have just kept scrolling.

(43:16):
So now that we know that they are a little bit more educated, they now know like they know you as the doctor and we know they have some level of interest,
we can put them into the next step, which is the interest stage.
And what we're going to do here is put them into an audience. We can target them and retarget them over and over and over and over and over again.
So now that you have all these videos, they watch video one and then the next week they watch video two.

(43:42):
You start pushing out video two to them. And then week three, you push out video three to them.
And then week video four and video five and video six. All of a sudden, eight weeks down the line, they've seen you a dozen times on Facebook
and they've watched a bunch of these videos. Now they're super educated on chiropractic care, right?
They've seen all these different things that chiropractors do to help with all these different symptoms.
But they also have seen you as the doctor over and over and over again, which is super powerful because now they know you as the go to authority.

(44:11):
You start building like this little celebrity status, which is weird to think about. But that's what you want, right?
We have doctors that run these videos and they've been doing it over for a year. They'll go to the grocery store and people recognize them.
They're filling up the gas at the gas station and people come up to them and say, hey, you're the doctor, which is weird.
But that's what you want. You want to build a little celebrity status in your community because for a small amount of ad spend,

(44:39):
you can get a lot of people watching these videos and into your audience and retargeting them over and over again.
So they're seeing you consistently. Then the next time that they have headaches, they're going to think back to that video they saw.
They're going to be like, oh, yeah, that doctor said I should drink more water and I should, you know, put blue light glasses on or whatever the tips are that you give.
And they're going to remember that. So and then if it becomes really bad or if they know someone that's dealing with migraines, they're going to send them to you.

(45:04):
They're going to be like, you should go to this doctor. He does this. I saw this video. He does this cool thing. Great.
So now that you've built out this audience and you've retargeted them over and over again, now is the right time to serve those lead generation ads.
Hey, if you happen to have headaches, we happen to have the special lunch coming in, get evaluated. We'd love to check you out.
Of course, once they get into the practice, we want them to become promoters where you make them feel great.

(45:27):
They refer their circle of influence, their friends and family. But you can see the power that this has is when you serve that lead generation ad,
that person's much more likely to actually care about that coupon. They're actually much more likely to want to show up and get that care because they've been educated.
They know, like, and trust you as the doctor. Super, super powerful. So here's an example of what this looks like. I have it on the screen here.

(45:51):
You know, week one, you just, you know, video one, week two. Here's another video. Week three. Here's another video. Week four. Here's another video.
You continue to do this with all the different videos that you can come up with. And you can do this for the topics of those videos can be pretty general, right?
So some examples here are, you know, proper posture, getting better sleep, what is spinal decompression, sciatica pain, stuff like that.

(46:14):
You know, this can apply to a lot of people. You can also take the strategy where you're actually building videos that are very specific to individuals.
So here's an example on the screen where this doctor created a video about golf and how chiropractic care impacts golf, golfing injuries, you know, the torque of the spine.
When you go to swing your driver, that's a pretty specific audience. But what's great is that when you go to set up your campaigns, you can take that video and target people who have an interest in golf.

(46:46):
So people in your area within a 10 mile radius or whatever your distance is, anybody that's watching the golf channel or have, you know, looks at golf clubs or looks at golf courses or reads the golf digest or all these different golf interests,
you can target that golf video at people who like and play golf. And now that video is super relevant.
So if I'm a golfer and I'm scrolling through Facebook and I see this guy holding golf club, I'm much more likely to stop and watch that video.

(47:11):
And now if I watch that video, it only took me a minute or two of my time. And now I understand, oh, wow, chiropractors do this thing and it helps with the spine and it actually could improve my golf game.
That's pretty relevant. Now I'm in the audience and now I'm going to get all these other videos over the course of several weeks.
And now I've seen the same doctor over and over again. And I have a much better understanding of the power of chiropractic care, all because I saw this golf video with this one time and I became super familiar with the practice.

(47:38):
So this can be super, super powerful. And then of course, the step after that is to convert them.
So we talked about these lead conversion ads. A lot of times that's through a new patient special, giving them that incentive that this kind of offer can help them kind of like get them over the edge, pull the trigger.
Usually these lead conversion ads can be can convert people a few different ways.
Doing a form on the platform like Facebook has their Facebook forms. You can push them to your website with a landing page, all sorts of cool stuff. You could shoot them, make them have them shoot you a message through the Facebook messenger.

(48:10):
So some different ways that you can actually start that conversation. But regardless, that offer is much more relevant once they've seen you over and over again through that educational material.
So it's a three step process, social media ad campaigns. You want to start with patient education, drive that awareness, fill the funnel from the top, nurture your audience.

(48:31):
Once they show a level of interest, you want to hit them over and over and over again with the same material, not the same material, but new material that's educational in nature, growing that brand that no like and trust factor.
And then of course, step number three, which is getting them to actually convert back through those lead generation ads. Again, a lot of times there's some type of special offer works really, really, really well.

(48:53):
And if you do this long enough, you're going to have a really big audience of people in your area that know who you are and understand the power of chiropractic care, and you can help more people in your community.
So this is the right way to use social media.
You want to also have the organically that we talked about earlier, but the paid strategy is how you can really get in front of a lot of people with a lot of really good content.

(49:14):
Okay, that was a good section on social media.
Tip number five is going to be your email and texting SMS. So this is going to be some patient communication stuff. How do you stay in touch with the people that are on your list, whether they're existing patients, or they are potential leads, or they're old patients that you haven't seen in a while.

(49:36):
So some strategies around that.
The reason why this is important is because it allows you to stay top of mind for people, you don't want to email them every day, you don't want to text them every day. But if you email them periodically here and there with good educational material, it kind of keeps you at the top of the radar.
So the next time that they have an issue, they know who to contact, they know who to go to, and they're another channel where they're seeing you repetitively.

(50:02):
So that way you stay top of mind. You also can do further education through this channel. So let's say someone is seeing you or was seeing you for back pain and then all of a sudden you show up in their inbox and you're talking about headache treatment.
Maybe that sparks a reactivation. Maybe that patient comes back and says, Hey, I saw this email that you also help with headaches. I happen to have this problem where I'm getting headaches every other day.

(50:28):
So, you know, the good opportunities to further nurture that relationship. Long-term nurturing for leads. So let's say you do get a Facebook lead or a lead from Google and they decide, you know, not right now, or they stop responding or they get cold feet and don't show up.
Don't give up on that person. Life happens. People get busy, they forget, they get cold feet, they're not sure if chiropractic is right for them. Continue to nurture them in the long term.

(50:53):
And then you can get content to them in their email inbox. So that way they can absorb material and continue to build that relationship with you online. And hopefully in the future, you know, they decide, okay, I should come in and see this doctor.
We talked about triggering reactivations, building authority. The more times that they see you, the more material that you can educate them on, they're going to see you as that go to authority figure to get help.

(51:16):
I don't know why my slides the social media on here, but the there's two different types of communication that you can push out there through email and texting.
The first is doing a blast. This is where you create some content. Maybe it's in an email, maybe it's in a text and you send it out to everybody all at once on your list.
This is like a one time communication. This works well if you're doing, you know, if you have some piece of content, you want to get to everybody at once, maybe there's an event going on and you promote it out through this one time blast.

(51:46):
This can work really well if you're pushing out educational material and you're trying to get it to everybody. There's also the idea of using automated sequences.
So this is where it's not going to everybody at once, but it's typically going to people that did some type of action that triggers the activation or the automation series.
So maybe they signed up for a form or maybe they clicked on a link on something or they visited your website and did this thing.

(52:12):
And that activity triggers the series to start. And then there's a sequence of communication that goes out.
So maybe, you know, the first thing is they get an email and then the next day you get a text message and then two days later after that, they get another email.
And then next the week after that, they get another email followed by a text message. You know, you get the idea.
It's a sequence that is spread out by different time gaps that you set. And those automated series can be really powerful to continuously educate people and get people the right content when they need it based on some activity.

(52:46):
So an example of this would be like, let's say a lead signs up on Facebook and they don't book right away.
You could still set up an automated follow up sequence to say, hey, just check in and see if you still needed help.
Hey, just wanted to check out on that pain you're having. Did you want to come get evaluated?
No, continue to follow up with them several times. If they don't respond right away and book right away, that doesn't mean that they're not interested.

(53:12):
It doesn't mean that you should give up on them. Hit them up several times. I think there is a study done in sales where it takes up to like 12 touch points on average to get someone to actually say yes.
And I think a lot of offices struggle with this concept where they have to like follow up with patients and follow up with people because, you know, you're a doctor.

(53:36):
You don't want to feel like you're chasing people or you're desperate for patients. But, you know, like I said, life life happens.
People get busy. You have to continuously follow up so that way you can stay top of mind and get people at the right point in time to respond to you.
Don't give up on people just because they didn't book right away. Use automation series to follow up with them.

(53:57):
Could be another example would be appointment reminders. So if they do have an appointment booked, send them a text message ahead of time.
A day before, two hours before their appointment to make sure that they actually show up. Could be after their appointment, automatically asking for a review.
We talked about the reviews being super important for your Google listing. So why not automatically set up a series that does this for you on your behalf?

(54:21):
This could really help drive new reviews for you without you having to manually ask for new reviews all the time.
Okay, step number six is going to be your content marketing. So a lot of the things that we talked about, regardless if it was your social media promotion, sending out emails and text messages with educational material, building out content for your website.

(54:43):
It's all about creating content, right? So how do we create content? How do we fill our content machine so you can fill all of the channels with good information and material that people will want to actually read and absorb and watch.
So examples of content are going to be blog posts, social posts, videos, research papers, books, a podcast, for example.

(55:06):
All of these things are going to help drive education, build authority, grow the engagement, and also build your search engine rankings. So super, super valuable to have a content strategy.
And the challenge with this is that it can be really time consuming.
So we have to figure out what is the best way that we can create lots of content in a short amount of time that allows us to fill all of these channels. And it really has to do with this idea of using pillar content.

(55:33):
So how this works is you have one big piece of content that you create. It's massive. It has all sorts of information in it.
This session right now that I'm doing is an example of pillar content, right? Or maybe it's one big blog article that has all sorts of really good information.
Maybe it's an event, a speaking event that you hold in your community, educational in nature, you're providing content on or material on whatever you're holding this little seminar, record that.

(56:02):
That can be a piece of pillar content. And then once you have this big piece of pillar content, you can take that pillar piece of content and splice it in smaller pieces of content that you can then distribute through all these other channels.
So I'll give you an example. This session right now that we're recording, I'm going to take this, turn it into a blog post. I'm going to send it out in an email blast.

(56:24):
I'm going to chunk it up into different social posts. I'm going to publish it on YouTube. Maybe I'll make an infographic. I'll definitely strip the audio and make it a podcast.
So I'm going to be able to take this one piece of content and create all sorts of these smaller pieces of content, chunk it up into different pieces and distribute it through all of these different channels.
Now creating a pillar piece of content does take a little bit of work. You have to pre-plan it. But you can get help with this.

(56:50):
You can have writers that are going to write blog articles for you. You can have team members that are going to record your speaking opportunities and your events that you hold.
You can help have people help record you, you know, or create that content for you. And you are not the one that has to go through and do all the editing. There are people out there that can do this for you.

(57:11):
If you're working with a marketing company like ours, you know, lean on them to make this content for you with your pillar content.
Obviously, when you create pillar content, you want it to be authentic in you because you want it to be positioning you as the doctor, the go-to authority, right?
But once you create that pillar content, you can see that it creates a lot less friction to fill the content funnel for all the other channels that you should be promoting yourself with and getting in front of all these people.

(57:41):
So use this pillar content strategy to create that big piece of content and then you can splice it up or have someone help you chunk it up into different smaller segments and distribute it through all these different channels to help really build out lots of good content being fed into the digital system.
This will really help with education. It makes it easier and more bite-sizable for individuals to absorb.

(58:05):
If you're posting something on Facebook or on Instagram or on TikTok, it can't be a 30-minute presentation because people won't stick around, right?
Chunk it into smaller things based on topic and you'll be able to promote that to your audience.
Okay, step number seven or tip number seven is a CRM software.
So CRM stands for customer relationship management and a software puts this into a place where it's a central hub on your computer that you can manage the relationship with all of your patients.

(58:38):
So basically, what you want to do is connect all of these different sources of where things are happening.
You know, Google, your social media sites, your website, your phone system, your texting platform, your calendar. Try to get this all connected into one piece central software that helps you manage all the relationships, all the leads that are coming in, all the communication so you can track everything.

(59:05):
The last thing that you want to do is put a bunch of effort and money into promoting your practice and then letting a bunch of things fall through the cracks.
You want to have a place that allows you to track every new lead that comes in, every new inquiry, where they're at on the stage, who do you need to follow up with, who's booked, who didn't show up, what communication has been sent out to who.

(59:26):
All of that matters because then it sets you and your team up for success to make sure that you're not losing out on opportunities because you failed to follow up with someone or they didn't show up and then you didn't give them a call back to rebook them or any of the things.
You're going to end up wasting money and time if you don't track all these activities into a place and giving you a systemized way to do this.

(59:51):
You could do this manually, punching things into Excel, but I tell you what, it doesn't work well.
Things get lost. It's not as efficient. So having some type of software is going to help you. For our clients, we use one called ChiroPipe. Highly recommend it.
But here's some examples of the functionality that it gives you. You'll have lead and opportunity tracking where every lead comes into a dashboard. You can track where they are on their stage. You know who to follow up with, where they're at in the process.

(01:00:17):
You have patient communication. So two-way emailing, two-way texting, social messenger integration, Google Messenger integration, all in one central place. So you always have one dashboard to go to to communicate with your patients and your leads.
Online appointment calendar. So having a system where patients can book themselves online. They can pick a day and time themselves so they don't have to pick up the phone and call you or wait to hear back from you.

(01:00:41):
They can just book themselves and creates a lot less friction for them to do that. Email marketing. So we talked about sending out email blasts and automated series.
You know, being able to set up and send out email communication into your platform, being able to track that communication.
Workflow automation. So we talked about some examples of that. Automated review collection, automated appointment reminders, automated lead follow-up, using sequences to help establish that.

(01:01:07):
You want to be able to do stuff like that. Reputation management. This is tracking your incoming reviews, collecting reviews, responding to reviews, seeing where your reputation is on all the platforms.
Google is the primary one, but you can collect reviews on Yelp and Facebook and all the other channels too. Obviously, you want to keep track of that and making sure you're staying on top of that.
So those are some really important factors in your CRM platform. And the reason why, again, all of this is important is because you're trying to build out systems and strategies and campaigns and advertising methods that are going to help people along that entire journey, right?

(01:01:42):
So you could have a patient that was scrolling through Facebook and watched one of your educational videos. And then after that, they went to Google and started Googling their symptom and they hit one of your blog articles.
Maybe they sign up for your email newsletter and they started getting email drips from you. And then, you know, three weeks later, they see a few more videos and then they click on your lead generation ad for the special. They sign up for the special.

(01:02:05):
Then it takes them to the website and they can book an online appointment without having to pick up the phone and call you. All of these things matter because every single touch point along the way has helped nurturing them and pushing them into your world and positioning you as the go-to authority, that doctor that they want to go see because they've built this relationship.
So super, super important to consider all of those things. If you have questions on any of this, please feel free to reach out. I'm going to throw my contact information on the screen. If you need help establishing a more robust digital footprint, obviously we are here to help.

(01:02:37):
So thanks for your time. I appreciate. I know it's a lot of material to absorb, but it's super, super important to understand these concepts and these strategies and the channels because this is how you build a really successful practice and become the number one chiropractor in your market.
So let us know if you have any questions. We are here to help. Thank you so much.