With the start of a new year, chiropractic marketing techniques and strategies begin moving in new directions. Just when we thought we were getting a new understanding of previous techniques, the job market is changing. Amazon is laying off and talk of another recession is everywhere. Consumers are finding new ways of researching and locating services. Social media is a political showdown and yet, our chiropractic strategic marketing techniques continue to build, grow, and change with current trends and needs. Automation is the trend of the future. The time is coming when Alexa (or some advanced form of it) will not only answer our morning questions about the weather forecast and play music from our favorite artists, but it will manage our calendars, provide insightful and personalized information, and have the capability to predict what and where we should target our marketing. All of this is based on a new data methodology. The data methodology has been the focus of our Marketing Circle for years, so it seems that technology is catching up to us.
It also seems that we need to create new updates to the circle in order to stay ahead of the curve. Our 2023 updates are in the works right now, so get ready to update to the new version.
With constant changes in chiropractic marketing techniques and strategies, how do we determine what is, or is not, important to our industry? Nobody can predict the trends of a new year and a new business cycle, but we can evaluate what is happening now and make short-term predictions based on these occurrences. Now you more clearly see the importance of the increased need for valuable data.
As we go through predictions and updates in marketing, remember that consumers are more reluctant today than before to give up their personal data. Therefore, marketing is going to be more focused on direct communication and building trust.
Recession-proofing your business
The buzzword of late has been recession. It’s not our job to determine if it is coming or not, but rather how to deal with it, or even avoid it, if it comes. Health and wellness is listed as an essential business classification. Consumers cannot live without it. Because of this, patients are more fastidious about choosing their providers. Your task is to not just provide but to accentuate the features and benefits of the services you offer that are essential to health and wellness.
The most successful alternative medical providers specialize in a specific demographic. We call this “Become The Expert”. Although you can offer more than one service, you want to be known as the expert in just one area.
This is where valuable data comes in. If you follow the data, you can determine what trends your demographics follow. For example, if you live in an area where soccer is big in your community, then you need to determine what offerings you have that can cater to soccer injuries, strength training, and pain management. This is where you focus your expertise, your marketing techniques, and the data you collect that will be targeted toward this demographic.
Marketing with Social Media
Turn your thoughts to communication instead of promotion.
Over the past 10 years, social media as a marketing method has gone up and down, with twists and turns along the way. This will not change in 2023. There is so much volatility in social media that it is hard to know where to go, and how much money to invest. We are also suffering from the illness of social media burnout. Social media is in competition with each other for every ad dollar they can find, creating new paid services that we as consumers are willing to pay for.
With The Marketing Circle in mind, we want to point out that social media falls under the Communication step. Chiropractic Social media is still the best place to find new patients, but the way we have targeted them in the past is through paid marketing. Now people are blocking all ads from showing up in their feeds, reducing the chances of you finding that perfect new customer.
Let’s step up and make social media work for us. We want to find new customers, but we don’t want them to block us. The focus in social media needs to be on communicating with people on a level they can relate to, and trust. According to Harvard Business Review, “People differ in degree to which they feel comfortable sharing data and in having the companies serving them act on that data. Breaking a customer's trust at this level could mean losing that customer - and possibly many other customers - forever.”
This year, we are going to focus our social media content to inspire consumers to start something new by educating them about the features and benefits of a program we offer. We will showcase a specialized and focused service with fact-provided content, such as videos and articles, followed by other services we provide in our area of expertise. With this plan, we are building enough trust to entice people to offer back to us detailed information which we then add to our data mine for future evaluation. With the new data we can then fine point exactly what a targeted community wants and needs from a healthcare provider.
With all of this new data, we are able to collect through research and communication with our specific demographics, we can now pinpoint exactly which direction to take with marketing. If you look closely at how we arrived here, you can see that in a small way we were marketing all along. Broad marketing isn’t going to build a business, so we need to start using our information to create a detailed, focused marketing plan. To make things clear, everything is digital marketing today... even when it is not. For example, appointment cards that have your website or social media printed on the front. Or, reminder postcards on birthdays or holidays which have the same digital marketing information found on your website. Information such as IP addresses, location, or even interests can be tracked by evaluating landing pages receiving traffic. The information you provide to customers will tell you a lot about what resonates with them by evaluating which digital resources of yours receive traffic.
Everything we do in clarifying our business and communicating with customers points to our digital presence.
Web Presence
With all of this information, your best starting point is a good website evaluation.
Starting your year with a site evaluation should be top priority on your marketing to-do list. Your keywords can change yearly, if not quarterly or seasonally. Keywords are not just in the metadata of your website, but on pages as well, which means it is vital that you are vigilant in updates to your content.
At the beginning of each year, (at the very least), take some time to read the information on each of your pages and determine if this is what you want patients to think of you. If you are looking for a content refresh, or help with content in general, we have a beginning-of-year website content package. We can do a complete overhaul of your keywords, plus develop on-page content for the pages you feel need updating, saving you time and hassle.
Just changing the images on your website can give it a new, fresh look and show customers (and Google) you are still in business and are ready to be the preferred provider.
Automated emails are a great way to stay in touch with your current customers, as well as past customers. Something as simple as “We miss you” can be a reminder to someone that they need to schedule an update appointment.
Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and many other mass email providers offer wonderful automated tools on their paid plans that can keep your patients updated based on accurate data that they provide. If you offer monthly newsletters, which we highly suggest you do, don't forget to place links to your website and social media, and “share with a friend” buttons.
Automated mass e-mail is a big part of future marketing as long as you don’t use it to spam people with useless information. You will see big changes in the use of emails in 2023.
If not already done, creating your 2023 marketing plan should be done soon and should be complete with a generic plan and smart goals set for the whole year. You should also have a 6-month plan to break the yearly goals down into 2 sections. Detail out your goals and how you intend to achieve them. The second half of the year will be for evaluating and adjusting as necessary in order to stay on track for the year. The second half of the year's goals are equally important. The best strategy for new goals is to determine two new projects you can create that will expand your business offerings, organize your processes, or define new paths. You will do the same for the last half of the year as well as evaluate the goals from the first half. Your KPIs and data are the evaluation tools that lead you to build on your path throughout the year.
Monthly marketing plans are the complete breakdown of last year's successes, this year's goals, and details on how you want to achieve the goals. Budgets are then determined by evaluating all of these variables. Marketing without a marketing plan is exactly the same thing as going to school without textbooks, notepads, or pencils. Putting your details down on paper is a commitment to success. Make sure your team understands how to follow the map!
Agile Marketing
Agile marketing is actually an evaluation method that is designed to work for marketing teams with players in each platform used in your marketing plan. We have developed a skeleton crew version of agile marketing for 1 and 2-person teams.
Each marketing plan will create results, and although you may think you know what the results are telling you, you may be surprised when you implement evaluation charts and look at them again. Done correctly, your marketing will be a completed program where every element communicates with each other. Ads communicate with social media, and social media communicates with your website, etc. You may see great success in your Google efforts and think you are doing great, except when you put it on paper and compare it to your website traffic, you may discover you are not doing so well at all. Google may not be sending you leads to work with. If you don’t evaluate, then you don’t know how you are performing, and money becomes irrelevant to your marketing process.
Remember at the beginning of this article when we suggested that marketing is going to become more automated? Well, you can create ways to automate the information you gather and begin to have your own version of Alexa telling you what you need. And it won't be long until you can just ask Alexa to tell you about it. Not only will automation be the new buzzword in marketing for 2023, but communication and inspiration will also be as well. At Marketing Health Academy we offer services to help you with all of your marketing and website needs. We also offer educational materials and subscription services (or 1-time buy) on things such as keyword research or blog writing services. You are welcome to download information ebooks under our resources section, to help you to understand exactly what your needs are. These will help you determine if you have the time and resources to complete marketing for your practice, or if you will need assistance. Give us a call, we are ready to help!
