Consistent Chiropractic Marketing: What Message(s) are YOU sending?

What is the overall theme or message you send to the public with your Chiropractic marketing? Have you ever thought about it?

I would guess from most of the Chiropractic advertising I see, that many Doctors of Chiropractic DO NOT spend a great deal of time thinking about what message they are conveying with their advertising.  This leads to sporadic spurts of Chiropractic advertising confusion.

Most Doctors of Chiropractic simply don’t know WHAT they are trying to say.  It’s not because they have nothing to say.  It’s because as Doctors of Chiropractic we know how valuable Chiropractic is and we are passionate about telling the world!  We have so much to say we try to communicate all of our messages without much thought to order or consistency.  This all leads to two common Chiropractic marketing pitfalls: inconsistency and confusion.

One of the most common Chiropractic marketing mistakes is inconsistent advertising.  Many Chiropractic practices run many different ads in an illogical order.  While the ads themselves make sense, they don’t work well with the ad that ran the day before or the week after.  For example, one advertisement promotes Chiropractic as a treatment for back pain.  The next ad might focus on nutrition.  The next ad focuses on neck pain or headaches.  Another ad might discuss the importance of children receiving Chiropractic care.  If your ads run months apart it may not be much of an issue.  However, if you run many advertisements close together this can be problematic.

I’m not saying you can’t promote all of these aspects of your practice or Chiropractic.  I’m simply saying you need to do so in a logical manner.  If you want to discuss pain and injury then by all means pick one series of ads and focus on pain and injury.  Run your 3 or 4 different advertisements about pain and injury before jumping to another topic.   Another series of ads might discuss wellness and preventative care.  If you offer unique treatment or services like acupuncture, spinal decompression or massage then discuss those in a logical order in another campaign.

With some careful attention to detail you can even work in transition phrases to help ease your audience into the next topic.  While this may seem like overkill, it sends a well organized and consistent message to the community.

The second major mistake many Chiropractic practices make is trying to send too many marketing messages in one advertisement.  We’ve all seen (and probably ran) those ads that attempt to discuss all of our Chiropractic greatness on a postage stamp sized area.  One advertisement is not the place to list all of your skills.  Listing your practice name and a bunch of phrases like nutrition, pediatrics, acupuncture, laser therapy, decompression, geriatrics, sports injuries, auto-injuries, personal injuries, orthotics and underwater basket-weaving is not effective advertising.

Consistency is key in Chiropractic marketing.  If you are one of those rare jack-of-all-trades in the Chiropractic profession, by all means promote all of the benefits of your practice.  Just do yourself a favor, and do it in a consistent manner.  One of the worst things you can do is try to promote EVERYTHING about your practice in one advertisement (or even in one ad campaign).

Start by picking the top 2 or 3 aspects of your practice and focus on promoting those in a single ad.  Once again, if you have a lot to promote break it down into different ad campaigns.  Make a list of everything you want to promote and then design individual advertisements to promote everything on your list.

Last but not least, make sure you aren’t contradicting yourself with your marketing. Are you practicing what you preach?  Are you getting adjusted? Are you taking the supplements or using the same exercises you promote to your patients?  You’d better be, or at least be prepared with a good explanation why you aren’t!

Are your advertising messages contradicting each other?  I’ve seen Chiropractic practices say one thing in an advertisement one week and turn around two ads later and say something in complete opposition.  Nothing places doubt about Chiropractic, and your practice, faster than sending contradictory messages in your advertising.

Consistency is key in Chiropractic marketing. Take the time to design a logical and well thought out marketing campaign and you have a much better chance of creating Chiropractic marketing success!