If online marketing keeps changing, how do I keep up?

As a chiropractor who has a passion for patient wellness, you will always be a health professional first and a marketing expert second. Those who try to reverse these two end up alienating their patients with grandiose sales pitches or stop seeing patients altogether and sell health products instead.

If you’re reading this, I assume you’re in this profession for the right reasons and want to make as much  money  as possible, while helping everyone you can. For full-time chiropractors, the online marketing world can be overwhelming.

The technology for setting up and optimizing your website can seem intimidating to begin with. Then you have to consider learning basic SEO, decide whether to do pay-per-click advertising, and update your website and blog regularly.

From there, changes can take place that are completely out of your control. Google might switch up its search results programming. Recently, Google had something called the “Panda Update,” which knocked down the rankings on some very big sites. Technology is constantly moving forward as well, with old programming standards becoming out of date.

The solution is not to stay ahead of the changes and read up on every little thing that happens in the online world. Instead, the key is to stick to solid online marketing fundamentals that will still be valid no matter what happens in the internet marketing universe.  

Fundamental #1: Create value. Beyond all the methods for showing up in search engines, the most important thing is to have a website that people want to visit.

This means you provide value for your visitors. You could have a blog that chiropractic patients enjoy reading, or simply have a compelling description of your services.

If your practice works miracles for people with back and neck injuries, then describing what you do and how to get an appointment with you is providing value. Having a video demonstrating your services makes it even better.

Fundamental #2: Keep an eye on results for where you spend your money. A lot of chiropractors lose out by not making sure they get an ROI from what they do online.

Whether you’re paying for ad traffic, hiring a Web designer, or buying SEO services, you should be able to tell whether you have money coming back or if your spending isn’t really going anywhere.

This is a big reason why it’s essential to know what any service provider is promising you before you sign up for anything.

For example: Some SEO companies will guarantee first page rankings on Google but only pay for sponsored ad placement, which will disappear as soon as you stop paying high ad budgets.

A way to make sure that any online investment is paying off is to use an analytics service and/or a phone tracking service, so you know 100 percent where your new patients and revenues are coming from.

Fundamental #3: Ask for help when you need it. If you want a laugh, go to http://web.archive.org and look at how some of your favorite websites looked five years ago.

Many of the sites that look great now looked awful at the beginning. What likely happened is that the owners of the website tried at first to design the websites themselves (or use a cheap hired designer) before realizing that professional design was needed.

You’re probably capable of buying a beginner’s book on Web design and making a very basic website. However, there comes a point where you may run into a wall trying to use programs like Dreamweaver and Photoshop that professional Web designers have spent years studying, and that’s OK.

In the end, you have to decide if you want to spend your time helping patients and teaching wellness or programming websites.

If you keep these three fundamentals in mind, you will be immune to most of the shifts in the online marketing world.

Remember, the most important thing you can do is continue to provide information for your visitors about improving health and wellness while promoting your practice. Your site will stay strong and continue to bring in new patients, while you focus on providing excellent care to your patients.

For more research, visit www.ChiroEco.com/research.

This research was provided by ChiroMatrix.

800-462-8749 • www.chiromatrix.com