When marketing your chiropractic business, you have a ton of options.
One hundred and fifty-nine, to be exact, according to Splash Copywriters. For instance, you can do affinity marketing, which involves partnering with other businesses so you can both leverage each other’s audiences. Or maybe you choose to do performance marketing, which is online marketing you pay for only if it provides results, like pay-per-click advertising.
But an additional type to consider is content marketing. Mastering it can help you promote your chiropractic practice.
What content marketing is
The Content Marketing Institute explains that content marketing is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
In simple terms, content marketing involves regularly creating posts about topics your target audience cares about most (like nutrition or fitness), even if they don’t deal with chiropractic specifically. At the same time, these posts are designed with the intent of increasing your revenues.
Types of content marketing
Lyfe Marketing indicates that there are 10 types of content marketing that tend to perform well in today’s marketing environment:
- Blogs. One major benefit of blogging is that it increases traffic to your website, thanks mainly to search engine optimization (SEO, or the use of keywords), moving you higher up in your target audience’s search results.
- People spend about a third of their time online watching videos, according to Lyfe, making this a great way to reach prospective patients.
- The wonderful thing about infographics is their ability to take complex and sometimes confusing or boring data and ideas and make them easier and more fun to understand. There are free online tools that make it easy even if you aren’t a graphic designer.
- Case studies. Case studies are essentially online reviews, and BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2017 found that 85 percent of consumers will trust an online review as much as they trust a recommendation from a family member or friend.
- eBooks. The main benefit of offering an electronic book in your content marketing plan is that it’s an easy way to obtain prospective patients’ contact information. To download the eBook, the visitor fills out a small form first. This gives you a way to reach out to them with your other marketing efforts.
- White papers. Though similar to an eBook, white papers have more data and detail, making them more appealing to patients who like to do thorough research when it comes to their health and wellness.
- Offering patients—both current and prospective—helpful checklists, such as what to do step-by-step if they’ve been in an auto accident or a list of healthy foods they can take with them when they grocery shop, are beneficial because these types of posts provide value to the user.
- Lyfe says that interviews are one of the best-performing content marketing strategies because they position you as an expert, while also helping the listeners gain a better understanding of their own health-related obstacles and goals.
- Social media posts. The true value of social media is the fact that it is social. By posting on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you’re able to reach a larger audience; especially if you create posts that get shared over and over again.
- GIFs and memes. These types of content marketing are fairly new to the scene, but they’re quite popular, making them worth consideration when developing your content marketing strategy. People love to share them.
Now, how do you take all of this information and put it into practice?
Developing an effective content marketing plan
Digital marketing expert Neil Patel suggests that the first step is to define your goals. For instance, do you want your content to generate leads, improve your ranking in search results, or improve your brand awareness? Or maybe you want it do something else.
Next, take a closer look at your audience and see what type of content appeals to them most. Once you know this, you know what type of content will likely net the best results. But also keep in mind that, whatever form that content takes, Patel says you want “content that stands out, is unique, has a distinct voice, and most important, offers genuine value to readers.”
Additionally, don’t just put your content out there and forget about it. Instead, develop a system whereby you measure its results. That way you’ll know what type of content generates the most return, enabling you focus your efforts there, and which type isn’t worth your time and should no longer be pursued.
This can also involve getting feedback from your patients.
Content marketing can help you grow your chiropractic practice. All you have to do is pick the types that resonate most with your target market and develop a plan, measuring it regularly to ensure that you’re getting the results you want.
