Growth hacking: Market on a budget

When you read the words “growth hacking,” you might roll your eyes.

That’s understandable; you are a chiropractor, not a 20-something tech superstar living out your wildest fantasies in Silicon Valley.

But, growth hacks are no longer just for the programming wizards working for Airbnb in San Francisco. You can apply the same principles they use to grow and develop your chiropractic practice.

Grow hacks are modern marketing

You don’t need special skills to use growth hacks in your chiropractic practice. Growth hacks are a set of efficiencies combined with strategic implementation that can yield growth that exceeds the sum of these parts.

If that sounds complicated, think of it like this: Chiropractic growth hacks are tips for you to grow your practice fast.

Where to start

Your chiropractic growth hacking begins with two simple words: Facebook retargeting. As prospective patients visit your website, you use a simple tool to gather their information.

Why this matters

Have you ever looked at a pair of shoes on Amazon? Maybe they looked cool, and you were interested, but for whatever reason you didn’t buy them.

But afterward, on other website you visited, you saw the same shoes advertised, almost begging you to buy them.

That is what retargeting is, and you don’t need to be a huge company like Amazon to use its power. There are a few simple and inexpensive ways to start using the power of retargeting to expand your audience and reinforce your message.

Retargeting on Facebook occurs by building “custom audiences.” These are a group of people who are targeted, or collected, based on specific criteria.¹ For example: You can import phone numbers, first and last names, Facebook user IDs, email addresses, or use the people who visit your website to create your list. This useful tool is often overlooked by amateur marketers.

A significant advantage of Facebook’s custom audiences is that they allow the highest level of targeting. They literally allow you to select specific people on Facebook.

The possibilities for using this type of laser-focused targeting are almost limitless, but consider a few easy-to-implement strategies to start with.

As mentioned, one of the best custom audience types you can build as a chiropractor is an audience of people who have visited your website. This sounds challenging, but it’s dead simple.

To create a custom audience based on website visits, Facebook gives you a short piece of code that you can install on your website, and it then automatically collects visitor information around the clock, generating a list of people who have visited your site online.

The real trick is then feeding that information back into Facebook to curate a list and market a specific message to those people, who are now warm leads. Not only is this effective but it’s free. This is where your online marketing can really spread its wings. Fly young bird, fly.

Now you can use your custom audience as a target for your Facebook ads. What better group of people to advertise to then those who have already visited your website. What’s more, Facebook ads allow you to spend any amount of money that fits your budget. And you can turn them on or off with a few simple clicks. No long-term contracts or crazy risks. You can track, monitor, and optimize on the fly.

Growth hacks like this will greatly improve your marketing and lead generation. But growth hacks aren’t magic. They won’t flood your office with new patients tomorrow or make up for other shortcomings in your processes and procedures.

But when used wisely, they can accelerate your progress, lead to new opportunities for growth, and ultimately be the foundation that changes your practice. It will take a bit of effort but it’s worth it.

Sustainable success

The days of hanging out your shingle and having a line of patients outside your door are over”•if they ever existed at all.

Admittedly, you didn’t go to chiropractic school to study business and marketing, and in most cases the business aspects of running a practice are woefully under-taught in the schools. This is one reason why so many chiropractors are struggling or have left the profession.

Making use of chiropractic marketing hacks, including the type of retargeting discussed above, is a powerful way to build your business in the digital world. You can create sustainable, long-term growth patterns that are efficient and leverage technology to amplify your message to the people in your community.

Now, as Seth Godin often says, go cause a ruckus.

Jeffrey Langmaid, DC, is dedicated to helping chiropractors achieve more in practice. He is the founder of The Evidence Based Chiropractor, a company dedicated to helping chiropractors build referral relationships, as well as being the co-founder of The Smart Chiropractor; a chiropractic marketing agency with a focus on research and social media. Additionally, he is the director of Laser Spine Institute’s Total Spine Care Network. Over the years he has been featured on Yahoo Health, Prevention Magazine, Chiropractic Economics, CBS News, MSN Health, and more.  Learn more and connect at DrJeffLangmaid.com

Reference
¹ “About Custom Audiences.” Facebook Business. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/341425252616329. Updated August 2017. Accessed August 2017.