Chiropractic Ads: How to Stretch Your Budget

Building a successful chiropractic marketing strategy is a complex endeavor. Too often, online ads fail to produce a great return on investment (ROI), despite the best intentions from the advertiser and medical professional behind them.

Most commonly, the issue lies with a lack of digital marketing expertise, which is natural. Experts in spinal manipulation, massage therapy, and other medical fields should not be expected to also build significant experience in the world of medical pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Fortunately, successful treatment for your digital ads is just as possible as a successful therapy for your patients would be. All it takes is an understanding of the best practices associated with different ad platforms, like the different nuances that come with reducing the cost of either Facebook or Google ads. And, of course, a deep understanding of your target audience is always the first step.

What is the Target Market for Chiropractic Ads?

Generally speaking, the target audience for chiropractic digital ad campaigns break into two distinct segments with different needs and pain points.

Individuals between the ages of 25 and 44 are looking for therapy options to address their often intermittent pain. This might be their first interaction with a chiropractor, as they’ve tried (and failed with) more traditional medical treatments. They tend to embrace alternative therapy and are relatively educated (with 76% having an undergraduate degree).

Individuals between the ages of 45 and 65 are looking to address increased bodily wellness issues, especially related to their spine. They tend to have good insurance and enough disposable income to cover chiropractic adjustments if their insurance doesn’t. Almost one-third of this segment has a graduate degree, 44% are vegetarians, and 67% are careful to analyze their diet.

Of course, your exact audience demographic may differ from these two general segments. A better understanding of who your ads will and should reach is the core foundation for optimizing your messaging and targeting accordingly, reducing costs in the process.

How to Decrease the Cost of Your Chiropractic Advertisements

With a clear definition of your target audience in hand, it’s time to look for individual best practices related to the specific channels on which you try to reach them. Google ads management, Facebook, and Instagram all come with unique nuances designed for both conversion rate optimization and cost reduction.

Paid Search Ads for Chiropractors

Reducing your cost per click on any chiropractic marketing strategy tends to start with paid search, the ads that appear on relevant results for search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Google owns an overwhelming market share among search engines, and best practices here tend to apply to others like Bing as well.

A few strategies can help you reduce your cost per click on paid search ads:

• Focus on the right keywords. Pick words and phrases that are most likely to be relevant to your target audience specifically looking for chiropractic services in your area.
• Create a bank of negative keywords, which are words and phrases that automatically exclude your ad from being shown on a search result. For example, if you are looking to reach potential patients who are searching for ‘spinal injury’, a good negative keyword might be ‘attorney’ to avoid showing you ads to those not seeking treatment.
• Choose your bidding strategy. Automated bidding is best if you don’t have the expertise or time to constantly adjust your bid manually, but manual bidding can be great for paid search experts looking to get that final bit of optimization.
• Optimize your landing pages. The text on your ad and landing pages should match, and the landing page should fulfill the promise that your ad has set up. For example, an ad asking your audience to book their chiropractic adjustment should lead to a landing page that makes booking an appointment easy.

That last part is especially important for chiropractic Google ads. The network assigns each ad a quality score, composed of how closely the target keyword, ad copy, and landing page match. The better the match, the less expensive placing your ad will be.

Google Display Ads for Chiropractors

Although both are part of Google’s ad management platform, display ads are different from search in that they expand far beyond Google. They consist of visual banner ads that appear on millions of websites that are part of the Google Display Network. GDN reaches 90% of all internet users, bringing the potential to significantly increase visibility for your chiropractic practice.

Of course, that broad reach can also mean that display ads can get expensive quickly. Finding the right targeting keywords and geographic radius is absolutely crucial to limit your reach only to relevant audiences. Fortunately, Google Display Network has enough options beyond keywords to optimize your targeting and lower costs. For example, you can:

• Limit your ads by page topics to make sure your ads fit the topic of the websites where they would appear.

• Limit your audience to only recent visitors to your website or a list of potential patients you have in your database.
• Limit your ad placements to websites or apps, excluding mobile app and games that can often lead to accidental clicks.
• Target in-market audiences and specific demographics that align with your target audience.

And of course, quality score also matters on the display network. Your targeting, ad messaging, and landing page all have to match up well for optimum, cost-optimized results.

Facebook Ads for Chiropractors

Lowering the cost of your chiropractic Facebook ads again starts with aligning your targeting with what you know about your target audience. The more specific you get, the more likely your ad will be to appear in front of relevant users who are likely to actually use your services.

The list of targeting options on Facebook is immense, ranging from demographics to recent behaviors, life events, and more. Custom audiences and Facebook remarketing can be an especially cost-effective way to lower your ad costs, allowing you to show your ads only to recent visitors to your website or specific pages on it. You can assume interest at that point and use your ads to drive to the appointment.

Of course, that’s not the only option to lower your costs.

Facebook itself recommends video to increase conversions for your new patients, and you can use the platform to easily test different visuals and messaging to see which convert at the highest rates and lowest costs. You can also set up bidding caps that ensure you never pay more than a certain amount for a click from a patient.

Finally, Facebook’s Relevance Score is similar to Google’s Quality Score. It dynamically evaluates your messaging and consistency with your landing page as well as how audiences have reacted to your ad. More consistent and positively received ads will receive preferential treatment, leading to lower costs and more exposure at the same time.

Instagram Ads for Chiropractors

Research has shown that Instagram ads tend to be more expensive than Facebook ads, but you can still optimize them to arrive at a reasonable cost that results in positive ROI for your chiropractic practice. These tips can help reduce the price of your chiropractic Instagram ads:

• Use Facebook’s advanced targeting options to match the locations and demographics of your target audience. Because Instagram ads are set up through Facebook’s ads manager, the same options for targeting are available on this network as well.

• Choose a campaign objective that matches your goals, like clicks and conversions for booking appointments or reach and awareness if you just want to get your name out there.

• Test your ad placements. Instagram can place ads both in newsfeed and in its vertical and temporary “Stories” feature. Each may be more cost-effective depending on your audience, so running tests for both helps you decide which placement makes the most sense.
• Use social proof in your copy. On Instagram, ads that include quotes and testimonials from your audience’s peers tend to perform well.

Because both Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same parent company, many of the Facebook optimizations described above apply to Instagram as well. For example, you can leverage remarketing to show Instagram ads to recent web visitors or test creative to make sure you focus on what converts the best.

How Much Should Chiropractors Spend on Digital Advertising?

Ultimately, the answer to how much you should spend on medical advertising depends on your goals. If you want and need to grow your chiropractic practice fast, you’ll need higher initial investment.

It’s important, though, to not just spend money on keywords or social media targets if there is no local demand for them. That process can lead to wasted budgets, with ads showing up to audiences outside of your geographic reach or target demographics who will never convert to patients.

You can determine your local market demand in one of two ways. The first is to calculate your demand by pulling census information from your zip code and surrounding zip codes, which you can then combine with keyword search volumes to extrapolate local demand for any particular service.

Of course, that process takes both time and expertise. The alternative: a free, automated local market analysis from DoctorLogic. Get your analysis today, and use it as the foundation to know your audience and optimize your ad costs accordingly.