Getting more chiropractic new patients isn't about chasing the newest marketing trick. It's about understanding where patients are searching, making sure your practice can be found, and tracking whether your marketing is actually producing results. In this episode of The Successful Chiro Podcast, Dr. Noel Lloyd sits down with Corey Hiben, founder of ChiroX, to break down what chiropractic practices need to know about today's digital marketing landscape. Corey explains how chiropractors can improve their local search visibility, strengthen their Google Business Profile, decide between SEO and Google Ads, create websites that actually convert visitors into patients, and measure whether their marketing investment is producing a real return. You'll also hear why new patient growth isn't always the real problem, what numbers practice owners should be tracking, and why marketing strategies need to change depending on your market, growth goals, and practice capacity. If you're serious about growing your chiropractic practice, adding associates, or building multiple locations, this episode will help you better understand the systems that can keep a predictable flow of new patients coming through the door.
For decades, one challenge has consistently been at the top of chiropractors' minds:
How do I get more new patients?
Today, the answer increasingly starts with what happens when someone searches for a chiropractor online.
In this episode, Dr. Noel Lloyd interviews Corey Hiben, founder of ChiroX, about how chiropractic practices can use SEO, Google Ads, Google Business Profiles, better websites, and data-driven marketing to create a more predictable new patient pipeline.
Corey shares his journey from occupational therapy into digital marketing and explains why he ultimately chose to specialize specifically in helping chiropractors grow.
In This Episode You'll Learn:
SEO vs Google Ads:
Corey explains a simple way to think about the difference:
Google Ads can help create opportunities in the shorter term, while SEO is a longer-term investment in the visibility of your practice.
For growing practices, the strongest strategy may ultimately involve both — paid visibility today while building organic visibility for the future.
Your Website Isn't About You
One of the biggest mistakes Corey sees is chiropractic websites filled with information about the doctor but lacking a clear path for someone who simply wants help.
Prospective patients primarily want to know:
Can you help me?
Can I trust you?
How do I schedule?
Making those answers obvious can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your online presence.
Track the Number that Matters
Marketing shouldn't be a mystery.
Corey recommends looking closely at how much you're investing and how many actual new patients are being generated from that investment.
Cost per lead and other metrics matter, but ultimately the practice owner needs to understand whether marketing is producing real patients and real growth.
Learn More about Corey Hiben & ChiroX
If you'd like to learn more about Corey's approach to chiropractic SEO, Google Ads, websites, and local search:
Visit: ChiroXMarketing.com
You can also check out the ChiroX Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and other major podcast platforms. Dr. Noel Lloyd has also appeared as a guest on Corey's show.
Ready to Grow Your Chiropractic Practice?
Getting new patients through the door is only part of building a successful practice. You also need the systems, team, leadership, and associates to serve those patients without making the owner responsible for everything.
Learn more about Five Star Management:
Visit MyFiveStar.com
Ready to see what's possible for your practice?
Book a consultation with the Five Star Management team and learn how the right systems can help you build a stronger, more scalable chiropractic practice.
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Dr. Noel Lloyd for the Successful Chiro podcast, and I'm interviewing Corey Hiben.
Corey, how are you? Phenomenal, man. How you doing? Hey, I'm gonna read a little blurb off your website. Corey positions ChiroX as a search marketing company helping established chiropractic practices generate predictable new patients. New patients, super key, through SEO, Google Ads, Google Business Profile, organization, and better performing websites.
So, let's talk about new patients. I've been a chiropractic management consultant for many, many years, decades. Mm-hmm. For decades, the number one reason that people called me was they called me for new patients. Mm-hmm. That's before I started doing the associate thing. [00:01:00] So, in general, how do you view the chiropractor's need for gobs and gobs and gobs of new patients?
I've gathered that based on the fact of a handful of conversations I've had on my own podcast show, one that you were actually recently on. And I've brought on- ... a lot of very successful high-earning practice owners, people doing, you know, seven, eight figures easily s- one person nine figures.
And I ask that question often, right? Of like what are your, what are the KPIs that you track, and what are the metrics you pay attention to? What actually matters, and what actually moves the needle on a business? And when can you decide to open a second location or to hire a new associate? And I can say the through line for a- almost every single one of them has been like if they were to choose one metric to track, it would be new patients.
And so like really no matter what conversation I'm having with the chiropractor based on their practice of like what their challenges are, what they're hoping to accomplish, deep down every single one of them needs, probably needs new [00:02:00] patients at the end of the day.
And so it's something I've decided to lean in on. But yeah. So here's my experience, is that you can be a mediocre chiropractor with rather rugged skills, but if you know how to produce new patients- Mm-hmm ... you're gonna be successful. And you can be an absolutely wonderful chiropractor But if you have trouble with new patients, the road ahead is gonna be rocky.
It's gonna be a big, big challenge. So you provide a service that wasn't out there not too many years ago. I remember about a decade ago, maybe 15, 16 years ago, there was these things called online reviews. Mm-hmm. And, and we were working to do that. But, but I mean, your industry, I mean, virtually changes every day, and what's happened over the last 10, 12, 15 years is incredible.
Yeah, it's, I'll be honest, I signed up for a really difficult job, because I often feel like I have to pull a [00:03:00] rabbit out of a hat on a weekly or monthly basis- ... because of the changes that are regularly happening. And so you're spot on, is like being in the digital space is that it's an ever-evolving, changing, with new, you know, Google will roll out some sort of new changes to their search algorithm, and then they'll have a new AI platform that'll roll out.
And all these things affects who finds you and how they find you, and how they actually convert to a lead, and how we connect with them, and do we do it via email? Do we do it via text? Do we send push notifications? Like, there's just so many of these, like, little tiny drops and check boxes that we have to try to hit, and it's always changing.
And yeah, you're right. I mean, like I- I'll be honest, like sometimes I do think about that and struggle with that of, That- that is the nature of the marketing industry, especially in the digital space. It's probably a little different If you're doing some of the local stuff, doing some of the in-person stuff.
But generally speaking, in the, in the digital space is, yeah, I'm, I'm a, I'm part- part marketer, part magician I feel like most weeks, so. Well, yeah, [00:04:00] now what you just said is that it's challenging to keep up with your industry, and I virtually heard that from every guy who does work like you do. Imagine what it is for the chiropractor.
Oh, yeah. And I mean, there are... So here's the, here's the way I'd like to handle our interview on our podcast today, is that I'm gonna interview you like I were a chiropractor in practice thinking about hiring you. Let's imagine, we don't have to imagine because I've already heard really, really nice things about you.
Mm-hmm. And I'm seeing you a lot of different places on, on YouTube, and I'm listening to what you're doing, and I like the questions you ask. So I end up in a conversation with you. So I'm just gonna ask you questions like I'm- Thinking about buying your stuff. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. Bring it, man. I'm op- I'm an open book.
Okay. So here's, here's a question. I found out, I did a little digging, and I found out that you used to be an occupational therapist. What did you see [00:05:00] in chiropractics specifically that led you to leave clinical practice and build a marketing company specifically for chiropractors? Yeah. That's a great starting point, man, because that was really the, I would say, the birth of the trajectory that eventually led me to building ChiroX, because at the time, working as an OT, I was responsible for my own marketing.
So at the practice that we worked at, it was an outpatient clinic, we were doing outpatient orthopedics, and we were responsible for getting new patients in the door. And so I was doing everything, or at least what I thought was the correct things to do, and I was going to local conferences and I was, you know, sending cold emails to some of the local doctors, 'cause at the time we had to get referrals as an occupational therapist.
And, going downstairs, we were connected to a hospital, and I'd go down and, like, shake hands and talk to the doctors and try to ask for some referrals and try to make these in-person relationships. And I was doing everything, man. I was trying to connect with everyone around me, I was trying to do all the digital stuff, and none of it worked.
And eventually I just realized that, like, [00:06:00] I need to lean into this and I need to be successful at this, because to the point of our original conversation, without patients, I don't have a practice, and I need to figure out how to get new patients into my practice and ultimately grow the practice.
And after leaning into it super, super hard for a while, I did start to find some success and I did start to figure out some of the nuance. And one of the, one of my favorite questions that people ask me is, like, "Well- "Why should I do, Google versus Meta versus, local in-person events versus flyers versus whatever?"
Name your marketing tactic. And my response is always, "It all works if you're willing to figure out the nuance." It all works. Everything works. Right. There's no, there's no question. Right. It's just like you have to figure out the nuance on how to make that thing successful. And so from so much trial and error of doing a lot of this stuff myself is that I personally started to really get good and started to learn the digital side of things, right?
And through this process of getting better at learning how to do my own marketing for my own practice and getting new patients in the door, I eventually realized that I actually [00:07:00] like this business marketing side of things a hell of a lot more than I like this actual patient care side of things . Oh, okay
and so, and that's, that's really where the shift happened for me was that I'm, you might not know this about me, but I am very introverted. I generally love... Like one-on-one conversation's my favorite thing, but if you get me into like group settings, I, I do not thrive in any way, shape, or form. And I've basically spent my entire life, um, so prior to OT school, I was actually in school for computer science.
And so I've pretty much spent my entire life like learning computers and technology and how to use them, and spending time on the internet and playing video games, and doing all those weird ner- weird nerdy things. And so there was just this like shift of realizing of like I don't really wanna be in patient care.
I wanna continue to somehow work in the healthcare industry. I still wanna actually serve other people in the industry and help them get new patients. And over a course of many years, there's this slow transition from moving from patient care to just literally just doing all the marketing digital side of things, of, you know, designing websites, building websites, learning SEO, learning Google Ads, learning Google business profiles, all those different things.
And how I ultimately ended on, ended up on, chiropractic to your, to the point of your original question. And this might surprise some people, but It was sort of twofold. So one of them was I realized that when you look at... [00:08:00] So obviously I was serving other occupational therapists, I was serving physical therapists, I was serving doctors, I was serving speech therapists.
I went even as far as like serving like certain gyms and fitness industry stuff. And what I realized was that all of those healthcare professionals are dependent upon an insurance-based hospital ty- style system. And so realistically, they actually don't know or care about business at all, one iota. Ah.
They, they couldn't give two hoots about the actual business economics of building a business and building a real, something you can eventually build and sell, right? Like, doctors don't think like that. Like, OTs, PTs- You're right ... they don't, they don't think like that. And some of them are now, there are people shifting to more the cash-based model.
But at the time, everyone was just like in this like hospital system. They were, they were in this giant conglomerate. They were just a number within a system, and they didn't really have any ownership to their actual practice. And, and, but if you look at chiros, and even [00:09:00] dentists for that matter, it's a completely different industry, right?
It's like they're actually- Right ... building a business. They actually have to understand the business economics. And I realized through having all these conversations with all these different types of healthcare professionals I was working with, is that the chiropractors were the only ones that I felt like I was having conversations with that w- even understood the concept of a KPI.
Or even- Yeah ... understood the concept of like, oh, I need to invest money into my business to grow it in order so we can keep the lights on. And yet like a doctor doesn't really understand that for the most part. And so I got sick of basically trying to sell them on the fact of why they needed marketing, and even just trying to educate them on what even it means to run a business.
And I was like, okay, obviously the chiropractic industry understands this a lot better. And so I started to lean into that. And then the second, thing that really I guess you could say was like the final straw is my wife's a chiropractor. And so, Yes ... I met her right when I was starting to make this transition phase.
I was starting to help her grow her practice. I was starting to do some of the marketing for her practice. And I was like, all right, maybe I just like put [00:10:00] my, you know, flag in the sand and say like, "Let's just focus on the chiropractors," versus all the other healthcare professionals that we were serving.
And I'll be honest, man, it's, it's one of the best business decisions I've ever made. We're doing great. It's, it's, it's way easier to run a business when you have a very specific niche. You don't have to think about all the different nuances of different industries. And yeah, we've, we've come a long way since then, but yeah.
I think I actually met your wife before you did, because she worked for one of my clients and ended up pur- purchasing- I think so, yeah ... his practice. Yeah. So I'm gonna proceed on this interview you to possibly hire you, track I'm on here. So when a chiropractor tells you, "I need more new patients," how do you determine whether the real problem is visibility, website, or their offer or some other office process?
How do you know that where the problem is. Yeah, the, so it all, everything's data-driven decisions on our end. And so like- Mm-hmm ... all of our conversations when we bring in a [00:11:00] doctor is, "What are your numbers at the moment, and where do you wanna be?" So for example, if a doctor... I had this recently. If, if a doctor comes to you and, I'll, I'll just use the example I had.
I think he had, like, two doctors at his location, and they were getting, I think, somewhere in the range of, like, 50 to 60 new patients a month. And they were coming to us for marketing, and to me, that was actually already a red flag of, like, maybe they don't actually have a new patient issue. It sounded like to me, based on, like, what they were telling me of their numbers, is that they actually had a retention issue- Right
which is a different conversation. And so, like, the most basic answer I can give you is, like, whether a doctor does or doesn't need n- new patients, it's purely data. It's like, how many are you getting now? Where are they coming from? And how long are they sticking around, AKA, like, what does their LTV look like?
And that gives us a general idea and picture of, like, where is the actual bottleneck? Is it new patients? Is it retention? Do you have enough margins to even be able to put money into your marketing at this moment? And like, yeah, it's all, it's, it's very data-driven in terms of, like, how we make that decision.
But, like, most, most [00:12:00] practices I will say would, would never, not benefit from new patients. Right. But sometimes that's not the immediate problem. And so there are circumstances where, like, even if they are getting a lot of new patients at the moment, is that we will start to onboard along with them while also, like, filling some of the other bottlenecks that they need to figure out in the meantime. But, and it also depends on their goals and aspirations 'cause, like, I'm su- I mean, you see this every day. There's doctors that are, like, very happy being a single practitioner, and just making a six-figure salary that, you know, feeds their family and keeps the lights on, and they have no ambitions of growing.
And if that's the case, then, like, we're probably not a good fit for you. Like, and that's totally fine. No judgment. But yeah, so it just depends. But- Well, one of the things you said on your website, and one of the things I was, as I was reading through, is that you talk about helping people dominate local search.
Now, I'm thinking that if I had a chiropractic practice and I could dominate the local search, that would put more people in my website, it would put more people in [00:13:00] my clinic. In practical terms, what does dominate local search actually look like? Yeah. Show, it m- basically means shows up at number one. So the main thing that we focus on is what we call internally search marketing.
If somebody goes onto a search platform, whether that's Google or ChatGPT or Gemini or Google Maps or whatever their favorite search platform or search tool is, is that you show up in that top spot. That's really what it comes down to because, like, if you look at the data, it's pretty clear that I think it's, like, 60% to 70% of all clicks land on the, whatever the first organic button is.
So if you're on a Google Map pack and you're in the number one spot on that Map pack, past the sponsored ad, so not the, not the paid ad. But the top organic spot gets, I think, 60 to 70% of all of the clicks. So if you are able to land your business in that top spot, you will mathematically dominate the market.
Now, the nuance and the challenge of this is, is that each one of those things that I mentioned [00:14:00] before play by different rules, right? So to show up in the top spot on a Google Map pack versus on one of the blue links on just like a regular Google search, versus on a ChatGPT or a Gemini or something of that nature, is they're all a little different and they all have different nuances, and they pull their information and their data from different things.
And so how do you show up in that top spot? It, it varies. And then also too, it comes back to the other-- the sponsored thing as well, is like, okay, let's say 70% of them are going to that top sponsored spot. Well, then the other, like roughly we'll say ten to 20% of those are gonna be that sponsored click, and then everything else is past that.
And so if you are both paying for the ads to land on the top spot and you have that top organic spot There's, there's just no way you're not gonna get a bunch of new patients knocking at your door. They're just gonna show up, so yeah. So now let's say that I'm not dominating local search, and here's another question that I would have is what mistakes do you see chiropractors making, let's say with their Google business [00:15:00] profile, and what could they do to improve that immediately?
So let's say I've got a practice and I know that I've got a Google business profile problem- Mm-hmm ... and I wanna ask you for some advice, which I'm doing. So- Mm-hmm ... what, what might I do to help it immediately? Yeah. So the, the answer that you're probably expecting me to say, and what most people will probably tell you, is to get more Google reviews.
And I'm not saying that that's wrong. That there, there, that is a huge lift to a profile, but that also takes time. It's also challenging. You also have to have some sort of system in place, which is something that we help with, is like making sure there is some way that you are capturing these leads, 'cause most people don't.
Most people just like rely on the fact that their patients will someday do it because they provide such an amazing care, and I'll be blunt with you, they won't. They won't if you don't ask them. They won't if you don't stay on top of them. They won't if you don't nurture them. They won't if you don't help guide them on how they should even give the review.
People just don't do it. And so if you don't have already some system in place to do that, you're already missing out on a huge [00:16:00] opportunity. But the answer that I'm actually gonna say that's different than just like getting more reviews is something that most people actually have no idea and don't know about their profile, is that because Google owns both the, the profile, the Google business profile, and obviously all the search results in just like regular s- search results, regular Google, is that those things actually talk together, both your profile and your website.
So if you talk about on your website that you have services for, you know, decompression and, shockwave and, maybe you do some acupuncture, blah, blah, blah, whatever, you list off all your services. If those don't match with what are on your profile, you're actually gonna show up in a lower ranking spot because Google will compare those and be like, "Is this, is this the same?
Is this trustworthy? Can we trust this source? Are they saying the same thing on their website as they're saying on their profile?" And if they're not, that basically decreases the trust signal you're sending to Google, and they're less likely to rank you. And so- Most people have no idea how important it is to both have a really good website [00:17:00] and a really good profile and making sure that those things match up in what you're talking about in terms of your services and your offers and your descriptions and, like, having reviews on both of those things, and just, like, making sure that both of those are dialed in because they actually both lift each other up if done correctly.
If they're done- if they're not looking the same on both ends, they're gonna actually pull each other down. That's, so that's, that would be the biggest thing. Obviously, that's a huge list, lift for anyone listening to this show is like, "Yeah, go build a whole new website and refix your whole profile." I mean, that is the answer, but that's a lot.
But if you were to only do one thing today just to, like, get a, to get a quick boost is I would say just make sure they match up in terms of what s- what is said on the website is also what is said on the profile, and that should help things pretty, pretty quickly. But yeah. Okay. Now, by the way, this is something that's happening inside my brain.
I'm thinking, "I don't know how to do that." Yeah. And so that's doing what I call stretching the gap. That's between my knowledge and your knowledge. [00:18:00] So I've got another question here. What should a chiropractor think about SEO- Mm ... versus, let's say, Google Ads, and when is one more appropriate and when should they be used together?
Yeah. So it's short term versus long term, I would say. So if you needed leads because you're struggling to pay the bills and you needed them within the next, like, we'll say 90 to 120 days- Mm-hmm ... Google Ads are great. At that, in that window of time, you could spin up a custom landing page. You could put out some custom campaigns relative to the offers that you have or maybe to some of the service that you have, and you drive that traffic directly to a landing page that was optimized for conversions.
Purely for conversions. That's the only point of a landing page for anybody is to, like, you want when somebody lands there to know exactly how you're helping them solve that problem, and you want them to click a button to either call or fill out a form. That's really all you're trying to do. And so roughly you can get some pretty good results in roughly 120 days.
Not gonna be amazing [00:19:00] 'cause you definitely need a little bit more data from your Google Ads to, like, really optimize those things, but you can start to see some leads in that window of time. The SEO side of things is, as cliche as this statement is, and I hate saying this, Noel, is that it's slow, and it's a long play, and it takes time, and it takes investment.
But if we go back to that statistic I told you earlier that roughly 60% to 70% of all clicks goes to that top organic SEO spot. If you're willing to invest in your business, if you assume that your business is gonna be around for a long ass time, there's almost no reason not to invest into the SEO of your business, knowing that you're gonna get all of the clicks to your business, right?
Like, you're gonna have to work at it, or you're gonna have to somebody work at it if you hire somebody to do it. It's gonna take time. It's gonna take some tweaking. It's gonna take some optimization. But, like, over the course of, we'll say, a 10-year business, is, like, the ROI on it is just far beyond worth it in regards to, like, putting your, putting- Mm
putting some effort [00:20:00] into actually growing your SEO. Is it challenging? For sure. That's why, I mean, agencies like mine exist. But, yeah, you're gonna get way more traffic, way more clicks, way more opportunities, if you do play that long game. One of the things that I've noticed in going to chiropractic, websites, and I've seen dozens if not hundreds, is that There's all of this information that seems like it has been written by someone for the chiropractor to impress the chiropractor because there's no simple click big red button, you know, new patients start here, or for an appointment, start here.
Just out of curiosity, your experience with evaluating different websites- Mm-hmm ... how many people just blow it up badly, by not having the right landing page? Almost all of them. Yeah. Yeah. I would say it, I would put that in the camp of that is the norm. And it's, it's [00:21:00] not, it's not out of malice or anything, right?
It's just a straight gap in knowledge of understanding how the digital world works, how to, how to do good copywriting, how do you have a compelling offer, how do you, make things simple and easy to understand, how do you, understand the technical mechanics of how a website works, right?
Is, like, it's... Yeah, I, I would say that is the norm. And for anybody listening, like, best resource or advice that I can give to you is, there's a really great fellow marketer of mine I've been following for a long time. His name's Donald Miller, but he wrote a great book called, Story Brand.
So, like, he has a really good framework of how to build a simple page, and as long as you, like, check the boxes of, like, kind of how he lays things out, you can get, like, 80% of the way there, which is, typically speaking, gonna put you above 95% of other chiropractors in your area- Yeah
is, like, just doing the basics of what he teaches in that book. You could probably Google it and find the information as well. But that alone h- will help you [00:22:00] understand of your website has nothing to do with you. Nobody, nobody for the most part cares about your degree or your credentials- No, they don't
They don't care. Nobody cares. The only thing that they care is can you help them solve their problem, and do you seem kind and trustworthy? And typically, the way that you do that- Mm ... is you speak the language of what are the challenges that they're dealing with and how you can help them with them, and then you probably have some authenticity to it of, like, probably photos of you, probably you working with patients, maybe some trust signals of, like, some reviews and testimonials, but that's really all they care about is they wanna know is, like, this is a safe place.
This person seems kind and nice and can probably help me, and also they're speaking the languages that I understand and speaking to my pain points. If you can cover that, you're ahead of almost every chiropractor out there. A- and then also, one of the things, I was marketing to a medical group in downtown Seattle.
I had two clinics within six blocks of each other, and there was a very busy, large, medical group, multiple doctors, and I was speaking to the referral coordinator [00:23:00] And, one of her first questions is, "How quickly can I send a new patient over and get an appointment?" And I thought, "She's not asking anything about me technically."
And she later told me that she knew me and liked me and felt that she could trust me, but the main thing she wanted to be able to do is get somebody in my office quickly. Mm-hmm. And when somebody is going to a website, now I know I'm preaching to the choir, If they're searching chiropractor in their local area, they already think that they need a chiropractor, and one of the easiest things should be the button to press to be a new patient.
But I'm starting to, uh, I, I'm starting to say things that I would expect you'd say. Here's, here's, another question. Many chiropractors have paid marketing companies without getting measurable results, and I think, I take a look at myself. I'm, I'm 77 years old. What you know about this, I'll never learn.
And, but, but I need new patients, and[00:24:00]
maybe I'm 56 or 66 or 46. You, you're the expert. What numbers should an owner insist on seeing to know whether the marketing is really working? Yeah. So you're hitting back on kind of what I was saying earlier about everything is data-driven. And-
I actually spent the entire weekend, building our own custom portal for our clients to be able to track exactly what you're talking about, is the main metric that we have now in our portal is basically month after month of how many new patients you're getting. And it is a very simple equation, Noel.
It is literally how much are you spending in terms of, like, if we're doing ad spend or retaining services or whatever it is, and how many new patients are you getting out of that? It is literally that simple. And obviously there's a lot of nuance within that of like, you know, cost per lead, cost per [00:25:00] acquisition, like li- lifetime value of, like, if this was a quality lead or not, and yada, yada, yada.
We could get into all the nerdy stuff. But realistically, again, back to that original point, is I realized even our clients, the only thing they care about is, "How many new patients did I get?" Right. Right. And so, like, that's, that is the premise of why I decided to build this custom portal for our clients is so that we can regularly see on a month-to-month basis is how many.
To answer your question in terms of, like, specifics, it is, pretty market dependent, right? It's like, let's say, like, one of our clients, we'll say, is in, like, Newbury, which is, like, this tiny middle-of-nowhere town. There's nobody there, so we're the only ones really running ads in this entire area, so they have no competition, and so the cost to run ads is incredibly cheap.
You're gonna see, a 10 to one ratio in terms of, you put a dollar in and you're gonna get 10 out essentially in terms of what you'll get from a new patient, right? Well, so, like, to break that down to, mechanics is, like, you would spend, we'll say, for the sake of this sample, this example, is like you would spend, $10 to run this ad for a week and then [00:26:00] you would get, you know, a patient that's worth, like, $1,000 in LTV, something of that nature, right?
But, like, in more competitive markets like here in Austin, Texas, or I have clients in, like, Charlotte, North Carolina, or, more, very much more competitive markets where there's a lot of other people that understand the benefits of doing digital marketing, there's other people paying for these leads, right?
And so, like, in markets like that, you can oftentimes maybe see, like- a one to three ratio, right? So like maybe you spend a dollar in and you might get three out in terms of the ROI, if you know what you're doing. That's why like a big part of specifically the paid ad sides of things when you're, when you're talking about ROI, that's where it does become very data-driven because like there'll, there'll be times where we'll just cut certain campaigns.
We'll completely stop doing certain types of digital marketing because we're just not getting the ROI on it. Like a perfect example of this is we have a client up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and we were doing what are called local service ads. And after doing these for a number of months, we realized that like it just wasn't worth the ROI.
So we just completely stopped those, reallocated that budget entirely into the [00:27:00] pay-per-clicks, which is more like the Google's like typical pay-per-click ads, and we found a much higher ROI on those. I think it was like now we're getting like, five to one or something of that nature within that market.
But, yeah, it 100% depends on the market, but you should, if you are looking to an agency, whether it's me or anybody for that matter, is like you, you gotta know the numbers. Like, like- Right ... or, or they should know the numbers and be open to disclosing those numbers. If they're just taking a, a, a retainer fee or however they're charging you, I have no idea, and you, you aren't actually seeing like this is the money in and this is the new patients coming out of it.
I'll be honest, like one of the biggest challenges of a marketing agency and one of the biggest challenges of my job is having really good attribution, which is just a fancy way of saying like how do I know where this lead actually came from, which is like why we spend so much time getting a lot of the tracking stuff in place in terms of using, you know, phone number swapping systems and like custom landing pages, so we can see if it was actually a form submit from our Google ad or whatever it was or like, having things set up [00:28:00] on the website so you know that like this is where the lead is coming from 'cause it is, it's challenging.
It's challenging to know where leads come from sometimes. But if you can't like have at least some ballpark understanding of where they're coming from, you might wanna question what's going on 'cause if you don't know, you, you don't know, right? Well, now this leads me to a question. If somebody hears a chiropractic testimony, I go to work and somebody who's in the cubicle right next to mine who used to have the bucket of aspirin on his desk is now talking to me about how he's pain-free and chiropractic helped him.
I wanna know that chiropractor's name. Mm-hmm. And I might see that chiropractor. So I'm asking you about practices that you've helped, and what type of, different, success stories have you seen in maybe different markets? You mentioned the Newberry market, and I would imagine that's quite successful because they can, they can spend very, very little b- amount of money and [00:29:00] get a good return.
But what are some of the changes that you've seen? And, and not only the changes, but also the length of time it takes to make those changes. Yeah. So, you're, you're bringing up a really interesting topic that I've had conversations with a lot of doctors about, about big markets and small markets. And I think the biggest challenge of big markets, like a major city, whatever, name your city, doesn't matter.
In those markets, the challenge is new patients, which is funny. Right. Because when you look at the smaller markets, like a, like a Newberry or I can name a, name a handful of other ones, but the problem there, funny enough, isn't actually typically new patients.
It's actually typically doctors. It's associates. It's hiring. It's getting somebody that actually wants to come and work for your practice and to build your practice with you or be a part of your practice in some way, shape, or form. And so they're two- Right ... completely different problems, right? And so we do adjust accordingly, understanding that these are different challenges based on, like, the market that you're in.
I can safely say turnaround in terms of, how long does it take, [00:30:00] especially depending upon the market small markets because it's typically not a new patient issue we can see turnaround pretty quickly 'cause we don't see a lot of competition in the area, so we can spin up ads pretty quickly.
I would say the timeline that I give most of the practices that we start to work with is, like, 90 days. That's just, like, a baseline that we start with. And 'cause, like, kinda to my point too about, even with the Google Ad side of things of, like, even that does take time. This is another thing that people don't realize is that Google Ads in no way, shape, or form, especially now today, is something that you just, like, turn on and all of a sudden you land in the top spot in front of the correct people.
The way that it works is that over the course of running these ads, the longer you run the ads, the more data you gather and the better you get at targeting, and then the cheaper your ads actually become. So typically when we start ad campaigns, we can expect, like, a cost per lead to be somewhere in, like, the 150, depending upon how competitive the market is.
Maybe even, like, $200 per lead, depending upon, again, how competitive the market is. But over the course of that campaign, [00:31:00] our goal is to get it down to, like, 50, 60 bucks per lead, which is pretty, pretty damn good for industry standard in terms of what you can actually expect. That's great. Um, but again, that takes time.
It takes time to gather the right data and know of, like, "This is a good lead. Send us more of those. This is a bad lead. Stop sending us those or stop showing those in front of people that are bad clicks," right? 'Cause it, it does gather that data over the course of time and they do get better and better and better.
But yeah, that's, that's generally the benchmark I say is, like, 90 days 'cause that gives us at least enough window of data of time, even in a competitive market to know, like, "Okay, there's a lot of search volume for this. We should probably... You know, we're, we're getting these for pretty cheap.
These are typically pretty high-quality leads. Let's put some more ad budget on this. These leads are actually not great. They, they don't actually show up for their appointments. They cost a lot of money. Send us less of those," and that brings down ad spend. But 90 days is roughly what it takes for something like that.
And so if you think back over some of the clients that you've helped, I know [00:32:00] that a new patient would be worth to a clinic any place between $1,500 and let's say $4,500. Mm-hmm. How many new patients might somebody see if they are spending correctly and things are working right and, and maybe market forces work out in their favor, an additional five, 10, 15, 20 a month?
How many possibly? Yeah. Uh, I'll give you the range because again, it's very market dependent. So like in a- Sure ... in a smaller city like, we'll just use Newberry again 'cause we're talking about that one. Yeah ... the, the thing about markets like that is that there's actually a cap to how much money you could even spend that's even remotely worth it, because you're only gonna get in front of so many people, and there's just isn't enough, there's just not enough people to spend money on, to be honest with you.
And, you could see probably in the somewhere in the 10 range. Something in a more- Got it ... competitive area, you'd probably see something more in like the 30 range, I would say. And then something mid-market would probably be around 20. Like Fayetteville, for example. Fayetteville's not a major city, but it's, it's bigger-ish.
It's a decent- Sure ... sized city, [00:33:00] and our client there gets roughly 20-ish, from Google a month, give or take, depending upon the month. But that, I'd say that's probably the range a, a practice could expect, again, depending upon the size of the market, but. So somebody's listening to my podcast and they're asking themselves if they're a prospective client.
Who's your ideal, ideal... The person that you've done the best for, you love to work with, so an ideal client. Who would that be? Somebody that actually wants to grow. Kinda to my point earlier is that if you look at the general scheme of the entire chiropractic industry is that transparently most of them don't wanna grow, man.
And, um, and I, I don't have any issues with that. I'm not trying to tell anybody how to live their life. But, like, most practices and most doctors are super cool being rather a solo practitioner or maybe an associate for, like, their occasional time they wanna take vacations, and they're cool with that. And to be honest, like, we don't typically work super great with those practices, because we're trying to get a practice to the point of, [00:34:00] like, multiple doctors and even potentially multiple locations if that is something that they are interested in.
If they're not interested in those things, probably not a good fit for them to be honest because, like, we take a very personalized, a very, like, white glove approach to, like, we, we will look at your stuff. We will look into your numbers. We will be serious about setting up the right systems and processes to make sure this stuff works, and, we look at it far more as a partnership than it is just, like, this agency that you pay to just, like, do this thing on the side.
So if you are the type of person that legitimately wants to grow your practice, whether that does mean more doctors or more locations, again, how you decide those is very dependent upon you and the kind of business you wanna build. But, those... We do far better with those types of practices than we do of the other 95% of practices that are super cool being just, like, a single doc, which is totally fine.
But- S- so that's a five-star management practice where the doctor wants to add multiple associates and continue to grow, and where the [00:35:00] client who's purchasing your services and hiring the doctor doesn't have to do all the work himself. So some docs get to a particular level, and they find that they're working about as hard as they want to work, and they've made peace with that.
Okay, so somebody's listening to you and me, and they're thinking I wanna grow. Sounds to me like I might be an ideal client. How does somebody get in touch with you in order that they can set up s- their own interview process and ask you questions and have you give them answers? Yeah. I'd say the two best places to find me is gonna be checking out my podcast show, which Noel is on, so if anybody wants to go check out that episode.
It's on YouTube, Spotify, all the major platforms. It's just called ChiroX. Everything else is on my website, chiroxmarketing.com. You could literally just Google my name and you would probably find it right away. We do... I mean, as a marketing agency, we spend a lot of time on our SEO, and so we're pretty easy to find on the internet.
You're not gonna have an [00:36:00] issue finding our business and what we're up to and finding all of our posts and social media accounts and things of that nature. So we're very easy to find, which makes sense, as that's what we do. And one of the fun things for me is to see your podcast pop up on YouTube, because I spend a fair amount of time on YouTube, and here's your interviewing this guy or this person or that person or the other person.
Well, this is what I hope. I hope that you are wildly, wildly successful in helping great chiropractors bring in lots of new patients into their practices so that they can grow, so that their associates can grow, and so that everybody can succeed. I wanna thank you a bunch for letting me ask you these questions and interview you, and, I wish you the very best.
Hell yeah, Noel. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
Okay, buddy. Hey, we'll see you later. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Thanks.