Successful chiropractic Facebook ads formula includes many variables. On the one hand, we have a Facebook algorithm that will check the quality of your ad, its relevance, landing page quality, and its compliance to the policy and many other factors.
On the other, we have the real product and its reputation, which no ads will change. Not only ads expert is responsible for success, but the sales team, every administrator, and doctor, everything will count.
Facebook Ads for chiropractors are restricted by the Facebook Advertising policy. It also needs a great funnel, ad copy, and a powerful headline along with good quality creatives. Chiropractors should target the right audience based on the following recommendations.
Table of content:
- Step 1: competitive analysis
- Step 2: complying with Facebook Policy
- Step 3: creating a powerful offer
- Step 4: making successful creatives
- Step 5: writing strong ad copy
- Step 6: choosing the right ads campaign objective
- Step 7: targeting the right audience
- Step 8: setting up a budget
- Step 9: analysis and optimization
Every step includes screenshots and real examples of 2021!
STEP 1: Competitive analysis in chiropractics
Facebook Ad Library – is a free library of all active ads all over the world.
- Choose your target country. When you analyzing the market, you can get ideas from all over the world to adjust them to your needs and location.
- Always choose “Search all”.
- Type the name of the competitor or the general keyword, e.g. “chiropractor”.
- Look through ads, and their details, check when, on what platforms ads were launched. Note what kind of creatives, ad copies, and offers they use.
Let’s see what we have. I found crazy amount of ads and you will find them too – great place to get ideas and learn from mistakes.
One of the ads running by Stanlick Chiropractic. Great ad copy! They ask a very relevant question as we all sit a lot of time and the most common issues are back pain, sitting unproperly. It is great because it reminds us about bigger problems – they use an emotional trigger.
They also use a real video with real doctor. This is what you should do – always use original content.
BUT! There are some mistakes in this ad:
- the video is 3 minutes long! Internet users will not invest 3 minutes in you. The max length for an ad video is 60 sec, but try to make it as short, clear, and natural as you can.
- no call to action at the end of the ad copy. You should always guide users to the next step.
- no headline. Headlines increase the possibility that people will click (click-through-rate or CTR), which means it increases effectiveness.
- the ad leads to the home page of the website of the clinic – it is a critical mistake. You should lead people through the funnel! Don’t lose them. When I’m on your home page, what should I do? I don’t have time to explore your website, plus, most of the websites that ever existed are horrible and not user-friendly.
Check as many competitors’ ads as you can and make a list of:
- offers they use
- the type of creatives: photos, videos, what they are about. What is good or bad about them?
- what do they mention in the ad copies?
- what call-to-action do they use?
- what is their funnel? What journey will every person take?
Typical funnels:
- Ad – Lead form with contacts – Follow up call – Visit
- Ad – Lead form with contacts – Follow up call – Visit – Retargeting ads
- Ad – Website – Follow up call – Visit – Retargeting ads
- Ad – Ebook or useful material for email – Email campaign – Visit
etc. These funnels are very general, to build a funnel you should know your audience, create a strategy and implement it, adjust it over time.
STEP 2: Facebook Policy for ads for chiropractors
Every time we launch an ad, Facebook automatically checks:
- if your ad creative contains less than 20% of text on it. If it has any fake buttons, flashes or other misleading symbols.
- if your ad copy is complying with policy
- if your Instagram account, Facebook Page, Business manager and all employees are complying with policy
- if you payment method is valid
- if your domain is verified
- if all Business information is set
- how many disapproved ads you’ve ever had and what kind of business you promote
- if your landing page does not violate any policies, and so on and so forth.
Yes. I know, it sounds complicated and it is actually. You need to be very careful with Facebook and healthcare theme.
Facebook is not forgiving, it can disable your ad account or your Business manager forever.
Based on Facebook policy a chiropractor should:
- avoid any misleading information such as promising a cure or making assumptions.
- do not encourage discrimination based on medical conditions.
- not include any personal attributes based on a medical condition. Do not include “your”, personal questions, or any other personal attributes in the ad.
- Do you have problems with your back?
- Bad posture ruined your first impression? Get help now
- Treat your Sciatica with our chiropractors, etc
- avoid shocking content: traumas, zoomed-in photos, etc.
- any information that contradicts World Health Organization
- avoid grammar, punctuation, and other mistakes
- not include before and after photos.
- not ask people about disabilities or request insurance information.
Here is the link to the Official Facebook Advertising policy.
STEP 3: How to create a good offer?
An offer is the value proposition that is relevant to your target audience and distinguishes you from your competitors.
Based on the competitive analysis, this is how chiropractors in US advertise:
- Mention that you accept insurance and which one
- Promote New Patient Special, Men’s or Women’s Special packages
- Mention bonuses: if there is anything free or included?
- Mention prices or discounts. This approach is less and less effective, it will potentially work on a warm audience, but try to avoid this cheat code.
- Announce a new office opened
- Free Spinal Examination
- Appointment on the same day – strong push to make a decision
- Make an offer in form of the question
- Use social proof if you have it: how many clients you have, any percentages, ranking, etc.
- Use a lead magnet like free exams or discounts for the most in-demand service. A good lead magnet has a result, has a value bigger than its price, and most importantly – it makes a random person your client.
- Use situation: Relax at Stanlick Chiropractic after an accident. We will handle the Paperwork
It is also an option to repeat your offer in Headline of the Facebook ad. Always add a headline while advertising on Facebook – it is another option to catch eyes of your potential clients.
Tips for better headlines for a chiropractor’s ad:
- Make it short and clear
- Repeat the offer
- Make a promise, but not a misleading one
- Tap into a buyer’s emotions, trigger them to make a decision: curiosity is one of the most powerful emotions. What else triggers people? Failure, fears, anger or hate, danger, stress, death or risk, mistakes, etc.
- Use limited offers – it is another trigger for decision-making – urgency and fear of missing something. Use strong words: now, new, deadline, hurry, final, expires.
the first 25 people to reply to this ad to come in and get a FULL exam for only $47 (75% off!)
- Emphasize the benefits
- Use strong words to emphasize scarcity: limited, only available for…, etc.
You will get a thorough examination, all necessary x-rays, and a report of findings for only $49!
- Build trust with special words: Lifetime Guarantee, certified, no risk, proven, secure, money back.
- Use numbers and special characters in the headline
- Add emoji as it leads to a higher click-through rate.
STEP 4: 15 creatives’ ideas for successful chiropractic Facebook ads
The video trend is still remaining in 2021. In fact, you never know what will work until you try, so read my ideas, generate yours with your team and test all of them. Only real numbers and money will show you what is best creative format for you!
- Educational Doctor videos
Make a video with your doctor explaining a common issue, giving quick advice, talking about the benefits of exercises or a massage.
- Film it even with your phone in your clinic.
- The video should be friendly and not for other doctors, but for people. It should be simple, clear, and build trust.
- It would be great if the doctor/chiropractor can illustrate what he or she is talking about. If it is an easy exercise, show it!
- Smile!
- Always add subtitles!
- Say call to action at the end of the video.
The ad copy for this type of video should be relevant to the video content, it will still have a title or a heading, and a call to action.
- Whiteboard explainer videos
This is a great idea as it can be different from most of the ads a person sees and it means, it will catch the attention.
All tips from idea 1 is valid here too.
- Office walkthrough videos
Great idea to show your office, your specialists, benefits of your services. It builds trust and make people feel like they already know you.
Again, it should a friendly video, with subtitles, and a call-to-action.
- Content boost
I assume that you are not only advertising, but also building strong community and creating valuable content. The good content will work better than any advertising in long term perspective.
Promote your post directly from Instagram app or via Ads manager to start building relationships with cold audience. It will also help you build awareness and gain more followers.
- Massage promotion with an image or a video
It can be a give away, a discount for limited time, or something else.
What kind of massage you will promote depends on your best selling services and target audience.
Make sure the conditions are clear, and the offer has limited time or spaces available. If it is a give away, think about further interaction – it still should be someone who will use your services, it should be target audience and not just people interested in winning free bonuses.
- Free Consultation schedule video invitation
A good lead magnet is a free exam or consultation. Be specific about how the free consultation is going, what are the results of it, and why it is a good idea to go with your doctors.
Don’t overthink it – the short and simple 30sec video is enough. Don’t forget about a call-to-action.
- Guide or ebook to download
Advertise a checklist for healthy routine, a guide with easy exercises or an ebook about headache as your lead magnet. It would be the first step in your funnel. If you didn’t work through all the funnel and don’t guide people – this approach will not work.
A guide or an ebook can attract a lot of people interested in free material, so the results of an ad campaign could be great. But if the lead magnet or the funnel are not well prepared, you will lose all these people and not return you ads cost.
Make sure your lead magnet has great value, but leaves questions and build awareness about the problem and the possible solutions YOUR clinic can provide.
At the end of your ebook, I should find the info about the next step of the funnel – an exam, a massage, or what? I also should find how to contact you to schedule my appointment or share my thoughts about the guide.
- Educational seminar offline or online
This is also a first step into your funnel. You can organize an offline or online meeting about back pain for all office employees. You will talk about the context, the problems, and variety of solutions. You will also present your own solution, program or clinic, and get contacts of people who are interested.
This clinic uses about 100 different creatives to promote this event, and this is a very good approach if you want to have results. Test as many creatives as you can actually think about.
Make sure your meeting will have a very clear theme and target audience: if it is too broad, you are likely to invite people who are not really “suffering” right now and are looking for solution.
- Always do follow ups with all participants and keep them warm.
This is quite complex funnel and will take time and patience.
Creative formats:
- To advertise a seminar try short video invitations, including common questions or issues the target audience has, and adding a call-to-action at the end of the video.
- Also, try single images with general information about the seminar (date, topic, speaker), or illustrations of the issues the target audience has, to grab their attention.
- Talk about most common issue people can have
- Use appealing image with highlighted areas where people can have pain
- Mention most common “how this feels like” to connect with people
- Give them a solution and some more benefits or time limited offer
- Add call-to-action
In this example the image is not the best one, as most of time Facebook will disapprove such images, better check the quality of the image in Support chat, if you are not sure about it.
Here is how the whole ad will look like:
- Use real testimonials mentioning an issue in carousel or single video
Better to use video testimonials as it is the best social proof. Ask people how do they feel now and what was the initial issue. You can easily combine it with procedure demonstration but in a very natural way.
It will help other people to associate themselves with the problem and believe that you can actually help.
People have multiple levels of making decision, 2 of them are: Can I resolve this specific issue I have, am I capable? Can I resolve it with specific clinic/doctor? Make sure you build this trust.
- General info ads in dynamic ad with great promo video
- Talk about services and procedures
- Mention general info about the clinic
- Talk about common issues people come with
- Mention values and what distinguish you from competitors
- Describe the procedure and what it is for, show it in a short video!
This type of video is great to promote products and services – show how it is going, who will be my chiropractor, what we’re going to do and what benefits I will have, and I have not only your words and promises, but real images and associations in my brain.
Real videos build trust and eliminate objections.
Please do not hire actors, do not pretend or fake anything in videos – show the real excellent quality you provide. Be friendly and simple.
- Promote special offers
Special offer for new clients: it is a big stress to go somewhere for the first time. Encourage new clients by creating special discounts for them or some kind of promo packages including procedures you may need during your first visit.
Special offers for men or women:
- Address people near your clinic on the creative
If you promote your clinic on a local scale, catch people’s eye with this information on the creative.
Here a chiropractor addresses different areas in ad copy, but the same you can do with creatives.
- Use triggers and emotions.
What do your clients want most? To feel relief from pain, lightness, joy, and regain the fun of moving. Use it in your ads. You can also use positive emotions, as this is what people want and expect to feel after a session:
More Tips for creatives:
- you can play around with pandemic, e.i. if people feel more safe knowing that all your doctors use masks
- your creatives should be relevant for demographics, e.i. If you target women, make sure you have the women in the photo.
- all content should be relevant: if you talk about back paint, the ad copy shouldn’t be about neck pain.
- All content should be authentic and real, avoid images and videos that look commercial
- Test as many creatives as you can.
- Comply with Facebook Policies we talked about before.
- Take photos with your own phone and simple designs in Canva.
STEP 5: How to create a good ad copy for ads?
We have two main ad formats: stories and feed. An ad copy is necessary only for Instagram and Facebook feeds. The text in your ad copy should be short, clear, with no typos. It should be written in comprehensible language – everyone should understand what you mean. But it also needs to be strong and sell your services.
Follow one of the 2 most used and effective strategies to write an ad text:
- AIDA = grab Attention (with a question, fact, offer), raise Interest (enumerate common “feels like”), build Desire to get your solution, and call to Action (schedule, book, etc).
- PmPHS (Pain, more Pain, Hope, Solution) – talk about migraines, how bad they can be, what are potential solutions, what are your best solution.
DO NOT COPY COMPETITORS! DO BETTER!
What you can mention in your ad copy for chiropractor ads:
- Experience of your doctors or clinic, certification, use words like certified, trusted, doctor
- Insurance accepted
- Your values and benefits: family-oriented care, First Adjustment, personalized Dr’s report, non-surgical & natural pain relief, focus on health, 100% natural healthcare
- Remind that it is better and cheaper to treat issues early!
- Underline the benefits of the technologies you use. Emphasize it with words: Hi-Tech, Breakthrough technology, We use different diagnostic tools like, etc.
- Mention your specialization, if you have any: treatment options for children and adults with ADHD
- Use trigger “money” – how much is the new client package?
- Work with fear and other emotions: Is it too much to ask to just feel normal?
- Work with objections about chiropractors:
Now, too many people think of chiropractic offices as a “Crack ‘n Go” where you come in with a bad neck or back – you get adjusted – and get sent on your way. While that might be true for some offices, we do things differently.
- Describe common symptoms to make sure people can associate themselves with the issue.
- If you are offering New Clients Promo, describe what is it:
We are offering new patients the following:
Chiropractic Consultation
FULL Spinal Evaluation
Doctor’s Report
Digital X-Rays (if needed)
25-Minute Stretching Session for just $19!
- mention the location of your offices, e.i. Our offices are conveniently located to serve patients near…
- your text should always contain a call to action phrase – E.i. Click to schedule now!
- If you have any famous patients who you can mention, Social proof works very well!
Make your text clear, short and friendly. Add emojis only if it is necessary, don't overload text with terms, contradictions and symbols.
Make sure your text is accurate, look at this example. Today is March but they are still advertising saying valid in January. What are your impression as potential client?
Some examples of texts for ads:
This is a good long read post, but technically it contains too much emojis:
This text has awesome idea, as it talks about reals case. BUT! No links will work in ad copy, address or phone will be impossible to copy. Instead of it, it is better to use call-to-action and make sure people will message them or book an appointment.
STEP 6: Choosing the right campaign objective
Facebook Ads manager has 11 objectives, 5 of them are good enough for chiropractor ads:
- Engagement – you promote a published post (not an IGTV video, not a carousel) to get more reactions and reach out to more people. It is a good option for regular promotions, building awareness, and warming up a cold target audience.
- Video – you promote an educational or any other video and Facebook remembers people who watched at least 50%. Then, you can target them with other ads.
- Lead generation – is a short application form to schedule an appointment. A great option if you do not have a landing page. Easy to set.
- Traffic – get people to visit your landing page. Facebook will show ads for those who are more likely to click. But clicks are not equal to leads, so be careful with this objective. If your funnel is built around a landing page, launch a Traffic campaign and wait until it will bring you at least 25, better 50 leads. Then you can switch to Conversion. This way Facebook will have more information about how to find the right audience.
- Conversion – people still visit your landing page, but now Facebook looks for those who are likely to take an action: schedule an exam, fill in contacts, etc.
Important note: To use Traffic or Conversion campaigns you must have a Facebook pixel on your website.
To avoid risks connected with landing pages, try to lead people directly to schedule a meeting or filling in contact forms by using Lead Generation campaign objective, or Traffic campaign with caledly or simple registration form as landing page.
Landing page should contain the same information as you promised in your ad, it should be short, clear and with no misleading information or additional conditions. It can contain extra details about consultation or services that will help a person to make final decision.
Note that about 50% of people can open your landing page but do not fill the contact form!
STEP 7: Facebook Ads settings for chiropractic offices
Before you launch any ads, you need to generate some ideas about your target audience, based on your existing clients, or clients you want to get.
- How old are they? Where do they live, do they have family?
- What are they fears, expectations, objections?
- What alternatives they have?
- What are their interests: are they concerned about ecology, or they study science?
- What are the best solution for them?
Try to think about 3-5 characters that will represent your target audience.
While setting up the audience settings on Facebook ads, try to fit within 500,000 people, not millions. Do not target very narrow audience - it will cost more and the ads will work slow.
With Facebook ads you are able to set demographics:
- location, where people live (not recently visited)
- age
- sex
- language
You can also set Detailed settings including interests, behaviour, job titles etc.
9 Facebook ads for chiropractors settings:
- Look-alike audience
You already have some clients. If you have at least 300 emails or phone numbers, you can use them to create a look-alike audience – people who are acting same way on Facebook that your existing customers.
You can create look-alike audience based on who interacted with your Instagram account, your website, people who watched you video ads, who filled your Lead gen form, etc.
Each look-alike (LAL) audience should contain 1%, but you can create as many LAL audiences as you want and test them all individually – 1 LAL = 1 ad set.
Normally, this audience bring cheap leads.
2. Custom audience
The same audiences we used to create LAL, we can actually use to promote our other services and products.
Remind your old clients about check-up, new office, discounts, events, etc.
- Detailed targeting: main relevant interests
Each of your services targets specific conditions, and it is very likely that Facebook has a relevant interest. If you’re targeting people who suffer from migraines, you will look for:
You can exclude organisations and societies to make sure you do not target your colleagues, but only potential clients.
This will create you a lot of ideas, see how many relevant interests Facebook offers (don’t mix them all in one ad set):
4. Detailed targeting: Parents
Facebook lets us target parents with kids within a specific age range. You can target all parents, or narrow the audience and combine the fact of having kids with ADHD interest, for example. It might help you to reach out to parents with kids with ADHD.
5. Geofencing
Choose about 5 miles around your clinic and target all people in this radius. This is a good thing to start and build awareness, but this audience in limited, and you either will need to renew creatives very often, or you may annoy people to the point they will never come.
6. Broad audience
Broad audience means all genders, almost all ages without any detailed targeting settings.
This is the only option you have, if your clinic is in small town – change creatives very often, study your audience very well, and keep the audience warm.
If you are testing ads in a big city, and you have quite a big budget, you can also use a broad audience, but this will give you no information about what specific interest works. On the other hand, you will be able to conclude about age, sex, devices, placements.
7. Expanded audience
Expanded audience – it is kind of automatically created audience that Facebook thinks will interact with your ads. You don’t know which interests will Facebook use, but this approach can be quite effective.
It is the easiest way to go if you don’t know anything about ads. But it will also give you almost no space for optimization.
How to set auto audience:
8. Detailed Targeting: close interests
We can think that people who might be interested in chiropractic, are also interested in health, in general, women can be interested in beauty and cosmetology.
9. Detailed Targeting: Sports
Men and women practicing sport or Crossfit are very likely to need you: massage, injuries, pain. You can target them with a specific offer.
MORE TIPS:
- exclude existing clients, it will save your money. Create a custom audience based on emails or phone numbers and exclude it.
- work with a look-alike to get cheaper results
- if you target a region or countries, always check delivery and results by locations in Ads manager – you can exclude expensive cities with no leads.
- always use retargeting.
- don’t expect immediate results. Every test teaches you more about your product and audience.
- Use dynamic ads to automatically rotate texts and creatives to get better results.
Step 8: How much Facebook ads for chiropractors costs?
To plan a budget, you need:
- know your business model and costs
- know your unit economics to know what cost of the acquisition of 1 client is acceptable.
- have a financial plan and calculate, based on average conversions, how much money you should invest to get it.
- or simply put aside a spare $300-$500 to start.
Studies led by WordStream show that the average cost per click in healthcare is $1.32. The average conversion rate is around 11%. The average cost per action in healthcare is $12.31.
Ex. if we have $300, we can get ±227 clicks and ±24 leads. If you were advertising a special price for a new client $39, so you can get around $936 (or $636 minus ads cost).
Please note, that this is a very average calculation, your clicks and results can absolutely be more or less expensive, and they can be completely different!
Location and scale of the market also play a role: for a small market (less than 100 000 people), you are likely to spend around $300 monthly. The budget grows as your market does. It also will be bigger if you have big competitors who invest a lot in ads.
Only preliminary tests will show you the real situation and you will be able to set KPI for ads and new budget. Without test – it is only our hypothesis!
Step 9: How to analyze the metrics and results?
On regular basis you or your ads manager should check these metrics and adjust ads to get better results:
Reach more than 1000 per day Results / Leads at least 25-50 for each ad set Cost per results - as low as you can acheive but effective in terms of qualified leads. Average cost per click in healthcare is around $1.32 CTR - more than 1%, average CTR for all industries is about 0.8% Frequency - 2-3 max, the best is 1 Budget - enough to get at least 2-3 leads when you're testing, then, based on your strategy. CPO - how much 1 real client costs you.
| Facebook metrics | Note |
|---|---|
| Reach | = how many people saw your ad. Should grow fast enough. If during 1 day you’ve reached less than 1000 people either the audience is extremely narrow (e.i. 10 000 people) or your budget is not enough to compete. |
| Results | The actual number of how many clicks or leads you have. THe learning process needs to get 50 results as soon as possible. |
| Cost per click | CPC = spent budget / all clicks |
| Cost per results | Either cost per click or cost per lead (CPL) |
| CTR | Click-through-rate. How appealing and relevant is your ad. And, in the end, how cheap it is too. |
| Amount spend and budget | Monitor your spendings based on results. |
| CPO | CPO – cost per order. It is not a Facebook metric, but you should always consider it. How much every client costs you? Does it fit in your economics? |
| Frequency | The best way is to keep the frequency at 2-3 times per person. Do not annoy people, it is about your reputation. |
| CPM | Cost per mile (people). This metric can grow if you have big competitors with bigger budgets, or the frequency is more than 2-3 times per person. |
How to optimize facebook advertising for chiropractors:
- Test as many creatives as you can to get higher CTR and lower Cost per results
- Optimize campaigns for conversions once you’ve reached 50 results.
- Launch retarget to optimize budget and retain people.
- Test different lead generation forms to get more warm clients
- Turn off ineffective ads.
- Test new offers and ideas, be unique.
- Exclude new clients from ads.
- Monitor frequency and CPM and change creative on regular basis. Try new formats.
- Always check actual trends and spy on competitors.