A Simple Referral System That Brings Better Chiropractic Patients

You can spend all day tweaking Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, and funnels and still miss the highest-converting growth lever in chiropractic: referrals. The hard truth is that most patients love your care, rave in the office, then walk out and instantly move on with life. If you don’t create a moment and a system for referrals, they won’t “just happen” consistently.

I walk you through a practical referral marketing system you can run every week inside a chiropractic office, starting with the best times to ask: right after a patient win, during the first few visits when excitement is high, and at progress exams when results are undeniable. You’ll hear simple scripts that feel natural, plus ways to educate patients so they know the full range of conditions and life stages you help, from family care to posture and mobility.

We also get tactical with referral cards and “gift of health” vouchers, QR codes for easy sharing, patient appreciation events, bring-a-friend ideas, social media referral posts, testimonial marketing, and low-stress referral contests that follow regulations. Finally, we talk team culture: celebrating wins, building confidence, thanking your “super fans,” and making gratitude a repeatable part of your practice growth.

If you want the templates I mention, email me at info at enrico d.com, and check out Marketing 101 for Chiropractors on Facebook. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more chiropractors can build steady new patient referrals.

1. Join Marketing 101 for Chiropractors Facebook Group here
2. Learn more at EnricoD.com
3. Book a free discovery call with Enrico to level up your business

Transcript

Why Referrals Beat Paid Ads

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Every chiropractor wants more new patients. Most turn to Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, AEO, community events. But the truth is the highest converting new patient you will ever get is a referral. You know this. If you've been in chiropractic business for more than two years, you know a referral is the best way to build a practice. Most offices think referrals just happen, though, and that's the issue. But the truth is that most successful practices intentionally create systems that stimulate referrals every single week. Think about that. What are you doing to stimulate referrals? In this episode, I'm going to break down exact things chiropractors can do constantly to stimulate referrals from their patients. Welcome to another episode of Marketing 101 for chiropractors. I'm Dr. Enrico Dolchicori. And each and every week I help you grow and scale your business or at least stay accountable in growing and scaling your business. Referral marketing is so important. I've done a couple episodes on this, and I've even had guests on the show about referral marketing, but it's nice to tap back into once or twice a year and just get everyone back on the same page. The referral patients trust you already because someone they love or respect referred you. So immediately your trust goes through the roof. They already believe in chiropractic because of whoever did the referring. They have social proof because your name's out there. They handed them your business card. Um, you they close at a much higher rate. They're walking in saying, hey, Doc, I trust you already. Tell me what I need to do to get better if you think you can help me. And they stay longer in care. A referral patient is often worth three, four, five X more than what your lead generation is getting for most of the marketing channels that you use, which means referral marketing isn't optional in our industry. It should be a core growth strategy. And that's what this episode is all about. How do we build systems inside of our office that continually stimulate growth of our new patient acquisition? Now, a healthy business, we've heard this from every mentor, every guru, everybody that says this, should not need tons of new patients because then they have a leak issue in their business where they're just cycling through a very acute type practice. But what if you run an acute type practice? Then you need to scale up your marketing. And if you run a corrective type practice, you need a certain flow. And if you truly run a wellness practice, you don't need much more new patients. So the biggest referral mistake chiropractors make is that they never ask for these referrals. They I don't know if we're just too humble, we just don't want to ask. We feel awkward bringing it up, and we assume happy patients will just naturally refer everyone they want. And I've learned something over my almost 20 years, 19 years as a chiropractor, is and in working in two different countries, uh Canada and the US, different there's a different psyche that happens in Canada. I felt like the way society kind of worked with your neighbors is that assuming people are happy kind of worked up there. Because they really did talk about you. You were the thing to talk about. In America, it's not. And it all comes down to the perception of value and money. It really, the money beliefs that are different in America, that are different around the world. So let's not get into my philosophy about money in the US, but it changes the game. Assuming that happy patients will refer is dumb in the United States because they won't. It's so transactional in the United States. We expect that when I give you my credit card or I give you cash or whatever it is or direct or Bitcoin, that the service is going to be good. I'm paying you for something back. I'm gonna pay you for a cheeseburger, I better get a cheeseburger. I pay you for a chiropractic adjustment, I better get a chiropractic adjustment. Then I can judge the quality on my own later, whether that cheeseburger was good or whether that adjustment was good based on my preemptive beliefs. And it's very different here. So once that transaction is made, they paid you, and that there is no thinking about you once they get into the parking lot. It's gone. It's absolutely gone. Then they come in for the next time and they rave while they're there. They rave about how great they feel, how that really helped them, how much better their life is. And you're sitting there being like, Yeah, we are the bomb. And then you should refer a hundred people, right? You're assuming that. And then they leave out the front door. And guess what? They're thinking about going to pick up their kid. Traffic. How they're gonna make a left turn onto that busy road that's right in front of your office. That's they're on to the next. And that's the way it works. So you cannot assume that they're just gonna refer to you. We have to create, we have to create a system, many systems. People are busy and they're distracted, even if they love you, they forget the moment they walk out that front door. If you want referrals, you must create reminders and opportunities for people to refer. So let's go over the best moments in practice to do this. Let's start there because you could do this today. You could do this right now in the office. I know this launches every Friday, but but uh on Monday in the office, you can do this. When a patient gets great results, when they're raving about you in that moment, pain relief, sleeping better, headaches are so much better, improved mobility. I look at my shoulder, Doc, I could reach, I can shampoo my hair. Uh, that's awesome to hear. This is what you're gonna tell them. That is so awesome to hear, Mary. If you know someone dealing with something similar, we'd love the opportunity to help them too. They don't know this is an option for them. Can you help me tell the world more about this? Start with the people you love first and let's build from there. Can you do that for me? I say this once a week to people. Tell people about that. Did you know? Did you even know we could do that? I didn't even think about that with chiropractic. I came to you for my low back. I didn't think you could help with a frozen shoulder. And then you move on from there. Just saying that first things. Patients are excited about care when they when they're getting started with you, those first few visits, day two, day three, day four, that they're excited at that time. As you start care here, many of our patients refer families and friends with similar issues. We're a full family office. Did you know kids can get adjusted here? Don't wait for the kids to come in. Maybe they are a 10:30 a.m. patient. They like those Tuesday, Thursdays at like 10 in between 10 and 11. They're never going to see the kids coming in because the kids are always at school. So maybe stimulating that or having children's toys in the office or children's posters in the office, and then adults start saying, You take care of kids here, that's great referral marketing as well. And then the best, I think the best time is at the progress exams. Patients see progress, you show them progress, whether it's subjective, objective, whatever you're doing. You're doing great, Mary. If you know someone dealing with a similar issue, we'd love to help them. Now, you see, you think that's silly listening to it on a podcast, but think about the last time you did this. You'll be like, oh man, you know what? I don't even ask for them. It's been months since I've asked for a referral. You're not, you're not begging, you're not uh petty for asking for referrals. You run a business. People understand that principle, but they also have experienced how good you are. So referral systems that actually work. Now we're thinking outside the box. The referral cards, these things are simple but effective. I mean, we always we've always used the business card, but you got to turn your business card into a strategy. Patient gets a card that says, share this with someone who needs chiropractic. It could be a card, it could be a small voucher, it could be um, it doesn't have to be a big flyer, big piece of paper, but offer something like a free consultation, half off. We we call them the gift of health. And if you want the gift of health, just email me at info at enrico d.com and say, hey, what was that gift of health thing you were talking about? And I'll send you a PDF that you can customize and print them yourself or your office. Brand it the way you want. And then what we do is half off the exam. So we charge$200 for an exam. People can then get this, they come on and they get$100 off their exam because they were referred by Mary. And there's a line down the middle saying referred by. And Mary puts her name on there, Mary S. And we remember that Mary did that. So they'll get like either a free console, the half-off exam, new patient special. The key point with this is make it easy for patients to hand something to someone. You can even create this digital, you can do QR codes, you can get tech, you can get fun with this. You can have a QR code that they take a picture of, and then they send that as a picture text to the referrals that they they're thinking about. Whatever. Patient appreciation events. I've been a fan of these my whole career, but I don't know if it's old school or not, but just inviting your best patients, the referrers are referrers. Uh, I forget if it was Reggie Gold or who said, you know, people who go to church go to church. People who go to church go to lectures. People who go to lectures go to go to lectures. Makes sense. And that is those are the people you want to invite it to your best referring patients, your best patients, the patients that pay. They don't question your wellness plans, they don't question your membership plans. They come on in, they refer their kids to get adjusted. You have a patient appreciation event, uh, like an open house, health workshops, kids' day, whatever you want to do, ladies' night, whatever it is, encourage patients to bring guests. Do this twice a year. Have a seasonal thing that you do spring and fall, you know, during the holiday seasons, whatever it is, referral opportunities in a relaxed setting come more natural when you're doing this. And then the people who they bring to these events, the they end up signing up anyways. They're like, I came here because they wanted me to meet you, and this is just a fun event. So we're coming here because it's a great opportunity for you. You got the bouncy houses, the kids are bouncing. I can talk to you for five minutes and see if you can help me and my family. Uh, bring a friend, bring, bring a fet friend days to your appointments. Bring a friend to come check out how you get adjusted. If you guys do something cool now, like the Blair technique is something I've been able to just poster in my office. It's like a campaign. Come on in, watch this adjustment, watch the process of how we analyze, assess, and correct with the adjustment on this. And they'll bring people in, they're like, What's going on? And why, why, why is it so dramatic? Why do you spin like that? And they'll ask questions and you can sit there and talk about how this thing works. And it works really well. And this is this happened naturally. I didn't even ask for people to bring friends, they would just bring their friends, like, you need to come with me to my appointment. What a great idea to stimulate that, have bring a friend to Cairo Day. Uh, you can do an evening thing, you could do, you know, bring a friend or family member for a complimentary posture check if they do come in. Or maybe if it doesn't work with your flow, when the friend comes in, they can then have like a special at the front where they book and be like, yeah, I want to get assessed for that too. And then you can book them in in your normal flow as a new patient and offer them something for that if you want, or give a give a referral to a referral stimulation to the referee who brought them in. Social media referral posts. These should just be in your constant cycle of uh social media posts. Tag someone who needs an adjustment. It's a great way to get some activity on your posts. Who do you know dealing with back pain? Who do you know dealing with migraines? Who do you know dealing with sleep issues? Who do you know? And then have some piece of formal information there that's useful about sleep and tying it to how chiropractic can help, and then asking for people to tag on there. It works it works better on Instagram. Referral contests. You can have contests. Refer a friend this month to be entered to win blank. Prizes could be massage guns, uh wellness baskets, a free month of care. I wouldn't do the I wouldn't do the care stuff for most states. I wouldn't give away any any care. Gift baskets go really well. Uh the massage guns are a great thing. Everyone loves winning one of those. Uh easy stuff, 50 to 100 bucks. You can have this cool gift basket that you give away to people. Always, you know, always full follow regulations with whatever you're doing with that. But there's usually no problem with having like a raffle type thing for people to come in. We used to give away barbecues and do all this fun stuff in the summers. Testimonial marketing. Uh, the best, uh, a great way to do this is video testimonials, leveraging them to stimulate more referrals on your YouTube channel and social media. Social media posts, before and after stories. I came in with ABC, and after so long, I left with feeling ABC. If you know someone dealing with this, share this video with them. Videos work really well. You'll see it cross-post on social media. Your patients will cross-post it and they'll tag and say, they'll send it, they'll share it, and they'll say, This is my Cairo. Listen to this, this is what I was talking about. The Blair technique, the pediatric technique, the craniosacral technique, the the why they just babies, why you can go when you're pregnant. Um, they'll share those videos. They're actually quite useful. And you should cycle them and have them going routinely. And then the family discussions. Just how's your family doing? Usually the husband's the last one to come in and get checked, but just stimulating that every time. How's the husband? How's your husband doing? Oh, he's still dealing with it. I try and get him in here. I'm like, hey, you know, next week we're doing a little promo. If he comes in, we can do this, this, and this. And you just offer the same thing you offer everyone, the gift of health. Uh, if you're is your kid or your spouse under chiropractic care? Do your kids play sports? At the front, we have a whiteboard where we're always putting up stats and facts and why you should always be getting checked and why kids should be getting checked, because of their tablets, because of their iPads, because of their posture, because of sitting in a desk, because of a position of where they are in the classroom, vision, all these things. The office culture around referrals has to be unanimous through your entire team. So these are all ideas on how to stimulate referrals, but now you got to get your team on the same page as the mission and vision of this. Why is the culture important? Because your team can actually derail the referral process. That's what we talked about systems and procedures in your office. Referral growth happens when the entire team believes in asking for referrals. For some of you, you're like, oh no, that makes sense. My team will do it. For others, you're like, oh man, we're so bad at that. Uh, I don't feel like my team is on the same page. This is a great chance to sit down on your next team meeting next week and put that into the team meeting and be like, how where do we all sit in our belief system about referrals? How do we feel about that? And how are we processing the referrals that come into an office and how are we stimulating? So train your staff to celebrate patient wins. When you you get to hear that in the treatment area uh when someone shares it with you, but sharing those wins every week with your team, just write I write them down on a quick sticky and then I transfer them to my my weekly meeting notes so that next week when I go through it, I bring up, I bring up some of the wins that came up. Hey, did you guys hear about Mary? Uh frozen shoulder for like four years, and now she can like shampoo her hair again. That's a huge win. Uh, encourage patients to share their stories and their care with others and talk about chiropractic confidently. That last tip, uh, as I get more and more of these students from life and and Palmer and uh coming in as they're finishing up their preceptorships. Um, we just routinely have a preceptor all the time. And the, you know, you see the confidence there and you're like, well, that makes sense. They're still working on it. But then you see docs four or five years out of practice or even longer, where the confidence is still not there. And that has a trickle-down effect to how many referrals and how well you get referrals. It comes from confidence, it really does. Like you should bring them in here because chiropractic can help. Um, and then starting a conversation with that. Every office has super fans. You guys can right now think of three patients in your office that are super fans. Patients who love chiropractic, they love you, they love talking about you constantly, and they bring in multiple referrals. You know them, encourage them, thank them. That's the most important thing. Thank them. And you guys, they are they are happy with a thank you card in the mail, nothing in it. Thank you for the referral. Thanks for bringing in that. Acknowledge them. They love that. They can become your best marketing channel uh just because of the connections that they have. They're part of a rotary club, they're part of a women's group, they're part of whatever it is in the community that you don't have access to, they can be your vocal point for that. Gratitude and acknowledgement. Always thank patients who refer. Always. The thank you card. You can even, we sometimes send gift cards. If I know where their favorite restaurant is, I will send them a gift card to that. I don't care if they're into Chick-fil-A, like it's not about health. Gosh, guys, I don't want to get on a side tangent here, but you you know, when you work with other docs and associates and uh just the belief systems that get in there, like, oh no, no, no, no, that's that's unhealthy food. Uh, we don't want to we don't want to support that. Yeah, but they but they like ice cream, man. Like they're huge ice cream fans. They love the the vanilla ice cream at you know the the Dutch place down the road. They just love it. I'm gonna get them a gift card for that. And then you've got people like that. I mean, that that has more love behind it because not only did you listen to them, you know where their favorite place is, you sent it to them. These things go a long way. Uh, and then public appreciation with permission on the whiteboard that's there. Thank you to Nancy, Rebecca, James, and Mike for referring patients this month to our office. People who uh refer more when they feel appreciated. It's a psychological thing. It goes back to the beginning of the podcast. People are distracted and moving on to the next because that's how life is. Uh, when they feel appreciated, when you can create some emotional tie for them, they'll the chances of remembering are become higher, become way higher. And just and education, making sure patients are educated in what you do. Yeah, they they can pinpoint A and B for what they came in with, low back pain, difficult waking up in the morning and stiffness, and then that got better. Now they know from personal, from personally going through it, that they can refer people with back pain and stiffness in the morning. But what what about other things that uh they may not know about that chiropractor can help? So knowing where they are in their life is really important too. Just this episode is about just becoming a little bit bringing more consciousness back to inside the office. We always talk about getting patients on the outside. We're always searching outside in. Isn't that funny with chiropractors? Like we know it's inside out, but we search outside in. It's it's funny. Go inside out. Your practice has been built. You have a funnel of people, you have emails, you have all these things. Start on the inside, change the discussions about you know the weather in spring and what people are doing for spring break and Easter, and change it back to chiropractic and stimulate the referrals. What watch what happens when you become consistent in this? We chase the most current marketing tactic, but referral marketing has been the most powerful growth engine since the beginning of chiropractic. If you implement even a few of these strategies that we talked about today continuously, you can turn your existing patient-based into your most powerful marketing system. And then for any of you that need help, for kind of for you listening that need help with any ads, funnels, or marketing systems, you can join the marketing 101 community for more information. We're always there. You can always email me. Some of you text me on the weekends. I love answering your questions and how to make these things better. But focus on referral marketing, focus on the people that you've built in your community already around you and lean on them a little bit. It takes a lot of pressure off of your marketing systems when things start to slow down or anything like that, and you need to push for more new new patients. Um, it becomes an organic streamline on there. If you continuously nurture it like you do with your marketing, uh, you'll find this two avenue balance that starts to happen where you get three, four, five, six, seven new patient referrals every month that just work well. Sending uh our system that that works well, just as on autopilot, a new patient comes in. We have a Google Sheet that we follow. Did they or did they not sign a care plan? Did they come to their day three appointment? And then if it's yes, they automatically get the gift of health and and a welcome letter in an envelope mailed to their home with a$5 coffee card to either Starbucks or whatever the low, we pick Starbucks just because they're everywhere. With a Starbucks card, it gets to them, it says, Welcome to chiropractic. Healing takes time. We're here for you. Take a moment to relax, go grab a tea or a coffee. And this next one's on us. We're so excited to get started with your care. And they have two gifts of health. If you think of anyone else that needs help and is, you know, struggling with the healthcare system, tell them to give us a call and we'll give them half off the exam that you paid full price for. Thanks to you. You will save them$100. So they are the ones that are saving them the money. Um, so and that's the letter. And again, email me, say, hey, send me that letter. I'll even send you a$5 gift card to Starbucks if you ask. Go for it. Ask. You'll be surprised what happens when you make the ask. Uh, people want to help each other. People are good. People definitely do want to help each other. And I and I love helping you guys too. So if you need anything, info at enrico d.com, marketing one on one for chiropractors on Facebook. We have a group, uh, the podcast, the YouTube channel, tons of stuff on how to just go and do it do it yourself. And then me if you ever need me. Stay well, stay healthy.