Nowadays, millions of Americans rely more on holistic approaches such as acupuncture to experience complete body healing instead of merely solving a single symptom. In fact, the latest statistics reveal that roughly 11,623 acupuncture businesses exist across various states. Most likely, the numbers would continue to increase in the next few years.
As such, if you’re running an acupuncture clinic or if you’re an active practitioner, you will need to implement the right acupuncture marketing strategies. This step becomes extra critical to staying relevant and ensuring that you reach more patients in this increasingly competitive niche.
So, where do you start? What necessary steps do you need to take so you can expand your market? Learn more about these and more as we list our top 8 marketing tips for acupuncturists below.
More than 40 years have passed since acupuncture started getting traction in the healthcare industry. Each year, more and more patients feel interested in trying alternative medicine to deal with recurring pain or health issues. Even so, spreading awareness about acupuncture is still quite relevant today.
It gives patients and their loved ones insights into what they should expect from acupuncture therapy. It also shares a message of hope to those suffering from long-term conditions that acupuncture might be able to address.
Now, to do this successfully, you’ll need to tap into content marketing. With good quality and well-planned content, you can drive people to visit your website (if you already have one), interact with you on your social media pages and even reply to the email newsletters you send. It also helps you build your authority and gain your patient’s trust.
Here are some quick content marketing tips for acupuncture clinics and practitioners:
A website is a must-have for any business, regardless of the niche or industry. As more people turn to search engines to find answers to questions, it becomes crucial to have a website that provides them with what they need.
While you may argue that a social media page is more than enough for content distribution, a website offers more benefits. For starters, unlike your social media pages, you have complete control over your website. It also helps you to consolidate your content and ensure that they’re all organized and searchable.
In short, your website can quickly become your audience’s go-to platform to access valuable resources such as:
Your website can also double as a sales, marketing, and customer support tool. Many people see it as a sign of credibility as well.
Please take note that when you create a website, you’ll need to ensure that it converts. To do that, you can follow these website conversion tips:
We highly recommend building a website with a professional design firm. If you would like to partner with us on your website design or redesign click here. We focus on clarifying your message, reaching the right people, and building your business.
Search engine optimization or SEO is undoubtedly among the most vital acupuncture marketing tactics you’ll need to work on to boost site traffic. Basically, SEO refers to a set of techniques that helps a website appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). It has three respective areas that play a specific role in improving your online presence:
This aspect aims to build keyword relevance on each of the website pages. It allows you to optimize your website content for your target users and the different search engines (Google, Bing, etc.).
As the word suggests, off-page SEO is a group of practices that you do outside the website. These practices are essential in building your credibility as a source of information on acupuncture and holistic healthcare.
Technical SEO covers every technical aspect of a website. It includes the server speed, redirects, 404-page errors, coding errors, site structure, and sitemaps. All of these are essential to getting your pages crawled, indexed, and ranked for your target keyphrases.
There are website plugins like Yoast and RankMath that provide you with a list of guidelines in optimizing a website for search. Here are some of the fundamental SEO tips you can use on your website:
Learning what keywords patients use to know about acupuncture therapy will help you understand what specific types of content you need to produce. It also enables you to designate specific keywords for your web pages.
This applies to all webpages and blog posts you will publish. Doing so can help you encourage patients to click through your link when they find you on search.
This will help you understand the most crucial points you need to work on. SEO audits should be highly comprehensive. It should include a report on technical SEO issues, on-page SEO improvements, and link building opportunities for off-page SEO.
As you can see there is a lot to good search engine optimization (SEO). If you would like some help we can provide you with high quality search engine optimization services to help you attract more new patients consistently.
Millions of people look for directions online when they want to go to places like an acupuncture therapy clinic near them. Hence, you must ensure that your practice gets pulled up among your area's available listings. To do that, you’ll need to work on your Google My Business (GMB) listing.
Have you claimed your listing on GMB yet? Does your business even appear on Google Maps? The earlier you can claim or create your GMB listing, the better!
Once you have your GMB page ready, here’s what we recommend you should do:
Social media serves as their daily source of entertainment, news, and information for millions of people. On top of that, social media has become one of the main channels used for marketing businesses.
If you're not tapping into social media marketing (SMM) yet, you may be missing many opportunities to make meaningful connections with your potential patients. You can use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to spread awareness about natural healing through acupuncture. You can also use your channels for content distribution when you create new content on your site.
Other than that, here are other benefits of having an active social media page for your acupuncture clinic:
Videos are among the fastest and most effective ways you can connect with an audience. In a 3-to-5-minute span, you can deliver vital information that could drive action, like booking an acupuncture consultation or encouraging clinic visits.
Essentially, it’s similar to publishing a blog post. However, instead of using text, you use visual cues and animated graphics to pique your audience's interest.
If you’re not yet entirely convinced of the benefits of video marketing, here are some quick stats and facts:
There are many ways you can use video marketing for your acupuncture clinic. Here are some exciting and practical ideas you can try:
Many businesses are quick to jump to conclusions when hearing about paid ads. Some see it as expensive and ineffective. Others are too intimidated by the process alone. If this sounds familiar, then you should check out the stats on paid ads from Sprout Social and WebFX below:
Paid ads can provide you with fast results if you set up an effective campaign. It can aid you in boosting brand discovery so more patients know about your clinic. Pad advertisements also come in handy in amplifying your current acupuncture marketing efforts, especially on search engines and on social media.
Reputation management is critical to every online acupuncture marketing strategy. This is because many people look through online referrals and customer reviews when deciding about a business. In fact, marketing research shows that 50 percent of customers tend to question a local company's quality and credibility when they see negative reviews left by previous clients.
As a result, leading a proactive approach to managing negative feedback from unhappy patients must maintain your credibility. Here are some actionable steps for managing your online reputation:
Creating a sound and effective marketing plan for an acupuncture business requires a lot of work indeed! The entire process could take up a considerable chunk of your time and resources.
Thankfully, you don’t need to go through this journey alone. Instead of worrying about the technicalities of marketing your acupuncture business, you can focus on what you do best – providing relief, hope, and reassurance to your patients.
At Hope and Healing Solutions we are focused on helping holistic businesses throughout the world. We focus on helping you reach more people, especially those who are in dire need of your services.
By analyzing market data, checking out your industry competitors, and understanding the essential goals and KPIs you have for your practice, we can create and implement a customized acupuncture marketing approach.
Want to start amplifying your reach today? Get in touch with our team, and let’s begin planning the best approach in marketing your acupuncture business.
