Local Physician Advertising: How Doctors, Dentists and Chiropractors Are Spending Budgets

Digital Spending Trends for Doctors, Dentists and Chiropractors

According to BIA Advisory Services, the total digital local spending by this group is expected to reach $1.5 billion by 2025. Of that, they will spend over $68 million with radio stations for digital products, up 2.2% over 2024. Additionally, they’ll invest over $77 million in OTT/CTV, representing a 12.2% increase.

These represent significant opportunities for local media sellers. These advertisers want to reach specific audiences within your market but may be unsure about the best approach to take.

Within digital outside of OTT/CTV, these businesses spend the most in these categories:

• Search
• Display
• Classified and vertical
• Video

Even though these categories represent the bulk of spending, it doesn’t mean they are the “right” tactics. It’s simply what they have always done, but this doesn’t always correlate with performance.

Bringing Strategic Campaigns to the Discussion on Digital

Another concern is that advertising efforts may be in siloes. They may manage some in-house, use agencies or buy from local media sellers. This creates gaps and challenges.

First, there’s no cohesiveness when each tactic operates on its own. Second, it’s more expensive than an integrated ad campaign. Third, reporting isn’t consolidated, so it isn’t easy to evaluate the campaign as a whole.

You can support their entire digital ad buy and radio. What you recommend starts with their goals as a business, which could include:

• Patient acquisition
• Patient retention
• Brand awareness
• Recruitment

Each of these would have different ad type mixes to achieve the goal. For patient acquisition, the goal is to drive traffic to their website or call to make an appointment. For brand awareness, it’s just reminding the community of their services and reputation.

You can use our ad mix tool to determine what would be the ideal media buy for these. Since patients are a somewhat different audience than consumers, this is a nuance you don’t want to overlook.

Discuss with these advertisers who their ideal patient is demographically and what their attributes are. It’s also crucial to ask about the words they use to describe those who seek care. All these things matter when building an advertising plan.

Determining What’s Worked and What Hasn’t

SEM (search engine marketing) is a favorite tactic for physician local advertising. However, it can be expensive and ineffective without the right strategy and optimization. If they aren’t seeing great results, find out why by asking about:

• How often do they refresh keywords, and are they using negative keywords?
• What creative works best and why?
• Do they receive many calls from search ads?

SEM can be a key part of the ad plan, but investing too much money here without any guardrails can create waste.

These advertisers also buy a lot of display ads. Display is a basic tactic that can drive people to their website. One thing they may not be considering but should is geofencing. It may be advantageous to use their banner and video ads in geofencing campaigns, as well.

Focus on areas where their ideal patients would be. Chiropractors often have many athletes as clients. Gyms and other areas of physical fitness could be good areas to fence.

Local Physician Advertising Allocates Too Much to Direct Mail

The dollars they spend on digital are still in the shadow of direct mail. According to the BIA forecast, this segment had the largest share at 29.2%. There are some pros to direct mail, but paper, ink and postage are becoming more expensive.

It’s a good idea to remind advertisers of this, as well as simply ask about the results from mailings. Some of those dollars could be better spent on OTT/CTV or geofencing. All of these tactics are much easier to measure, as well.

Helping Local Health Care Providers Focus on Their Strengths

No matter the company’s goals or budget, the campaign will falter without a strong message. You can be a source of inspiration here, tapping into what matters. If they have strong patient satisfaction scores and testimonials, these should be front and center.

If they specialize in a rare treatment, this could be a campaign. Other ideas that may be relevant include:

• Extended hours: Some dentists have Saturday appointments.
• Discount rates for the uninsured: Many plans don’t cover chiropractic services, so these providers may have special pricing.
• Quick appointments: This can be a barrier for new patient acquisition. If the practice has immediate availability, this is something to talk about in ads.