Summer Marketing for Chiropractors: How One Clinic Hit 104 New Patients During the Summer Slump

[00:00:00] So last July, a clinic owner looks at his books and sees, well, the exact thing every chiropractor dreads, right? The massive- Yeah … steep drop in new patient appointments. Oh, yeah. The infamous summer slowdown. It’s brutal. It is. But instead of, you know, slashing his marketing budget or just sending his staff home early, he did something completely counterintuitive.

He bought 50 hot dogs. 50 hot dogs. And he puts on this l- loud, crazy Hawaiian shirt Hauls a piece of screening equipment to a local apartment pool and, um, ended up breaking his clinic’s all-time record. Yeah, 104 new patients in a single month. Which is just wild. It is, but it completely shatters that long-held industry myth that you just, you know, have to accept a seasonal dip in revenue.

Like, the patients are still out there. Their daily geography has just shifted. Right. Welcome to The Chiropractic Deep Dive, proudly presented as a part of the Successful Chiro podcast. We are coming to you straight from the team at Five Star Management, a premier [00:01:00] chiropractic consulting company. And our entire mission here is helping you, the practice owner, break through those plateaus, scale your clinic, and ultimately smash your goals.

Exactly. And today, we are giving you exclusive access to the insights from an internal Zoom master class led by the phenomenal Dr. Noel Lloyd, and the focus is entirely on summer marketing. Yeah. The central problem Dr. Lloyd tackled is what the industry basically calls the summertime blues. It’s the worst.

Right? When June, July, and August roll around, your patients’ highly structured routines just evaporate. I mean, kids are out of school, families are packing up the SUV for vacation, and those, um, predictable Tuesday afternoon appointments just suddenly disappear. The clinic gets really quiet. Okay, let’s unpack this.

Yeah. Because Dr. Lloyd made it very clear that before we can give you the blueprint for, like, outdoor events and community outreach, we really have to address the internal bottleneck. Absolutely. And that bottleneck is how you, the clinic owner, actually [00:02:00] conceptualize the summer season. Yeah, because the most sophisticated marketing tactic in the world is going to fail if the practitioner implementing it subconsciously believes, well, that it won’t work.

Right. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Exactly. So during the master class, Dr. Lloyd hammered home this core operating principle, which is record keepers are record breakers. I love that phrase. It’s so good. Basically, if you want to obliterate your summer slump, you first have to know the exact metrics of your absolute best new patient month.

Like, you need that baseline. Yeah. And he shared this fantastic retrospective from his early days in practice back when hitting, um, seven patients a day on a $7 office call felt like this monumental achievement. A $7 office call is just wild to think about now. Oh, totally. But it really highlights the trajectory of growth, you know.

Because on that very same Zoom, you had participants sharing their current record months, ranging from 18 new patients to 81, [00:03:00] all the way up to that one participant hitting 104. Right. And setting that baseline proves to your brain that high volume is physically possible in your specific clinic, no matter the season.

But the danger of the summer season is how easily clinic owners just, like, accept defeat. Dr. Lloyd identified the number one marketing mistake as simply surrendering to the calendar. Oh, for sure. The collective industry just sighs, assumes everyone is at the beach, and decides to coast until September.

And that surrender leads directly to the second mistake, which is failing to keep the event calendar full. Right. And then the third mistake is purely logistical, honestly. It’s lacking a weather backup plan. For tent thing. Yes. Dr. Lloyd practically begged participants to just spend two hundred dollars on an open-sided ten by ten tent so that, you know, a random Tuesday rain shower doesn’t just derail an entire week of community outreach.

Yeah. And the other logistical piece was forgetting to have a first string and second [00:04:00] string coverage plan for when your community outreach assistant or your doctors take their own summer vacations. Because they will take vacations, right? Yeah. Right. But wait, I struggle to buy that whole premise a little bit.

Yeah. I wanna push back here. Okay. Go for it. If my town literally empties out for the summer, like if people are physically driving out of state for two weeks at a time, no amount of positive mindset or a two hundred dollar tent is going to magically put bodies in my waiting room. Aren’t we just kind of pretending a very real logistical problem Doesn’t exist?

Like, you wouldn’t forfeit a baseball game just because you saw a cloudy sky, but if there’s a hurricane, you don’t play? Well, what’s fascinating here is that treating your marketing like a seasonal thermostat- Mm. You know, turning it down just ’cause the weather gets warm, is exactly why clinics freeze to death in August.

Freeze to death in August. Yeah. Right. You have to treat your marketing like a generator. When the main power grid goes down, which in this case is your regular patient routine, the generator has to kick in the hardest. The town doesn’t entirely [00:05:00] empty out. I mean, the demographics just shift their gathering places.

Okay. That makes sense. If you assume the community is gone, you proactively stop booking events. You don’t train your outreach assistant. You create this self-fulfilling prophecy where the drop in patients is actually engineered by your own lack of activity, not the vacation schedules. Man, that is a gut punch.

Yeah. The drop is a result of pulling your own marketing levers in the wrong direction. Exactly, and Dr. Lloyd countered that self-inflicted wound with this golden rule for the season. He told the group, “If it isn’t fun, you’re doing it wrong.” I, I mean, that completely reframes the work. If your summer outreach feels like a miserable clinical chore, you’re just repelling the exact energy people are looking for in July.

Yeah, which transitions us perfectly into where we actually plug this generator in. The master class focused really heavily on high impact casual events, starting with farmers markets and city fests. Because those are massive built-in community hubs during the summer. They are, but strategy is [00:06:00] everything here.

You do not want your team standing on scorching blacktop at 2:00 in the afternoon. Yeah, that violates the fun rule immediately. It totally does. So participants found massive success by running strictly four-hour Saturday morning blocks, typically like 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM to beat the heat. And the specific objective for that block is to walk away with six solid appointments.

Right, but to do that, your team has to make a psychological shift. You aren’t standing there thinking, you know, “What can I sell today?” You are asking, “How can I serve this community right now?” And the practical application of that service involves utilizing low barrier entry offers. Like the master class discussed offering a $47 x-ray that includes a free exam and consultation.

Yeah, and combining that with a tool like a Myovision scanner right there in the booth- Oh, it’s huge. It is. Yeah, yeah. Because the Myovision scanner is an incredibly strategic choice for a bustling outdoor market. For those unfamiliar, it’s a piece of diagnostic equipment that [00:07:00] measures the electrical activity of the muscles surrounding the spine.

Right, because when someone is just walking by holding like a bag of fresh tomatoes, you have about 30 seconds to capture their attention. Exactly. A verbal explanation of subluxation just won’t work in that environment. But scanning their neck and instantly showing them a visual color-coded graphic that proves their muscles are firing symmetrically or asymmetrically, that makes their invisible pain visible.

Undeniable proof that they need to visit your clinic. It totally bridges the gap between casual conversation and medical necessity. Yeah, it really does. Also, a vital warning came up regarding those multi-day summer festivals. A participant called it death by screening. Oh yes. That’s a huge trap. If you have a festival running all weekend, you must rotate your doctors.

Do not leave one associate out there for twenty-four hours straight, or they’re going to resent the marketing process entirely. Burnout is the absolute enemy of conversion. An exhausted doctor just cannot project the energy required to book a [00:08:00] new patient. Here’s where it gets really interesting for me though.

The master class moved from public festivals to highly targeted private events, specifically weenie roast pool parties and pizza parties at upscale apartment complexes. Yes. This is brilliant. Right. First, the instruction is to literally wear a Hawaiian shirt, flip-flops, and sunglasses while representing a practice.

Which is so fun. It completely shatters the paradigm. Mm. It makes me think of when you’re a kid and you see your high school teacher at the grocery store in sweatpants. It just reminds the patient that the doctor is actually a human being. Breaking that sterile clinical barrier is so crucial in a summer setting.

Nobody in a swimsuit wants to be approached by someone in a stiff white coat or, you know, a formal clinical polo. Exactly. So for a daytime weenie roast, you bring hot dogs, orange soda, and chips, and you set up a SAM machine near the pool grill. Well, let’s clarify the SAM machine for a second because bringing medical equipment to a pool sounds incredibly invasive.

It does sound [00:09:00] invasive. Right. But a SAM is actually perfect for this exact scenario. It requires zero disrobing. The prospect can literally be wearing a swimsuit or just a T-shirt. Oh wow, okay. Yeah,

it takes sixty seconds, feels completely casual, but delivers a highly professional diagnostic insight. That’s awesome. And for the nighttime version, the pizza party, you simply set up near the fitness center or the rent drop-off area with a couple of pizzas and a Bluetooth speaker. Yeah. And if we connect this to the bigger picture, the brilliance here isn’t just about handing out free food.

It’s the B2B, the business to business mechanics behind the party. Right. You are targeting upscale apartment complexes- specifically because that demographic has the disposable income to afford ongoing care. Exactly. But more importantly, you are solving a major problem for the property manager.

Property managers are constantly pressured to increase tenant retention. Oh, sure. They need to provide what the industry calls tenant amenities to justify those high rent prices. [00:10:00] When you approach a property manager and offer to host a free catered health and wellness event for their residents, you are giving them a premium amenity at zero cost to their budget.

That is such a win-win. In return, you gain this powerful symbiotic partnership. The building manager will enthusiastically promote your practice on their internal newsletters, in their elevators, and on their community bulletin boards. You are essentially borrowing the trust they have already built with hundreds of ideal prospects.

You’re bypassing the traditional marketing funnel entirely by becoming a community partner. So smart. Very smart. So pool parties and farmers markets definitely cast a wide net for people who actually have free time on a Saturday. Hmm. But that still leaves a massive demographic untouched, right? The high-stress professionals who are too burned out to even go to the pool.

How do we reach the people hiding in their offices or classrooms? Well, this is where Dr. Lloyd’s master class pivoted to hyper-targeted outreach, starting with teacher massage events. Okay, tell me [00:11:00] about that. The timing here is the absolute most critical factor. You execute the strategy in early June, right as the academic year is ending, because teachers have just endured nine months of compounding physical and emotional stress.

I can’t even imagine. Right. So you go directly to the local schools, offer free chair massages to the staff in their break room, locate those deep stress knots, and present a special offer like $50 off the first visit or a free initial exam that excludes the alignment just to get them scheduled. But the reality of sales is that you are going to face friction. The masterclass noted that the most common pushback from this specific demographic is the July objection.

Oh, the classic July objection. A teacher sits in the massage chair, feels great, but then says, um, “I’ll wait until July when my schedule really calms down.” And if you accept that objection and say okay, you lose the patient forever because July brings family vacations, house projects, and just a whole new set of distractions.

So what do you do? The script Dr. Lloyd’s group developed to counter this [00:12:00] is literally a masterclass in empathy and urgency. You maintain eye contact and say, “You have had a brutal year. You have been wrangling 30 kids for nine months. You have golf ball-sized knots in your trapezius right now. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and you need to prioritize refilling your own cup today.”

Man, that phrasing, refilling your own cup, is incredibly powerful. It validates their suffering immediately. It really does. It takes chiropractic care out of the category of, like, just another chore on the to-do list and reframes it as the immediate antidote to the burnout they are actively experiencing.

It creates emotional leverage. And another strategy that leverages those B2B relationships while targeting a stressed demographic is the wellness happy hour. Oh, right. This takes the apartment pool party concept and significantly scales the infrastructure. Instead of showing up alone with a SAM machine, you curate a micro health fair.

Right. You bring three to five other local wellness providers with you. Mm-hmm. Perhaps a gym [00:13:00] owner, a local juicery, a massage therapist, and maybe a cosmetic dentist. Yeah, and the financial structure of this is just brilliant. You charge each of those partners $100 to participate. That multi-hundred-dollar pool covers the catering, the nice appetizers, maybe some wine.

You completely eliminate your own event costs. Yeah, exactly. And for those business partners, paying 100 bucks to gain direct access to hundreds of upscale apartment residents is, like, the highest return on investment they will see all year. Plus, the ancillary benefit is the networking You establish yourself as the mayor of the local wellness community.

Definitely. But a participant in the master class highlighted a crucial follow-up step to ensure these B2B relationships actually survive past the summer. You have to maintain the connection. Yes. One clinic owner makes it a policy to spend $500 on premium Godiva chocolates every December. They walk into these apartment complexes, schools, and partner businesses, hand out the gifts, and map out the entire event [00:14:00] calendar for the subsequent year right then and there.

So what does this all mean? Because I wanna challenge the ultimate effectiveness of all these events. Okay, let’s hear it. We’ve laid out the Hawaiian shirts, the Myovision scanners, the empathetic scripts for teachers, and the Godiva chocolates. It all sounds incredibly busy, but a great event, even one where you hand out 50 hot dogs and scan 20 spines, does not guarantee a single person is actually gonna walk into your clinic on a Tuesday morning.

That is a very fair point. How do you prevent these leads from simply taking their free pizza and ghosting you once the magic of the event fades away? Well, this raises an important question, and it highlights the exact failure point for the majority of clinic owners. You can engineer the most engaging community event in your city, but if the bridge connecting that event to your front desk is broken, you have wasted your time.

Right. Dr. Lloyd zeroed in on one undeniable, unglamorous data point: the follow-up call. The phone call that nobody wants to make. The phone call that generates the revenue. Dr. [00:15:00] Lloyd shared that simply implementing a highly structured, timely follow-up call literally tripled the actual show-up rate of event leads.

Tripled it. Tripled it. Three times the patients walking through the door just from picking up the receiver. Let’s break down the mechanics of that call because tone matters immensely here. Oh, tone is everything. The tone must extend the clinical care you initiated at the event. You’re not calling to ask, “Are you still coming to your appointment?”

Right, because that sounds like a collection agency. Exactly. The script should sound like this. Hey, it’s Dr. Maggie. We met at the school massage event yesterday. I’m just calling to see how that shoulder is feeling today and to make sure you received the link for your new patient paperwork. Wow, that’s completely different.

It demonstrates genuine care, it subtly reminds them of your medical expertise, and it really solidifies their internal commitment to show up. Without that call, your tent at the farmers market was just a performance. Just giving away free hot dogs. Yep. But with the call, it becomes a [00:16:00] predictable patient-generating system.

That is the definitive difference between hoping for practice growth and actually engineering it. As we wrap up this deep dive, the ultimate takeaway from Five-Star Management today is that the summertime blues are a complete myth. The drop in numbers is a choice. A hundred percent. If you track your records to establish a baseline, if you invest in the logistics like open-sided tents, if you embrace casual partner-driven outdoor events at upscale apartments, and most importantly, if you execute relentless empathetic follow-up calls, your summer will easily transform from a season of anxiety into your most profitable quarter.

The blueprint is there. The execution is entirely in the hands of the clinic owner. So I wanna leave you, our listener, with a final provocative thought today, a direct challenge for your own clinic. If Dr. Noel Lloyd, a true master of practice growth, asserts that fun is job one for summer marketing What is one [00:17:00] rigid, overly sterile process inside your practice right now that you could inject a little bit of that summer pool party energy into?

Ooh, I like that. Even if you are listening to this in the dead of winter, how can you make your patient onboarding or your waiting room feel less like a clinical chore and more like a welcoming community gathering? Jot that down and bring it to your team meeting this week. It will completely change the energy of your staff.

Speaking of changing the energy and trajectory of your practice, we at Five Star Management are dedicated to helping you implement exactly these kinds of systems. So I have three rapid-fire calls to action for you to execute right now. Listen up. These are important. Number one, we wanna look at the specific bottlenecks in your practice.

Book a free strategy call with Dr. George Birnbach. The link to get directly on Dr. Birnbach’s calendar is waiting for you right now in the show notes. Take advantage of that. Number two, come meet the Five Star team in person. We wanna work with you live. Attend our upcoming two-day event in Chicago, [00:18:00] Illinois called Streamline, Scale, Succeed.

It is happening on July 25th and 26th. It is going to be an absolute game changer for your practice’s growth. Seriously, grab your tickets via the link in the show notes. And finally, number three, if you got actionable value out of today’s deep dive, hit that subscribe button on the Successful Chiro podcast right now.

We deliver weekly tips, strategies, and master class breakdowns just like this one to ensure you never stop growing. Remember, just because the calendar flips to June doesn’t mean your systems have to shut down. Turn on the generator, get out into the sunshine, and go break some records. We’ll catch you on the next deep dive