January's new patients start choosing a chiropractor in late December. The next 30 days are setup.
The first weeks of January bring a wave of new patient searches. Here is a 30-day plan to get your profile, schedule, reviews and follow-up ready before then.
Every January, a lot of people who have put off their first chiropractic visit finally pick up the phone. Most practices notice the wave when it hits, then scramble with a crowded schedule, stale Google profile, and an ad account that was paused since summer.
The searching starts earlier than the booking. People look between Christmas and New Year's, on their phones, during the quiet days off work. The practices they call in January are often the ones that looked ready in December. That leaves you about 30 days, starting now, to get ready.
Week 1 (now to mid-November): hours and the holiday schedule
Start with the piece that breaks most often over the holidays.
- Set holiday hours on Google. Your Business Profile lets you enter special hours for specific dates. Put in Thanksgiving, the day after, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day exactly as you will run them. A profile that says "open" when the door is locked costs you trust with a new patient before they ever meet you.
- Check your regular hours are there at all. In our benchmark of 71,195 practices, 24.4% list no hours. Only 21.4% show Saturday hours. If you see patients on Saturday mornings, say so.
- Block new patient slots for the first two weeks of January now. If your regular patients fill every opening before the new year starts, there will be nowhere to put the people your marketing brings in. Hold a few slots each day for new patients and release them a few days ahead if they stay empty.
Week 2: the page they land on
When someone searches in late December, they land on your profile first and your website second. Both need to answer the same three questions: do you take my insurance, what does the first visit involve, and what does it cost if I pay myself.
The website essentials guide has the full list. For this week, make sure your new patient page:
- States the first-visit fee for self-pay patients, or a narrow range
- Lists the insurance plans you are in network with, by name
- Describes the first visit step by step, in plain words, without promising what it will fix
- Has a tap-to-call button and an online booking link at the top on a phone
Keep claims about results off the page entirely. Describe what happens during the visit, who the doctor is, and how scheduling works. That is what a new patient actually wants to know.
Week 3: reviews from the regulars
December is a good month to ask your established patients for a Google review. They are in a reflective mood, they like you, and they are already coming in.
The median chiropractor in our data has 15 reviews. The top quarter starts at 78. If you are near the median, a focused month of asking can move you noticeably.
Keep the ask about the experience, not the outcome. Something like this at checkout:
"Hi Maria, we are trying to help more people find us in the new year. If you have had a good experience here, would you mind leaving us a quick Google review? I can text you the link right now."
Never ask a patient to describe their condition, and never reply to a review with any detail about their care. The reviews guide has the full text sequence and reply rules.
Week 4: decide on the ad budget now, not January 2
If you run Google Ads or Meta ads, decide your January budget before the holidays. Campaigns that sat paused for months can take time to settle once you restart them, and you do not want that learning period to land in the first week of January.
A practical approach for a single location:
- Turn a modest campaign back on around mid-December, at a fraction of your January budget
- Make sure it points to the new patient page, not the home page
- Raise the budget in the last days of December as searches pick up
- Check the search terms the first week of January and block anything unrelated
The Google Ads guide covers which campaign types make sense for a practice and which waste money.
The piece most practices skip: answering
Everything above sends more calls your way. Now count how many of those calls will hit voicemail while your front desk is checking someone out. In the first busy week of January, that number usually goes up.
Set up a text-back for missed calls so every caller hears from you within a minute or two. "Thanks for calling Riverbend Chiropractic. We are with a patient. Are you looking to book a first visit? Reply here and we will get you scheduled." Then run your own numbers through the missed call calculator to see what each unanswered January call is worth.
The 30-day list in one place
- Holiday hours entered on Google
- Regular and Saturday hours confirmed
- New patient slots held for January
- New patient page with fees, insurance and first-visit steps
- A month of review asks from regular patients
- January ad budget decided and campaigns warmed up by mid-December
- Missed call text-back turned on
If you would like help with any of this before January, try any service free for 14 days, no card required. Text or call (385) 213-7449, or start at /free-trial/.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, chiropractors among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor