The Ultimate Instagram Marketing Step-by-step Roadmap for Health and Wellness Businesses -

Ready to market your chiropractic, functional medicine, health, or life coaching business on Instagram but don’t know where to start? This ultimate roadmap has you covered, step-by-step!

After serving over 200 health and wellness professionals over four years, I have curated my best tips into a roadmap for you! Tip: Hit the star icon at the end of your URL bar to favorite this link for reference!

1. Get your mind right.

Understand that you are not an influencer or full-time content creator. You have a business to run and a life outside of marketing your business on Instagram, so your results are going to be slow and steady.

2. Get CRYSTAL clear on who you serve and your branding.

You can get some clarity on this topic by working through THIS free questionnaire, and learn how to create your own brand and mood board for a cohesive aesthetic on your Instagram feed by checking out this video and blog post.

3. Set your goal and strategy

Not knowing exactly what you want to accomplish by using Instagram to market your business is like heading out on a road trip without Google Maps. You can’t be surprised if you don’t get to your destination if you don’t know WHERE you’re going.

Here are some common Instagram strategies:

✨More NEW patients or clients to clinic or online program in general
✨More NEW patients or clients for a certain aspect of your practice or program (like: more pregnant patients, more supplement sales, etc.)
✨Retention or value-add for current patients or clients
✨Brand awareness + Audience & Authority Building
✨Email list growth

Picking ONE strategy and talking about it OVER and OVER and OVER also helps with the marketing rule of seven, an old marketing principle that says people must see or interact with someone at least seven times to take action.

According to this article in Forbes “People struggle with important decisions when they’re given too many choices — it makes them worry if they’re selecting the right one, which leads to inaction.”

4. Make sure your account is set up properly

You want to be an Instagram Professional -> Business account, not Creator or Personal.

5. Make sure your bio is optimized and searchable.

This post breaks down everything you need to know about your Instagram profile and bio!

6. Batch your content ahead of time

I would recommend using a program like Planoly* to map out your posts ahead of time. I’m not talking months and months’ worth. Even doing a week at once will help you not feel like you’re a hamster on a wheel.

If you want a huge copy/paste content library complete with Canva graphic templates for health and wellness pros, then check out Holistic Marketing Hub. Create a posting schedule you can realistically stick to (3x a week is fine and is what we do for our Instagram management clients)

*This is an affiliate link to Planoly, but over the years we have used Facebook Manager, Tailwind, Later, and Plann and Planoly continues to be our favorite.

7. Vary your content themes.

Don’t hold back- you have to give value or entertain to keep people on your page. If every post just says “read my new blog post on my website!” or “chiropractic helps with your stress book an appointment!” then readers will lose interest.

Also, don’t hide behind your logo or business. Don’t think you have to keep business and personal separate. Instagram is the place to show your ideal client or patient why they should choose YOU over all their other options.

You can find my content ecosystem here and repeat after me: DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT.

8. Use the right hashtags

Hashtags are NOT dead, and I can show you irrefutable proof from the 16 Instagram accounts we manage, plus mine, that hashtags increase your Reach (the number of unique people who see your posts).

Use hashtags that are less than 500k (really 250k is better if you’re a small account) and take advantage of local/regional hashtags for your area like #gulfbreezefl #raleighmoms etc. EVEN IF YOU SERVE A VIRTUAL AUDIENCE that’s not just in your area.

For a list of pre-vetted hashtags (except local ones to your area), click HERE.

9. Build community

Be social. Go out and comment on your people’s posts. Reply to their stories. Share their posts to your stories and tag them. This guide breaks it down step-by-step.