If you have recently finished your professional education and passed your required exams, gotten your certification, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and start helping people. Oops. First you need some clients!

One of the most effective ways to begin marketing your nascent chiropractic practice is by posting a website. But before you hire a web designer and lay out thousands of dollars, take stock of the situation.

What can you accomplish with your web marketing?

First, acknowledge that it is unlikely anyone is going to hire you simply because of your website. If someone gets referred to you by a friend, they will want to look you up. Prospective clients can find you online and check out your credentials--but they will want to talk to you (probably meet you in person, too) before they decide. You are not going to \"close the deal\" over the Internet.

It is also unlikely you will sell anything directly over the Internet, at least at the beginning of your practice. The web gurus who promise instant millions from your website are blowing smoke. You are going to make an income from your practice by selling your hours and programs.

Your pragmatic goal for your marketing website must be to motivate people to pick the phone up and call you and ultimately to hire you. All of your web decisions should focus on achieving that goal.

With that realistic goal in mind, you can right-size your website. You need a good enough website and it does not have to cost thousands. Consider using a straightforward content management system that lets you do it yourself. Using a professional template will let you have a polished-looking site with all the appropriate elements: a home page, services, biography, FAQs and contact information. You can collect email addresses of visitors, watch the traffic, optimize your site for search. And you can get a website up this week. Yes, this week.

Since your business is new, one of the most empowering things about having a content-management system you can control yourself is that as your practice evolves (and it will!) your website can keep up. Your website will not get out of date because you can change it with a few Internet clicks.

Internet marketing should be part of your new client acquisition program, just keep in mind what it can achieve.