CampfireQuestions around the fire
These are the questions owners actually ask on calls with us, in their words, answered plainly. Pulled from 31 recorded sales conversations and updated as new ones come up.
Cash-based PT and chiro clinics
Are you an agency, a software, or a course?
Campfire is a growth partner: we build your acquisition system with you (ads, follow-up, CRM, tracking, and AI roles that run it), train your team to tend it, and then you own it. You rent an agency. You learn from a course. This is installed, and it stays.
How much does it cost?
Price depends on how many roles we install and whether we run it alongside your team afterward. We tell you the number on the first call, not after three. Installments are available on request. The way to judge it: one plan of care per month usually covers it, and the system keeps running after we leave.
How much of my time does it take?
Plan on three to five hours a week for about twelve weeks, including a weekly call. We do the building; your hours go to decisions, approvals, and learning to tend what's built. After that, the system runs with a weekly 20-minute check.
Can an AI answer my phone, texts and DMs?
Yes: an AI role can answer calls and texts after hours, reply to DMs in seconds, answer the questions you get every day, and book the appointment. Patients don't hate it when it's fast, honest about being an assistant, and hands off to a human the moment a real conversation starts. The failure is using it to replace people. The win is using it so nobody waits.
What's the ROI? Is this worth it for a practice my size?
Measure it in plans of care. Take what a new patient is worth to you over their plan, divide by what it costs to book one, and you have your return. Across our clinic accounts last year, a booked appointment from Meta cost about $130 where it was tracked. If your plan of care is worth ten times that, the math is not close. If you can't answer what a patient is worth, that is the first thing we fix.
What happens after the 12 weeks?
You keep everything: the accounts, the AI roles, the playbooks, the call recordings and the help docs. Nothing evaporates. Ongoing support is optional, as a monthly group or a consulting engagement. When the AI tools change, and they will, the roles are written in plain instructions you can update, and the group is where we show you how.
What exactly gets built, and do I own it?
You own all of it. What gets built: the ads and landing pages, the follow-up sequences, the CRM, the tracking, and two to nine AI roles that handle repeatable marketing work. Each is under your logins with written instructions. We're the builders, not the landlords.
Is it HIPAA compliant, and who owns the data?
The marketing system never needs patient health information, so none goes into an AI model. The AI roles work from your FAQ, your calendar and your marketing data, not your records, and anything that could be PHI is stripped in a separate step before a model sees it. Your data stays in accounts you own. Clinical records stay in your EMR.
Is this lead generation or back-office automation?
Both, in order. First the back office: follow-up, speed to lead, booking, reactivation, so a lead that arrives actually becomes a patient. Then lead generation: ads that fill the top. Most clinics buy ads first and lose half of what they paid for in a voicemail box. We fix the leak before we add water.
How do I track where a new patient actually came from?
Four things: a tracking number on every ad so calls are counted by source, forms that carry the source into the CRM, a pixel that records the booking, and a front desk that asks every new patient one question and writes down the answer. Then every patient has a source, and the ad report stops guessing.
What's a reasonable ad budget to start with?
Start at a level that buys enough leads to learn from: for most single clinics that is $1,000 to $2,500 a month across Google and Meta. At roughly $60 per lead, the midpoint of our clinic accounts last year, that is 15 to 40 leads a month, enough to see what converts. Raise it when cost per booked patient holds steady for a month.
If the ads don't work, then what?
You find out within weeks, not months, because everything is tracked. Ads fail in one of three places: the offer, the landing page, or the follow-up. We fix the broken one, and if the market simply isn't there, we turn the ads off and put the budget into the channel that is working. You are never locked into spend that isn't returning.