Coming up with awesome pediatric and occupational therapy marketing ideas can mean the difference between running a successful OT business or one that is about to go under at any turn.
In this post, we cover seven of the most effective occupational therapy marketing ideas that we and our clients have used with great success.
These ideas will work whether you need occupational or pediatric therapy marketing ideas. The tips are practical and easy to use. You can apply one or more of them right away to kick start your occupational or pediatric therapy marketing ideas.
Here’s how to get started!
7 Awesome Occupational Therapy Marketing Ideas
1. Market To Doctors To Increase Your Referrals
Most healthcare happens on a continuum: occupational therapy is part of a patient’s overall plan for rehabilitation, a healing plan that usually starts with doctors. In light of this, when you’re coming up with your occupational therapy marketing ideas, one of the most logical places to start is with a list of doctors that you can market to.
First, make a list of doctors you’ve already worked with. Then make a list of new doctors you’d like to work with but haven’t yet. Both the ones you know and the ones you don’t can become a source of referrals for your business.
These groups are good candidates for a monthly brochure, newsletter, or postcard campaign. Mailers offer you a low-pressure way to let local doctors know that you’re taking new clients. Include helpful tips and office updates in your mailers.
Be sure to make your occupational therapy marketing newsletters and mailers interactive, too. Do this by creating events like a coffee social or a guest talk at your place of business. These can become meet-and-greet opportunities for you and the doctors you want to work with. Advertise these events on your newsletters, postcards, and more.
Doctors don’t have to be the bad guy.
2. Start A Blog
No modern occupational therapy practice should be without an online presence. You should at least have a website and a blog to get started.
Creating a blog that you post to regularly allows you to tap into a market of locals who are already searching for what you’re offering.
In other words, people who find your occupational therapy practice via a Google search (or whatever search engine they use) are searching for terms like “occupational therapists near me” or “occupational therapy in [my city].”
These search terms indicate that the searchers are ready to purchase, and according to Forbes, 80% of local searches on mobile phones lead to conversions. If you optimize your blog’s content for mobile searches, you have a good chance to attract these searchers.
But that’s not the only reason to write a blog. If you create content once – the blog post in this case – you can repurpose it for other media, like your Facebook page or email newsletter.
For best results, create content that gives web searchers useful tips and in-depth information about occupational therapy. Consider this a big part of your marketing plan.
As such, you can write blog posts that cover “regular” topics. You can also do some pediatric therapy marketing via your blog, too. Both topics will improve your SEO and your visibility online.
3. Get Reviews
Social proof is a big thing in today’s occupational and pediatric therapy marketing worlds. (In any business for that matter…) One of the most advantageous types of social proof you can get is online reviews.
And the good news is, according to Forbes, nearly 70% of customers will leave a review if asked. This stat says more than it seems. It ties into the mobile marketing stat we mentioned earlier.
Usually, when people get to the point where they’re reading reviews online, they’re on their mobile phones and they’re close to making a purchase. Forbes says that while 90% of sales still happen in a brick-and-mortar business, nearly 100% of the searches begin online first.
Basically, the trajectory of your reviews on Facebook, Yelp, and other online site go like this:
- Search for an occupational therapy practice near me >
- Search for reviews of local occupational therapy businesses (usually on a mobile phone) >
- Client contacts the business that appeals to him/ her after reading reviews and other social proof. (Your informative blog is important here, too.)
4. Create A Free Ebook
Few things give your occupational therapy marketing plan the clout that producing an eBook does. When you write a book, you position yourself as an expert in your field. The book can cover the top occupational therapy specialties, offer a list of resources, or talk about OT principles at work in a therapy session.
Once you have the eBook written, offer it as a giveaway on your website. Potential occupational therapy patients or interested physicians can download the book in exchange for their email addresses. It’s an excellent way to build your occupational and pediatric therapy marketing funnel and create credibility with your future clients at the same time.
5. Join Community Groups
Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online sites offer occupational therapists the chance to interact with people who may be in need of your services. These online groups can be forums for parents with special needs kids, people who are searching for information about occupational therapy, doctors, and other related medical personnel.
By genuinely participating in the group and offering your tips and advice, you naturally get the attention of people who belong to the group. It’s a natural way to interact with potential clients.
The key here is to be natural, not pushy. Let your words speak of compassion and good advice. Let your online account tell people what you do. In other words, create a business account that says “Jane Smith – Occupational Therapist” and post your responses from that page, not your personal social and forum pages. Your words tell people your know what you’re talking about; your social media page identifies you professionally.
6. Offer a Free Occupational Therapy Workshop
Your pediatric and occupational therapy marketing ideas should include some live events, like workshops. For your would-be patients, you might create workshops that offer an introduction to occupational therapy. For the doctors you work with, you might present the latest scientific information about some aspect of occupational therapy.
Events like these work best for small niche audiences and should be held in a neutral space, like a local hotel, athletic facility, or community center. You’re going for an easy setup here. Facilities like these have personnel who can help you get your ducks in a row, which allows you to focus on your upcoming pediatric and occupational therapy marketing event.
The most important aspect of this event is that you focus on the interaction between you and your potential new clients. Keep the presentation short and sweet to keep the energy and enthusiasm alive. Be sure to also include several presenters for the same reason.
Finally, make the whole thing fun and interactive. Encourage the exchange of information. Leave business cards. Take people’s business cards. Or do some sort of raffle: Offer a prize in exchange for people’s contact information.
7. Reach Out to Past Clients Via Email and Newsletters
One of the things that business owners often forget is that it takes far more time, money, and effort to attract new customers than to retain the old ones. The Harvard Business Review reminds us that the cost of getting a new customer costs five to 25 times more than it costs to keep a customer you already have.
But how do you do this? By keeping in contact with them through regular emails and hard-copy newsletters and postcards.
These occupational and pediatric therapy marketing tools fall mostly into the “soft sell” category. While you can send regular offers to your clients – for example, offer them your free eBook – you want your emails, postcards, and newsletters to include useful information and cheery tips.
This does two things. First, because the items you send are upbeat and useful, people are more likely to open them.
Second, it lets your clients know that you really care about them. You’re not just contacting them when you want to make a sale. You’re genuinely concerned for their well-being. Ironically, this soft-sell approach often leads to more sales in the long run for this very reason.
FAQ
How do I market my occupational therapy practice to doctors?
The seven tips above give you the “inroad” you need to market to local physicians and other medical professionals in your area.
How do I market my OT practice to patients?
You’ll do many of the same things above, but with a few caveats. First, you want to check on the direct access laws in your area. If the law requires you to get your clients through doctor referrals, then you’ll want to concentrate most of your efforts on getting more doctor referrals.
If it doesn’t, then you can proceed with the following ideas in mind. Reach out to patients via blogs, social media, newsletters, etc. BUT do so without jargon. Members of the general public aren’t going to understand terms that an OT does, so try your best not to use them. Plain English is best.
You also want to use the recommended pediatric and occupational therapy marketing tools above to create a sales and marketing funnel. The information that you create should be geared toward people in all areas in the funnel, from the wide brim to the narrow mouth.
What if my practice is a pediatric occupational therapy clinic?
It’s most important to make your content attractive to both parents and kids – do a 50/50 split. Fifty percent of the content you create should be geared toward the parents and 50% should be geared toward their kids. Make sure both parties know that you feel compassion toward their plight and that you want to help them feel and function better.
Also, emphasize that you run a one-stop shop. In other words, you may offer occupational therapy, but you also physical therapy, health and wellness classes, and more. The more services you offer, the more likely the parents will stick with your service and not look for second and third providers for the services they need.
How do I market my multi-disciplinary clinic?
It’s important for you to realize that this isn’t a drawback at all. It’s an asset as the paragraphs above explain. Aside from occupational therapy and physical therapy, you can offer summer camps for the kids, health and wellness for the parents, and more.
The key to making this work is to create a separate page on your website for each service that you offer. This not only makes it easier for potential clients to navigate your website but it also allows you to build your SEO opportunities by creating dedicated pages for each service/ discipline.
What if I don’t have the time to market my OT clinic?
The short answer is to hire it out to people who are experts at occupational therapy marketing. Just as you’re a specialist in your field, we’re specialists in ours.
We know your business because we limit our client rosters to professionals in occupational and physical therapy. We know your clientele. We know the types of writing and design that your potential clients respond to.
Think of us as your off-site full-service marketing team for your occupational therapy business.
Key to Remember
When you create specialty occupational therapy marketing collateral, like postcards, brochures, and more, you’re sending a visual and written version of your brand out into the world. As such, you want to make sure that what you’re sending is effective and gets the job done.
If you create beautiful collateral and follow the seven tips in this post, you’ll be well on your way to creating an occupational therapy business that can thrive!