Physical Therapy Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Practice
Is your practice attracting all the new patients you want?
“In my years of talking to hundreds of PT practice owners, I find that many owners are either too swamped or just don’t know enough about how to market to get good results. We went to school to be great PT’s! But most of our business training is self-taught. In this blog post, I’ll show you the critical areas to focus on to make a difference in your practice advertising and create an effective marketing plan. If you do well here, you will have more control over your practice stability, expansion, and profitability.”
-Neil Trickett, PT
Founder of Practice Promotions
5 Essential Physical Therapy Marketing Strategies for PT, OT, and Rehab Private Practices
Physical therapy marketing describes the actions, tools, and content used to attract new patients to your PT Clinic through both direct-access and referrals. For private practices, new patients are generated by methods such as:
- Past Patient Reactivation via Email and Direct Mail
- Patient & Physician Referrals
- Online Searches to Your PT Website
- Blogging and Online Advertising
- Partnerships with Local Businesses or Community Events
“Can I Market Directly to Patients?”
Yes! You absolutely should market direct access and can do so in every state now. And can it be done yourself? Well, yes…
…However, many practice owners are too busy or do not put the effort that they need into consistent and effective PT marketing, to keep a steady flow of patients coming into your practice. Marketing is one of the most important actions you should be doing as an entrepreneur. It is important to remember that while your main focus is healthcare, your practice is a local business. And just like any business, you need to market to your community. That’s why we have many free marketing training tools available for PT Owners.
If you do decide to get help, make sure they have a core understanding of physical therapy – not all marketing agencies have the experience to succeed in this complicated arena. Either way, you want to be educated on the subject, so let’s look at some ideas proven to work for our clients:
Tips & Ideas for Marketing PT
Focus on Marketing to Current and Past Patients
PT marketing should be at the core of your practice’s planning and business development. Whether it’s maintaining monthly campaigns, such as patient newsletters, blogging, emails, and social media, or upgrading key assets, like your practice website or brochures, at least 5-8% of your practice income should be spent on marketing.
Why? The best way for any business to grow, especially a physical therapy practice, is word-of-mouth. You can increase word-of-mouth about your clinic with branding, marketing, and good public relations. Keeping consistently in touch with your building customer base allows you to grow through repeat business and word-of-mouth.
For more tips on websites, newsletters, and patient growth download our PT Marketing Guide
You need past patients to be a key part of your team, coming back for care when needed and referring others. Imagine if your current caseload was 50% returning patients, 25% patients referred by others, 15% referred by physicians and 10% from the general public.
This would create an impressive expansion of your practice and help you achieve your practice goals. It can be done with the right combination of high-quality care and professional marketing.
Build A Massive Online Presence to Get Found by Local Prospects
What if 10 patients per month found you without any paid ads? What if it was 20? 30?
Many of our clients hit these numbers every month – and you can too! Your website is the hub of your marketing efforts and most online marketing will direct back to it. In order to build a massive online presence, your physical therapy website should be compelling and full of useful tips and advice that prospects can use.
Blogging is an excellent way to build the SEO of your website, provide great content, and share that with your customers as well as prospects. If you’re not sure where to start, check out this article on how to write blogs for physical therapists.
Social media is a great way to engage your customer base, build referrals, and advertise to the community. However, there are tricks to know and going alone, can make for an expensive proposition, if it doesn’t work, or you don’t use it! One special technique is to use your patient list, building a custom audience on Facebook. Then direct your posts, blogs, and ads towards that customer, custom audience for great exposure to the people that know you the best.
How to Get Started with a Physical Therapy Marketing Plan
1) Determine Your Goals and Needs
Start by setting a goal of how many new patients you want a month. Next, plan what it will take to advertise to key audiences including physicians, past patients, current patients and the community. Ask yourself:
- Are you already seeing a steady number of past patients coming back into the clinic?
- Do you get fewer and fewer physician referrals each month?
- Are patients finding you through online searches?
- How many patients do you need to see per week?
Use this knowledge to craft a marketing plan that addresses your current and future business needs.
2) Write Down Your Primary Message
The first step in any PT marketing effort is to explain physical therapy. Many people, even physicians, might not know exactly what PT is or how it can help them.
Focus your efforts on educating prospects and referral sources on what problems you solve and how you can do so quickly and effectively. Then, showcase yourselves as the experts to turn to for orthopedic and neurological problems by presenting useful and educational articles.
3) Promote Your Message
Use your website, social media, online ads, and print marketing to get the word out! Determine your budget for each of these areas and make sure each runs consistently every month to build success. Add personal testimonials from past patients to build credibility and empathy with your audience. Lastly, be memorable and engaging with fun facts, relevant news, and outreach opportunities.
Explore PT Marketing and Advertising Solutions
How you brand and market your practice is key to the success of your business. There are several ways to target and engage patients, physicians, and community members and make them remember you as the PT experts.
Some options include:
- Sending a patient newsletter with informative articles and clinic updates
- Mailing postcards to promote special discounts and programs
- Having professional brochures to distribute to the community
- Using referral systems to keep attracting new prospects and rewarding loyal clients
Looking for a Better Marketing Solution?
To Explore How a Complete PT Marketing System Can Grow Your Unique Practice, Schedule A Time to Meet With Our Expert Team!
