Is your practice reaching its true potential?
How PT marketing can make all the difference…
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. How much marketing training did you get in school? How much have you done while in your practice? In this blog post, we will discuss critical areas for you to focus on to make a difference in your practice advertising. If you do well here, you will have more control over your practice stability, expansion, and profitability.
For most practices, new patients are generated by a number of sources such as past patient reactivation, patient referrals, online discovery, and physician referrals. Some practices also rely on partnerships with local business or sponsorships with community events.
However, many practice owners do not put the effort that they need into consistent and effectively 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.
Why you need to focus on PT marketing to your 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.
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 in Your Community
Your website is the hub of your marketing efforts and most online marketing will direct back to it. 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.
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 Create a Physical Therapy Marketing Plan
Start by setting a goal of how many new patients you want a month. Plan what it will take to advertise to key audiences including physicians, past patients, current patients and the community. 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? Use this knowledge to craft a marketing plan that addresses your current and future business needs.
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.
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.
The right advertising and marketing tools grow your practice…
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:
- An updated, mobile-friendly and well-designed website
- Actively blogging and marketing your clinic on social media
- 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
Want to learn more about PT marketing? Let the expert team at Practice Promotions coordinate your practice’s marketing and help you get more new patients. Call us today for more information or check out our physical therapy websites, custom patient newsletters, and other products!
