Marketing Strategies for Physical Therapists

As a physical therapist, you are an expert in the overall care and the unique treatments associated with various types of physical conditions. As a result, your patients are capable of achieving the absolute best results. While it is true that you must spend the majority of your days placing a high emphasis on the health of your patients, it is imperative that you dedicate additional time and various resources to grow your physical therapy practice.

The main method of achieving optimal results is marketing to doctors and prospective patients. In doing so, you will find that you consistently log appointments and that you have a constant flow of revenue. Continue reading to learn the best marketing strategies for your practice.

Focus on the Patient

When it comes to care models, the future rests in those that are centered on the care of the patient. Your patients must be at the forefront of your marketing plan. All of the decisions that you will make and that they will take part in making impacts them and their health directly.

Yes, you should also market towards third-party payment guarantors and referrals, but it is essential that you place your focus on the patients that you serve. Consider the following questions:

1. Why do your patients require the services that you offer?
2. What motivates your patients to reach out to your practice?
3. Where will those patients go to obtain information about the services that you provide?
4. What or who has a direct influence on the buying decisions conducted by your patients?

Analyze the Competitors

When creating a marketing plan for your physical therapy practice, it is important to analyze those that your practice is in direct competition with. What practice provides similar services for the patients that you serve? How are your services similar and different from those in the industry? Do you offer services that set you apart from the competitors?

Analyze Your Marketing Plan

Now that you know a little about your patients and your competition, it is time to analyze your marketing plan. In order to get started, consider the following:

1. Your marketing plan will help in supporting your overall business goals. You must address how you will achieve success in this endeavor.
2. What is your purpose? Why are you trying to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish?
3. Who is your target audience and why?
4. What are the current conditions like in the physical therapy marketing industry?
5. Consider the services that you offer and set your market strategies accordingly.
6. Outline strategies that you may use to message and/or communicate with your target audience.
7. Determine the amount of money that you have to budget for marketing.
8. Consider how you will achieve your marketing goals with the amount of money that you have available in your marketing budget.
9. Outline how your overall progress will be monitored.
10. Explore the various opportunities that your physical therapy practice has in terms of long-term marketing efforts.

Steps to Succeed in Marketing Efforts That Focuses on the Patient

In order to ensure that your marketing efforts focus directly on the patients, consider the following steps:

1. When starting your marketing campaign, you must effectively measure the strengths and the weaknesses of your practice. This is considered to be the most effective starting point. This will allow you to reach clarity when it comes to your proposition on the value that your practice will offer. You have to know – exactly – what you are offering before actually offering it. One of the best ways to determine your value proposition is to collect data about your current patients and determine their outcomes based on that data. In doing so, you will know where your practice excels.
2. You must do all that you can to stay away from the standard “one-size-fits-all” messaging in your marketing campaign. Instead, when you create marketing messages, ensure that there is intention. Your messages must be tailored so that they outline what your patients are looking to achieve when taking advantages of the services that you offer. Additionally, when you create the communications that you will share with your target audience, make certain that what you share is actually backed by solid data. A good example is outcome data associated with your practice that will help lend credibility to your track record.
3. Target specific audiences with each of the marketing messages that you send. First, start by training the members of your staff on utilizing outcome data information. This will allow them to engage in marketing efforts with the prospective patients that they interact with on a regular basis. In addition to this, you may take your marketing efforts online. It is a known fact that most patients now conduct their own research on treatments, providers, and other healthcare options prior to make a decision on how to use as a provider. Make sure your information is out there. By having a website, blog, and a social media presence, you will find that you are discoverable and more successful.
4. While it is true that you may use highly compelling sales copy to market your physical therapy practice, nothing will promote your practice better than the reviews offered by your patients – both present and past. Patients provide objective and well-rounded feedback. This helps paint a picture for soon-to-be patients and the experiences that they are likely to have with your physical therapy practice. Simply encourage your patients to leave an online review of your practice. Tell them to be open and honest. That way, future patients have the ability to truly see what your practice is all about.
5. The next step to marketing your physical therapy practice is to ensure that you have a large assortment of professional referrals. These referrals will provide your practice with new business. Instead of simply throwing all of your money towards advertising, how about placing an emphasis on cultivating solid, long-lasting relationships with professionals in the medical community? Simply position yourself as an expert in your field. Then, focus on demonstrating your overall value. You can do this by updating and making sure all information on your social media accounts are current, creating patient referral forms, and even visiting the offices of medical providers, introducing yourself, and informing them of the types of services your practice offers.
6. When marketing your practice, you must place an emphasis on establishing an online presence. Basically, this boils down to getting your name, address, and phone number out there. Additionally, you must start utilizing keywords and keyword phrases that help in describing you, your business, and the services that you offer through your website, blog, and social media accounts. Additionally, you should place your information on local directories on the internet. The two most common include both Yelp and Google+. Others include Foursquare, CitySearch, the Yellow Pages, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local.
7. To effectively market your physical therapy practice, you must have a website. If you are reading this, it is quite likely that you have already gotten this step out of the way. If not, it is never too late. You should get one started immediately. While it is true that you may use programs such as Wix to create your own website, it is advised that you have a developer, designer, and SEO specialist assist you with this task. You want a site that properly displays and represents your brand. One of the best places to obtain website assistance is Brick Road Media. They have been creating professional websites for physical therapist specialists for several years. Not only do they handle the design, they also handle the creation of your content and the development of the site as a whole.
8. When it comes to your website, it is basically about your content. Content is the means of communicating highly relevant content about your practice and the expertise that you possess. Once you get your website up, you should make certain that you organize your content by using catchy headlines, brief paragraphs, high-quality content, and keywords and keyword phrases that represent your industry. Remember, when creating content, focus on both standard searches people do on their computers and other devices, as well as voice searches. This will help you rank higher in all major searches. The higher you rank, the better your marketing efforts will be!
9. Once your website is all set up, it is time to get your blog going. Believe it or not, the blog is an excellent marketing strategy among physical therapy practices. This provides a way to share your expertise, to educate patients, and provide patients with much-needed information about their health. By having a blog, you will be deemed an expert in your field. As a result, it will increase brand awareness. Patients will come to respect you as an “expert” and will want to take advantages of the services that you offer through your practice. Your blog will help to increase loyalty. All you have to do is publish highly-valuable information, interact with your readers, and recommend your services to help them with their needs.
10. Next, you will want to create an email marketing campaign. Basically, you will collect email addresses from your website. Once your readers plug in their email, you may then send them emails on content that they will consider valuable. Additionally, you may outline the services that you offer and plug in discounts and specials that they may take advantage of. This will help in boosting the engagement of your readers and having patients take a highly active role in the overall course of their card.

Connect to Other Physical Therapists

Once you have taken the steps listed throughout this guide, the next step is to connect to others physical therapists. Not all offer the same services as you. By working together, you can assist one another with referrals and marketing campaign. This is a wonderful way to network and collaborate resources.

We here at Colorado Physical Therapy Network offer unique opportunities for networking and resource collaboration among therapists in a wide assortment of industries. If you would like to open up a whole new work that will assist you in all your marketing campaign endeavors and provide complete solutions for your physical therapy practice, we encourage you to join our network today.