Don’t Make This Mistake – It Will Cost You New Evals

For over 19 years we’ve been helping PT private practices market their services online.  We’ve seen a lot of silver bullet, online marketing, promise you riches marketing companies come and go because:

1. They extract all they can out of the PT private practice and move on,
2. They don’t adapt to the changing market,
3. Most Important – they don’t have any idea how patients buy physical therapy services.

Here I want to review some information to help you, the practice owner, better understand how your patients buy and better yet, help you avoid paying for a marketing service that doesn’t work…but costs you a lot of money.

Physical Therapy Marketing – Is it a Bad Word to You?

Many clinicians underestimate the effort, time, and money that is required to succeed in their local market.

When things don’t go as planned, they follow this predictable pattern:

1. I don’t know enough – I have to learn.
2. I have learned but I never executed what I have learned.
3. I need an outside company to save me.
4. I bought the silver bullet solution – the one that promised me riches, and nothing happened.
5. Marketing sucks and I can’t trust marketing companies.

We see this regularly.  In fact, I just had two conversations with clients yesterday – one tried Facebook ad funnels and it cost him five figures.  Another was told by their marketing company that they had over 100 new leads. When I asked how many converted into patients, they had no idea.  They received a lot of data, but had no idea if it had any impact on their bottom line (i.e. generated more revenue).

Neither one of them made a profit with these fly-by-night marketing companies.

80% of PT Marketing Strategies Sit on the Shelf and Nothing Happens

You’ve probably heard this before – if you want to succeed, know your market.

Define your ideal target market, your ideal clients, etc., etc.

These exercises often leave small practice owners with a piece of paper, the start of a strategy, but no action, and no results…no new patients. I’d invite you to step back, just ask a few of your patients, and look at some of the basic numbers that you most likely already have right in front of you.

Good Marketing Starts with Knowing How Patients Buy Your PT Services

Ask yourself these questions:

A. What is the age of the patient population I want to serve?  Usually it’s 40+ years of age…this is when orthopedic injuries become more common.

B. How do 40+ year olds buy?  They use Google, they look at clinics’ reputation, some visit the PT website, and then they call or request an appointment from the website.

C. What percentage of patients do a search before they visit a physical therapy practice?  The answer is astounding – 84% as reported by LSA (which is localogy.com).

D. It gets better. The research results also noted that that percentage of healthcare consumers of physical therapy, contacted a physical therapist 100% of the time after they did a search!  Of course this behavior doesn’t happen 100% of the time across all communities, but most follow this pattern.

E. Finally, take a look at your website visitors – how many do you get each month?

Quit Missing Out on Easy Opportunities – Focus on the Low-Hanging Fruit First!

I just shared with you how a large percentage of consumers buy PT services – Google first, some visit your website, then they call.  So, you simply want to optimize/focus your time and energy on this.  The good news is this is what E-rehab has known this for some time and it’s what we do everyday for our PT private practice clients.

The bad news is that newer PT business owners, don’t know this yet.  They focus on media channels that often times don’t matter much – Instagram and social media for example.  If you don’t believe me then consider these survey results.

When PT Practice Owners Don’t Consider Their Market’s Buying Process, They Lose

We looked at 100 PT private practice websites in the greater Los Angeles county area, and here’s what we found:

• 48% of PT websites have basic mistakes with their addresses.
• 45% of PT websites don’t even have a phone number that’s easy to find or above the fold.
• 67% of PT websites don’t even have an address above the fold

The Take Home Messages – Focus on GMB, Your Reputation, and Your Website (design, imagery, and the copywriting [copywriting is the words that persuade website viewers to take action])

1. Focus on Fast, Easy, Friction-Free Mobile and Desktop Website Experience
2. Make It Painfully Easy for New Patients (and existing ones too) to Contact You
3. Put Your Energy Into Your Google Business Profile – that means get those reviews too!
4. Put Your Time, Money, and Energy Into Your Website!!!

There’s no need to struggle.  There’s no need to get lost in pages of irrelevant data. There are no silver bullets – successful practices will master the basics and knowing how your target audience buys from you is one of those basics.

You Can Avoid All of These Problems, Execute Your Marketing Strategy, and We Can Help.

Contact us and we’ll provide you with all of the online marketing services you need at a price that any practice can afford.

We Guarantee It!

You can reach David Straight, DPT, co-owner by setting up an appointment – just click here.