The Hidden Costs of DIY Marketing: Why Physical Therapy Practices Need Expert Help

In today’s competitive market, many physical therapy practice owners are tempted to cut costs by handling their own online marketing. However, this approach often leads to disappointing results and, paradoxically, higher expenses in the long run. The adage “penny wise, pound foolish” perfectly encapsulates this situation, as does the saying “jumping over dollars to pick up dimes.” Both highlight the financial pitfalls of not investing wisely in professional marketing services.

The Pitfalls of DIY Marketing

Physical therapy practice owners may believe that DIY marketing saves money. However, the reality is quite different:

  • Time Drain: Learning and executing effective online marketing strategies is time-consuming. Time spent on marketing is time taken away from patient care and other critical aspects of running a practice.
  • Ineffective Strategies: Without professional expertise, it is easy to implement strategies that do not yield results. This trial-and-error approach can be costly and frustrating.
  • Lost Opportunities: DIY marketing often lacks the precision and expertise needed to capitalize on all potential opportunities. This can result in missed appointments, fewer patient referrals, and diminished clinic growth.

The Wisdom of Investing in Professional Marketing

Allen Dib, a renowned marketer and author of the One-Page Marketing Plan, emphasizes the importance of investing in professional marketing expertise. Reflecting on his experience, Dib notes that trying to save money by doing it himself led to significant losses in both time and money. By hiring experts, he could have accelerated his marketing success and avoided costly mistakes.

Dib writes, “Stop being cheap and screwing around with DIY. Every time I’ve done something the cheap DIY way, I’ve regretted it. In fact, I’ve ended up paying a lot more later on, both in time and money.”

This insight is particularly relevant for physical therapy practice owners. Investing in expert marketing services is not a cost; it is an investment that generates returns. E-rehab, with its 21 years of experience in web design, development, and marketing for physical therapy practices, exemplifies this principle.

Leveraging E-rehab’s Expertise

E-rehab’s comprehensive services are designed to drive new and repeat business for physical therapy practices. Here are some key benefits:

  • Customized Websites: Professionally designed websites that engage visitors and convert them into patients.
  • SEO and Social Media: Strategies that increase online visibility and attract more local traffic.
  • Email Marketing and Reputation Management: Tools that nurture relationships with patients and build a strong online reputation.
  • Video Management: High-quality video content that educates patients and showcases the practice’s expertise.

A Smarter Investment for Long-Term Success

Investing in professional marketing services like those offered by E-rehab ensures that physical therapy practices are not just surviving but thriving. By leveraging E-rehab’s expertise, practice owners can avoid the pitfalls of DIY marketing and achieve better results faster.

Take An Important Step Toward Securing Your Practice’s Success

Are you ready to stop jumping over dollars to pick up dimes? Invest in your practice’s future with E-rehab’s expert marketing services. Click here, schedule some time to learn how we can help you attract more patients, build your online presence, and grow your practice. Don’t let the hidden costs of DIY marketing hold you back—make the smart investment in professional marketing now.

By shifting your mindset from viewing marketing as a cost to seeing it as an investment, you position your practice for sustainable growth and success. Reach out to E-rehab today and start reaping the benefits of professional marketing expertise.

5 Physical Therapy Private Practice Marketing SOPs for Online Marketing Success

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, having effective marketing strategies is essential for the success of your practice. To ensure consistency and efficiency in your marketing efforts, it is crucial to implement standardized operating procedures (SOPs).

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of SOPs and delve into five essential SOPs for your physical therapy private practice’s online marketing success.

What is an SOP and Why is it Important?

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are documented guidelines that outline step-by-step instructions for various processes within your practice.

SOPs ensure consistency, streamline operations, and facilitate training for your team members.

By creating SOPs, you establish a framework for successful marketing campaigns, minimize errors, and maximize your practice’s potential.

Now, let’s dive into the five SOPs for your physical therapy private practice’s online marketing success:

1. Building an Email List SOP (E-rehab offers 2 ways to do this):

 

Building an email list is the cornerstone of effective communication and patient engagement. Implementing an SOP for collecting or importing email addresses into a marketing system will allow you accomplish a number of key marketing objectives like:

  • Building a targeted list,
  • Communicate with past patients,
  • Share information about the practice
  • Educate patients about current services, and
  • Stay connected with them in the future.

Ensure your SOP includes clear instructions for logging into secure accounts, processes for collection of email addresses, and segmentation to match the message with where patients are in the buyer’s journey.

E-rehab offers this functionality and it requires no more than 8-seconds per patient.  So, make sure you are using email marketing and have an SOP to implement this strategy.

2. Asking Patients for Ratings and Reviews:

97% of consumers read ratings and reviews and they read your reviews too.  Patient testimonials and reviews are powerful marketing tools that establish trust and authority for your practice.

An SOP for requesting patient ratings and reviews is essential. This SOP should guide your team on how to set expectations that you are going to ask patients for a review, the appropriate timing for requests, provide them with clear instructions on where and how to leave reviews, and how to use technology to connect your patient with a review site like Google or your website.

By incorporating ratings and reviews into your marketing strategy, you can enhance your online reputation, boost search engine optimization (SEO), make your practice look more attractive for potential new hires (after all, who wants to work at a clinic with no reputation), and leverage social media to attract new patients.

3. Establishing Review Goals and Incentives:

One way to ensure success of your reputation marketing program is to have the right SOP to make sure you are capturing reviews over a long period of time.

Here’s what this SOP should include:

  1. First, create monthly, quarterly, and annual ratings & reviews goals.  This crucial for tracking and measuring the success of your practice’s online reputation management.
  2. Aim for at least half of your patients to be able to write a Google review.
  3. To encourage your staff to follow the SOP, incentivize them by offering a $10-$20 bonus for each review they generate.
  4. Celebrate each employee’s success at company meetings to reinforce the importance of reviews and foster a positive culture of engagement and excellence.

4. All of Your Staff Need to Know – Who You Serve, What You Do, How & Why You Do It

You need an SOP for informing and testing everyone in your company about who you serve, how and why you do it, and what your ideal target market is.  From here, you can create messaging – an elevator pitch/one-liner/or talking logo.

Define your unique value proposition, articulate your core values, and what messaging you’ll be using to position your practice in your community and deliver it through your website, social media, and patient communication materials.

Where should you start? Follow Donald Miller’s concept of a Brandscript, as outlined in his book “Building a StoryBrand”, to craft a captivating practice mission.

By effectively sharing your mission, you establish an emotional connection with patients and differentiate your practice in a crowded marketplace.

IMPORTANT: you need to periodically test your staff – ask them to deliver your elevator speech/one-liner/talking logo to you.

5. Monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

To gauge the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts, it is crucial to regularly monitor KPIs and metrics. Schedule monthly meetings with your digital marketing agency to review these metrics and discuss strategies for improvement.

Key metrics to monitor include website traffic, email open rates, the number of appointment requests from digital directories, and the effectiveness of Google and Facebook Ads.

Action Item:
Block out 15 minutes every month to review this data. If you notice anything unusual, find out from your marketing agency (e.g. E-rehab) what might have caused the change.

By analyzing these metrics, you can identify areas for optimization, measure the success of your campaigns, and make data-driven decisions to maximize your marketing ROI.

Wrapping It All Up

Implementing standardized operating procedures (SOPs) for your physical therapy private practice’s online marketing is a fundamental step towards achieving long-term success. By following the five SOPs discussed in this blog post, you can build a targeted email list, establish trust through patient ratings and reviews, set review goals, craft a compelling practice mission, and monitor crucial metrics.

Click the link to book an appointment with David Straight, DPT, and co-owner of E-rehab, who can help you implement these vital SOPs and take your practice to new heights!

Some of the Physical Therapy Web Design Details Described in an Infographic

Nothing like an occasional visual graphic to help describe many of the things we consider when creating a physical therapy website design and what is included with physical therapy website development.

We like to describe what we do as a bicycle wheel.

E-rehab.com is a physical therapy website design and development company first and foremost. This is the hub of most online marketing strategies is the website. Practices should start with great website development first!

After you build the hub (i.e. a custom, responsive physical therapy website), practices can ad spokes – additional marketing strategies and tactics to reach their marketing goals…but the website is always first.

If you have more questions about how we can help, please contact us or request an appointment on our calendar.

 

Coronavirus Email Messaging & Social Posts for E-REHAB Clients

We have been working overtime to help you share the message that you are open and still treating patients.

We Will Send Out a Message to Your Email List for You

 

Now We are Getting Ready to Send the March Newsletter for Our Clients

You should log into your Control Panel and Edit your newsletter if you have updates to communicate to your list.

Reviewing & Authorizing Your Facebook Timeline Post for Your Facebook Page.

This post is about your practice being open for business during the outbreak. 

**Note: If you are closed, let us know if you want us to post this to your website.**

We have also created a Facebook post for you. Below, you will see an example of it on the Coast Physical Therapy Facebook page.

Adding the Image Yourself

If you’d like to add this image to your website, right-click on the image below and save it.  Then upload it as an image post to your Facebook page.

Instructions on how to release this message, so it shows up on your Facebook Timeline, are also in your Control Panel and explained in the video above, as well.

​Check Our Blog for Frequent Updates

I’ve compiled a list of resources that I’ve found online. You can see these if you click here.

We plan on updating our blog with additional information as needed.

If you find additional resources, please let me know. I’ll evaluate them and if I have time, I will add them.

Telehealth Image to Add to Your Facebook Page

Below is an image that you can right-click and download the image then add it to your Facebook page.

In good health!

Resources for PT Private Practices Dealing with the Coronavirus Outbreak

We are compiling a list of resources for physical therapy private practice owners to help them deal with the Coronavirus outbreak.

The Private Practice Section is recommending you contact your Senator and Congressmember to  ask for additional PPP funding.

Here’s a template for you:

My name is and I am a physical therapist in private practice. I am the owner of (name of clinic) located in (town). We have (number) clinics and employ (number) people. (Share brief story of how your clinic has been financially impacted by COVID-19). Thank you for the policies enacted which support small businesses and health care providers during this public health crisis-especially the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.

As a small business owner, I am thrilled to be qualified for the PPP, but as of April 16th, there is no more money to lend. Without this loan, (describe the impact of not being able to obtain these funds-on patient access, on your business, as well as the local economy)

Please Senator __________, I (as well as my employees and my patients) desperately need you and your colleagues to enact legislation which will infuse another $250 billion into the PPP program. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.

Respectfully,

Name, credentials

If you are a PPS Member: Member: Private Practice Section of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA)
Cell: ____________
Email: ____________

Talking Points
Thank you for enacting the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to help us small businesses keep our employees on payroll. As of April 16th, there is no more money to lend. Without this loan, (describe the impact of not being able to obtain these funds-on patient access, on your business as well as the local economy) Please Senator __________, I (as well as my employees and my patients) desperately need you to enact legislation which will infuse another $250 billion into the PPP program. As a voter and a small business owner, I thank you for your help!
Template Facebook Post
Template Facebook Post As of April 16th, the PPP has no more money to lend. (tag Senator __________ on Facebook), I (as well as my employees and my patients) desperately need you to add another $250 billion to the PPP program. Without this loan, (describe the impact of not being able to obtain these funds-on patient access, on your business as well as the local economy). As a voter and a small business owner, I thank you for your help!
Template Twitter Post
As of April 16th, the PPP has no more money to lend. (Use Senator’s twitter handle: @Senator __________), I (as well as my employees and my patients) desperately need you to add another $250 billion to the PPP program. As a voter and a small business owner, I thank you for your help! #PPSAdvocacy

Senate Committee’s Small Business Owner’s Guide here:

Here are two other links we think may be most helpful today:

California Physical Therapy Association Resource Page

Click here lots of resource links and information

Financial Resources

Smart Assist has a good list of financial resources by state.
Click here for details

PPS Special IMPACT Issue

An entire issue about dealing with COVID-19 – Click here

Telehealth Resources

I created a dedicated telehealth page.  Click here for this.

Webinars & Recordings

From Clinicient
Clinicient is providing virtual town hall meetings: As the COVID-19 situation remains everchanging, the well-being of our clients, their patients, and our employees is our top priority. Like you, we want to do our part to help.  Starting today we will begin holding virtual town halls to give you, and all rehab therapists, practice owners and their staff a forum to hear from us, share ideas and collaborate as we mitigate the impact of COVID-19.
Click here to register.

From Breakthrough PT Marketing
Chad Madden at Breakthrough PT Marketing did a good webinar with answers about the COVID-19/Coronavirus outbreak and what PT practices can do.
Click here to watch that.


Click here to watch the webinar.

He also created a Facebook Group – PT Private Practices Standing Up Through Crisis.
Click here to visit the group and join if you are interested.

Important Documents

3-15-20

Provided by BCMS Comp. Facility Message to Patients, Patient/Employee Questionnaire, Patient Decision Tree for Questionnaire, Employee Decision Tree for Questionnaire

In response to “how do we decide” how to handle certain Coronavirus issues, Mary, Alicia, and Teresa at BCMS Comp have created two Decision Tree documents for your review and use, as applicable. It is critical that you don’t put yourself in jeopardy by changing content that could be state or federal law requirements or prohibitions.  If you have questions, please email Alicia Nevins Mahoney at nevinsa@bcmscomp.com .

Click here to download all 4 documents.

Business Relief

Disaster Relief from the Small Business Administration

The SBA is providing guidance and small business loans for economic damages.

Click here for more information.

Local SBA Assistance

Here’s a resource to local SBA counselors that you can reach out to.  There’s a finder function on this website to locate a resource near you.

Click here for more information.

Interim Guidance Resources from the CDC for Businesses & Employers

Other Business Resources

Thoughts on How to Lead & Manage Your Staff from Simon Sinek

Here’s a good post from Simon Sinek about options to retain your staff.  I hope this helps.

It’s on Facebook.  Click here to view it.

Idea to Offer Elderly Hours – Grocery Stores are Doing This. Perhaps It Would Work in Your Practice

Here’s a story about how some grocery stores are offering elderly hours for their patrons.  Perhaps you can do something similar and offer elderly hours for higher risk patients?

Click here to read more.

E-REHAB’s Website Resources – Our Response to Coronavirus/COVID-19 Outbreak for Our Clients

As you are very well aware, we are in the midst of a Coronavirus outbreak and considerable social action & reaction.

In an effort to support our clients, and the well-being of patients, we have put together resources that are available now, with plans for more in the near future.

Here’s What We are Doing:

  • We created a home page message
  • We created a special FAQ web page
  1. Messaging for your website home page
    We have a prepared statement for your home page based on the current best information available.
    Click here to see a live example.

    **YOUR ACTION ITEM: You need to let us know if you want this information on your website.**

    2. ​​

  2. You now have available a Special FAQ COVID-19 Page
    Click here to see a live example.

  3. We have created a telehealth page that can be added to client websites. We recommend you keep it short and have a strong call to action to have viewers call you for details.
    Click here to see an example.

Note: We understand every clinic is unique and if you need to supplement or remove what we’ve provided, please send a request to support@e-rehab.com with clear and specific information to replace our text.

More to come soon.