Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 4

Physical Therapy Marketing Ideas – Positioning Yourself Against Your Competition

One of the most common challenges that private physical therapy practice owners face is something that’s seen across all businesses:

How do you set yourself apart from everyone else?

Unless your clinic is in an extreme rural part of the country, you probably have to compete with a number of other practices in the area, many of which have claims about why the patient should choose them. Example claims are typically as follows:

We’re the best,
Best in the city,
1 on 1,
Hands-on,
Experienced,
Top-rated.

So how can you show prospective patients that they’re better offer choosing you than the competition for their care? It’s all about communicating your message and having a well-designed reputation marketing plan.

Here are 4 big ideas that will elevate your practice above your competitors:

I. Create clear distinction

One of the foundations of your physical therapy marketing strategy should be to determine how you will create distinction between your private physical therapy practice and all the other practices in your region. Distinction is all about standing out from the crowd and presenting yourself as better than average so that patients will choose you. Scott McKain, who is a global expert in the art of distinction, breaks this method down into the 4 Cs:

Clarity: before you even work on delivering your message, you first need to define who you are as a business, what your practice is all about, and perhaps just as importantly, what your practice is not about; this step is crucial, because it is extremely difficult to differentiate your practice unless you know how you want to represent it.
Creativity: research has shown that in the best marketing strategies, this step follows clarity, and not the other way around; some may find this to be counterintuitive, but the truth is that while being creative is absolutely necessary, it needs to be guided by the clear definition of your business.
Communicate: using a creative approach, you next need to figure out a way to clearly and effectively communicate the message you’ve landed on to current and prospective patients, and do so on a consistent basis; one way to accomplish this is by providing success stories of patients that have had a positive outcome from treatment.
Customer-experience focus: this means planning every business decision around the patient experience, listening to their feedback, and responding in such a way that shows them their interests are your top priority.

II. Write an attractive value proposition

Along with the formula to creating distinction, another essential component how you should position yourself amongst your competitors, should be your value proposition. Proposing your value means articulating to prospective patients why you can solve their problems more effectively than other practices in the area. It shows patients what specific benefits they can expect if they see you for treatment and the value of your services that you’re guaranteeing. When created and delivered properly, this can be the ingredient that will give you a clear competitive advantage over others.

Below are a few key elements of a good physical therapy private practice value proposition and some tips on how you can create one for your practice:

It should contain a headline, sub-headline or paragraph, and possibly a few bullet points or a visual element
Start by making a list of all benefits your patients will experience, then identify what value your services will bring to them, and finally differentiate and position yourself to make it clear who your target patient is, what you offer them, and how you’re different
Your proposition should be easy to understand, clearly communicate the benefits patients will get, and show how you’re better than competitors; it should also take 5 seconds or less to read and understood your value proposition
You should also focus on highlighting the countless benefits and advantages of physical therapy over other treatments, showing that it is an effective first-line intervention supported by research for a wide range of conditions with little to no side effects; it is also easily accessible, saves patients money, and will help them avoid additional specialist visits, diagnostic tests, opioids, and unnecessary surgeries

III. Bring what makes your practice unique front and center

This next one is more than just saying your are the best. It can set you apart when done right, but won’t necessarily result in a long-term competitive advantage (because your competition could replicate it).

As with the other strategies mentioned above, the goal is to show why a patient should choose your practice over your competitors, and one of the most powerful ways to do this is by clearly showing them what makes you unique.

In order to do this, first do a detailed review of all the other private physical therapy practices in your region, taking stock of what services they offer, what advantages they claim to provide, and what some are missing. From there, take a close look at your own practice and work to identify some of the prime characteristics, qualities, and services that aren’t found elsewhere. Some examples of services or traits that might set you apart are:

Having hours of operation that are more extensive than other practices
Accepting more insurance types than other practices
Having several locations to better serve patients
Providing treatment services that are not typical, such as aquatic therapy, laser therapy, or certain techniques like the McKenzie method, the Active Release technique, myofascial release, or ASTYM
Having a policy that ensures physical therapists—rather than aides or assistants—spend a certain amount of time with each patient

An Example of a Private Practice “Positioning” Themself Against Corporate and Hospital PT Care with a Comparison Table

IV. Use the right language…especially on your website

The final step is to make sure that you’re using the clearest and most effective language when creating content. Without the right language, you could have the right idea of what you want to say, but are not saying it in a way that engages readers and drives them to your clinic. Consider website visitors as an example. It usually only take about three seconds after landing on your page to decide if they want to continue looking or not, so you definitely want to make a positive first impression (a good image will do that for you) that keeps them there. Next, they will start reading, so you need to use the right language.

One method to determine if you’re using the right language is to think about the following three questions that visitors are asking when visiting your website:

1) What do you offer?
2) How will it help me recover?
3) How do access your services?

If the answers to all three questions are clearly visible on your website above the fold (the bottom of their computer or phone screen), you’ll be increasing your chances of getting that visitor to read on and hopefully turning them into a new patient. So it’s best to consider them when creating any type of content for your practice.

A Quick Glance at this Website and You Can See that They are Physical Therapists, Have 3 Clinic Locations, and They Help their viewers “…Get Back In The Game”

Additional reading: If you want to get clear on your message, one good reference is Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.

StoryBrand’s tagline makes it very clear how they help business owners to brand and position themselves:

Their tagline is: If you confuse you’ll lose. Noise is the enemy and creating a clear message is the best way to grow your business.

Click here to get the book.

In our next blog, we’ll offer some tips and resources to assist your writing process and ensure that you always have an engaging topic to discuss.

Physical Therapy Marketing Strategy Part 2: Divide all potential patients into segments to reach people with a specific message

A one-size-fits-all approach simply won’t cut it for many problems that need solutions, and this applies to your private practice’s marketing plan, too. While it may be easier to craft a single message and distribute it in a single way, you’ll fail to reach many potential patients and other individuals when you use this type of strategy. Instead, try to guide your physical therapy marketing strategies with segmentation.

Break It Down – Physical Therapy Marketing Segments

Marketing segmentation is the process of dividing your market of all the individuals you’d like to reach into unique groups – or segments—based on a variety of characteristics. The intended goal is that each segment created by this process can have a specific message that targets their needs and matches their needs with the specific benefits they’ll receive when they take you up on an offer.

In effect, segmentation will allow you to more easily personalize the content you’re distributing by individually targeting these specific groups rather than using a general, all-encompassing concept. Segmenting your market reduces the risk of an ineffective or unsuccessful marketing campaign, and research has shown that businesses that utilize this strategy typically turn better profits than those that don’t.

For example, you might offer a free myofascial treatment to a segment of people that have neck problems at work. You could offer a free balance screening to seniors as well. You are simply creating an offer that would be most appealing to each of those segments.

Assumption: these should be your ideal target patients. I just wrote about ideal patients and physical therapy marketing segments last month because it was top-of-mind for me then as well.

Segment in ways that are most applicable to your private physical therapy practice

There are countless ways to segment your market, but some of the most common ones include doing so by age, diagnosis, or geographic location. If you’re not sure what will work best for your practice, a great first step is to study your patient population. Look into statistics from patients’ medical records to garner an idea of the average age of your patients, what regions most of them are coming from (this is a great way to know where to send direct mail), what types of conditions are most common, and what diagnoses are the easiest to get paid for. This can serve as a single segment, or if some characteristics appear in a bimodal or trimodal—or more—distribution—several segments can be created and targeted with your marketing content.

Other possible segments to consider targeting include:

Individuals in need of a specific service: do some research in your area to see if there are any physical therapy services you offer (e.g., vestibular rehab, pelvic floor rehab, pediatric rehab) that are difficult to find locally; if so, be sure to highlight these services (on your website, blog posts, social platforms, and to your referral sources) and be sure to clearly state if you have specialists of any sort on your staff
Potential patients vs. existing patients: individuals in need of physical therapy that hear about your practice will be looking for a different message than your current patients; cater your marketing content accordingly
Patients vs. doctors vs. case managers: keep in mind that patients are not your only audience, and adapt some of your messages to those that are making decisions on what practice to choose for patients
Individuals most likely to benefit from your equipment or modalities: if your practice features any unique equipment or treatments (e.g., aquatic therapy, high-intensity laser treatment, Biodex system), promote them in your marketing messages by explaining what conditions you are most capable of treating

Use the Media that a Majority of Your Segment Commonly Uses as Well

So many companies are selling tactics like Facebook advertising or postcards. One thing you want to make sure you do is to use the media that your market segment uses. So, continuing with our example above, it might not be the best idea to run Instagram ads for balance screenings to seniors that could really use your help. Why? It’s because people over 70, for the most part, aren’t on Instagram (at least a majority of them). You’d be better off mailing them something several times. Additionally, for people with neck pain at work, you might want to use Facebook ads to reach them since people in the workforce in your area are more likely to be on Facebook. So, just keep in mind the segment, the offer, and the media that you will be using when putting together your marketing campaign.

A good reference for this is available here. The concept of Market (the segment you are targeting), Message (the offer), and the Media you are using (Facebook or direct mail in our examples) comes from Dan Kennedy.

Need Help – Get in Touch with Us

If you’re still not sure how best to segment your audience, we can help by providing some additional physical therapy marketing ideas and show you what we think will work best for your practice. Contact us to learn more.

Extra Training from YouTube

Here’s a good video that describes segmentation, targeting, and positioning if you’d like to learn more.

Physical Therapy Marketing Strategy Part 1: How to resist ‘bright and shiny objects’ by using a concrete marketing plan

It’s 2020 – Happy New Year! Now’s the time to execute the planning you did last quarter. If you are like most, you may not have had the time to plan and feel behind. As such, you could be more susceptible to the latest and greatest marketing ad promising you massive growth and riches.

You may want to ask yourself the following:

Do you ever find yourself jumping from one physical therapy marketing idea to the next?
Do you see one social media post offering to grow your practice, then another email, and maybe a postcard?
Do you often start several projects at once, only to see most of them fall by the wayside after a few weeks?
Do new marketing suggestions make you feel like you need to stop what you’re working on and pursue the latest solution instead?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may have some degree of “bright & shiny object syndrome”.

In the marketing world, bright & shiny object syndrome is essentially the tendency to be distracted by claims of the newest and best rather than focusing on what you’re doing at the moment. Those who are affected by it tend to begin projects based on new ideas without properly assessing long-term goals and whether or not the new pursuit is feasible and sustainable. As a result, very few marketing tactics—if any—actually get completed. Worse yet, if they do get implemented, they often yield little to no measurable return. As a result, you may fall into the trap of thinking that marketing doesn’t work.

Stop the Madness – Stop FOMO

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is one of the psychological tactics along with outrageous claims like “doubling your patient volume in 60 days”, that companies use to generate curiosity. These types of claims while possible, are not usually the average result of any one marketing tactic. Companies tend to promote the outliers to get your attention.

Strategy vs Tactics – In Most Cases, Tactics Should Come as a Result of Strategic Thinking and Planning

This brings up an important distinction that needs to be made between marketing strategy and marketing tactics. A physical therapy marketing strategy is the first step of the process in which you do the “big picture” planning for your practice prior to determining what tactics to use and how to use them. Individuals with bright & shiny object syndrome often try to implement their tactics before taking the time to lay out a strong strategy, which can wind up robbing you of your precious time and at worst, harming rather than helping your marketing efforts.

Here’s the problem: if you don’t think through and write up a marketing plan before implementing it, you may likely run into unexpected obstacles that you are not prepared to deal with. When confronted with these types of problems, it may then seem easier to abandon the project altogether and move on to the next, newer one instead. As you can see, taking this approach could lead to lots of unfinished business and can take a toll on your marketing budget over time.

Physical Therapy Marketing Planning Versus Taking Action

There’s a regular debate about strategy versus tactical implementation. The fact is, most small businesses (this includes PT private practices), don’t do much planning at all.

The flip side of the argument is that strategic planning is a way to delay action. The thought that you need a perfect plan that is going to guarantee results is enamoring but folly. It won’t happen. It’s best to do the following:

Get help where you need support,
plan,
take imperfect action,
measure the results,
modify the plan and future actions, and
continue to consistently implement!

Gary Vaynerchuk does a nice job of answering this question:

6 tips to help you stay focused and avoid distractions

If you’ve noticed any signs of bright & shiny object syndrome in yourself and want to change your ways, identifying the issue is the first step. In addition, keep these 5 tips in mind to help you stay focused with your marketing plan and block out the temptation to try the newest thing:

1) Take the time to set realistic short- and long-term goals for your physical therapy marketing campaign that will serve as the backbone of all future decisions
2) Try to commit to these goals no matter what, and only change them when you can realistically state that they are no longer serving your practice well
3) Understand that new does not necessarily mean better
4) Ask yourself if a new marketing tactic is feasible for your practice—both budget- and time-wise—before executing it
5) Discuss ideas with one or two at most, of your coworkers to get their feedback.
6) Avoid sharing ideas and developing strategy with everyone – that leads to “design by committee” in which you have too many ideas, too much criticism, and it slows down execution.

Need Help with Physical Therapy Marketing Strategy & Planning?

For additional suggestions on how to resist bright shiny object syndrome, we can help set you on the right track by analyzing your needs and capabilities to figure out what will work best for your practice.

Importance of Identifying Your Ideal Patients in Your Physical Therapy Marketing Plan

Increasing business at your practice starts with a strong marketing plan

If you own a private physical therapy practice, getting more business is likely a primary goal that dictates many—if not most—of the decisions you make. To this end, you probably also understand how crucial it is to market your practice in order to reach both current and prospective patients, but how to market and what you need to get there may seem a bit more daunting. That’s why we’d like to offer some physical therapy marketing ideas to assist you with this process.

Marketing is essentially the process of getting someone who is in need of physical therapy to know, like, and trust you. When you achieve these goals, there’s a high likelihood that people that know, like, and trust you will contact you.

The services that you offer, what separates you from your competitors, and presenting this information in such a way to show patients why they should choose to visit you instead of another practice are all important.

In today’s business world, with a seemingly endless number of marketing tactics—like e-newsletters, paid ads, a wide variety of social media platforms—it’s difficult to decide what combination of tactics will work best and be worth your time.

But as with much else in business, it pays to start with a plan.

Identify your ‘ideal patients’ and group them into segments to better define who you want to market to

Before beginning any sort of marketing, spend some time to create a clear marketing plan. Doing so will guide your future efforts and allow you to determine what approaches you’d like to take, and the amount of resources needed to make them happen. A critical first step in formulating a marketing plan is to identify your ideal patient, which is an individual whose problems you are most adept at solving. Ask yourself these questions to help identify your ideal patient types:

What are the demographics of these individuals?
What types of diagnoses do these individuals have that would lead them to seek out physical therapy (e.g. immobility, chronic pain, sports-related injury, pelvic problems, vestibular conditions)?
What are the perceptions of these people with respect to using PT services (are they open to direct access or do they need a referral)?
What types of media do these patients consume (e.g. Facebook, Google, Instagram, YouTube)?

Niche Down to More Specific Segments for Better Clarity and Physical Therapy Marketing Effectiveness

Once you successfully answer these questions, build a marketing campaign that attempts to reach these ideal patients directly, as those are the individuals most likely to come to you for care. Marketing plans are often more effective when you further segment your ideal targets into smaller groups or segments. Here are a few examples to consider when further segmenting your ideal patients into target markets:

Past vs. current patients
Patients referred by physicians vs. self-referred patients
What types of insurance/payment do these patient types usually have available to pay for PT services?
Individuals that are most likely to benefit from your services

Again, try to understand what it will take to get past patients (warm leads) with a need for your services to come back versus what prospective patients (cold leads that have never used you before) are looking for and would make them select you over competitors.

Why ‘done’ is better than ‘perfect’

A common problem that many private practices owners run into in their physical therapy marketing strategy is spending too much time trying to ensure that a marketing plan is perfect. This can lead to delays in launching the plan, which in turn, could mean less potential business for your practice. For this reason, we strongly recommend that you get something off the ground and “done” first, rather than getting too hung up on perfecting it. Marketing plans are meant to be tweaked and improved upon as you go, so work on erecting a strong base at the outset, and then building on it from there.

Physical Therapy Website Accessibility – ADA Compliance in the Digital World

Physical therapists understand the importance of creating an accessible environment better than most professionals. Working with people who are injured or struggling with pain often involves meeting them on their level, and the same is true for creating a space that’s welcoming for people with physical disabilities.

When it comes to creating accessible spaces, we usually think first about entryways, bathrooms, and other concrete obstacles that may present challenges for those with limited function or mobility. Tackling these areas is essential, but it’s also important to ask yourself whether or not your website is as welcoming as it could be.

Does the Americans with Disabilities Act Apply to PT Website Design & Development?

When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, the idea that being able to use a business’s website would be essential to engaging with their business didn’t exist. As such, the bill has few guidelines for accessible website design. In the 30 years since, though, online commerce and interaction has become a much more integral part of our lives.

This year, the idea that a website is an essential part of a business was debated on the floor of the Supreme Court. Early in October, 2019, the Supreme Court upheld the right of blind people to sue Domino’s for failing to make their website and app accessible.

According to the LA Times, the court’s decision was based on the idea that the ADA “protects access not just to restaurants and stores but also to the websites and apps of those businesses.” The ruling doesn’t mean the plaintiffs will win their suit; it simply means they have a right to bring it. Legal precedence on the matter is still far from established, but that won’t stop lawyers from finding as many businesses as possible to bring suits against.

E-rehab has accessibility tools for your website that might help you to avoid the hassle of a lawsuit.

Contact Us today at (760) 585-9097 or request a free consultation by clicking here.

To learn more about accessible digital design, visit W3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility.

17 Physical Therapy Marketing Ideas to Make Your Physical Therapy Website More Credible and Generate More New Patients

Authority, credibility, expertise, and trust are all important factors that patients scrutinize when looking at a physical therapy website. Patients that are unable to develop a sense of trust with you as a physical therapy service provider are less likely to call or request time with you on your appointment request system.

Increase trust and you will increase new patients!

Here’s a quick list of credibility opportunities that you can implement to increase trust between you and potential patients.

In a Physical Therapy Practice, People Judge What They Can’t See Based on What They Can See

Fact is, in a service business, people can’t test drive you or try on your physical therapy services. An outdated website may leave an impression that your practice is out of touch and may not be a clinic of expertise or excellence. I have compiled a list of seventeen things you can do to improve your online appearance and help you successfully convey that you provide exceptional services:

1. Upgrade your website design:

Creating a new physical therapy website design is well within the budget of any practice. It is important for your website to look great on smartphones…so, a responsive website is the right choice. Don’t forget to test all your website’s marketing features on more than one type of smartphone. NOTE: E-rehab clients can get a new website, free of charge, every 3 years.

2. Take real photos of you, your staff, and your patients:

Don’t use stock photos…or at least not ones that look like stock photos. And never, ever use clip art! Hire a professional photographer to take some pictures for you or license unique images from a pro, and you’ll immediately upgrade the appearance of your site.

3. Update your font:

Studies have shown that your website font actually impacts the believability of the claims you make on your website. Font matters! Make sure you’re using fonts that are proven winners on the web and that are big enough to easily read.

4. Make it easy for patients to communicate with you:

With smartphones, apps, sms, email, chat, and social networks, there are many ways for patients to connect with your office. Don’t miss out on vital communications by ignoring some communications channels.

5. Make sure your phone number is on top and on every page:

Your phone number should be visible above the fold on every page of your website along with a click-to-call function when people visit your site on their smartphone.

6. Add a live chat option:

Adding a live chat option is easy (and free too!) with a system like tawk.to .

7. Don’t want the commitment of live chat; add a bot:

Chatbots are a popular way to automate the interactivity on your physical therapy website. With a physical therapy chatbot, you can answer many of the questions that your patients may have before they even come in to see you. It’s a great way to educate your patients and it’s a great place for patients to submit an appointment request as well. We find that 1 in 10 people that use an E-rehab Physical Therapy Chatbot are scheduling an appointment.

8. Make sure you have a map that’s easy to access:

Make sure your address(es) is easy to see. There’s nothing more frustrating than looking up a local practice only to find that you don’t know where they are located. Make sure you have your address permanently placed on your site above the fold and also have a Google Map available.

9. Leverage your great service:

I rarely meet a practice owner that doesn’t think they provide great service. Fact is, if a practice has been around for five or more years, they’re probably right. If they weren’t providing great service, they would have gone out of business. But here’s the problem; it doesn’t matter how much YOU tell others that you have a great practice, that you are the best, that you are number one…it will never be as effective as the social proof that other patients can and will share about your practice. Encourage your happy patients to share the word about the success they had with you.

10. Include patient ratings and reviews:

I’m going to spend a little extra time on this by leading with a question. If you were a consumer that needed a locksmith, an urgent care practice, emergency plumber, orthopedist, or a physical therapist, would you look for one on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter? Out of the literally hundreds I have asked, I’ve only had one person say yes. Another couple said they might ask for a referral from Facebook. My point is, and your web stats will prove this to you, people check PT practices out online, most of the time, by either Googling you, or by going directly to your website. You may be asking, “What’s your point Dave?” My point is that there are two places that you want to have your ratings and reviews for prospective new patients; on Google and on your website. Start by getting ratings and reviews on those two platforms (and in most cases, it won’t matter if you have reviews anywhere else).

NOTE: Of course, this is how the E-rehab system works – we help practices capture ratings and reviews to be displayed on Google or your website. We also will import Google reviews and post them on your website as well.

11. Add patient video testimonials:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth millions. If you have a bunch of positive ratings & reviews, undoubtedly, some will question their authenticity. You can avoid any doubt and demonstrate the happiness and satisfaction of your patients with video testimonials. Click here to see an example.

NOTE: We have a patient video testimonial system that is so fast and easy to use, anyone can use it. Contact me and I’ll show you that it’s as simple as it gets and there isn’t any emailing or uploading of videos.

12. Highlight your specialties:

If you offer services that are uncommon, such as aquatic therapy, women’s health, vestibular rehab, concussion treatment, etc., make sure that you have a dedicated web page about these services. Also make sure that you include the service and your city in the page title and body so it’s more likely to rank on Google.

13. Highlight professional awards and association affiliations:

Have you won a Top Rated or Best Of award? Make sure that you display the badge on your website. While most of these “best of” websites have no relevant criteria to judge the quality of a practice, they do give badges away to many practices. Why do they do this? They want you to put the badge on your website that links to them so they will rank better in the search engines for industry searches like “best physical therapy in Salt Lake City” or “top physical therapy clinic in New Orleans”. Yes, it’s a joke/game, but if you are lucky enough to get the arbitrary award, add it to your website. It can’t hurt. I do recommend that you simply add the image but don’t link back to the ratings and review site.

14. Personalize your website:

Today’s patients want to see who will be treating them. Here’s how you can add a personal touch to the experience:

Staff biographies

Make sure that you have updated staff biographies on your website. Include the schools that staff member attended, certifications, specialized con-ed, types of patient conditions they like to treat, and then humanize the staffer. Tell viewers what they like to do in their spare time, mention some details about family, and involvement in the community if it’s relevant.

Behind-the-scenes

By providing video and pictures to show viewers what happens at the practice, a patient can more easily visualize their own visit. You may also want to showcase any unique company cultural traits. Both of these will result in impressing to the patient that your physical therapy practice is relatable and trustworthy.

Pictures of your great service

We are frequently asked what kinds of pictures should be on a physical therapy website. I suggest you share images of what you do best…patient education, manual therapy, and the sophisticated therapeutic exercises/neuromuscular reeducation that you use every day. For various services pages, take specific photos of the above three categories and include them on the respective services pages.

15. Be a healthcare professional:

A lot of the tips above are designed to make your business feel more relatable and friendly. But when it comes to opening up their wallets, customers still want to know you are a clinical professional. Here are ways to show you mean business:

Have a secure domain

This is a big one! Invest in an SSL certificate and secure your domain. It will help with SEO, build viewer trust, and HTTPS 2.0 protocols can speed up your site too.

Make sure you address the payment, billing, and co-insurance payment processes on your website

Show that you stand behind your physical therapy services with confidence!

Make your Privacy Policy visible

Make it clear that you’re going to protect their valuable information.

16. Make it clear how to reach support:

Let them know how you will handle things when they go wrong. When it comes to healthcare services, most complaints are centered around money. Clearly communicating how you verify insurance benefits, how the billing process works, and communicating in a timely manner can go a long way toward building trust.

17. Take Action!

It’s so important to communicate credibility and trust to prospective patients that are viewing you on the web. In today’s complex, competitive, and the oftentimes confusing marketplace, businesses need to go above and beyond to set themselves apart. Hopefully, the tips mentioned above will help your physical therapy practice stand out.

Contact Us if You Need Help

If you need help, don’t hesitate to give E-REHAB a call at (760) 585-9097. Since 2003, we’ve been helping PT private practices get the word out to their communities.

Why an In-Depth Understanding of Your Patients Is the Only Marketing Strategy You Need

Successful marketing is about more than tracking analytics, building a social following and getting traffic on websites.

Ultimately, successful marketing is about knowing your patients. No matter how great your marketing efforts are, it doesn’t matter if you can’t connect with the audience.

So, if you want to be truly successful, you need to have an in-depth understanding of your patients.

What is a Patient-Centric Marketing Approach?

Patient-centric marketing uses personalization to deliver services, messages, and content to the patient that provides them with the answers they need. This applies not only to marketing but also to your entire organization.

Putting your patients first can improve your relationship with them and retain more patients over time since they feel valued.

With patient-centric marketing, you stop telling your patients what they need, which comes across as unappealing and untrustworthy. Instead of pushing services and aggressively asking for the therapy appointment, with patient-centric marketing, you craft your messaging, content and services around addressing their needs first.

Ultimately, if a patient knows they have other options and feel undervalued by the clinic’s lack of attention, they’ll move on.

The Value of Knowing Your Patients

More and more businesses are taking advantage of the power of blogging and content marketing, meaning that the internet is flooded with content everywhere you turn. As a result, patients no longer need to waste time on low-quality content that doesn’t serve their needs.

If you want to stand out among this crowd, you need to create unique content that’s relevant to the needs of the target audience. When you can create content that fits their needs, you develop trust and value with your practice. This makes patients more loyal to your practice and its services.

Having loyal patients who return to your clinic when therapy is needed offers many benefits to your physical therapy practice, not only in revenue but in positive brand reputation and word-of-mouth recommendations.

In fact, repeat patients are 65 percent more likely to convert over new prospects. This means reduced marketing costs and more new patients for you. Loyal patients are also more likely to support your efforts to generate new business since they want to share their experiences with their family and friends. This boosts your trust with new patients and gets you more cash revenue.

So, when you stop guessing at your customers’ wants and needs and start paying attention to the feedback they give you, you get both long-term patient relationships and increased profits.

How to Get an In-Depth Understanding of Your Patients

Developing these relationships and this understanding of your patients takes time, however. Your patients’ needs may change over time, and you need to change with them.

Here’s how:

Build Your Patient Personas

A patient persona is a guide to the audience you’re trying to attract to your business. A patient persona describes one ideal patient or client in detail, giving you insights about their behaviors, demographics, background and other unique identifiers.

A truly in-depth buyer persona goes beyond this knowledge, however. It dives much deeper into understanding the patient’s life and the challenges they face. What are their problems? What influences their decisions?

The key to all of this is not to guess, of course. When you create buyer personas, you can’t just create a patient. It needs to be based on the loyal patient base you have.

If you’re trying to reach a different audience, you can even create multiple personas to target new patients, while also keeping your loyal patients happy.

Keep in mind that these may change over time as well, so you should watch how they evolve and continually find new ways to reach them.

Listen on Social Media

Many people are comfortable displaying much of their lives on social media. This can provide you with valuable insights about them and how they feel about your business.

If you only pay attention to posts and comments that relate to your business, however, you’ll miss out on insights from them about what they need from a product or service. To get a real understanding of the target audience and what they expect from your business, you need to go beyond the mentions.

Social listening tools can be helpful for this. Mention is one of the best tools to monitor your brand anywhere. It gives you insights about who’s posting about your business, where they’re located and what influence they have. From there, you can do a little more research into these potential patients to learn more about them.

You should also work to connect with your audience when they come to you. With the availability of therapists online, most patients expect quick responses when they inquire online. Be sure to pay attention to questions, comments, and feedback to you about your business, so you can get an idea of the problems your audience is experiencing.

Use Surveys

If you’re not getting the answers you need from social listening, don’t be afraid to ask your patients directly. Surveys provide you with opinions and insights that you may not have otherwise, and they’re easy for patients to participate in.

Keep in mind a few things, such as:

Keep your survey short and simple.
Humanize your message to let them know that their feedback has a purpose.
If your survey is a multi-page form, use a progress bar to let patients know how long they have to complete the survey.

Ultimately, the idea behind the survey is to keep it as quick and painless as possible for participants.

Pay Attention to Visited Content

Whether it’s videos, blog posts, infographics or images, patients engage with a variety of content throughout the day. To understand what they want and need, you need to pay attention to the type of content they visit.

The best way to learn more about popular content is with Google Analytics. This will show you popular content and the patterns that may arise, as well as the type of content that works better for your audience.

Don’t forget to check out your competitor’s social media pages to see what posts get a lot of attention as well. Using this information, you can create more content that’s aligned with what’s working for your competitor.

Look for Lost Conversions

In addition to learning about current patients, you can learn a wealth of information from the leads that don’t convert. This process is a little more involved, but it can provide you with valuable insights.

First, let’s look at the patient’s journey:

A patient is aware of a problem (usually some form of joint, muscle, and/or nerve pain)
A patient considers the options to solve that problem (often this starts at Google, then may progress to asking a family member, friend, doctor, or coming back directly to you)
A patient decides what solution to try (often based on their insurance coverage, the geographic location of a practice, and/or a practice’s ratings and reviews).

If you find that you lose patients in the consideration phase, you may be not doing enough marketing/advertising/or sales to let your community know that you exist. Of course, not every patient coming in contact with your clinic will make an appointment, but it’s still important to find leaks in the sales funnel.

With this in mind, you want to create content for each stage of the patient’s journey, so you can address any concerns they may have along the way.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to marketing, don’t assume you understand the patient better than they know themselves. Instead of telling your patients what they need, focus on providing them with information and solutions that address their needs, so you can create a loyal following that grows your business.

How to Ensure Your Physical Therapy Blog Posts Stay Evergreen

The best part about content marketing is its versatility. It can be specific to your practice, free and really covering any topic you want it to be, plus it’s easy for beginners to get started.
That said, not every aspect of creating content is easy. A successful content marketing campaign for your physical therapy clinic must deliver a valuable message, and consistently define you and your practice as the leader in your community.

One aspect of keeping your post evergreen is to revisit your blog history, we’re talking about the maintenance of your previous content marketing. Updating older content is a great way to boost your SEO, but many practice owners and marketers don’t take advantage of this opportunity.

Here’s why that should change.

Physical Therapy Content’s Final Stage

Content creation involves a defined process and repeated stages that begin with research. From there, the plan is formed to make new content over time. Once the content is designed or written, it’s published and shared, with not much done after the fact.
But the time after publishing, the maintenance phase is vital. Unfortunately, in the fury of constantly pushing new content, the end of this process is often neglected.
The content you’ve created to provide long-term value — your evergreen content — plays an important role in your site. These pieces are designed to stay relevant over time and guide new patients to your clinic, so they shouldn’t be neglected.

Just think about some of the benefits evergreen content brings to the table:
Driving traffic.
Backlinking.
Authoritative keywords.
Site and content continuity.
Improved ranking.

Evergreen and constantly maintained pieces serve as a foundation for the rest of your content and grow your authority as the leading physical therapist of your area. This also alleviates the stress of constantly struggling to source or validate new content.

Maintenance doesn’t have the urgency of creation, however, so it tends to take the back burner in content marketing. Content maintenance is about nurturing a sustainable relationship with your growing audience by keeping your post reliable.

If a loyal patient were to stumble upon an old, outdated post, they may lose faith in your practice.
Content maintenance is challenging though, which is why many content marketers ignore it. Evergreen content requires time, research and updates to stay relevant, which means adding a second plan in addition to your content marketing strategy.

Here are some methods you can use to update and maintain older content:

Physical Therapy Blog Technical Updates

Like anything else, your site needs maintenance over time. Whether it’s broken links or an outdated background, technical issues are likely present in your old content.
Even if it was published in peak condition at the time, there will likely be one or more elements that should be updated.

For example, Google recently made changes to their meta descriptions. The previous limitation of 160 characters is no longer the case, so what was once optimized is no longer optimized.
Maybe your meta description still works for SEO today, but it’s still worth the time to refresh your old content and check for things like this.

You may also want to experiment with new title tags to boost engagement and refresh your post. You may find that you have broken links or links to outdated resources that are no relevant which harms your credibility.

Broken links hurt your SEO, so take the time to find newer information or statistics that emphasize your point and link to those. You can also update your “last updated” timestamp to show viewers that your content is fresh.

Another technical challenge is the way content is consumed now versus how it was consumed years ago. The end of Flash, for instance, has also ended plenty of excellent content pieces that relied upon it. If you created content with Flash, it won’t last much longer as Flash is being phased out. Many sites recommend Flash be disabled anyway, so it’s a change that will come no matter what.

A way to update that content for modern audiences is by switching out JPEG images for PNG images. PNG images have better quality and load times than JPEG images, so if you don’t update them, you may find that you have slower load times that impact your SEO.

Revitalize Your Most Popular Old Physical Therapy Posts

While maintenance is important, you don’t need to update every single piece of old content, nor should you. The best place to start with updates is with your best and most popular pieces, regardless of how old they may be.

You can find out what these pieces are with Google Analytics under the “Behavior” section. This section will show you a detailed breakdown of each page’s performance for the history of your site and the posts that have stayed popular over the years. You’ll then have a list of pieces that are worth maintaining.

If you focus on maintaining and revitalizing these older pieces of popular content, you’ll most likely be able to continue to leverage them in the future.

You may also want to consider why these content pieces have been so successful. Each piece of content has a purpose, so you may learn more about what works and what doesn’t by analyzing your popular pieces.

If you think that an older piece could do better, consider “upcycling.” Upcycling turns your old pieces into a new format, which is commonly done with a video. It’s the same information, but it’s presented in a way that revitalizes the content and gets it more attention.

Make Relevance about your Physical Therapy Private Practice a New Goal

No matter how evergreen you thought your content was, time will always make your posts irrelevant. Eventually, posts will turn into old news, which requires maintenance to keep them relevant.
One of the benefits here, however, is that you can turn your piece into something noteworthy with your new perspective. So, instead of focusing on updating the piece for popularity, focus on making changes to make it more relevant.

To start, evaluate your content according to three questions:

Does your content still pique interest?
Is it timely?
Will it provide a purpose to your patients and your practice?

If the answer to all three of these questions is yes, then you have content that’s worth updating.

The most relevant content will be viewed and shared more, so taking the time to revamp your relevant content can improve your content lifecycle.

Once you decide that the piece should and could be updated, it’s a good idea to check the topic with Google Trends to make sure there’s interest in the topic of the old post you’ve chosen to update. If you see too many peaks and valleys, you may want to wait until the optimal time to revamp your piece.

Final Thoughts

Content maintenance isn’t the most exciting part of developing a content marketing strategy, but it’s incredibly helpful for your practice. If you want to continue to create evergreen content, you need to put in the effort to reach your patients.

This means taking the time with your old blog posts and checking for technical issues, popularity and relevance to see what will work best. It also means making a serious commitment to making these changes.

Evergreen content isn’t designed for overnight success. Instead, it takes up a vital place in your content library that will bring traffic and credibility to your brand for years.

Physical Therapy Website Design: Creating a Brand That Stands Apart from Competitors

Physical therapy website design is a great opportunity for a private practice to differentiate themselves from the competition. If you run a physical therapy clinic, you know who your competitors are, and you know what makes you different from them. So, how do you convey what makes you different from the rest when crafting a physical therapy website design?

Astute branding choices, plus specific attention to SEO, so you’re found easier online, is the right strategic formula. Additionally, you need a site that is patient friendly, loads fast, offers the right information to your viewers (i.e. services and specialties), and has clear calls to action throughout. Of course, you want your website to work well on not only desktop computers but tablets and smartphones too (this is called a responsive website and you can read more about what that means by clicking here).

Here at E-rehab.com, we’re an experienced team that gets your business there, step by step.

Branding in Your PT Practice Web Design

Your physical therapy practice needs to demonstrate how it stands apart from others. While it’s important to use quality images, graphics, and a consistent color palette to make a statement, branding should also be about the information you share with your prospective patients. Here are some ways you can differentiate your practice:

Share innovative physical therapy techniques others don’t offer?
List special credentials and the benefits of seeing a PT that has them (perhaps you have and OCS and/or doctoral degree)
Do your outcomes set you apart? If so, list them. FOTO has a widget for that. Ask for the code and we can include it.
Do you have a unique physical location?
Do you treat/touch every patient every visit? While it’s getting harder to do so with declining payment, this is a good differentiator and something the big box clinics don’t do much of anymore.

Include Your Own Physical Therapy Images & Video – Images and Video are Everywhere and You Should Leverage This Too

In the age of visuals, providing videos on your website that showcase what you offer, is a great method of branding. Don’t just do a video about a treatment technique, create a series of videos on the conditions you treat, why physical therapy is a great choice, and then why someone should choose you.

Patient Video Testimonials and Social Proof

Also, patient testimonials are one of the best methods of branding for websites. Real results are everything when it comes to patients choosing physical therapy, and they’ll hear it directly from your best cases. This is called social proof. Here’s what social proof means:

…often in situations where we are uncertain about what to do (i.e. I don’t know which physical therapist I should choose), we would assume that the people around us (experts, celebrities, friends, patients.) have more knowledge about what’s going on and what should be done. Reference: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-proof

Effective SEO

Your website should be optimized not only for your brand name but also for the keywords “physical therapy + city your business is in”, so those in your local area find you easier on search engines.

It’s also important to include appropriate titles, include keywords, and alt tags for your images and videos, so the search engines have a better idea of who you are and where your business is located.

While keywords in text are still important, be careful in being too general. Developing unique long-tail keywords pertaining to specialized physical therapy procedures you provide, will help you get found easier too.

Easy Integration with Social Media

Integrating a website with social media is essential in order to provide content about the physical therapy services you offer. You can do this by creating social media buttons that link to your social properties as well as easy shares on your web pages, blog, and videos.

Creating educational information on your site for social media sharing is important to alert your followers about services and specials you offer. The more detail you include in your content, the more apt it is that visitors will share. Just be sure the content you create for social media is information not found anywhere else. You want to get all the “juice” you can which will help with your search engine rankings.

Customizing Your Site for Mobile

Responsive design for mobile devices is more essential than ever for your physical therapy site. As more and more people use mobile devices to look up information (statistics indicate that approximately 35% of PT website viewers are using mobile devices now), your site needs to be optimized for mobile platforms as well. If you aren’t sure if your current website is mobile optimized, we recommend you check it out here: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

15+ Years of Experience – We’ve Got You Covered

We’ll help make your site easy to use so those searching for you will find exactly what they need and fast. This means possibly restructuring the desktop version of your site, so the most essential information gets seen first.

Stand out and show prospective patients that you’re there to help. Contact us here at E-rehab.com, so we can create a unique website for your physical therapy practice.

Physical Therapy Marketing Online – The Total Online Presence

In this post, I would like to share with you a little bit about what a total online presence is. I describe these key components because these are the basic online technologies that new, existing, past patients and even referral sources will engage with.

So, what exactly is a total online presence for a physical therapy practice?

Number 1

You must check on page 1 of Google especially in the maps listings. Are you there? That’s step one of a total online presence. SEO or search engine optimization is the strategy that is required to rank your physical therapy website on page one of Google, Bing, and well, Yahoo. Yahoo doesn’t matter much anymore.

Number 2

you need to have a five star reputation so you convert people that are looking at you online in the patients. Having a 5-star reputation is a great way to differentiate yourself from the big-box companies, POPTS, and hospital systems.

Number 3

you need a great looking, fast, and responsive website that looks just as good on a desktop as it does a tablet and smartphones.

Number 4

you also need video. Video helps you build authority and trust and allows you to deliver the key message that you want patients to know. Video gives people confidence that you are more engaged in their needs too.

Number 5

you need an e-mail marketing system that will welcome patients, allow them to download their paperwork, thank them for choosing you, and send monthly newsletters that creates both goodwill and gets patients to come back to you next time they need care.

Number 6

you need to create social network properties like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Foursquare, and Instagram. Then you need content and a social media marketing platform to post your content on these social properties.

Number 7

you need to be advertising online. Pay-per-click advertising can be a great way to generate leads for your practice especially in niche markets like TMJ treatment, vestibular rehab, women’s health, and balance rehabilitation to name a few.

If you have questions give us a call at (760) 585-9097

Physical Therapy Blogging – E-rehab in the Top 50

We are honored to be recognized as one of the Top 50 physical therapy blogs by Feedspot.com .

I thought this would be a good time to talk a bit about physical therapy blogging.

I see a lot of PT blogs and most of them die a rapid death.

The owner/practice marketer realizes that it takes a lot of time to create quality blogs post on a regular basis.

Others that blog on an ongoing basis don’t seem to have the strategy of “blogging with purpose”.

Blogging with purpose means creating blog post that are:

full of quality information that visitors to a PT website might find useful,
original content that isn’t copied from some other website or a graphic someone grabbed from Pinterest,
representative of the services you provide (no point in blogging about personal training if you don’t do it),
optimized for the search engines.
good content to be shared on your social media properties

Too many times I see blog posts that aren’t original, don’t have the target audience in mind, and simply wouldn’t be of interest to physical therapy patients.

Ask Yourself These Questions…

When marketing, Dan Kennedy says you need to fulfill three requirements: market, message, media and they must match.

There are three main keys to your success in Magnetic Marketing.

Message: Without the right message, you are going to be in trouble. Most people do not have a well-crafted message…
Market: The second thing is making sure you are actually marketing to the right people..
Media: The third piece of the triangle is media. You need to have the right message and it has to be delivered to the right market via the right media.

Think of it as a triangle with message, media and market at each corner. All three of these must be working together synergistically for you to get the greatest impact that you can from your marketing

Reference: https://dankennedy.com/images/PDF/MagneticMarketing_FR.pdf

Summarizing the Concepts of Physical Therapy Blogging

Make sure you are writing for a specific audience that can use your PT services.
Make sure you message is value-packed and entices people to take the next step in your funnel.
Make sure you are using the right media…blogging can be the right media to use especially if your posts rank on the search engines.

[note_box]NOTE: a good example of a blog post that you might want to write is a post with the title: Lower Back Pain Treatment in *Your City*. If this post ranks on Google, then people that are looking for lower back pain treatment in your area just might read it and take the next step, i.e. call you.[/note_box]

Looking for someone to blog with purpose for your practice? Give us a call at (760) 585-9097.

3 Statistics to Know For Successful Physical Therapy Online Marketing To Baby Boomers

physical therapy online marketing

When it comes to physical therapy online marketing, reaching the right audience is the most important component to a successful strategy. For physical therapy offices and businesses, it makes perfect sense for your physical therapy online marketing strategy to target baby boomers. As baby boomers age, they face mobility-related accidents, chronic illnesses, and other health obstacles which require short or long-term physical therapy care. So how can you go about making sure that your services are reaching this demographic locally? Here are three key facts to know–thanks to Hubspot‘s informative article on the Baby Boomer generation–that will help you improve your online marketing strategy.

Fact: 82% of baby boomers are on at least 1 social networking site.

In addition, 15% of baby boomers are on Facebook and spend at least 11 hours on the site per week. This is important to note, especially when you work on your social media marketing.

To reach baby boomers on site like Facebook, make sure that you regularly update your social media sites with news and information related to physical therapy tips and reminders to help reach current and potential clients. For example, you can post infographics about the best stretches or routines to build strength after hip surgery, or develop a series of blog posts with photos that explain various equipment, medical terms, or conditions that baby boomers commonly face. Or, start a conversation asking people informally how they’re feeling after physical therapy. It can be helpful for patients to see others respond positively after 3 months of therapy, or provide insight into what helps. Providing helpful links, starting conversations, and more are all ways to help engage with baby boomer customers, who will see you posts when you are active and engaged on the same networks.

In addition, don’t forget that site like Facebook offer ratings and reviews, which can help baby boomers find trustworthy physical therapists. Developing your social media pages will help you maintain authenticity among this demographic.

Fact: 33% of all tablets are owned by people 50 years and over.

This is important information for understanding how important mobile-responsive and mobile-friendly your online marketing should, especially for baby boomers. According to the Venture Capital Review, baby boomers also own 23% of alliPads and 30% of all Kindle Fires, which can help you understand where they are looking at and reading information.

How does this fact help you adjust your strategy? For one, it reaffirms that your blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, emails, and newsletters should be brief and graphically pleasing. These formats are best for mobile audiences who are skimming through information quickly. Having attention-grabbing newsletters that are concise and to-the-point has immediate

Fact: Only 5-10% of marketing is targeted to baby boomers, even though they lead as the largest group spending in all types of product and service categories.

This is also reflective in physical therapist marketing strategies: though baby boomers are more likely to need physical therapy, marketing exactly to their group is not always a priority. If you want to step ahead of competitors, you can develop a strategy that will improve your presence.

What would make your online presence more appealing and accessible? From your website appearance to your content, you can do many things that will encourage engagement from baby boomers. For example, photos on your website should reflect the demographics you serve, whether it’s older men and women, or younger athletes. Baby boomers are more inclined to use your services when you use photographs reflecting themselves. In addition, the overall website should also be clean-cut and professional, without any gimmicky colors and graphics that can distracting and unappealing. You might also want to add larger text than standard 12-point font for readability, and easy navigation with larger buttons or tabs to change pages, especially on a tablet.

Overall, these five facts will help you understand baby boomers, and allow you to develop an online marketing strategy that really targets their attention. For more facts, read the compiled list at Hubspot, and contact us to help you serve your demographics.